Happy first week of 2022! We’re saying good riddance to 2021 and hoping for a Congressional New Year’s Resolution promising a return to regular order. First up, an honest scrub of the President’s Budget Request (PBR) when it is delivered in February.

Needle scratch!

Well, here’s our first roadblock. Rumor has it the Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23) PBR will be delayed by at least a month because there is no finalized Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) budget. Yep, that’s right. The fiscal year gets a jump on things and started on October 1, 2021, and the government is still running on a so-called Continuing Resolution through February 18th. That means programs are running on autopilot, at the previous fiscal year’s levels. This is no good for anyone.

Until there is agreement on the final FY22 budget, the budget hearings that keep Congress busy in March and April are on hold. So, what’s an idle Congress to do? How about set some resolutions of a different kind? We’re talking about the performance art that non-legislation/legislation has become in recent years. We’re talking about an entirely different type of resolution.

• National Butter Day, anyone? That’s in the same month (November) as
• Drowsy Driving Prevention Week. Well, maybe if we weren’t stuffing ourselves with butter, we’d all be a little more alert. J/K! We love butter at Taxpayers for Common Sense. We always look forward to the butter cows during State Fair season.
• A day Recognizing Interscholastic Athletic Administrators. (Whistle lanyards for everyone!)
• Supporting the goals and ideals of No Name Calling Week. (Ahem! Whatever could have prompted that one?)
• Also, Remembering Kindness in the United States.
• Commemorating the 100^th Anniversary of the Creation of Wonder Bread in Indianapolis. (Hey, you gotta have something to spread all that butter on!)
• Gospel Music Heritage Month (“Give Me that Old Time Religion…it’s good enough for me”)
• Tax Exempt Fraternal Benefit Societies are Good
• National Day of 3D printing (As long as they don’t start printing the butter cows, instead of using real butter.)
• Reaffirming German-American Friendship (Maybe they’d like to celebrate with some Wunder Bread and butter.)
• Calling for a commemorative stamp in honor of Ralph Samuelson, known as the Father of Waterskiing. This resolution was proposed by the Senators from Minnesota because, fun fact alert, waterskiing was invented on the Mississippi River in Lake City, Minnesota. (See, these Weekly Wastebaskets are nothing if not educational.)
• Recognizing the Importance of the Blueberry Industry
• And, we can all celebrate National Cleaning Week by,
• dancing it out on National Dance Day!

Let us assure you this is nowhere near an exhaustive list of the oddball resolutions that an idle Congress occupies itself with during the slow times. Our friends at Pew Research databased the ones proposed in calendar year 2021 for your perusal, including the ones called out above. And our own research showed that 1,900 of these types of resolutions were proposed in a 20-year period ending in 2008. Watermelon Week, anyone?

And though this Weekly Wastebasket is a light-hearted accounting of the “resolutions” by Congress in 2021, we’re making a serious point here. Congress is devolving into a stagnant backwater where important legislation goes to die, and bipartisanship is a distant memory. Republicans and pro-defense Democrats have come together every year, for more than 60 years, to push the notion that the Pentagon policy bill is “must-pass” legislation. How about some of that bipartisan mojo for an improved Farm Bill? Or to deal with our looming climate crisis? Or the debt crisis?

Dance it out, people! And let’s have a Congressional New Year’s resolution to do better.