Lawmakers of all political stripes are fond of reminding everyone in earshot that the Constitution gives them the power of the purse. Congress wields this power through twelve spending bills that fund all facets of government and have to be passed each year. Well, fiscal year 2011 turns into a pumpkin at midnight September 30, just three weeks away, and how many of the dozen bills have been signed into law? Uh, that would be zip, zilch, zero, nada.

In many years the House passes all of their bills before they leave for August recess, and the Senate has at least moved everything through committee if not the floor. Not so in 2011. The House has passed six spending bills; the Senate has passed a grand total of one. But that’s just the start. Remember after each chamber adopts their version of a bill, they have to hammer out their differences in a conference committee and pass the resulting bill. None of that has occurred. Clearly they aren’t going to get there from here.

Unfortunately this isn’t a surprise. It’s been well over a decade since all the bills were done before the beginning of the fiscal year. And it’s worth remembering it was mid-April, more than half way through the fiscal year, when the FY11 spending decisions were finally approved. That followed a fall where the then-majority Democrats couldn’t get any of the bills done before the 2010 elections, punting to the newly elected Republican House majority in the New Year. This time around, wrangling over the debt ceiling debate delayed Congress from even determining what the total amount of spending should be in FY12 putting them behind the legislative eight ball again.

This Congressional failure is more than an embarrassment or an inconvenience. Operating on stopgap spending, agencies are held hostage, unable to adequately budget, hire or promote staff, fulfill certain parts of their mission, or interact with the public if it requires travel. And it’s not just in Washington; this affects Farm Service Agency offices, National Park Rangers, and medical research grants amongst others. It used to affect veterans as well, but Congress admitted failure and approves much of the Department’s budget a year in advance! This is Congressionally-driven government dysfunction.

There are already rumblings of a month-long continuing resolution to buy Congress time until October 31st. That should be more than enough time to finalize the bills and have some certainty in fiscal year 2012 spending. The debt ceiling deal locked in the spending levels so now it’s just about filling in the details with something the House and Senate can agree on. The final deal provided less security spending and more non-security spending than the House had previously agreed upon in their budget and that may be a hurdle, but in the end the deal passed both chambers with bi-partisan majorities (although clearly the debt limit sword of Damocles was part of the impetus).

From the impasse over the FY11, spending bills to the wrangling and brinksmanship over the debt ceiling deal, the public is fed up with Washington infighting. The creation of the so-called deficit “Super Committee” is just the latest example of the Congress not fulfilling their constitutionally mandated job. To put it in perspective, we have 535 people representing more than 300 million Americans – if that isn’t a “super” committee we don’t know what is. Congress needs to roll up their sleeves and get the FY12 spending bills done – only a month late. Sad as it is, that would still be progress.

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“The real problem with big issues like Medicare is that both parties have to be brave at the same time…Every pollster will tell you not to do that to get partisan advantage. Too many people here are willing to deliberately harm the country for partisan gain.” — Jim Cooper, a Blue Dog Democrat, quoted in The New York Times