The Continuing Resolution Is a Surrender of the Power of the Purse

Washington treats the continuing resolution as a boring emergency valve, a temporary bridge between budgets, a procedural speed bump that keeps the lights on while the adults argue. That is exactly the wrong way to think about it. The continuing resolution is not a harmless tool. It is the quietest way to hollow out the Constitution. This is not about any particular CR, and it is not about one party or one fiscal fight. It is about the CR as a way of life, and that way of life is constitutional atrophy.

What the Constitution Actually Requires

The Constitution places the power of the purse in Congress for a reason. Article I, Section 9 is blunt: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." That is not a suggestion. It is the structural check that makes every other check possible. James Madison, in Federalist No. 58, called the power of the purse "the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people." Why? Because specific, periodic appropriations force the people's representatives to say yes to specific dollars for specific purposes. The first Congress did exactly that, line by line, item by item, subject by subject. It was slow, it was tedious, and that was the point. The House of Representatives was designed to hold the purse precisely because it would be the most accountable branch to the people. An appropriation was not supposed to be a vague instruction to keep spending. It was supposed to be an affirmative act of judgment. A continuing resolution is not that.

A Resolution That Resolves Nothing

The name itself tells the story. A continuing resolution does not resolve anything. It continues everything. A CR is a law that says, in effect, keep spending at last year's levels, on last year's priorities, for a set period of time. It is not a budget. It is a non-decision with a signature on it. The constitutional injury is this: the appropriations process exists to force the current Congress to make current choices about current conditions. A CR does the opposite. It makes the previous year's decisions, made by a previous Congress under previous conditions, permanent by default. It does not ask whether a program worked, whether a threat changed, or whether a dollar is still needed. It simply continues the checks.

Worse, it destroys accountability. When Congress passes a CR, no member has to vote for the wasteful grant, the obsolete weapons system, or the bloated agency. They cast one vote to continue everything. That is not responsibility. It is a mass absentee ballot on spending, and it produces government without fingerprints. Calling a CR an appropriation made by law stretches the original meaning of the word appropriation beyond recognition. The Founders understood an appropriation as a specific designation of funds. A continuing resolution is a general command to keep the status quo running. It is the difference between writing a will and leaving the house to whoever happens to be standing in it.

The Seen and the Unseen

Henry Hazlitt taught us to look for the unseen. The seen effect of a CR is that the government stays open, paychecks clear, and nobody has to suffer the inconvenience of a shutdown. That is real, and it is visible. The unseen effects are far more serious. First, accountability dies. The power of the purse is the people's hold on the state. When Congress stops making specific spending decisions, the executive branch and the permanent bureaucracy gain power. They know that if they can just outlast the appropriations clock, a CR will keep their money flowing. They no longer have to justify themselves line by line. They just have to keep the machine running.

Second, outdated priorities get locked in. Friedrich Hayek explained that the knowledge needed to allocate resources wisely is dispersed across millions of people and cannot be centralized. Annual budgeting, imperfect as it is, forces Congress to confront at least some of that dispersed knowledge through hearings, testimony, and competing claims. A CR short-circuits that process entirely. It says, in effect, last year's knowledge is good enough. But conditions change. Threats change. Prices change. Needs change. The CR is central planning by inertia.

Third, Congress loses the habit of governing. If a legislature does not have to choose, it forgets how. The power of the purse atrophies from disuse. And when that happens, we no longer have a government of laws. We have a government by default. There is another unseen cost that deserves attention. A CR often prevents any new initiative from starting, even when the current Congress and the American people have clearly changed course. Under a continuing resolution, agencies are generally barred from starting new programs, awarding new contracts, or increasing production rates. The result is a bizarre form of paralysis. Old, discredited programs continue on autopilot while new priorities sit frozen. That is not merely inefficient. It is a direct assault on the principle of consent of the governed. A newly elected majority can promise change, but a CR denies them the tool to make that change real.

The Objection: But a Shutdown Is Worse

The objection is predictable. Without a CR, the government shuts down, and shutdowns are irresponsible. Here is the truth. A shutdown is visible and temporary. It creates exactly the kind of pressure that forces Congress to do its job. A CR is invisible and permanent. It removes the pressure. It allows Congress to avoid hard decisions indefinitely. The real choice is not between a CR and a shutdown. The real choice is between specific appropriations and a permanent non-budget. Be honest about shutdowns: essential services continue. National defense, air traffic control, border enforcement, and the core functions of the state do not simply vanish. The sky does not fall. What a shutdown actually does is remove the fiction that Congress can govern without deciding. That pressure is not a bug in the system. It is a feature, one the Founders put there on purpose. If Congress cannot pass individual appropriations bills on time, the answer is not to pass a CR. The answer is to stay in session, cancel the recess, and do the work, or face the voters.

Reject the Automatic CR Trap

There is a movement to make the continuing resolution automatic, an auto-CR that kicks in whenever Congress misses its deadline. The idea is sold as a way to prevent shutdowns. It would be the constitutional equivalent of a do-not-resuscitate order for the power of the purse. An automatic CR would write into law that no decision is a decision. It would sever the last connection between spending and the consent of the governed. It would not fix the budget process. It would eliminate the process. If a manual CR is a surrender of the purse, an automatic CR is a surrender with a notarized signature. Reject it outright.

What Real Restraint Looks Like

If we are serious about restoring the power of the purse, the remedy is not to make the failure automatic. The remedy is to make the failure unacceptable. Congress should pass the twelve individual appropriations bills that fund the federal government, on time, every year, under regular order. Members should be forced to debate and amend them line by line. If an agency cannot justify its budget in public, its funding should lapse. That is not cruelty. That is self-government. We should also reject the omnibus strategy, which is the CR's older, heavier cousin. In an omnibus, Congress crams thousands of line items into a single, multi-thousand-page bill that nobody has read before the vote. That produces the same result as a continuing resolution: no accountability, no deliberation, no fingerprints. One giant vote to spend everything at once is not legislating. It is rubber-stamping the status quo.

The path back is not complicated. It requires no new laws. It requires only that Congress do the job the Constitution already assigns to it. Individual appropriations. Public debate. Specific votes. Yes and no, line by line. That is the discipline of a free republic.

The Human Stakes

The continuing resolution is not a repair tool. It is the slow erosion of the most important power the people gave to Congress. Every time we accept it as normal, we tell our representatives that they do not have to choose, do not have to prioritize, do not have to answer for a single dollar. We let them off the hook. We let the bureaucracy off the hook. And we let the republic off the hook. That is not self-government. That is a government that governs itself and sends us the bill. The power of the purse is not just a weapon against the executive. It is the people's hold on the entire machinery of the state. When Congress lets it rust, we are no longer citizens of a republic. We are customers of a government that has forgotten who works for whom. The CR is not a harmless technicality. It is how a republic stops being a republic, quietly, one stopgap at a time.