bq. As Congress and the President struggle to finish up appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began _October 1_, I asked “Sarah Anderson”:http://www.bren.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/sarah_anderson.htm and “Jonathan Woon”:http://www.pitt.edu/~woon/ to share some of their work on delay in appropriations spending. They write:
President Obama submitted his FY2011 budget to Congress on February 1, 2010. That was 431 days ago! As congressional leaders attempt to negotiate an agreement that avoids a shutdown of government, President Obama blamed partisan politics for the delay in passing a budget, “saying”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/04/06/remarks-president-budget-talks “I do not want to see Washington politics stand in the way of America’s progress.”
In our “research”:http://www.pitt.edu/~woon/papers/apptiming.pdf, we study why delay occurs in budgeting by analyzing appropriations bills from 1977-2009. The figure below shows the length of the appropriations process in terms of days from when the president submits his budget until final appropriations are signed into law. The figure shows the range and average durations for all appropriations bills (usually 12-13 of them), and our data help to provide some historical context. **_431 days is the longest we’ve gone without passing any appropriations bills_**. The second longest duration without any bills passing was FY2009 (when the 110th Congress punted and the 111th Congress completed an omnibus bill in March 2009). Only a handful of bills took even longer (one bill for FY1978 took 504 days, 4 bills for FY1982 took 440 days, and 5 bills for FY1996 took 445 days). On the other end of the spectrum, all bills for FY1994 passed within 217 days (although a continuing resolution was still necessary).
While we don’t specifically model shutdowns in our analysis because they are so rare, two of our results help to put some perspective on the current budgetary situation. (Before discussing our results and its implications, we note that our analysis isn’t quite final and like all scientific research, especially observational research, it must be viewed with appropriate caution.) First, we find that the probability of passing a budget decreases after elections. Because Democrats in the 111th Congress did not pass a budget prior to losing control of the House in the midterm elections, passing a budget is now more difficult.
Second, we find that duration depends on the ideological distance between key institutional players. This has implications for both the FY 2011 and FY 2012 process. Passage of both budgets will be difficult not just because a Democratic President faces a Republican House but also because there are divisions between the House and Senate and divisions within the Republican Party. The divisions between freshmen beholden to the Tea Party and senior members of the Appropriations Committee will make passage of a budget, never an easy task, that much more difficult.
In short, the 112th Congress has all the conditions for not one but two drawn out budget processes, and although the current situation is an extreme case, it is also broadly consistent with historical patterns. As soon as the current crisis with the FY 2011 budget is dealt with, it’s on to FY 2012. We’re already 53 days into the process and counting!