• dhork@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Government shutdowns are a unique situation, specific to the US Congress, because Congress has decided to structure the government to be inefficient, on purpose:

    • It authorizes new programs and appropriates money for them in separate process, leaving the real possibility that an authorized program does not have funding.

    • It often cannot agree on appropriations levels, but needs to continually appropriate funds to keep the government running, leading to these continuing regulations that just kick the can down the road

    • It sets a statutory limit on the amount of debt the government can take on, but then appropriates more money than it takes in, making it so that even if all appropriations bills are on time, the government may run out of cash on hand unless the debt limit is increased.

    Congress does this, on purpose, to make sure that there is plenty of opportunity to debate spending levels. But in practice, since nobody can agree in a long-term vision, we just lurch from crisis to crisis.