"Since the mid-'90s, this country has been governed by revolving continuing resolution and omnibus spending bill(s). … That is the reason we're $33 trillion in debt."
Continuing resolutions keep the government functioning but permit the appropriations process to drag out for weeks or months past its theoretical deadline. Between fiscal 1998 and 2023, there have been an average of 113 days – or almost four months – between the start of each fiscal year and the date that year’s final spending bill became law. In the most extreme case, the final spending bill for fiscal 2017 didn’t become law until May 2017, more than seven months into the fiscal year. Rather than pass individual spending bills as envisioned in the 1974 budget law, Congress has increasingly resolved its annual spending disputes by using omnibus bills – which bundle several appropriations measures into a single, giant law – or full-year continuing resolutions. The first such omnibus measure was passed in 1950 as a one-off experiment, and the tactic was used a couple of times in the mid-1980s. However, omnibus bills have become much more frequent in the past two decades. In all but two fiscal years since 2007, in fact, all or nearly all of the regular appropriations bills were combined into such after-deadline package deals.