My latest column for the Christian Science Monitor argues that a slew of budget deadlines will drive policy action this Fall. Case in point, the potential for a government shutdown when the government’s fiscal year ends next week. I don’t think that’s likely, at least not yet, but such deadlines will be the big thing this fall:
September brings the change of seasons. Football players return to the gridiron. New television programs replace summer reruns. In Washington, legislators gear up for another season of legislative brinkmanship.
What distinguishes such brinkmanship from ordinary legislating? Hard deadlines.
Such deadlines force Congress to address policy issues that might otherwise languish due to partisan differences or legislative inertia.
Last spring, for example, the repeated threat of a government shutdown forced Congress to decide how much to spend on government agencies in fiscal 2011. This summer, the debt limit forced Republicans and Democrats to reach a budget compromise before Aug. 3, the day we would have discovered what happens if America can’t pay all its bills.
Hard deadlines thus can force Congress to address major issues. But they also invite that brinkmanship.
Like students who put off writing term papers until the night before they’re due, legislators often drag out negotiations until the very end. As we saw with the debt-limit debate, the ensuing uncertainty – will the United States really default? – can damage consumer, business, and international confidence. Hard deadlines also give leverage to those legislators who are least concerned about going over the brink.
So get ready for the new season. The fall legislative season is full of deadlines that could invite such brinkmanship. Here are five.
[The first two were funding for the Federal Aviation Administration, whose short-term funding was scheduled to expire on September 16 and the highway bill, whose funding was scheduled to expire on September 30. Both won temporary extensions between the time I wrote my column and when it appeared online. FAA funding now runs to January, and highway funding through March.] …
Sept. 30 also marks the end of the fiscal year – an especially important deadline. Congress has made woefully little progress in deciding next year’s funding. So we again face the prospect of temporary funding bills being negotiated in the shadow of threatened government shutdowns.
The fourth deadline comes on Nov. 23, the day the new “super committee” has to deliver a plan to address government debt and cut the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade. If any seven committee members agree by that date, their plan will get special, expedited consideration in the House and Senate.
If the committee fails to reach agreement or Congress fails to enact it by Dec. 23, however, then automatic budget cuts go into effect for a range of programs, including defense, domestic programs, and Medicare, starting in 2013.
A final deadline comes at the end of the year, when several economic initiatives are set to expire, including the 2 percent payroll tax holiday and extended unemployment insurance benefits.
Each of these deadlines will command congressional attention. The downside of inaction will be tangible and visible. With renewed concern about jobs, policymakers will feel extra pressure to continue any funding or tax cuts that can be directly linked to employment.
These deadline-driven policy issues will thus dominate the fall legislative season. That will leave little space for any new initiatives that don’t come with a deadline.
Brinksmanship exists, but so does “faux brinksmanship”: That’s when Congressional members refuse to come to an early agreement on issues that they are willing to resolve because doing so would create the impression that they are “weak” and didn’t get as good a deal as they could have gotten. They prefer to be able to claim that they only accepted a compromise because of the potential dire consequences of some deadline.
The problem is that Congress doesn’t have a good bonus program to make sure that they do their jobs well. In theory, elections provide incentive, but that doesn’t necessarily encourage good behavior in Congress, because too many elections are based on issues that have little to do with a well functioning government. What would happen if we took a few key deadlines (annual budget deadline, for example) and metrics for behavior and docked all Congress members for performing poorly (e.g. 5% loss of salary per week for missing budget deadline)?
DSM