Congress is poised to miss its April 15 deadline for finishing next year's budget without even considering a draft in either chamber.
Unlike citizens' tax-filing deadline, Congress's mid-April benchmark is nonbinding. And members seem to be in no rush to get the process going.
Indeed, some Democratic insiders suspect that leaders will skip the budget process altogether this year — a way to avoid the political unpleasantness of voting on spending, deficits and taxes in an election year — or simply go through a few of the motions, without any real effort to complete the work.
Congress has failed to adopt a final budget four times in the past 35 years — for fiscal years 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007 — according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. If the House does not pass a first version of the budget resolution, it will be the first time since the implementation of the 1974 Budget Act, which governs the modern congressional budgeting process.
The practical consequences of failing to produce a federal budget for next year are about the same as they are for a family that doesn't set a plan for income and spending: Congress doesn't need a budget to tax or spend, but enforcing discipline is harder without one. |