This shortened funding period travels down the chain to the front line employees. The resulting job insecurity causes concern, confusion and frustrations from government and contractor employees. The government would shut down, like it did right around this time last year. In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days – forcing employees to be furloughed, national parks to close, childcare and other services for military families to shutter, and loans to small businesses to stall.
Check out the Potomac Officers Club’s upcoming events and harness your opportunity for critical face time with federal decision makers. A CR can also stop being “clean” if Congress writes it in such a way that the programs carry forward, but the level of funding what does cr stand for in government is adjusted for those programs. CRs are generally intended to be temporary in nature, but Congress can keep offering subsequent CRs during a funding fight, extending them in perpetuity if necessary. Please consult a qualified professional for financial, legal, or health advice specific to your circumstances. Agencies develop mitigation strategies like using multi-year funds when available, delaying grant programs, or requesting “exception apportionments” from OMB for critical programs.
Stopgap spending bills are now the norm to keep federal agencies running
These acronyms and abbreviations are routinely used in government solicitations. You will also encounter these acronyms throughout the various sections of government contracts. This master list of acronyms will help you better understand the specialized language of government contracting. This is essential for successfully doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) and working with contracting offices at military bases and DoD agencies. In late 2020, there was a deadline to either pass a new budget or pass a Continuing Resolution that would allow funding and government operations to continue past the deadline.
The historical pattern suggests that CRs have become an expected part of the annual budget cycle rather than true emergency interventions, potentially reducing the urgency to complete regular appropriations on time. This table simplifies a complex topic, highlighting how regular appropriations are designed for proactive, detailed governance, while CRs are reactive measures with significant trade-offs. The Antideficiency Act is a cornerstone of federal fiscal law that makes CRs necessary when regular appropriations lapse. While the inclusion of “anomalies” in CRs is intended to mitigate some of the harm caused by rigid funding formulas, this approach represents a form of micro-legislating that occurs under considerable time pressure. This process may lack the broader, more systematic deliberation characteristic of the regular appropriations cycle. Regular appropriations fund discretionary spending, which makes up roughly one-third of total federal spending (35-39% in recent years).
Q: Does the President have a say in what goes into the federal budget?
This creates an environment where governing often occurs by lurching from one short-term fiscal cliff to the next, rather than being based on stable, long-term strategic planning.
On more than one occasion employees were sent government mandated 30-day layoff notices because no budget was in place and the funds from the CR had run out.
This entire process allows Congress to thoroughly assess federal programs, make informed decisions about resource allocation, and clearly communicate its spending priorities.
When CRs become the norm, the essential deliberative processes of hearings, debates, and detailed bill development are curtailed or bypassed.
This duality is not accidental but a systemic adaptation to the intricate challenges of governing within a diverse democracy.
Changes to the structure of these committees in the early and mid-2000s eventually brought the number of subcommittees, and in turn the number of stand-alone appropriations acts, down to 12. Congress has not enacted all 12 appropriations acts since fiscal year (FY) 1997, however. Instead, Congress has relied on CRs to keep agency operations funded. Since FY1998, Congress has enacted 125 CRs to keep federal agencies funded.
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Consequently, agencies frequently operate based on outdated priorities and resource allocations, leading to significant inefficiencies and strategic planning difficulties.
The regular appropriations process is structured to ensure that spending decisions follow a methodical, public, and accountable path—a key feature often compromised when the process breaks down.
In essence, it’s a financial Band-Aid that keeps the government running.
This isn’t merely about potentially receiving less money than anticipated; it fundamentally impairs agencies’ ability to adapt to changing circumstances or new requirements.
Ensure that all project documentation is up to date and readily accessible. Accurate and timely reporting can help maintain a positive relationship with contracting officers and reduce the risk of audit issues. Contractors should review their cash flow projections and ensure they have sufficient reserves to manage any delays in payments. Consider negotiating flexible payment terms with subcontractors and suppliers to maintain liquidity.
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The day-to-day operations of most federal agencies are funded on an annual basis by appropriations. When those appropriation bills are not enacted by the start of the fiscal year on October 1, Congress uses a continuing resolution, or “CR,” as a temporary measure to fund government activities for a limited time. Continuing resolutions are temporary “stopgaps,” often employed to avoid a partial government shutdown and to give lawmakers more time to enact appropriations for the full year. However, programs deemed essential services, such as those related to public safety, often continue to operate even without a CR.
Congress then goes through the appropriations process by holding hearings, creating and modifying the bills, and then passing those bills. Between FY1977 and FY2019, there were 20 instances where funding gaps led to at least one full day without available appropriations for some parts of the government. The duration of these shutdowns ranged from a single day to as long as 35 days. During the FY2019 shutdown, an estimated 800,000 employees were affected, and a similar number in the 2013 shutdown. This historical data clearly quantifies how CRs have become a standard, rather than exceptional, part of the federal budgeting landscape, underscoring a significant shift from the intended regular appropriations process.
Impact on National Priorities
While temporary funding measures often avoid shutdowns, they also reflect the failure of lawmakers to reach an agreement on some or all appropriation bills for a full fiscal year. Funding the government for a full year is preferable to using a CR because it allows government agencies to appropriately plan and match their resources with their responsibilities. Predictability benefits the economy by providing certainty about government activities.
A measure of prices paid for goods and services excluding food and energy; the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation. Measures the change in prices of all goods and services purchased for consumption by urban households.
The uncertainty causes interest rates to be higher and removes the impetus for business to reinvest profits. Instead businesses hold onto their money due to the uncertainty, thus hampering economic growth. Brittany A. Madni is the Executive Vice President of the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC). She served as a Congressional aide and trusted senior advisor for a decade on Capitol Hill, developing a nuanced understanding of the legislative process with an emphasis on budget and appropriations strategy.
A CR provides a quick-and-dirty legislative solution to keeping federal agencies operating, without delving into the policy debates that presumably makes enacting full appropriations acts a challenge. Since congressional legislating is a rare event, policy initiatives are often bundled into legislation that eventually must be signed into law. For example, the congressional majority attempted to enact a debt limit suspension in the most recent CR.
A “full-year” Continuing Resolution provides final funding amounts for covered federal agencies and programs for the entire remainder of a fiscal year, effectively taking the place of one or more regular appropriations acts that were not enacted. In essence, for the agencies it covers, the full-year CR becomes their regular appropriation for that fiscal year, providing certainty about funding levels through September 30. The Antideficiency Act serves as a powerful enforcement mechanism for congressional authority over federal spending. However, when timely appropriations aren’t passed, it transforms from a tool for fiscal discipline into a trigger for significant operational chaos (government shutdowns) or drives the adoption of suboptimal governance through repeated CRs. While the Act’s purpose is to prevent unauthorized spending, its consequence when Congress fails to act is the mandated cessation of many government functions, with substantial disruptive effects on public services, federal employees, and the broader economy.
This is where competing priorities, ideologies, and regional interests clash most directly. The political dynamics surrounding the negotiation and passage of a full-year CR can be particularly contentious. Because it forces a single up-or-down vote on a massive, all-encompassing funding package, it inevitably contains elements that are undesirable to various factions or individual members of Congress. This can make it a “losers out of everybody” scenario, where few members feel their specific priorities have been adequately addressed. This pattern is exemplified by situations where multiple CRs are needed within a single fiscal year to keep the government operating. This creates an environment where governing often occurs by lurching from one short-term fiscal cliff to the next, rather than being based on stable, long-term strategic planning.
