The Washington Post

The Congressional Budget Office reported Monday that the five-week government shutdown cost the country $3 billion that it will never get back, with substantial pain for individuals who went unpaid and businesses that lost customers. With another closure looming, two senators are pushing bills they say would end shutdowns once and for all. Both proposals have risks.

Don’t get us wrong: We’re against shutdowns. Lost billions are just one measure of the latest. Five million pieces of mail went unopened at the IRS during the five-week hiatus, and the National Taxpayer Advocate said it will take the agency a year to dig out, even as it implements a big new tax law. Federal recruiting surely will take a hit. The shutdown showed how much Americans rely on competent government services, but it will hobble the government’s ability to attract the talented workers it needs to provide them.

Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Mark R. Warner, D-Virginia, have introduced competing bills that would automatically continue previous spending if Congress doesn’t pass new spending bills. The budget would essentially run on autopilot.

The problem is that giving lawmakers a fallback option limits “the incentive for one party or the other to go to the table to negotiate a new spending bill,” the Brookings Institution’s Sarah Binder wrote The Washington Post in an email. “That limits Congress’ ability to respond to changing agendas or emergencies that might require shifts in spending priorities.” Government agencies cannot plan long term, pursue new projects or end failing ones when their funding levels are tied tightly to previous appropriations.

The bills recognize this downside and offer alternative solutions. Portman would begin across-the-board spending cuts, hitting defense and nondefense spending, after 120 days, as an incentive to negotiate. That might work, but there is a danger that anti-spending insurgents would welcome the opportunity to force down federal spending. Warner’s, by contrast, would withhold funding from Congress and the White House until lawmakers agreed on new appropriations bills. Of course, a future Congress could cancel both these forcing mechanisms while keeping spending on autopilot.

Lawmakers may judge that the disruption caused by shutdowns, and the difficulty of compromising on a budget, justify adopting a new mechanism, no matter how risky. But it might be better to start by adopting another of Warner’s ideas: to withhold congressional and White House operations money if Congress doesn’t pass new funding bills. The government might still shut down — but lawmakers and their staffs would share the pain. That might help them see the wisdom of reopening the government a lot more quickly.