Jan 12
5
Big Government Cannot Pay Its Bills, Again
Since Barack Obama became president on Jan. 20, 2009, the federal government has not had a budget. It did not have one for the first two years of his presidency, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and it did not have one for 2011, when the Democrats controlled the Senate and the Republicans controlled the House.
The Senate — continuously under Democratic control during the entire Obama presidency — has not voted out and sent on to the House any annual budget since George W. Bush was president. The House sent a budget to the Senate a year ago, but the Senate rejected it and sent nothing back in return.
In the nearly three years that Obama has been in office, the government has been collecting revenue, borrowing cash and spending ravenously on the basis of what the government calls continuing resolutions — known in Washington by the initials “CR.”
When Congress enacts a CR, it basically authorizes the government to operate for a finite and brief period of time. The period of time does not coincide with the government’s fiscal year. The federal government’s fiscal year runs from October 1st to September 30th. Here we are at the beginning of a new calendar year, and your government does not have a budget for its fiscal year that began more than three months ago.
Instead, the feds have operated under 15 continuing resolutions throughout the Obama presidency. Some of these CRs have been for as long as nine months, and one was as short as 24 hours. There was a time when the end of a continuing resolution would have brought intense media scrutiny. Will the government stay open? Will it shut down? Who will get blamed? Will Congress let the president spend money the government doesn’t have? None of this produces drama any longer, because the bizarre has now become the routine.
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