Newsweek: Congress Is Self-Inflicting Another Government Funding Crisis
The U.S. House of Representatives is once again bringing about a self-inflicted government funding crisis. A simple alternative to the House's habit of using continuing resolutions (CRs) to fund the government would be to pass 12 individual appropriations bills, on time, as required by law. Since we failed once again to pass all 12 by the June 30 deadline, we ought to at least send the five appropriations bills that we passed over to the Senate.
The problem is that we failed to do that too. The result is that the House has proposed its 35th CR in the last decade. Whether for three weeks or three months, it will continue the Biden administration's spending levels and policies. Things like funding for the World Health Organization, United Nations programs that promote DEI and anti-American sentiment, a woke military, and dangerously lax immigration programs like CBP One and CHNV (preferences for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela).
These and a flotilla of Biden policy flotsam will persist into the Trump administration if Congress passes yet another CR.
The House has passed, in the form of five budget bills, 70 percent of the federal budget for this year, covering some of the most vital areas in our government: defense, military construction and veterans affairs, state and foreign operations, and funding the expansive Department of the Interior.
The last thing Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate majority leader, wants to see are those five bills. They actually provide some small increases in spending but implement America-first policies and denude Biden's dangerous schemes.
Schumer would then have to determine whether he was willing to "shut the government down" by killing the House bills. The Democrats keep complaining about furloughing federal employees, but passing those five bills would leave the vast majority of government open until Congress could finish its last work on the budget bills.
In addition, the disaster relief and agriculture issues that are being given an unpaid-for $110 billion extra in the CR is not the answer. It hasn't got any offsets to pay for these programs, the numbers its supporters are using have no economic justification, and the money can't be spent in the next days and weeks. Those billions of dollars will go to a Biden administration hellbent on wrecking the country as it leaves office; witness its fire sale of border-wall materials.
Besides sending appropriations bills the House has already passed to the Senate, we can divert $30 billion from Biden's fund to hire new IRS agents toward far better purposes by allocating $20 billion to hurricane relief and $10 billion for farmers' needs. That would not add to our national debt, would take money from the pernicious IRS, and would take us a couple of months into the Trump administration's stewardship.
With another $10 billion diverted from the IRS fund (a total of $40 billion from the IRS new agent fund) we could provide direct funding, to kick in on January 21, for border security, while also passing language prohibiting any further Biden sales of our border fence material.
In the meantime, the House should stay in session and work on passing the remaining appropriations bills that will fund the last percentage of the federal government.
This plan would sustain the federal government, eliminate Biden's crazy programs, fund farmer and hurricane needs, and lay the issue of whether to keep the government open or shut it down in the lap of the U.S. Senate.
Let's see if Schumer wants to keep the government open.
Andy Biggs, a Republican, represents Arizona's Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.