Traditionally, Congress finds enough votes to pass a budget by offering incentives to opposing Representatives by including spending on some special project that will benefit the Congressman’s home District.  

Budget bloat grows and grows year after year.  It has been a hundred years since Congress last passed a balanced budget.

To pay for its many programs without a corresponding increase in taxes – which wins no votes, of course – Congress has simply borrowed money.  

Year after year, for over a hundred years, Congress has put off paying its bills.

Year after year, Congress pays an ever-increasing amount of interest on its loans.

But now the interest payments are growing faster than ever.  For decades, voters wanted the largesse of too much spending more than they worried about how their children would pay for it.

In November of 2022, voters seemed to show signs of a change of heart.  A lot of new Congressmen are now intent on cutting all that spending.

Those new Congressmen are not naïve tyros; they are adamant and unwavering about their intentions.  

One result:  it took Kevin McCarthy 19 votes to become Speaker of the House.  In the process, he promised important Committee Chairs to many of the new Congressmen, and made other promises of similar importance.  

The new Congressmen are a substantial power to be reckoned with.  The fight, as often as not, has not been between Republican and Democrats, but between traditional, more moderate Republicans, and the new, more conservative Republicans.  

And it is not all that unusual for Speaker McCarthy to side with that new, more conservative bloc.

When the Federal government’s over-spending ran up against the debt ceiling authorized by Congress, the conservatives forced Biden to accept some curtailment of spending in exchange for a raise in the debt ceiling.

Without that raise, the Federal government would not have been able to pay its bills.  A default would have sent shock waves throughout the world, severely disrupting financial markets and the still-shaky national economy, and force much higher interest rates on future borrowing.  

The Federal debt is far too high, because politicians over the past hundred years have been simply passing the problem on to the next generation.  

Now, as part of averting a default, those conservative Republicans are forcing Congress to take the first, limited steps towards resolving that mess.

Having done so, in September, Congress will face a new dilemma:  a government shut-down.  

Why September?  Because September is the last month of the current fiscal year.  If a new budget for the fiscal year that begins October first is not approved by that date, the Federal government has no money; it is unable to pay Federal employees, and so must shut down.

Congress is solely responsible for creating and authorizing the Federal budget.  Without that action by Congress, the operation of the Federal bureaucracy is not legal.

That may not be so easy this year.  

Usually, Congress crams all of its intended appropriations for the twelve divisions of the government into one big “omnibus” bill.  

But Speaker McCarthy has made it clear that there will be no gigantic omnibus bill for 2024.  Speaker McCarthy wants twelve individual appropriations bills, with each to be passed separately.

As twelve separate votes, it will be more difficult to smuggle in budgeting for special interest projects for a particular Congressman, in exchange for his vote on a special interest for another Congressman.  If the two projects are placed under separate votes, there is no assurance that the horse-trading of votes will be mutually successful.  

As twelve separate votes, the traditional you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours gravy train becomes more problematic, since the results of one vote on one issue can no longer be assured to coincide with another vote on a separate issue.  

And anything that reduces taxes and Federal spending is a good thing for the economy – which is to say, a good thing for the well-being of individuals, families, and businesses.  

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