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In late September, I went on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to talk about the impending government shutdown. After a discussion with the program host, guests get to answer questions from viewers who call into the program. I expected to be challenged on something, but did not anticipate that on that list
Congress has once again missed its annual deadline to fund the federal government for the entire fiscal year. This has become an all-too-familiar dance on Capitol Hill: Congress fails to adopt a budget; the House and Senate draft very different spending bills; nothing happens for a few months; then we
By Professor Mark Richardson, Georgetown University The Supreme Court is expected to hand down rulings on a number of major cases during the last week in June. The past few years have brought major decisions reshaping jurisprudence and law – including those that overturn long standing precedents – and this
After a chaotic and historically unproductive first session, the 118th Congress appears to be off to a more hopeful start in the new year. Recent news indicating congressional leaders have finally secured an agreement on the top-line numbers for funding the federal government for the remainder of FY24 is certainly
The partisan and intra-branch posturing on the debt ceiling, on display since January, has finally yielded actual legislative text. Last week Speaker Kevin McCarthy successfully shepherded his conference to pass a debt ceiling bill, accurately characterized as a “bare-minimum victory on a doomed bill.” This description of the House GOP’s
Guest Post by Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Cabana For the national security community, the calendar year has dawned with an $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and an omnibus funding bill passed in late December. But what may have felt like a Christmas miracle to congressional staffers scurrying home belies
Sometime in the last ten years the congressional budget process died. The precise moment is hard to pinpoint because it is not totally – just mostly — dead. But today, only a hollow version of the process still exists. Partisan majorities pass shell budgets to trigger reconciliation in the hopes
Where are we with government funding? It’s déjà vu all over again, as Congress passes another Continuing Resolution (CR). The FY2022 congressional appropriations process—which will provide funding for the federal government from October 1, 2021 until September 30, 2022—is once again delaying final action. After its failure to enact full
Halfway through its first session, the 117th Congress finds itself in familiar territory, one that past Congresses know all too well. The crush of ambitious and unfinished legislative business is threatening to overwhelm Capitol Hill’s notoriously tricky and fickle schedule. Call it the tyranny of the congressional calendar. Here we’ll
Here we go again. To keep the government funded past the start of the fiscal year on October 1st, Congress passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) that lasts until November 21st. Over the last decade, during non-election years, it has taken, on average, SIX months into the fiscal year before all
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