Disagreements over the future of pandemic-era health insurance subsidies are threatening to prevent Congress from passing a continuing resolution (CR) needed to prevent a government shutdown on Wednesday. But all the focus on health care has drawn attention away from the effects of the CR itself, which could lead to lawmakers unintentionally imposing some of the deepest spending cuts in modern history.
Congress is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills each year to fund the roughly 30% of government spending that doesn’t operate on autopilot. When lawmakers fail to pass a new appropriations bill before the previous one expires, they use CRs to temporarily continue government funding using the previous year’s funding levels and policy directives. From 1998 to 2011, CRs covered about one-third of the average fiscal year. But Washington’s dependence on them has risen in recent years: the federal government has been funded by a CR nearly half the time since 2011. And in four years — 2007, 2011, 2013, and 2025 — a CR lasted the entire year, meaning Congress simply declined to pass an appropriation bill.
Now, Congress may rely on a year-long CR yet again to continue avoiding the plethora of policy issues more directly related to the appropriations process than the expiring health-insurance subsidies (which are considered mandatory spending not normally part of the appropriations process). That approach would be unprecedented because Congress has never before gone two consecutive years without passing any original appropriations bills. And there are serious consequences to operating the government at funding levels set more than 18 months ago.
