In this revealing episode of Budget Watchdog All Federal, Steve Ellis, Josh Sewell, and Gabe Murphy dissect the March 2025 continuing resolution that’s anything but “continuing.” They expose how HR 1968 gives unprecedented flexibility to the Pentagon with a $6 billion boost and expanded transfer authority while cutting $13 billion from domestic programs. The team explains how this unusual full-year CR weakens congressional oversight by blocking challenges to presidential emergency declarations and tariff policies. Discover why this legislation represents a concerning shift in the separation of powers and what it means for taxpayers when Congress relinquishes its constitutional authority over spending. Is this CR really about keeping the government running, or is it a power grab that undermines democratic accountability?

Following the taping of this podcast, reports surfaced indicating that Republican appropriators in Congress belatedly sent the Pentagon funding tables detailing congressional intent for the Pentagon spending in the CR.

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Budget Watchdog All Federal, the podcast dedicated to making sense of the budget spending and tax issues facing the nation. Cut through the partisan rhetoric and talking points for the facts about what’s being talked about, bandied about and pushed to Washington, brought to you by taxpayers for common sense. And now the host of Budget Watchdog AF TCS President Steve Ellis.

Steve Ellis:

Welcome to All American Taxpayers Seeking Common Sense. You’ve made it to the right place for 30 years. TCS that’s taxpayers for common sense, has served as an independent nonpartisan budget watchdog group based in Washington dc We believe in fiscal policy for America that is based on facts. We believe in transparency and accountability because no matter where you are in the political spectrum, no one wants to see their tax dollars wasted. It’s March, 2025 and dear podcast listeners, what Congress just passed and the President signed into law is far more than a typical continuing resolution. HR 1968 might look like a standard stop gap funding measure on the surface, but it contains significant policy changes that go well beyond simply keeping the lights on in Washington from reshaping defense spending to blocking congressional challenges to presidential emergency declarations. This so-called CR represents a dramatic shift in the balance of power between branches of government. Here to help me put all of this into context, is Josh Sewell, TCS, director of Research and Policy, and Gabe Murphy, TCS, policy Analyst. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Gabe Murphy:

Thanks, Steve. Great to be back on.

Josh Sewell:

Yeah, thanks Steve. And I got to say, you’re right, calling this a simple continuing resolution, it’s like calling a battleship a rowboat. I mean, this thing ain’t just a continuation of 2024 spending and it’s actually more concerningly yet another instance of Congress transferring its power of the purse to the executive branch.

Steve Ellis:

Alright, well let’s dig in. So Josh, for our budget watchdog Faithful, who might need a refresher, what is the continuing resolution?

Josh Sewell:

Yeah, so generally a continuing resolution is a lot, it sounds, it’s a stop gap measure that Congress passes when they fail to pass appropriations bills on their own. And so it typically funds government agencies at previous year’s levels. It continues the spending of last year. And you say when Congress

Steve Ellis:

Fails to pass the spending bills, that means basically every year. And as budget watchdog Faithful know from episode 79, the CR passed in December was going to expire on March 14th,

Josh Sewell:

And that one that just was going to expire on March 14th was actually the second CR for the year. So HR 1968, the most recent one, had to pass by March 14th to avoid a government shutdown. And again, it was sort of sold, or at least it’s been talked about as being a clean cr. That’s what the president had originally requested or he claimed he had requested that. And a clean CR would, as it sounds, maintain current spending levels without a bunch of changes, but they always have some anomalies. There’s something that has to change in a cr, but this one, it is quite anomalous,

Steve Ellis:

Right? So for instance, it canceled funding for the inauguration activities, which of course makes sense. Why would you continue spending that? The inauguration was January 20th, and so that would make sense as an anomaly. But this CR seems a bit different.

Josh Sewell:

Yeah, it is. And it’s not just those common sense anomalies. This one actually funds the government for six more months, which gets you to the end of the fiscal year. So it’s a full year cr, and that’s just not very common. And again, I can’t say it enough, it contains significant policy changes, not just detailed anomalies.

Steve Ellis:

Okay. I mean, I’ll grant you Josh, it’s uniquely long, or I guess I should say unusually long, but Congress has done full year CRS before. I can remember fiscal year 2011 and fiscal year 2007, for instance.

Josh Sewell:

But those didn’t actually cover all of government, all agencies in the government,

Steve Ellis:

Right? 2011 had all but the Pentagon and 2007 had all but the Pentagon and Homeland Security.

