Another Stopgap: The Case for Budget Process Reform

On September 2, 2026, President Trump signed into law H.R. 6500, a continuing resolution that funds the federal government through December 11 at fiscal year 2026 levels. The measure passed the Senate 90-6 on August 8 and cleared the House on September 1. While such bipartisan margins might suggest functional governance, this latest stopgap measure represents another installment in a decades-long pattern of fiscal dysfunction that undermines both constitutional governance and sound fiscal policy.

The Framers vested Congress with the power of the purse, intending deliberate consideration of spending priorities through a regular appropriations process. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution provides that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." This wasn't meant to be satisfied through hasty omnibus packages or serial continuing resolutions that perpetuate spending levels without meaningful review.

The continuing resolution has become Washington's default setting. Rather than passing twelve individual appropriations bills through regular order—allowing genuine debate over priorities and trade-offs—Congress increasingly governs through crisis-driven stopgaps and massive year-end omnibus packages assembled behind closed doors. This September's CR extends funding at current levels, effectively placing fiscal policy on autopilot while deferring difficult decisions to a lame-duck session in December.

The Cost of Continuing Resolutions

Continuing resolutions carry costs beyond their obvious avoidance of hard choices. Federal agencies operate under uncertainty, unable to initiate new programs or terminate wasteful ones explicitly defunded by appropriators. Long-term contracts become difficult to execute. Personnel planning suffers when agencies don't know their budgets beyond three-month windows. The Pentagon has particularly noted how continuing resolutions undermine military readiness and waste taxpayer resources through inefficient procurement.

More fundamentally, CRs insulate spending from scrutiny. By freezing funding at previous levels, they embed baseline assumptions that treat last year's spending as the natural starting point for this year's. Programs that should be eliminated continue. Agencies that should face budget discipline maintain their allocations. The entire apparatus of government spending advances on autopilot, unchallenged by the appropriations process the Constitution envisions.

A Cycle of Dysfunction

The reliance on continuing resolutions reflects deeper dysfunction in congressional budget procedures. The 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act established a framework meant to facilitate coordination between authorizing committees, appropriations committees, and budget resolutions. In practice, this framework has failed. Budget resolutions either don't pass or are ignored. Appropriations bills miss their deadlines. Continuing resolutions and omnibus packages fill the vacuum.

Why does this pattern persist? Both parties share responsibility. Congressional leadership finds it politically convenient to avoid tough votes on individual spending bills, preferring to package everything together where controversial items can hide. Members face fewer accountability moments when appropriations are bundled. Interest groups prefer the opacity of omnibus packages to the sunlight of regular order. And administrations of both parties have enabled the dysfunction by accepting continuing resolutions rather than forcing budgetary discipline through vetoes.

The September 2026 continuing resolution's strong bipartisan support—90 senators voted for it—illustrates the problem. Consensus in Washington often reflects agreement to avoid difficult decisions rather than genuine compromise on substantive policy. Everyone votes for the stopgap knowing it defers rather than resolves fiscal questions.

A Path to Reform

Reforming congressional budget procedures requires changing both rules and culture. Several specific reforms deserve consideration:

First, establish automatic continuing resolutions at reduced levels if appropriations bills aren't passed by the fiscal year deadline. Current law creates manufactured crises and shutdown threats when appropriations lapse. If funding automatically continued at 98% of the previous year's level, Congress would face incentives to pass appropriations bills rather than defaulting to stopgaps. Agencies would have certainty, but declining baseline funding would create pressure for action.

Second, return to regular order through restored committee authority. The appropriations process works best when subcommittees can conduct detailed oversight, hold hearings, and mark up individual bills. Leadership-driven omnibus packages circumvent this expertise and deliberation. Restoring genuine committee work requires both rules changes and leadership commitment to regular order.

Third, enforce budget resolution deadlines through procedural consequences. Budget resolutions increasingly fail to pass or are ignored once adopted. If failure to adopt a budget resolution triggered automatic restrictions on new authorizations or continuing resolutions, Congress might take its statutory budget deadlines more seriously.

Fourth, strengthen pay-as-you-go rules and statutory spending caps. While such mechanisms can be waived, they at least force Congress to acknowledge when it's violating fiscal constraints. Current rules have too many loopholes and emergency designations that render them ineffective.

Constitutional Obligations

The Framers understood that concentrated power threatened liberty. By vesting the purse power in Congress—the branch closest to the people—they created a mechanism for democratic accountability over government spending. But accountability requires transparency and deliberation, qualities notably absent from the continuing resolution process.

As Congress heads toward yet another December deadline created by this September's stopgap, fiscal conservatives should demand more than business as usual. The cycle of continuing resolutions and omnibus packages serves the interests of Washington insiders while failing taxpayers who deserve genuine deliberation over how their money is spent. Breaking this cycle requires both procedural reforms and the political will to embrace them.

The September 2026 continuing resolution may have averted a government shutdown and earned bipartisan support, but measured against constitutional standards and sound fiscal policy, it represents failure rather than success. Real fiscal responsibility requires more than keeping the lights on—it demands the hard work of actual budgeting through regular order. Until Congress meets that standard, stopgap measures will remain symptoms of institutional dysfunction rather than solutions to it.