Continuing resolution
Based on Wikipedia: Continuing resolution
Every year, the United States government faces a peculiar deadline that most Americans barely notice—until everything grinds to a halt. On October 1st, the fiscal year resets. If Congress hasn't agreed on how to spend money, federal workers stop getting paid, national parks close their gates, and "non-essential" government operations simply cease. The continuing resolution, or C.R., exists because politicians have found it extraordinarily difficult to agree on a budget.
It's a temporary fix masquerading as governance.
The October Deadline
The federal government's fiscal year runs from October 1st through September 30th of the following year. Each spring, Congress is supposed to agree on a budget resolution—a blueprint that sets overall spending limits. From that blueprint, twelve separate appropriations bills emerge, each funding a different slice of government: defense, agriculture, transportation, and so on. These bills must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate, then receive the President's signature.
In theory, this process concludes before October arrives. In practice, it almost never does.
Between fiscal year 1977 and fiscal year 2015, Congress managed to pass all twelve appropriations bills on time exactly four times. That's four successful years out of thirty-eight attempts. The continuing resolution exists because the other thirty-four years needed some kind of backup plan.
What a Continuing Resolution Actually Does
A continuing resolution is a special type of legislation that keeps the lights on when Congress can't finish its homework. It typically extends funding at roughly the same levels as the previous year, sometimes with minor adjustments. The resolution sets an expiration date—maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months—during which the government operates under last year's budget while politicians continue negotiating.
Think of it as hitting the snooze button on a constitutional alarm clock.
The C.R. takes the legal form of a joint resolution, meaning both chambers of Congress must pass it and the President must sign it. Unlike regular appropriations bills, which allocate specific amounts to specific programs, continuing resolutions usually maintain existing funding levels with a simple formula: spend what you spent last year, adjusted by some percentage.
There are actually three types of appropriations legislation. Regular appropriations bills are the twelve standard bills covering the entire government for a fiscal year. Supplemental appropriations add emergency funding for unexpected events—a hurricane, a pandemic, a war. And continuing resolutions bridge the gap when regular bills haven't passed.
The Antideficiency Act: Why Shutdowns Happen
The continuing resolution matters because of a law called the Antideficiency Act. This statute, first enacted in 1884 and strengthened over the decades, forbids federal officials from spending money that hasn't been appropriated. They cannot enter into financial obligations—buying office supplies, paying electric bills, issuing paychecks—without congressional authorization.
This isn't just a guideline. Violating the Antideficiency Act is a federal crime.
So when appropriations expire and no continuing resolution exists, federal agencies face an impossible choice: break the law or shut down. They choose shutdown. The Antideficiency Act transforms a political disagreement into an operational crisis.
Government by Hostage Negotiation
The mechanics of continuing resolutions create perverse incentives. Because the government literally cannot function without funding, the threat of a shutdown becomes a powerful negotiating lever. Politicians who oppose the current direction of government can simply refuse to pass a C.R. and watch federal operations crumble.
Between 1980 and 2013, the United States experienced eight government shutdowns. Most lasted only a day or two—just long enough to concentrate minds and force a deal. But some became extended sieges.
The 1995 shutdown lasted twenty-eight days. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, faced off against House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Congressional Republicans. The Republicans wanted budget cuts that Clinton refused to accept. Without enough votes to override a presidential veto, and unwilling to submit a revised budget, Republicans simply let existing appropriations expire. National parks closed. Passport processing stopped. Scientific research projects halted mid-experiment.
Clinton ultimately won the public relations battle, but the damage was done.
The 2013 Showdown
The most dramatic continuing resolution fight in recent history occurred in October 2013. Congressional Republicans, led by House Speaker John Boehner, attempted to use the C.R. as leverage to defund or delay the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—commonly known as Obamacare. President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats insisted on a "clean" spending bill with no policy riders attached.
Neither side blinked. The government shut down.
More than 800,000 federal workers were furloughed, meaning they were sent home without pay. Essential services continued—military operations, air traffic control, Social Security checks—but vast swaths of government simply stopped functioning. Research projects lost irreplaceable data. Training programs were cancelled. Contractors stopped receiving payments.
The shutdown lasted sixteen days.
When it finally ended, Congress passed the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2014, funding the government through January 15th. Then another continuing resolution extended funding through January 18th. Finally, an omnibus appropriations bill—a massive package combining multiple appropriations into one—funded the government through the end of the fiscal year.
The Affordable Care Act remained law, completely unchanged. The shutdown accomplished nothing except disruption.
The Hidden Costs of Temporary Funding
Even when shutdowns are avoided, governing by continuing resolution carries significant costs. Federal agencies cannot plan effectively when they don't know their budgets. They can't start new programs because the C.R. typically only authorizes existing activities. They can't sign multi-year contracts because they only have funding guaranteed for weeks or months at a time.
Research projects suffer particularly badly. Scientific experiments often require consistent funding over years. A continuing resolution that provides only three months of guaranteed funding makes it impossible to hire new researchers, purchase major equipment, or begin long-term studies. Scientists report losing the equivalent of several months of productive work to uncertainty and administrative disruption.
Training programs get cancelled because agencies cannot commit to schedules. Maintenance gets deferred because capital expenditures feel risky. The government becomes less efficient precisely because it's trying to save money through budget standoffs.
