This is the do-or-die week for Congress as the end of the fiscal year for the federal government arrives this Friday. Because Congress has not passed any funding legislation for FY 2023, they are planning to pass a “continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government from shutting down at midnight on Friday.
The CR is temporary funding legislation that keeps federal spending at the previous fiscal year’s spending levels for a limited period of time. It has become common practice for Congress to resort to a CR in the last several years no matter which party is in control. Congress uses the temporary time extension to put together the legislation that will fully fund the government for the new fiscal year.
It is usually disagreements over what and how much to fund that causes Congress to fail to pass funding legislation on time and create the need for a CR. In 2019, the federal government shut down for 35-days, the longest shut down in history, caused by a dispute between then-President Trump and Congress over the funding amount for an expansion of the U.S.–Mexico border barrier.
