Congress once again finds itself at dysfunction junction on finishing the bills that fund government in fiscal year 2016. It’s just their only major constitutionally-mandated annual duty, and with a September 30^th due date looming (Congress is gone from the end of the July to Labor Day) it’s pretty clear that they’re not going to finish the job. 

But it wasn’t supposed to be this way. We had such high hopes for this year. Yes, divided government between the Congress and White House would remain, but at least there wasn’t divided government within the Legislative branch, since both the House and Senate were under one party’s control.  Under the Republican leadership in both chambers, Congress passed a Budget Resolution to set spending levels.

But today, out of the dozen annual spending bills, the full House has passed six and six more have passed committee. Despite the change in leadership, the Senate is not performing much better than last year. The Senate has passed zero bills (yes zero) on the floor and eleven have passed committee. Some of this comes from the differences of opinion within the Senate on spending levels. The Budget Control Act of 2011 set the spending levels for this year and no one is happy with them, yet lawmakers aren’t coming up with fiscally responsible ways to relieve the caps. Instead, the Republicans want to blow by the spending caps by pumping a bunch of extra cash into a Pentagon slush fund (an end run around the caps) and the Democrats want to blow by the caps the traditional way – just spend more cash on both defense and non-defense discretionary spending. Also, back when Congress passed their Budget Resolution, they didn’t check with the other end of the Pennsylvania Avenue; consequently, the President has veto threats against all of the spending bills.

There has been a lot written about the (literally) flagging appropriations through the lens of the amendments dealing with the Confederate battle flag on federal property. Even though that fracas led to the spending bill for the Department of Interior to be yanked from the floor last week, let’s be clear: Congress was not on a path to appropriations success before that controversy. In the House, Democrats are not voting for any of the spending bills, which makes the legislation vulnerable to dissension within the Republican ranks. Over in the Senate, Democrats are trying to force a further negotiation of spending levels by blocking all the spending bills from even coming to the floor, starting with the most popular of all – Defense Appropriations.

The budgetary stalemate virtually ensures that there will be some fireworks come the end of fiscal year 2015. There may be another government shutdown or a continuing resolution to fund the government while final spending levels are hammered out. But the fact is, there is nothing that will be decided in the fall that can’t be decided today. All sides know the issues and where everyone stands. Instead of playing out the string, the White House and Congressional leadership should be hammering out a deal. What is most likely to happen is some sort of agreement akin to the Bipartisan Budget Act (also known as Ryan-Murray) that alleviates some of the caps with offsets. But we shouldn’t have to wait for December for a deal as was the case in 2013. Lawmakers should get it done now.