Opinion: Congress can end the shutdown cycle for good

Last fall, the federal government shut down for 43 days. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security went 76 days without funding. These were the two longest shutdowns in American history, both in the last 10 months.

People who kept this country running went without paychecks — these include TSA officers screening passengers, food inspectors keeping our meat and poultry safe, and federal correctional officers guarding some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals. Many turned to food banks; some got a donation of sweet potatoes from a local farmer just to get enough to eat. Working people fell behind on rent and car payments and had to negotiate with mortgage lenders just to stay in their homes. The American Federation of Government Employees knows of at least one federal employee who sold plasma to make ends meet.

That is not how any employer is supposed to treat the people who serve it, let alone the U.S. government, likely the largest and best-resourced employer in the world. And the situation was entirely preventable, because the modern shutdown is not some constitutional inevitability. It is a legal accident. 

For most of American history, funding gaps did not shut anything down: agencies kept working on the assumption that Congress would eventually pay what it owed. That changed in 1980, when Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti reinterpreted an obscure 19th-century law and ruled that agencies without an appropriation had to stop operating and furlough their employees.  

Since that opinion, the federal government has shut down partially or completely more than a dozen times. 

Early shutdowns were brief, and most workers were simply sent home and told not to work. But the two most recent shutdowns worked differently. Most federal employees were deemed essential and made to work without pay for weeks or months, missing multiple paychecks. 

The bipartisan Prevent Government Shutdowns Act would end this destructive cycle for good. If Congress were to miss a funding deadline under this bill, it would trigger an automatic continuing resolution that keeps agencies open at current spending levels, renewed every 14 days, until lawmakers finish the job.

No more political posturing and brinkmanship. No more furloughs. No more working without pay. No more asking public servants and military families to absorb the cost of Washington’s dysfunction.

In the words of my friend Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a longtime proponent of the legislation, “Americans are tired of worthless government shutdown drama and Congress using federal workers and government services as pawns in political standoffs.”

Amen. Our union has never pretended that prolonged continuing resolutions are good governance. Freezing spending at previous-year levels can shortchange defense readiness, scientific research, transportation projects and the safety net programs upon which millions of families rely.

But when Congress misses a funding deadline, as it has in each of the last several years, the alternative to a shutdown is a stopgap measure. Some in Congress worry that automatic funding would remove the pressure to legislate at all — that lawmakers would simply let the stopgap renew itself forever.  

The bill’s authors built in an answer to that concern. Under this legislation, Congress cannot recess, travel or take up unrelated business until it passes full-year appropriations. Members of Congress would have to stay in Washington and do their jobs, instead of leaving town the way some lawmakers did during the Homeland Security shutdown earlier this year. 

According to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who is leading the effort along with Lankford, “this commonsense, bipartisan bill incentivizes Congress to fund the government on time.” Members of Congress do not want to be locked down in Washington and prevented from working on other important matters.

Congress is expected to take up a stopgap funding bill soon that would keep the government open through the midterm elections. While that is far from ideal and reflects a broken budgeting process, it is still preferable to a shutdown. But passing one temporary funding bill does not solve the underlying problem. Shutdowns are becoming longer and more frequent and are literally disabling our government at a time of intense international competition and conflict. That is unacceptable.

Federal employees do not ask for much. They ask to be paid on time for the work they are required to do. Congress should pass the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act and make sure that request never needs to be made again.

Everett B. Kelley is national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

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