Congress has lost its grip on funding the government
Congress’s most important job is deciding how federal money is spent. It hasn’t passed annual funding bills on time since 1997.
And the normal act of budget-making has become all but impossible, with partisan gridlock and President Donald Trump’s push for Republicans to go it alone, opening new cracks in an already-battered system.
The breakdown in bipartisan budgeting every year threatens public programs that millions of Americans rely on and further endangers the government’s long-term fiscal health.
“The process at this point is completely broken, and the political environment is completely poisoned,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “There needs to be a group of lawmakers who are willing to work together to say: getting the budget done, the government funded, and being willing to compromise to do so is more important than the political food fight that the annual appropriations process has become.”
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