Why is the American Government Closed?
As you can see from the illustration on the left, Congress is part of the Legislative Branch of the Government. The other two branches being inconsequential to both this discussion and to Congress.
According to the Constitution, Congress has several jobs to do. For today's lesson, we will be focusing on two specific Congressional responsibilities:
- Funding the government, and
- Writing Laws
Article 1 of the US Constitution states that: "No money shall be drawn from the treasury (think Bank of America) but in consequence of appropriations made
by law." And we all know that you can't do anything these days when you don't have any money.
So, since it's Congress' job to write laws, it is Congress that is primarily responsible for ensuring that the US Government can keep spending money. Now, there are certainly opinions out there about how the Government should spend its ... I mean,
our money, but let's just set that little House of Horrors aside for the moment. Think of an Appropriation as a line of credit with funny little caveats attached. First, like the yogurt in your fridge, an Appropriation has an expiration date, after which, the Government needs more yogurt. Second, because the US Government is big, we actually need approximately 12 Appropriations to fund everything. All Appropriations lumped together are referred to as 'a Budget', and the Budget must be passed on or before the start of the new fiscal year.
Unfortunately, we must take a slight detour to define a 'fiscal year.' The Federal Government, for the most part, operates on what is called a fiscal year (for budget purposes.) The fiscal year, obviously, runs from October 1 through September 30.
Not surprisingly, it was Congress who established the fiscal year in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. At the time, Congress felt that there was just not a calendar out there that suited their purposes (having rejected the Gregorian Year, the Julian Year, the Revised Julian Year, the Persian Year, and the Congressional Year already defined for them in the Constitution.) So, from 1974 onwards, the Budget needed to be passed by midnight on September 30th.
If you recall your
School House Rock, the process of enacting an Appropriation is fairly straight forward (if fraught with pitfalls):
- The Executive Branch tells Congress how much money it needs
- The House ignores what the Executive Branch wants and proposes a new, smaller number
- The Members of the House vote and (ideally) pass their 'version' of the bill
- The House sends their passed bill to the Senate (typically by carrier pigeon with an acrimonious letter attached)
- The Senate makes changes to the House's bill
- The Members of the Senate vote and (ideally) pass their 'version' of the bill
- The House and the Senate meet in Conference to work out the differences
- Both the House and the Senate vote and (ideally) pass the reconciled or compromise (not a valued skill in Washington these days) bill
- The compromise bill is then sent to the President who (ideally) passes the bill into law
But on September 30, 2013 both the House and the Senate had passed their versions of the Budget (step 6), but neither side is willing to (here's that problematic word again) C.O.M.P.R.O.M.I.S.E. And so, no budget = no government, except for essential services (think Social Security.)
It's that time of year that all the good little boys and girls send you a note, just to make sure you don't blow it when you drop that gift down the chimney on Dec 25. And for those naughty little children, well, for them ...
(turns out my parents lied anyway because I got a gift from Santa after all - he just accidentally left it at my grandma's house)