Josh Sewell:

And so now you’ll see that the one department that’s common to those two instances that did get special treatment, got special treatment. Again,

Steve Ellis:

Treatment treat again, like in George Orwell’s book, animal Farm, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Just agencies this time. Gabe, I’ll bring you in on this. We said Pentagon. What was the Pentagon Special Treatment?

Gabe Murphy:

Well, Steve, first of all, national security spending overall got a $6 billion boost over FY 24 levels, which is quite a big series of anomalies. But in addition to that, the Pentagon can under the CR actually start new programs, which full year continuing resolutions typically don’t allow. The only requirement is that they had to be included in the House and Senate draft bills for the FY 2025 Pentagon Appropriations. So that’s a big change. And then it also cuts 13 billion from domestic spending across agencies. And those other agencies are generally forced to operate at or below the FY 24 levels with no new starts. So it really is giving the Pentagon some special treatment.

Steve Ellis:

So the Pentagon gets more money and more flexibility. What else does it get Gabe?

Gabe Murphy:

Well, I guess within that flexibility, there’s increases to the Pentagon’s transfer authority up from 6 billion to $8 billion. Now that’s transfer authority between accounts, and that’s something that is typically there, but the increase is concerning. I will say it’s not as bad as it could have been. The White House actually wanted 30 billion in general transfer authority, but didn’t get it. So that’s a good thing. But beyond that, this continuing resolution also gives the administration significantly more leeway to spend taxpayer dollars at the program and project level with limited congressional oversight.

Steve Ellis:

Well, and that’s an issue with having a continuing resolution writ large, I would say. And it’s a concerning is that it gives a lot of flexibility to the executive branch and a variety of agencies. And then also for budget Watchdog AF Faithful, just to put it into perspective, that 30 billion potential or requested 30 billion in transfer authority, that’s larger than some full agencies because in the Pentagon everything is bigger. And so that’s something that was very concerning. So at least they only increased it a bit, but still 8 billion is a lot of slushy funds to go around. So Gabe, sticking with you, how does this CR affect the level of detail and the Pentagon spending? We talked about how it gives them more leeway, how much more leeway?

Gabe Murphy:

Well, Steve, regular appropriations bills generally come with detailed funding tables as well as joint explanatory statements that get into detail about what Congress wants to spend money on at the program level and even at the project level. But CRS only appropriate funds at the account level with a few exceptions for program specific appropriations such as Navy shit building. That’s a big one. So the CR does list specific dollar amounts for programs like the Arley Burke destroyer. Overall, this CR adds 3.8 billion over FY 2024 levels for Navy shipbuilding.

Steve Ellis:

So let me dig in a little bit on that. So we said that it increased Pentagon’s spending 6 billion over FY 24 levels, right, Gabe? And so that’s of that 6 billion, and I know some things got upped and some things went down, but 3.8 billion of it is going to Navy ship building.

Gabe Murphy:

Yeah, that’s right. And other parts of the Navy’s budget took cuts in some places. But clearly ship building is a priority for the administration and I think Congress is taking its lead on that front.

Steve Ellis:

Okay. So sticking with the Pentagon, what specifically does it do to some of the accounts, other accounts for the Pentagon?

Gabe Murphy:

Well, it increases military personnel as well as operation and maintenance accounts by about 5.7 billion and 3 billion respectively. It also reduces procurement and what’s called RDT and E that stands for research development test and evaluation by about 7 billion Navy ship building gets that boost despite overall procurement cuts. There were some instances where, for example, the Army’s operations and maintenance account was cut by a little over 600 million. So there are some winners and losers here, but with minimal transparency about how this funding is going to be allocated at the program level, it’s hard to what this is all going to look like. And none of these numbers are ultimately going to matter much if Congress passes a massive increase for the Pentagon budget and reconciliation.

Steve Ellis:

So Gabe, you said a little over 600 million cut to Army’s o and m budget, and I recall from your analysis it’s 636 million, but it’s 36 million between friends. No biggie. Alright, Josh, turning to you, and because Gabe mentioned reconciliation, you’ve been tracking that. How will all this line up with those efforts?

Josh Sewell:

Yeah, a budget watchdog says these numbers won’t really matter. It’s because they’re all additive. And so getting the eventual number is hard to understand as of right now. So the house resolution that they adopted and their reconciliation plan would actually add 100 billion to defense spending. And this is fiscal year 2025 resolution. So it’s mostly, it could come over in numerous years, but it’s basically a one to two year plan. The Senate actually says, you know what? We’re bigger, we can do better. 150 billion for the Pentagon according to their resolution that they have in the Senate. Although now there’s some talk amongst senators, I think that’s too low. They want 175 or even $200 billion. And that’s on

Gabe Murphy:

Top of the 6 billion increase included in the cr.

