Yes, Madison anticipated government shutdowns. It was designed that way. What he didn’t anticipate, or at least hoped against, was political parties. He thought that the branches would value their prerogatives more. I’ve heard some ignorami in the past talk about “checks and balances” and “balance of power” as referring to parties. No.
5 thoughts on “Federalist 58”
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This is correct. The House was intentionally given what many consider the greatest single power in the federal government: the power of the purse.
In a fiscally responsible system based on matching revenues to expenditures, even with some modest deficit spending, this issue would come up every year, and the rest of the government would have to negotiate with the House to come up with compromises that allow some things they want to be funded to get funding.
This power has limits, as the House can’t force anything through without at least the Senate agreeing (and usually the president, too), but it can hold up the works for a while. Note that if the House does this too much or for politically unpopular reasons, then voters can change their representation accordingly.
At 56, I’m old enough to remember when Congress passed actual budgets and appropriations legislation for each of the major agencies every single year. There would be legislation for the defense budget, for transportation, for agriculture and so on. They did this year after year. Some years, they’d run late so they’d have a continuing resolution to cover things until the actual budgets and appropriations bills passed but they never depended on them as a way of doing business for the long term. Whatever happened to that process? If this article is correct (and it got the part about the first Mars lander wrong), the last real budget was passed in 1997.
Continuing resolutions only happen when Congress fails it’s legal responsibility to pass budgets and appropriate money. Congress has been derelict of duty for many years now. Notice that I said Congress. The blame belongs to both Republicans and Democrats. This is a bipartisan failure. They’re failing in one of their chief responsibilities and we’re letting them get away with it.
There have been separate resolutions, and then the authorizations and approps were conferenced
solo, but I think the author overstates her case.
Now perhaps 97 was the last year a Joint budget resolution was conferenced and then 13 approps bills
were conferenced and voted out on time, we’ve had budget resolutions out of both chambers and
signed as “Joint Resolutions”. Obamacare was tied to a Joint Resolution, and the damned thing
was movable as a bill in part because there was a joint resolution providing top cover, for the funding.
We’ve had a lot of Omnibus and minibus approps bills and a real shortage of Authorization bills, and the process has been just off the rails the last 4 years. Boehner couldn’t move an agriculture bill this spring.
That was truly hysterical.
I’d have some citations but CRS is offline due to the shutdown.
Gentleman, you can’t fight in here! This is a war room!
GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address, Sept. 17, 1796:
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.