The recurring failure of the United States Congress to pass appropriations legislation on schedule is not a dysfunction of partisanship. It is the predictable outcome of constitutional design choices.
The Constitutional Structure
The constitutional requirement that all federal expenditure be authorised by appropriations legislation passed by Congress produces the annual appropriations cycle that is among the most consequential and most dysfunctional features of American fiscal governance. The cycle requires the passage of twelve separate appropriations bills that fund the operations of the entire federal government, on a timeline that begins each spring and concludes — in the constitutional design's intention — by September 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. The actual outcome of this process, in every year since 1997, has been the failure to complete the appropriations process on time, requiring the use of continuing resolutions, omnibus packages, and in the most extreme cases, government shutdowns to manage the budget calendar that the constitutional process was supposed to produce.
The budget impasse is not primarily the result of congressional incompetence or unusual partisan conflict. It is the predictable result of the combination of constitutional design features that make the appropriations process very difficult — bicameral passage requirements, the sixty-vote Senate threshold, the House majority requirement, the presidential veto — with the structural partisan polarisation that makes the political accommodation required by those design features increasingly difficult to achieve.
The Governance Costs
The governance costs of the budget impasse are real and substantial. Continuing resolutions that fund the government at prior-year levels prevent the reallocation of resources that policy changes require. Government shutdowns impose costs on federal workers, on the public that depends on government services, and on the private sector actors whose activities depend on the regulatory and contractual functions that shutdown prevents. And the uncertainty that the recurring budget cycle failure creates imposes planning costs on every organisation that depends on federal funding or federal contracting for its operations.
The budget impasse is the annual proof of Congress's governance dysfunction — but the dysfunction is partly designed. The constitutional features that make fiscal governance difficult were designed to prevent the concentration of fiscal authority. Their cost is the governance failure they produce when the accommodation they require is no longer politically achievable.
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