Josh Sewell:

Yeah. And as a reminder to folks, the reconciliation is unique in the Senate in that it only requires a simple majority of sitting senators, of voting senators. And so that you can completely avoid in this Congress the bipartisan negotiations that normally happen in the Senate because Republicans, they have the majority.

Steve Ellis:

Okay, back to the CR, Josh, what does this mean for congressional oversight?

Josh Sewell:

I guess you could say there’s significant weakening of congressional oversight. This idea that, and this isn’t just unique to the Trump administration giving any administration significant authority to shuffle money around, that really is a major deference from Congress to any president that can make it harder to track the money.

Steve Ellis:

Josh, I read this somewhere. Does this CR really stop time? Is it all one day for the rest of this year?

Josh Sewell:

Yeah, I laugh, but kind of crying in some respects. In some ways, yes it does in the sense that as part of the rule that the house adopted to consider the resolution that it actually declares that all subsequent days, basically every day that Congress is in session for the rest of the year is considered one day. And so that is a legislative way of preventing a member of Congress from running the clock out to where they can force a challenge and force a vote on whether or not some of the president’s emergency declarations are actually valid.

Steve Ellis:

So yeah, so basically you only get these national emergencies for six months, although some of them have been in effect since the 1970s. And so just they’re doing this because it’s nuts that they’re just scared of having a vote. That’s all it would be, would be a vote. It wouldn’t actually end the emergency.

Josh Sewell:

No, it doesn’t stop anything. It’s a tool that was put into place for, there’s not a lot of power for any minority party in the House of Representatives, but this is one of the few tools that a minority party but also perhaps a minority viewpoint would have a chance to say, we want to have our say, and if you support this, vote for it. If you don’t support a vote against it, geez, it’s just a vote. Just a

Steve Ellis:

Vote, yeah. Yeah. Doesn’t then anything just a vote. And presumably if you have the majority, you could essentially vote it down, alright. Or maintain it, I guess I would say. What else does Congress give away in this fire sale, Josh?

Josh Sewell:

Yeah, it goes away from just the emergency and the various emergencies, but there’s also, it really does a similar tactic when it comes to tariffs. So it removes the ability basically of forcing a vote on whether or not the tariffs that the president is putting in the additional tariffs. He is also justifying those under various emergency powers and national security interests. And frankly, just I’d say with the numerous anomalies that are anomalous towards history and also just the expansive powers and the lack of oversight, it’s just frankly, it’s just, it’s a bad, well, it’s actually a terrible precedent for future budgeting.

Steve Ellis:

So Josh, what drove Congress’s decision to give up this authority to seed so much power to the White House?

Josh Sewell:

The regular budget process is broken. And so I think if you do have certain priorities that you want to get in there, it’s hard to go through that regular order, even just a semi-regular order because CRS are becoming the norm. As you mentioned earlier, something that’s unfortunately not anomalous. Many lawmakers seem to believe a strong executive branch is great when their party controls the White House. And so we’ve seen some shifting of some folks who were less supportive of executive authority a year ago are now willing to seed some of that power because their team’s in the office, and also I think Gabe can attest to this, is defense hawks always want more money. So by any means necessary, it’s all of the above given more money no matter what it takes, it feels like. And so I think that is a big part of it.

And then just in general, I mean flexibility, it appeases some folks because again, I think if your party controls the levers of power, they think the Pentagon will make those decisions in conjunction with the White House in a way that is conducive to their belief system as well to where it should go. So it’s just a really unfortunate occurrence that the president’s ability to declare emergencies and for them to go on forever is really sort of a real failure of our system right now that I think that there’s actually a bipartisan effort, maybe not enough yet really to reign that in and get Congress to have control over that again.

Steve Ellis:

Yeah, we’re seeing a lot of challenges to the separation of powers. I mean, that’s an episode for another day about what’s going on with the judiciary and whether they’re following the judiciary and obviously Congress and their dictates. So considering Congress is given this flexibility, how is the administration likely to be using it?

Josh Sewell:

Well, I don’t think anyone should try to predict how this administration is going to act specifically, and that’s just an acknowledgement of reality is that it’s definitely even passes, not prologue here, because even they’re acting a little different than their previous administration when they were in their previous term. But I think it’s clear that you have that six months for the rest of the year. So that debate is over as far as the 2025 spending. So the administration can start implementing some of its priorities that it may want to ask for in the 2026 process right now. So they have that ability and we’ll see exactly where they transfer as Gabe might have some better insights or maybe we can research this a little more and figure out, they’ll start sending up smoke signals, but they’ll definitely use that transfer authority I think. I mean, there’s a reason they ask for 30 billion.

