Make Congress work without pay until the government is funded
Washington Examiner
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Year after year, much more harm than good results from congressional budget battles fought under threat of a government shutdown. To help set things right, Congress should pass a combination of elements from two bills that are remarkably bipartisan while backed by a number of key conservative groups.
The first and most essential bill, authored by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and co-sponsored by nine Republicans and four members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus, is called the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act of 2023. A complementary bill, called the No Budget, No Pay Act, was introduced in January by four Republicans and two Democrats.
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The Lankford bill would provide that if any appropriations measures are not finished by the beginning of a new budget year, an automatic continuing resolution would kick in for 14 days that would keep spending at the prior year’s level. And then another 14 days, and so on. As Congress usually tries to raise spending each year, at least to keep up with and often to exceed inflation, the practical result would be to save taxpayers money in the interim without threatening a shutdown of government services. That’s why the bill is supported by centrist and conservative groups such as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Citizens Against Government Waste, FreedomWorks, National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Prosperity, America First Policy Institute, and Americans for Tax Reform.
To provide teeth, the bill mandates daily legislative meetings, including weekends, while forbidding travel, whether official or campaign-related, for all member of Congress and their staffs or by the staff of the White House Office of Management and Budget — until, that is, the necessary bills are passed.
Another incentive would really hit senators and representatives where it hurts: their own wallets. The No Budget, No Pay Act does exactly what its title suggests: If Congress doesn’t pass annual spending bills by Oct. 1, the beginning of a fiscal year, its members would not get paid until it does. And even when bills finally pass, the members would not be allowed to retroactively pay themselves their forgone salaries.
Both of these bills are commonsense, fiscally conservative proposals. Despite myths promoted in some right-wing circles, shutdowns absolutely do not save money but absolutely do hurt ordinary people. Most of the furloughed workers end up receiving back pay for the time they did not work, but the work itself doesn’t get done on time. There also are losses to the government from uncollected fees along with significant costs involved in actually preparing for and ramping up again after the shutdowns.
Meanwhile, IRS “help desks” go unmanned, as does the appeals process for taxpayers who believe the IRS mistakenly dunned them for taxes not actually owed. Tax return filings go unprocessed, meaning significant delays in rebates owed by the government to taxpayers. During the last significant shutdown, the IRS suffered such a backlog of filings and hearings that many taxpayers went unhelped or unpaid for more than a year.
Shutdowns close national parks and cause delays at airports because staff and security are reduced (even though air traffic controllers would still be on the job). Border protection, already overwhelmed, would be drastically curtailed. Some veterans’ services and important medical clinical trials for hundreds of desperate patients would be restricted. And businesses needing approval from regulators would be out of luck, delaying projects and costing jobs. Standard and Poor’s, for example, estimated that the 16-day shutdown in 2013 reduced gross domestic product by $24 billion.
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Finally, of course, eliminating the very threat of shutdowns would also eliminate the repeated “crisis mode” of governance that severely saps public confidence in our representative, constitutional system. And of course, it would take away the excuses of bombastic nihilists such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for causing havoc as a means of attracting media attention and campaign donations.
The combination of elements of these two bills would surely help the system work better while better serving the public and saving taxpayer money. This week’s political circus should give these bills major impetus.