An influential group of House conservatives admitted Friday that they’ve been outmaneuvered in recent government shutdown showdowns, and called for Congress to ditch the current spending process in hopes of avoiding more losses in the future.
The Republican Study Committee said it wants to see one massive spending bill brought to the chamber floor during the summer, or well before the Oct. 1 deadline for having government funding in place for the next fiscal year.
That way lawmakers will have a chance to debate and make changes without facing deadline pressures and the threat of a government shutdown to force action.
“The game of financial and political brinksmanship has yielded few, if any, victories for conservatives,” RSC Chairman Mark Walker said. “We cannot keep punting this problem and should be proactive rather than reactive.”
It’s been years since Congress passed all 12 of the annual appropriations bills that are supposed to be approved to fund the basic operations of government. It’s been even longer since those bills were all approved before the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year.
Instead, Congress has to pass a short-term stopgap “continuing resolution” to keep government funded at previous levels. When Congress is unable to pass a “CR,” the government goes into a partial shutdown.
The last shutdown was in 2013, when House Republicans tried to use the spending process to demand changes on Obamacare from then-President Obama. The president and Senate Democrats rejected the House demands, and the government shut down for 16 days — with the GOP taking the blame.
This year, President Trump and GOP leaders caved on nearly every one of their demands in the 2017 spending fight, afraid of being tarred with yet another shutdown.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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