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2016–2017 GSA-USGS Congressional Geoscience Fellow Final Report
What We Talk About
When We Talk
About Congressional
Gridlock
Kirstin L. Neff
Continuing resolutions. Sequestration. Suspended requests for
proposals. Delayed grant-making decisions. These have become
common refrains in the federal science enterprise. Federal sup-
port for science boasts a long history, yet the appropriations
process in Congress has ground nearly to a halt, resulting in
perennial brinksmanship that leaves agencies, contractors, and
academics unsure of near- and long-term funding. Beyond
uncertainty in appropriations, many programs proceed without
regular reauthorization as congressional gridlock touches all
aspects of legislative work.
I have experienced these effects firsthand. As a graduate
student, my training and research was funded in large part by
federal appropriations, first on my advisor’s NSF award, and
later on my own EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR)
Fellowship. I was awarded the three-year EPA STAR in 2012,
not long before the 2013 sequestration. I was relieved that EPA
chose to fully fund the 2012 awards, but that came at the cost
of applicants for 2013, who were left waiting a full year, after allow for simple majority approval.
which a smaller cohort was chosen.
The uncertainty I experienced is likely common among GSA
members who have applied for federal research funding in the
past five years. Continuing resolutions (CRs) have become stan-
dard, and regular order for appropriations now seems a remote
ideal. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has decried the debilitating
impact CRs have on the ability of the military to plan and
prepare—a similar argument can be made for the impact on the
U.S. science enterprise. Grant-making and contracting take
long-term planning, which is made nearly impossible by the
current appropriations impasse.
The Government Accountability Office (2013) found that
using CRs to delay appropriations decisions resulted in agencies Congress, topics related to my own portfolio, including an energy
delaying hiring or contracts during the CR period, rushing to
spend funds in a compressed timeframe, performing additional
work to manage within CR constraints, including issuing shorter
term grants and contracts multiple times, and taking action to
manage inefficiencies resulting from CRs, including shifting
contract and grant cycles to later in the fiscal year to avoid
repetitive work.
Congressional gridlock has been identified as a primary factor vote. Gridlock in the Senate this year can be partly attributed to
in Congress’ abysmal public approval rating. But how do we
measure legislative gridlock, and what are its causes?
30 GSA Today | March-April 2018
Political scientist Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution
defines gridlock as an inability to compromise (Binder, 2014).
She argues that congressional gridlock should not be measured
as an absolute—how many laws Congress passes—but as a rela-
tive measure: how many major legislative agenda items are
answered with new laws? She determined this relative measure
by looking at the unsigned editorials of The New York Times to
identify the salient legislative agenda items in a given Congress,
and then counted how many of these items were answered with
legislation signed into law. She found that the proportion of
salient items in gridlock has trended upward, doubling from
30% in 1948 to 60% in 2012.
Congressional observers have identified several causes con-
tributing to this gridlock. One of these is increasing political
polarization, which has been exacerbated by several recent polit-
ical developments. First, the power of lobbies has increased due
to several recent Supreme Court decisions that expand the abil-
ity of corporations, unions, associations, and individuals to fund
campaigns through Super PACs. Second, gerrymandering has
redrawn many electoral districts to make them safe for either of
the two major parties, allowing more extreme partisans to win
election. Finally, polarization has been advanced by what is
called the Nuclear Option—in which Senate rules requiring a
60-vote super majority for passage have been swept aside to
Binder (2014) points to one other possible cause of gridlock:
Congress is faced with an increasing number of salient issues.
She found that in addition to an increase in proportional grid-
lock, the absolute number of salient issues per Congress has
increased in recent years. It’s possible that the complexity of the
modern world and the federal government’s reach creates more
issues than Congress can reasonably address in a single session
under current rules.
In my experience, I have found that the Senate only has the
bandwidth to work on one or two issues at a time. While in the
House majority rule leads to passage of many bills, often by sus-
pension of the rules, Senate rules favor lengthy debate. Early this
bill and an infrastructure package, were floated, but were set
aside in favor of health care and, later, tax reform. Bills received
legislative hearings with some regularity, but Senate debate rules
and the need to vote on presidential nominees left little time on
the Senate calendar for floor votes on individual bills. Instead,
individual bills must pass through unanimous consent (though
any senator can put an anonymous hold on such a request), or by
appending them to a larger package of bills that receives a floor
the crowded legislative calendar, and even more so to the lack of
compromise on the salient items that did come to the floor.
The upward trend in congressional gridlock portends danger
for the future of federal science support. To bring stability, we
must find ways to decrease political polarization and encourage
compromise.