Commentary: Spending Bill Stratagems

Tick-tock. The ball drops on the fiscal New Year Wednesday night. Absent a deal on how to fund government starting October 1^st, workers will stay home, national parks will be closed, and agencies won’t be able to perform their jobs.

That everything would come down to the last minute was entirely predictable back in July, or even earlier. The House gave up after passing only six of the dozen required spending bills (every one of them facing a veto threat). The Senate never got started – not a single spending bill was even debated on the Senate floor, much less adopted. There were disagreements about whether and how much to bust the spending caps established by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA). Once the dissension regarding efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are thrown in, you have an appropriations conundrum of Gordian knot proportions.