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History of continuing resolutions in US Congress
Executive Summary
Continuing resolutions (CRs) have been a persistent feature of federal budgeting for decades: Congress enacted 207 CRs between FY1977 and FY2025, and CRs have occurred in all but a handful of recent fiscal years, producing routine funding uncertainty and administrative strain for agencies [1] [2]. Scholarly and government analyses converge on three facts: CRs temporarily maintain prior funding levels, Congress rarely passes all twelve appropriations bills on time, and CRs produce operational constraints that agencies must manage [1] [3] [4]. This analysis synthesizes key claims, highlights divergent framings from legislative, oversight, and research institutions, and identifies what those differences imply for interpreting the history and consequences of CR use [5] [6].
1. Why CRs Became Routine — The Political and Procedural Backstory
Congressional practice shows that passing all regular appropriations on time is rare, with only four years since FY1977 when all twelve bills became law on schedule; this chronic shortfall explains the repeated resort to CRs as stopgap funding instruments [3]. Several institutional facts underlie that pattern: appropriations are fragmented across multiple subcommittees, floor calendar pressures combine with policy disputes during budget negotiations, and procedural incentives reward delaying final votes when parties seek leverage. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) and historical overviews document how these structural features produce a default reliance on continuing resolutions, which preserve prior-year funding levels while deferring substantive allocation decisions to later negotiations [5]. The upshot is a systemic pattern where CRs substitute for completed appropriations rather than being exceptional measures, reflecting enduring political and procedural frictions [7].
2. How Frequently and How Long — The Empirical Record
Multiple compilations converge on a high frequency and variable duration of CRs: there were 207 CRs from FY1977–FY2025 and 47 CRs between FY2010–FY2022, with durations ranging from single days to many months, producing an average lag of roughly 117 days between fiscal year starts and final spending enactment in some analyses [1] [4] [3]. Government accountability work and secondary summaries show that CR prevalence spikes in years of divided government or high policy contention, and that some fiscal cycles require multiple sequential CRs. The data indicate that CRs are not an occasional patch but a recurring budgetary regime, and that their cumulative effect over years is prolonged periods where agencies operate under temporary authorities rather than multi-year certainty [4] [3].
3. What CRs Do — Mechanics, Constraints, and Exceptions
Continuing resolutions typically carry six operational features: coverage of which accounts and agencies are funded, duration, funding rate (often prior-year levels), restrictions on starting new projects, anomalies that adjust discrete programs, and embedded legislative riders [1]. These mechanics mean that CRs often freeze programmatic baselines, constrain new initiatives, and require agencies to defer hiring, procurement, or grants. Oversight reports emphasize that while agencies have mitigation strategies—reprogramming, carryover balances, or short-term contracts—those are stopgap measures that can increase administrative costs and reduce program effectiveness, particularly for grants and capital projects whose timelines do not align with temporary funding windows [4] [6].
4. Divergent Framings — Neutral Analysis vs. Political Narratives
Analyses from CRS and GAO present CRs as nonpartisan, operational facts of governance with measurable costs and coping strategies [5] [4]. Political actors frame CRs differently: proponents sometimes portray CRs as prudent continuity to avoid shutdowns, while critics depict them as failures of oversight that weaponize funding uncertainty for policy leverage. The available documents reveal these rhetorical differences but the empirical record limits partisan claims: CRs reliably produce operational constraints regardless of the framing, and the objective metrics—frequency counts, duration averages, and agency-reported impacts—support oversight concerns about inefficiency and planning disruption [1] [2].
5. What’s Missing and What to Watch — Data Gaps and Policy Implications
Existing sources chronicle frequency and agency impact but leave gaps in standardized, cross-agency cost estimates and long-term program outcomes attributable specifically to CR-driven interruptions; oversight reports note administrative burdens but not a unified dollar estimate of lost productivity [4]. CRS materials and public databases improve traceability of legislative history but cannot substitute for consolidated longitudinal cost accounting across program areas [5]. For policymakers and analysts, the essential next step is systematic tracking of CR-related delays, costs, and program slippage using harmonized metrics; absent that, debates about reforming appropriations procedures will rely on incomplete quantifications even as the political pressures that produce CRs persist [3] [6].