It’s hard to believe that the year is coming to an end, and in just a few weeks, we’ll be celebrating the start of a new one. We’re right in the middle of resolution season, and I’ve been thinking a lot about mine. Those of us who have broken resolutions before—and with my wife Kathryn’s delicious cooking, I’ve broken a few—know that change is impossible without action. I’ve heard it said that faith plus action equals success. We can’t daydream our way into change. It takes effort.
I think it’s time for those of us serving in Congress to make some resolutions, and to make the necessary effort it will take to keep them. The “govern-by-crisis” mentality that has become business-as-usual in Washington just isn’t cutting it, and the time to make a change is now. I have said over and over again that stop-gap spending measures and last-minute decisions prevent progress. When Congress pushes important appropriations and budgeting decisions until the very last minute, it means that Members are not adequately involved in the decision-making process, we aren’t able to participate in debate to make sure that the best ideas are the ones implemented into policy, and the American people lose.
This week, House and Senate negotiators finalized a $1.149 trillion “omnibus” deal to fund the federal government through the end of September 2016. The bill, weighing in at more than 2,000 pages, was released early Wednesday morning, scarcely giving Members time to read it, much less weight its merits. The bill does include some measures that I have fought for and believe in, like funding for our military, but it also includes policy measures that I have adamantly opposed and requires compromise that wouldn’t have been necessary if Congress weren’t forced to act against the clock. If Speaker Boehner had called the House back into session during August recess, as I asked, and if Member pay was contingent on the timely passage of all twelve appropriations bills, we wouldn’t be here in Washington, less than a week before Christmas, voting on a less-than-desirable bill.
That said, I believe that Speaker Ryan inherited this process, and I believe him when he says that he agrees that this isn’t the way government should work. “Inheriting this process,” he said earlier this week, “I know we need to restore regular order …” “I look forward to, in 2016, [to] getting Congress working back on the way it should be working, getting back to what we call regular order. That is what 2016 is going to be about—is steering this battleship toward working the way the People’s House was intended to be working in the first place.”
I’m happy to hear that leadership is making its resolutions now, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to take the action necessary for us to keep them. Those of us here in Congress work for
you, and it’s time for us to step up and make sure that both the process and the outcomes are working for the people of this great nation.
