“The American Republic will endure until politicians discover they can bribe the public with the public’s money.” — A sentiment attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville that, while likely apocryphal, has proven disturbingly prescient.
Every few months, with the predictability of seasonal allergies, America experiences another bout of government shutdown theater. Politicians thunder righteously about fiscal responsibility. Cable news deploys their doomsday graphics. Social media erupts with partisan finger-pointing.
And then, usually around 11:58 PM on deadline day, Congress heroically passes a continuing resolution—a temporary funding measure that essentially says, “We’ve failed at our fundamental job, but would like to continue getting paid while we continue failing.”
The nation collectively sighs in relief. Crisis averted. The system works. Except it doesn’t. Not even remotely.
The Broken Budget Process: By Design, Not By Accident
Let’s be clear about what a continuing resolution (CR) actually represents: a confession of incompetence or, more cynically, a calculated abdication of responsibility.
The federal budget process isn’t some mysterious arcane ritual known only to the initiated. It’s a well-documented, structured annual process established by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974:
- The President submits a budget proposal (February)
- Congress passes a budget resolution (April)
- Appropriations committees draft 12 funding bills (Summer)
- These bills are enacted before the fiscal year begins (October 1)
This process was specifically designed to prevent the very “emergencies” that continuing resolutions supposedly address. It provides ample time for debate, compromise, and adjustment.
The last time Congress actually completed this process on time? 1997. Bill Clinton was president, “Titanic” was in theaters, and most TikTok users hadn’t been born.
That’s not a bug in the system. It’s now the system itself.
The Tactical Advantage of Crisis Governance
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” as the political adage goes. But modern governance has evolved beyond this maxim to something more cynical: “Never waste time manufacturing a good crisis.”
Continuing resolutions offer a perfect vehicle for crisis governance:
- They avoid explicit priority-setting. Making actual budgetary choices creates winners and losers. CRs largely preserve the status quo, offending fewer constituencies.
- They enable grandstanding without consequences. Politicians can stake out maximalist positions, knowing they’ll eventually “reluctantly” compromise—appearing both principled to their base and reasonable to moderates.
- They concentrate power. Normal appropriations processes distribute decision-making across committees. Crisis negotiations consolidate power in leadership.
- They lower accountability standards. When the alternative is “government shutdown,” merely keeping the lights on appears heroic rather than the bare minimum.
Perhaps most perniciously, continuing resolutions make governance look impossibly difficult, lowering public expectations of what government can or should accomplish. When avoiding catastrophe is celebrated as success, actual effective governance becomes an unattainable ideal.
Historical Parallels and Economic Consequences
History offers clear warnings about this governance model. The late Roman Republic maintained the appearances of constitutional governance long after its substance had eroded. Formal procedures existed but were increasingly bypassed through emergency measures and extra-legal accommodations.
As historian Mike Duncan notes in “The Storm Before the Storm,” Rome’s breakdown didn’t begin with dramatic violations but with a gradual willingness to circumvent normal procedures for political expediency—precisely what continuing resolutions represent.
The economic consequences are equally troubling. Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises emphasized that economic calculation requires predictability and clear rules. Continuing resolutions create precisely the opposite: a stop-start governance model where agencies cannot plan effectively beyond a few months.
Consider the absurdity: We ask government departments to manage trillion-dollar responsibilities while never knowing their budget beyond the next CR expiration. No business could function this way—yet we’ve normalized this for our federal government.
The Bipartisan Consensus for Dysfunction
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the continuing resolution cycle is its remarkable bipartisan resilience. Through divided governments and single-party control, Republican majorities and Democratic ones, the pattern persists.
This suggests something more fundamental than partisan positioning—it reveals a system where the incentives for individual political actors have completely diverged from the incentives for effective governance.
Public choice theory, pioneered by economists like James Buchanan, helps explain this divergence. Political actors respond to incentives just like market participants. The incentives in our system now overwhelmingly reward performative crisis management over the unglamorous work of actual governance.
The real bipartisan consensus in Washington isn’t about policies or priorities—it’s about the tacit agreement to maintain this dysfunctional system that serves incumbents so well.
Breaking the Cycle
Solutions exist, though they face significant obstacles:
- Automatic continuing resolutions with penalties. Some have proposed systems where government shutdowns become impossible, but funding gradually decreases until a proper budget is passed—creating pressure without crisis.
- Budget process reforms. The current process could be streamlined, with fewer veto points and clearer accountability.
- Electoral consequences. Until voters punish representatives for budget failures rather than rewarding last-minute “heroics,” the incentives won’t change.
- Cultural shift. Perhaps most fundamentally, we need to stop treating basic governance as an unattainable ideal and start treating it as the minimum expectation.
The late economist F.A. Hayek warned about the “fatal conceit”—the belief that centralized planning could efficiently direct complex systems. Our budget process has evolved a different fatal conceit: that governance through perpetual crisis is sustainable or desirable.
It is neither.
The Question That Remains
So the next time you see those shutdown countdown clocks, remember: this isn’t an inevitable feature of modern governance. It’s a choice—a choice made repeatedly by the very people elected to prevent such scenarios.
The question isn’t whether we’ll avoid the next government shutdown. We probably will, at the last dramatic moment, with another continuing resolution.
The real question is: When did we decide that basic functional governance was too much to expect from the world’s oldest constitutional republic?
Or perhaps more pointedly: What would happen if we actually demanded it?
What do you think? Has America permanently normalized crisis governance, or is there a path back to functional budgeting? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Sources:
- Congressional Research Service. “The Congressional Budget Process: A Brief Overview.” CRS Report R46240, 2021.
- Peterson Foundation. “Budget Process Reform: What and Why?” Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 2019.
- Hayek, F.A. “The Road to Serfdom.” University of Chicago Press, 1944.