President Donald Trump has voiced his support for a continuing resolution that will fund the government through Sept. 30, 2025, effectively freezing discretionary spending for this fiscal year, after Congress failed to enact any appropriations bills in the last Congress for the current fiscal year.
In a post on Truth Social on March 10, Trump thanked members of the House Freedom Caucus for support int plan stating, “Thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the Radical Left Democrats and their desire to raise Taxes and SHUT OUR COUNTRY DOWN! They hate America and all it stands for. That’s why they allowed MILLIONS of Criminals to invade our Nation. Sometimes it takes great courage to do the right thing.”
Trump added, remarking on the temporary nature of the funding assured members the mechanism would buy time for the upcoming fiscal year’s appropriations, stating, “We need to buy some time in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. Unite and Win!!!”
Trump’s call for party unity is well taken. When it comes to continuing resolutions or any other appropriations package, usually those depend on bipartisan majorities to pass, certainly in the Senate owing to the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster under Senate rules, but also in the House for Republicans who often are unable to garner the votes to pass anything even when they have the Speaker’s gavel. This often can make House Republican majorities appear like a majority in name only.
In fact, the House in 2024 under Republican leadership only passed 5 of 12 appropriations bills for FY 2025 before the end of the session last year — because they didn’t have the votes. In a similar vein, the Senate didn’t pass any of them — because there it takes 60 to get to cloture and they didn’t have the votes, either.
None of this is new. Since 1977, Congress has completed all of its appropriations bills — now 12 — only four times prior to Oct. 1: in 1977, 1989, 1995 and 1997. The last time no continuing resolution was used by Congress was in 1997. Otherwise, Congress typically does not get the appropriations process done, about 91.3 percent of the time, instead resorting to stopgap spending bills in lieu of a massive omnibus or year-long continuing resolution.
The gridlock is in part by design, with the Constitution providing for a bicameral legislature that often is composed of opposing parties who must find agreement with the President, who also might be of a different party, for any bill including appropriations to become law.
Situations of there being mixed party rule occurred most of the time since 1977, 66 percent of the time, whereas only 33 percent of the time was there one-party control of the House, Senate and White House, 1977 through 1980, 1993 through 1994, 2003 through 2006, 2009 through 2010, 2017 through 2018 and 2021 through 2022.
The other certainty is that Congress will eventually end any temporary disagreement over keeping the government funded through government shutdowns — there have been 22 shutdowns since 1976 — with the longest shutdown occurring for 35 days in 2018 and early 2019. The second longest shutdown was in 1995 and 1996 of 21 days.
Three out of the four times that Congress got all of its appropriations bills done prior to Oct. 1 came with mixed party situations, where one party controlled the White House and the other controlled the House and Senate. In 1989, Republican George H.W. Bush came to agreement on funding bills with a Democratic controlled Congress, and in 1995 and 1997 Democrat Bill Clinton came to an agreement on spending bills with a Republican controlled Congress. In 1977, it was done with Democratic one-party rule, but that appears to be the exception, and came with a 61-vote filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
The formality of 12 appropriations bills under the Budget Control Act is not a constitutional requirement and besides some posturing, substantively completing them all has been little more than a hollow campaign promise for years.
Instead, the government has been funded for at least part of the year via continuing resolutions in 42 out of 46 years since 1977. These usually result in omnibus spending bills — with 29 omnibus spending bills adopted since 1986, and 15 full-year continuing resolutions since 1977 — highlighting Congress’ usual practice of combining all of the spending into one or two bills and passing them that way, rather than the supposed “traditional” 12 appropriations bills that almost always never get all done.
This is the principal reason why every single year there is some form of bipartisan, consolidated appropriations that end up passing, whether as an omnibus or a continuing resolution. In truth, every appropriations bill or continuing resolution requires at least some bipartisan participation in order to actually be enacted.
For Republicans, in the entire history of the filibuster, in more than a century, Republicans have never had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. So, in modern history, the American people have never seen a Republican-only appropriations process. An neither do Democrats get 100 percent of what they want either. It’s not an ideal process for either party, but there’s also a certain element of be careful what you wish for when considering alternatives.
For example, a majority party could try overriding the filibuster requirement by overruling a parliamentarian’s ruling that cloture hadn’t been invoked to pass appropriations bills on bare majorities in the Senate. If so, however, those doing so would in the future need to be okay with the opposing party similarly being able to pass whatever they want in appropriations with no way to block it in the Senate since the bipartisan requirement to get to 60 would be eliminated. One of the implications of the nuclear option could be mutually assured destruction.
In this year’s funding bill, however, the options the President are currently considering are a Republican-led continuing resolution that will effectively freeze spending, another bipartisan omnibus spending bill that would increase spending or a Democratic-led continuing resolution that would dismantle the efforts by the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) currently underway.
If Republicans cannot get a continuing resolution done or withstand a government shutdown by Democrats, then a bipartisan alternative could emerge. Trump it appears is trying to hold the line for his party.
Just a bunch of not-so-great choices, and so Trump seems to be going with the one he thinks is the least bad.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Reproduced with permission. Original here: Trump Opts For Continuing Resolution Freezing Spending Through End Of Fiscal Year, Dems Threaten Shutdown To Kill DOGE
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