Greenville News - Shutdown Revealed Failures

Op-Ed

By Sen. Tim Scott

In the weeks leading up to the federal government shutdown and the weeks that followed, Washington was consumed by a very specific debate: Should we tie funding of Obamacare to a short-term spending resolution? Ultimately this debate spilled over into the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and resulted in a government shutdown that lasted for 16 days.

I believe Obamacare takes our country in a dangerous direction and should be repealed. The law is resulting in the cancellation of health insurance policies for hundreds of thousands of Americans, higher premiums for those who are able to keep their plans, even greater burdens that make it more difficult for businesses to keep workers and hire new ones, and new taxes on our families and job creators.

We've all heard the phrase "don't miss the forest for the trees." However, in this case, that was exactly what happened in Washington. We never would have faced the question of a government shutdown if President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had not failed at one of their most basic duties: passing a budget that responsibly manages taxpayer dollars and provides for our country's long-term financial stability.

We know Oct. 1 is the beginning of the new fiscal year and the deadline for Congress and the president to pass a budget that, among other things, keeps the doors of the federal government open.

Four out of his five years in the White House, President Obama has been late submitting his budget proposal, which is required by law to be completed by Feb. 4 each year. Congress has not completed work on all of its regular spending bills on time since 1997. This year, Majority Leader Reid and the Democratic majority have failed to complete a single appropriations bill.

With these facts in mind, it's little wonder we found ourselves at an impasse that led to a government shutdown. This is not the first time this has happened.

We've walked our way up to the brink of this deadline several times over the years, though it had not been crossed in almost two decades. It's time for us to fix the massive structural problem that led to the shutdown so we can avoid it in the future -- whether the core of the dispute is Obamacare or any other issue.

Short-term continuing resolutions are no way to operate our government. These stopgap spending bills fund the government for weeks or months at a time, but perpetually lead to the threat of a shutdown and another crisis.

When families sit down to plan their budgets, they are forced to make tough choices -- like how to save for college, or simply how to get food on the dinner table that week.

When small businesses open their doors, they have a plan to meet their payroll and keep their doors open with the revenue they bring in. The federal government has repeatedly failed to play by these same rules, and as a result, we move from crisis to crisis with no solution on the horizon for our growing fiscal mess.

This crisis-to-crisis budgeting has to stop. The ongoing process of governing by continuing resolution does not adjust for programs that are wasteful, inefficient, or just plain broken. Government only grows bigger and weighed down with bureaucratic hurdles that make it harder for our families and businesses to prosper.

The government shutdown was fundamentally avoidable -- if Washington had only done its job. If we don't get our act together, we'll be in the same situation again in just a few short months.

It's time for all sides to come together -- including President Obama -- to craft a responsible, long-term budget that realistically accounts for the challenges we face: our country is $17 trillion in debt and our deficits are unsustainable.

I am hopeful that the upcoming budget negotiations that were part of the agreement to re-open the government will be productive, but these discussions should have started a long time ago.

We must also address structural issues in our budgeting process. That includes considering the concept of adopting two-year budgets like Texas or a number of other states have adopted; creating real enforcement mechanisms to make sure deadlines are met, or any additional ideas that will fix the process and require budget work to be completed on time.

Our country deserves better than short-term budgeting that only works well enough to get us to the next crisis.

I'm looking forward to guiding our country toward a more stable, more responsible, and more prosperous future, but our leaders in Washington need to commit themselves to the same.

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