Will Congress Ever Take The Libertarian Win And Embrace Automatic Shutdown?

Congress is at it again. With the March 14, 2025, funding deadline looming, the House is debating a continuing resolution (CR) that would maintain fiscal year 2024 non-defense spending levels.

This “clean” extension infuriates members like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), prompting Donald Trump to once again label Massie a “grandstander.”

While the Republican-led proposal freezes non-defense spending at FY 2024 levels, it boosts defense and border funding. Notably, there isn’t even a rescission package in play as an offset of sorts, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) had suggested.

Meanwhile, Democrats are feigning outrage, with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi lamenting on the House floor that the CR allows Trump priorities to “hollow out” and “starve” domestic spending. But the federal colossus is anything but starved.

A shutdown looms if no deal is struck by Friday, with the two sides, as usual, blaming each other.

Yet the real crisis isn’t the impasse—it’s the refusal to dismantle a federal behemoth our Framers wouldn’t recognize.

Spending Without Restraint

The Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse, but today, even so-called discretionary spending—as distinct from “entitlements” like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—has become effectively automatic. Annual deficits near $2 trillion—exceeding the total nominal federal outlays of the 1990s—enlarge a $36 trillion national debt.

President Trump, now back in the driver’s seat, has championed tax cuts and key deregulatory measures. But new and legacy spending ambitions continue unabated, as Congress—despite the GOP’s small-government rhetoric—has long capitulated to progressive aims. Joe Biden’s expansive agenda, from climate to equity to the recently exposed USAID grants to NGOs, thrived because Congress tends to keep the purse strings loose. That extraordinary spending, given Washington’s gravitational pull, also fuels regulation.

If shutdowns and debt ceiling clashes aren’t tools to curb federal excess, what else is? If other institutions exist to halt Washington’s spending spree, we’re all ears.

The Shutdown Leverage

A CR, with its built-in shutdown threat, may be the only remaining lever to force spending cuts. It flips the script on reconciliation, a process typically exploited to ram through spending hikes like Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

A shutdown isn’t the apocalypse—more than 20 have occurred without catastrophe. Taxes still flow to Washington from every paycheck, and the federal government has ample funds to reallocate, to some extent even when debt limits are reached. The true disruption? Dependencies on federal agencies programs that shouldn’t exist.

The fix isn’t an endless parade of CRs and bloated omnibus bills—it’s slashing the unnecessary. States, localities, and voluntary society should take on responsibilities Washington has hoarded. As an bonus, this would save the cash taking unnecessary detours to the federal government to pay bureaucrats, some of whom Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) suspects to be curiously well-off indeed.

Spending at already bloated FY 2024 levels—heights the GOP once regarded as unthinkable—requires affirmative action by them this week. They have to get up on their hind legs and take decisive steps to make it happen.

But imagine a system where spending cuts and restraint were the accepted default, not the contentious choice—where automatic reductions replaced relentless expansion, eliminating the need for last-minute battles. That kind of institutional shift could transform today’s recurring CR standoffs into a sustainable framework for real fiscal discipline. It would require innovations like zero-based budgeting (as opposed to baseline budgeting) and sunsetting federal agencies and programs.

The latter point underscores that curbing over-regulation is just as crucial as cutting spending. In line with “drain the swamp” priorities, recent Republican Study Committee and House Budget Committee proposals have emphasized the likes of pairing spending cuts with deregulation. Regulatory caps and sunsets could help discipline both red tape and red ink.

The bottom line is that progressivism and Bidenomics circa 2024 rely on GOP cooperation to survive—deny it, and Leviathan shrinks.

The Real Crisis

Shutdowns are messy, but fiscal collapse is messier. A “bigger dog” can bear “more ticks,” as CEI founder Fred L. Smith Jr. would often quip with regard to our wealthy nation–but not forever.

Both parties are complicit in a system that has left us with only two remaining tools to restrain government: shutdown brinkmanship and debt ceiling intransigence. It’s a sad reality that no formal institutions exist to impose fiscal restraint—only these crude, last-ditch mechanisms. They need to be rehabilitated into functional institutions.

The current budget process has proven incapable of restraining—let alone reducing—spending. Inevitably, when Congress “acts,” spending increases. Ironically, inaction may be the only path to securing a libertarian “win.” It must be transformed into a cleaner, more rational process.