Ladies and gentlemen, we have a budget. Congress has reached a deal to continue operating the government for the remainder of FY2012. And its only 2.5 months late! That has to be some kind of record.
In all seriousness, though, this is actually a huge improvement. In FY2011, congress funded the government through a series of short term continuing resolutions (CR). Each new CR included a cut of some small amount from the previous one. Regardless of your opinion on budget cutting, this is an absolutely terrible way to run a government. It set up a dynamic where agencies did not know whether they would have a budget in two weeks time, and if they did get one, they had no idea how much would be in it, except that it would be less than the one they had then.
Or, to put it another way, they were largely unable to function. It is impossible to plan operations under these conditions. Again, regardless of your opinion on the amount of government spending, this is not the way to run things. If you think government spending should be cut that’s fine, but it needs to be done in a predictable way, so agencies can plan accordingly, and continue to function in the meantime.
CR’s are also hugely inefficient. Typically, federal agencies are notified to begin preparing for a shutdown several days before a CR is set to expire if the passage of a new one is uncertain. This takes workers away from their regular jobs, and creates tremendous inefficiency. If you think those folks shouldn’t be doing those jobs anyways, fine, but again this isn’t the way to accomplish that.
520 Chestnut 
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