A Brief History of Kicking the Can
The continuing resolution has evolved from emergency stopgap to routine governance mechanism. Looking at the historical record reveals just how normalized this dysfunction has become.
Fiscal year 2001 required twenty-one separate continuing resolutions. Congress kept passing short-term extensions, each lasting just days or weeks, because they couldn't agree on a final budget. Twenty-one times they gathered, voted, and delayed the real decision.
Fiscal year 2011 saw seven continuing resolutions, with increasingly acrimonious debates about spending cuts. Each extension shaved billions from the previous year's levels, with the final deal struck just hours before a shutdown would have begun.
Fiscal year 2018 included multiple extensions, culminating in a brief government shutdown in January when Democrats and Republicans couldn't agree on immigration policy attached to spending bills.
The pattern repeats with grinding regularity.
Why Congress Can't Agree
Several structural factors make appropriations agreement difficult. The budget process requires both chambers of Congress to agree with each other and with the President. With different parties often controlling different institutions, this creates natural friction.
Elections complicate matters further. In election years, neither party wants to give the other a legislative victory. Incumbents prefer to campaign rather than negotiate. Lame-duck sessions after elections sometimes produce agreements, but just as often produce continuing resolutions that punt decisions to the new Congress.
The debt ceiling adds another layer of complexity. Separate from appropriations, the debt ceiling limits how much the federal government can borrow. Fights over raising the debt ceiling frequently get entangled with appropriations battles, creating compound crises.
And increasingly, appropriations bills become vehicles for unrelated policy debates. Abortion funding restrictions, immigration enforcement, environmental regulations—contentious issues get attached to must-pass spending bills, transforming budget votes into ideological referendums.
The Difference Between Appropriations and Authorization
Understanding continuing resolutions requires distinguishing between two types of congressional action that sound similar but work differently.
Authorization bills create programs and set policy. They establish agencies, define their missions, and specify what they're allowed to do. But they don't provide money.
Appropriations bills provide the actual funding. A program can be authorized but not appropriated—meaning it legally exists but has no budget to operate. Conversely, continuing resolutions can appropriate money for programs whose authorizations have technically expired, keeping them running in a legal gray zone.
This distinction matters because continuing resolutions only address the appropriations side. They keep money flowing but don't update policies, authorize new programs, or address changing circumstances. A C.R. freezes government in amber, funding last year's priorities regardless of whether they remain relevant.
Omnibus Bills: The Alternative to Twelve Separate Votes
When Congress finally does finish appropriations, it often abandons the twelve-bill structure entirely in favor of an omnibus appropriations bill. This massive package combines multiple or all appropriations bills into a single vote.
Omnibus bills have advantages and disadvantages. They're efficient—one vote instead of twelve. They allow trade-offs across different spending categories. And they're harder for any single faction to block because voting against them means voting against everything.
But omnibus bills are also enormous, often running to thousands of pages. Individual members rarely read them in their entirety. Provisions can be inserted with minimal scrutiny. The compressed timeline leading to omnibus passage—often just before a shutdown deadline—leaves little time for public review.
The 2014 omnibus that ended the shutdown fight ran to over 1,500 pages and was voted on within days of its release.
Living on Borrowed Time
The continuing resolution represents a kind of institutional failure that has become normalized. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse—the ability to decide how public money gets spent. This power is supposed to force deliberation, debate, and democratic accountability.
Instead, appropriations have become hostage to political theater.
Each continuing resolution represents a decision not to decide. It maintains the status quo, whether or not the status quo makes sense. New priorities go unfunded. Outdated programs continue. The government operates on autopilot while politicians fight over ideological battles only tangentially related to spending.
And every few years, the standoff escalates to actual shutdown, imposing real costs on federal workers, government contractors, and citizens who depend on public services.
What Would a Functioning System Look Like?
Some reformers have proposed automatic continuing resolutions—if Congress fails to pass appropriations, funding would automatically continue at some predetermined level. This would eliminate shutdown leverage but might also reduce pressure to reach actual agreements.
Others advocate for biennial budgeting, with appropriations covering two years instead of one. This would reduce the frequency of crises but wouldn't address the underlying political dynamics.
A few have suggested eliminating the Antideficiency Act's criminal penalties, allowing agencies to continue operations during funding gaps. But this would undermine Congress's constitutional authority over spending.
None of these reforms has gained significant traction. The continuing resolution remains, year after year, the government's favorite way of not making decisions.
The Human Element
Behind the legislative maneuvering are real people whose lives get disrupted by appropriations chaos. Federal employees don't know whether they'll be paid. Contractors don't know whether their projects will continue. Scientists watch experiments fail. Social workers see programs close.
During the 2013 shutdown, national parks turned away visitors who had planned trips months in advance. Veterans faced delays in benefits processing. Small businesses awaiting federal contracts were left in limbo.
The continuing resolution exists to prevent these harms. But its existence also enables the brinksmanship that causes them. Politicians know that the C.R. provides an escape valve, so they push negotiations to the edge. The backup plan becomes an excuse for not finishing the primary work.
In this way, the continuing resolution is both the symptom and the enabler of congressional dysfunction—a temporary solution that has become permanent, a stopgap that has become the status quo.