Government shutdown looms again

In less than 18 hours, as I write this, the federal government is expected to go into partial shutdown. The reason: Congress has not passed a budget for the 2011 fiscal year (that's the one we're now halfway through), and the interim spending resolution is expiring. Democrats and Republicans are blaming each other for the impasse, and it appears that a budgetary dispute will lead to a governmental closure for the first time since the Clinton-Gingrich game of chicken in the 1990s.

The thing to remember about this impasse is that it is not about next year's budget. This dispute is over the current fiscal year budget, which began Oct. 1, 2010. This budget should have been passed last summer and should have been in place before Oct. 1. Once this cat fight is out of the way, which it surely will be sooner or later, Congress faces the much more daunting task of passing the budget for FY2012, which begins Oct. 1.

Passing a budget, one can argue, is the primary, fundamental duty of Congress. But Congress has consistently failed to pass budgets on time. Call it attention deficit disorder on a massive scale. Congress can't seem to concentrate on its primary mission — setting a spending plan for the federal government. This is not a new phenomenon. I was on the federal payroll (as a Coast Guard officer) when the federal government changed from a July-June fiscal year to an October-September fiscal year. That year, we worked with a 15-month fiscal year. The extra three months, we were told at the time, would give Congress the additional time it needed to pass a budget on time. Ha!

Last year, when the FY2011 budget should have been passed, Democrats in control of Congress didn't want to pass a budget that could become a political hot potato in the 2010 elections, so they let government slide through a continuing resolution. That strategy didn't work out too well in November. With Republicans now in charge of the House and holding more votes in the Senate, they are determined to use the overdue budget to win ideological points. The year-round campaigning and 24-hour news cycles (which must be fed with controversy day and night) have made any legislative agreement more difficult. But if Congress cannot agree on how to fund the last six months of this fiscal year, how will our representatives ever find common ground to steer a new fiscal course in 2012?

Both sides, it seems to me, would be better off yielding on FY 2011 and saving their energy for the FY2012 fight. Rep. Paul Ryan has already thrown down the gauntlet with a radically different FY2012 budget plan that would fundamentally change Medicare and Medicaid and sharply reduce federal spending. The fight over Ryan's plan and alternatives yet to be revealed will make tonight's threatened government shutdown seem inconsequential. There is a growing consensus that the federal deficit and debt are much too large and must be trimmed. The fight will be over where and how to cut spending and whether to include some tax increases (or sunsetting of tax cuts), as the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission had proposed, in the budgetary solution. The battle over Ryan's plan or some alternative to it could be the political fight of the decade. Both sides should stockpile some ammunition for that fight and not waste it all on today's interim measure.