The Senate voted 88-9 to approve a stopgap spending bill to fund the federal government through Nov. 17, narrowly averting a shutdown by a midnight deadline. President Biden signed the bill into law shortly afterward.
- NPR, 30th Sep 2023.
On Saturday night, Washington DC time, the House and Senate finally agreed upon terms to approve a patch job to the United States budget, to keep the payments continuing for a little while longer. Just to be clear, a government shutdown in the United States is the direct result of self-imposed rules to do with spending limits and deb ceilings. In theory, the actual event of government shutdown shouldn't happen but because the debt ceiling limit is an invented problem, it requires an invented solution.
The people whom a US Government shutdown includes is not just restricted to government employees but also extends to people who live on government pensions and benefits. What makes this such a delightfully fun issue for the tory side of politics in the United States is that they can demonise pensions, benefits, and entitlements recipients because those people have very little to no political power to fight back. It also looks good in the greater narrative of demanding smaller government; while at the same time keeping quiet about the fact that the burden of taxation most heavily rests upon the lower and middle classes who can not avoid things like sales tax and income tax.
The grand problem here is to do with the way that the US Federal Government is constituted. Budgets nominally arise in the White House and the Congress rejects everything in them. Then the House and the Senate, argue longly and loudly about different versions of the budget, before one of the two chambers finally caves in and accepts the proposal from the other. When American political commentators talk about gridlock, this is a perfectly apt description because mostly Alexander Hamilton who is the chief architect of the US Government, designed a deliberately clunky system. In the various Federalist Papers, he argues that this is to limit the power that either chamber or the President has and this is supposed to temper the deliberations of the system. In practice, the whole system is so monumentally terrible and has been copied by exactly zero other nations.
Truth be told, there isn't 'a' US Federal Budget but twelve of them. I shall not go into the exact mechanics but the way the system broadly works is that the various government departments all have their own Spending section within their part of the twelve, and then the Department of Treasury fills in the gaps with Taxation measures. These then generally go together to form what is known as an Omnibus Bill, which is for by and with everyone together.
I was asked by an American person why this never happens in Australia. The short answer is that the Australian Constitution was enacted 111 years later and had the benefit of over a century of experience as well as the already existing running of the colonies' parliaments within Australia. The Westminster System, which was modified for the Commonwealth of Australia, is a good system.
We have more defined and far far harder descriptions of where bills can originate and what powers and differences exist between the chambers. Also because Australia is a Parliamentary system and not a Presidential system, this means that the offices of Cabinet such as the Departments of Treasury and Finance have cabinet ministers inside the chambers. The place where the Commonwealth of Australia Appropriation Bills originate from is the House of Representatives:
Proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys, or imposing taxation, shall not originate in the Senate. But a proposed law shall not be taken to appropriate revenue or moneys, or to impose taxation, by reason only of its containing provisions for the imposition or appropriation of fines or other pecuniary penalties, or for the demand or payment or appropriation of fees for licences, or fees for services under the proposed law.
The Senate may not amend proposed laws imposing taxation, or proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys for the ordinary annual services of the Government.
- Section 53, Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900)
In practice this means that the budget always originates in the House of Representatives and as such, as the first and only essential duty of the parliament is the passage of the budget, then the officer of Treasurer always sits in the House. Also in consequence, whoever can command the purse strings (called the supply of money, or more simply 'supply'), forms Government out of whatever peloton of members that they can pull together.
Also because Australia learned from the United States' more than a century of gridlock and knavery, the Constitution has the following section which is specifically designed to deal with instances such as this.
If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously. But such dissolution shall not take place within six months before the date of the expiry of the House of Representatives by effluxion of time.
If after such dissolution the House of Representatives again passes the proposed law, with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may convene a joint sitting of the members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives.
- Section 57, Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900)
Now of course I can't speak about Section 57 without touching on the dismissal of the then Labor Government with the sacking Prime Minister of Gough Whitlam on the 11th of November 1975. This exactly related to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 1975-1976 and the Senate failing to pass it. The effluxion of six months had passed and the Governor-General dissolved the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously.
Or rather, shenanigans had happened and the House and the Senate passed the budget while Gough Whitlam was at the Governor-General's residence and the Governor-General dissolved the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously anyway. This is a more obviously a more complex story but this is the short version.
Basically if the House presents a budget and the Senate won't agree it to it, then the Governor-General has the option of shutting the whole thing down, calling for a fresh election and starting again. In 123 years, there has never once been an actual budget bill which has failed to pass.
BUT...
In the unlikely event that even more shenaniganry should break out where the Senate abject refuses to pass, or even look at the budget bills, and where the Governor-General refuses to dissolve parliament (remember, 'may' is not 'must'), then budget bills ever since the 1940s when the power of assessing income tax was given over to the Commonwealth from the States, then even the budget bills themselves contain safety devices:
Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024
13 Repeal of this Act
This Act is repealed at the start of 1 July 2026.
- Section 13, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024
In this case, the 1st of July 2026 is well after not only the financial year in question of 2023/24 but also after the next Federal Election which must happen in 2025. Looking back at the mires of the 1975 Constitutional Crisis, not even the refusal of the Senate to pass the 1974/75 budget, or the Governor-General dissolving parliament was enough to incur a government shutdown as Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 1973-1974 had an expiry date in 1977, which was after the next theoretical Federal election which must have occurred. Not by hook or crook, or chook or rook, but by book, the Federal Government and all of the functions therein continued to function and would continue to do so.
The sheer utter stupidity of the United States' 'republican' form of government where the administration is outside of the Congress and the power of the purse is not properly vested in either the Congress or the President, means that the threat of government shutdowns in America is constant. Admittedly the United States' form of government is better in this respect than unicameral parliaments such as New Zealand, Queensland, or in matters of the budget, the United Kingdom, but the system is so utterly hopeless as to be almost always one October away from yet another breakage.
In Australia where the administration is inside of the Parliament and the power of the purse is properly vested with the the Parliament, then the threat of government shutdowns in America is almost always nil.
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