Chris Jacobs, Juniper Research Group founder and CEO, in his 23 December Wall Street Journal op-ed, offered a solution, but he made this error that’s fatal to his proposal.
But because the Senate parliamentarian allowed Democrats to create new slush funds for domestic spending with a simple majority via budget reconciliation in 2021, a future Republican Congress can do the same….
No. Two wrongs, as the saying goes, do not make a right. Republicans doing this because the other party does it is what Progressive-Democratic Party members do.
Aside from that, it’s simply a wrong thing to do, whether tit-for-tat or simply reconciliation. The better answer is to pass budgets and appropriations bills through truly regular order: get rid of reconciliation altogether and pass the money bills—or not—in the same way as other bills get passed or stopped.
There’s one other step required. One (ideally both) of the houses of Congress needs to enact a rule barring omnibus bills: only the single budget and the dozen separate appropriations bills can be considered.
If government shuts down as a result of money impass, there’s a big so what. The Obama Shutdown, the Schumer Shutdown, all the other shutdowns show how little government is missed.
This—Jacobs’ solution or mine—will remain pie in the sky, though, since we’re dealing with politicians and not persons representing their constituencies. That requires us, We the People, to get off our…couches…and fire those who don’t represent us once they get to DC and hire those who do. That will take two or three election cycles to drive the point home. Three to complete a cleansing of the Senate.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.