Greg Awtry

Would you hire someone who handed you their resume and you see they have failed at every job they held for the past 29 years? If you said no, then welcome to common sense America. If you said yes, then welcome to the United States Congress.

The single most important function of Congress is to pass a federal budget on time to keep our government up and running. In fact, Congress itself passed The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act in 1974, a law that says Congress completes the budget by October 1 each year. Congress is so inept it hasn’t followed their own law, as the last time they passed a budget on time was 1996, 29 years ago. After a six-week vacation, they are now back to work, if you can call it that.

It shouldn’t be that hard. There are 12 departmental appropriation bills that need to be passed by October 1. They have had the entire year to do this, and as of late August, they have passed only one. The clock is ticking, with less than two weeks left to get their work done. (Maybe, just maybe they shouldn’t have taken the last six weeks off.) I can tell you right now they won’t get their budget passed in time, making it 30 years in a row. And folks, it gets worse. Not only are they late every year, they are unable to balance our national checkbook. Congress is solely in charge of raising revenues to operate our country and solely in charge of how much we spend, and they are terrible at both.

In 1996 we were $5 trillion in debt, and now they have ballooned our debt to over $37 trillion, a number that has put our country in financial peril. So we would be foolish if we weren’t asking the question “Why?” Why can’t they pass a budget on time? Why can’t they balance our budget? Why do they spend more every year than we take in? The answer is simple. The two parties refuse to work together to do the vital work of responsibly funding our federal government.

So again, we must ask the question, “Why?” It’s because as important as funding our government is, it is apparent there are priorities Congress believes are more important. So what exactly could be more important than making sure we are being fiscally sound as a nation? Again, the answer is simple. Congress has placed three things in front of their budget responsibilities.

Reason Number One: To either gain or regain partisan power control of the House. Democrats don’t want to give Republicans a win, and Republicans don’t want to give Democrats a win. Why? It’s because of Reason Number Two: They want to get reelected. If they give in to the other party, they know the people back home will not be happy, so they play silly partisan games, calling each other names and pointing the finger of blame at each other. It’s obvious to all of us that their quest to get reelected is a higher priority for them than passing budget on time. So how do they get reelected? Reason Number Three: Congressional Representatives spend up to 50 percent, yes, 50 percent of their time fundraising so they can get reelected. Just imagine if they spent that amount of time working on our national budget, passing it on time, and working on a long-term plan to reduce our annual deficits!

And finally, here’s the dirty little secret they don’t want us to know. They are prohibited from raising money from their offices, but party leaders insist they do it from the Democrat and Republican National Congressional Committee offices just a few blocks away. They sit in tiny cubicles for hours on end calling lists of possible donors. Some have “leaderboards” listing who is doing well and those who are doing poorly. They have talking points on how to persuade donors. And some are provided schedules that suggest only allowing two or three hours a day to spend on actual legislation to allow more hours for party fundraising.

So what can we do about it? Well, for starters we could stop reelecting them. In the last election, with only a 19 percent Congressional approval rating, we reelected 97 percent of the incumbents. That’s clear proof that Congress is broken and lopsided when it comes to priorities, and clear proof that putting party over people is not working out so well for us, but clear proof it is working out really well for them.

The time has come for us to take a stand demanding Congress does what we sent them to Washington to do. Get our house in order by working together to put us back on solid fiscal ground, by passing budgets on time, along with a long-term plan to rebalance our budget. If they fail again, as they are likely to do, we need to personally ask them why? And it wouldn’t hurt to tell them if they fail again we will not be voting for them in 2026. Maybe they will understand that better than they understand finances.

That’s my two cents for today, which many think is way overpriced! But I would like to know what you think we should do, at gregawtry@awtry.com.

Greg Awtry is the former publisher of the Scottsbluff (Neb.) Star-Herald and Nebraska’s York News-Times. He is now retired and living in Hubbard Lake.