So what they do have, they’re going to use to the full extent. And then it’s obvious that those national emergency declarations are going to keep going. Trade policy is the most fluid part of the administration, I think. And so it’s the most hard to predict what’ll happen on a weekly basis, let alone for the rest of the fiscal year. But all this really just pretends, and I think not just because of what has happened over the last in this bill, but also this resolution and in the final spending bill, but also amongst the parts of the majority too, there’s a real concern about how this affects the 2026 budget because it begins a whole different ball of wax when you’re talking about how do you set priorities up for the next year of spending, which that process is beginning. Now.

Steve Ellis:

Gabe, Josh mentioned you about the transfer authority. Any insights or thoughts about where the Pentagon might be reshuffling cash?

Gabe Murphy:

Sure, Steve, I think Secretary Hegseth asked all of the military services to basically outline 8% cuts to their budgets across the board, more or less with 17 different sort of components exempted. And I think that’s going to be a pretty good blueprint for how they will try to reshuffle funds. I think we’re not going to know until they’ve done it, and I think it’s really important that Congress digs in and does some oversight over how they’re using that flexibility.

Steve Ellis:

So you mentioned Congress, Gabe, what else should they be doing differently now that the Sierra’s law?

Gabe Murphy:

Well, in addition to conducting that oversight over how the Pentagon is using this newfound flexibility, they should start working right now on FY 26 appropriations because while the president’s budget generally kicks off the appropriations process, it’s not expected to drop until late spring. And I think Congress can get to work and should get to work sooner on its vision for a budget before then, even if it needs the budget request to really get the ball rolling. But whatever the sequencing is, it’s critical that Congress start passing regular appropriations bills on time.

Steve Ellis:

So-called regular order. That is,

Gabe Murphy:

Yes, exactly. And I know that’s asking a lot these days, but it would be great. Lastly, I would just add that Congress should also reject proposals to massively increase the Pentagon budget through reconciliation. The Pentagon budget does not need more money. It needs some strategic decision making. In January, we outlined over $60 billion in annual savings that could be achieved through targeted cuts to the Pentagon budget. Things like the sentinel aircraft carriers, things that are just outdated or underperforming programs like the F 35 that just are not pulling their weight. And if Congress does ultimately add money, it should at least ensure that any Pentagon spending increases target genuine security needs and are part of a viable strategy. For instance, funneling money into Trump’s so-called Golden Dome Missile Defense Plan, which due to the laws of physics is just utterly unviable, would be strategically and fiscally reckless.

Steve Ellis:

Well, now Gabe, the Golden Dome is based on Israel’s iron dome and the way we’ve been making enemies of Canada and Mexico, we might need it. It would be funny, Steve, if it

Josh Sewell:

Wasn’t so incredibly wasteful. So in short, we need to make Congress great again, and I honestly believe that, I mean, lawmakers need to reassert their constitutional role in budgeting, trade policy, appropriations, all of that. And this isn’t something that we just started saying because it’s the Trump administration. You can look back through our past work. Anytime I mention the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act, we’re talking about reasserting congressional authority, and that’s something we talked a lot about the last four years under the Biden administration. If Congress doesn’t reassert itself, taxpayers, we’re going to increasingly be cut out of the decision-making process around how our tax dollars are spent. That’s just the fact, and it’s a fact that we don’t want to see happen.

Steve Ellis:

Yeah. So Josh, I think then you’re going to be start selling MCGA hats around some different, I dunno what color they would be. Not black, not red, but making Congress great again.

Josh Sewell:

Yeah, and it starts with the appropriators. So we can do just rebrand mags, make appropriators great again, and then we can all fight about earmarks. I like that. I like that even though we have

Steve Ellis:

A little tensions with the appropriators generally, but an active Congress in this case is a valuable Congress to taxpayers. Josh Gabe, thanks for joining me here on the pod. Hope to hear you soon again. Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks, Steve. Well, there you have at podcast listeners, when a continuing resolution gives the executive branch this much power, it should be called a concerning resolution. This is the frequency. Mark it on your dial, subscribe and share and know this taxpayers for common sense has your back America. We read the bills, monitor the earmarks, and highlight those wasteful programs that poorly spend our money and shift long-term risk to taxpayers. We’ll be back with a new episode soon. I hope you’ll meet us right here to learn more.