Here’s the New Congress’ Most Important Task

This article originally appeared in MarketWatch.

Lawmakers might take home an annual $286,000 compensation package, but over the past decade, they have failed to fulfill their primary responsibility: passing a budget and allocating funds for the federal government every year. With a Republican majority in the Senate after yesterday’s voting, the new 114th Congress should turn over a new leaf.

According to Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher, speaking at the Shadow Open Market Committee meeting Nov. 3, our economy is the best-looking stallion at the starting gate. But our government is reckless. Government-spending patterns have an effect on final demand, and investors need to know the government’s budget to make rational decisions.

Legislators are required by law to budget for the next fiscal year by Sept. 30, a deadline that has existed for almost 40 years. The Senate and the House have eight months to develop budget resolutions and complete the appropriations process after the president submits his budget request in February. This year, the House passed a budget, but, as has been the case for several years, the Senate has not done so.

Congress has failed to meet every deadline since the 1997 budget. By October 2014, federal debt reached $17.9 trillion. Interest on the debt totaled $221 billion in 2013, higher than the combined budget surpluses achieved in the late 1990s.

Enormous deficits have been financed in recent years through a mixture of continuing resolutions, stopgap measures to keep the government temporarily funded, and massive omnibus bills consisting of traditionally separate appropriations bills. Continuing resolutions allow Congress to postpone spending decisions to a more politically feasible time, while smaller appropriation bills get lumped together into an omnibus bill to prevent closer scrutiny on specific agencies and programs.

Congress’s reliance on 11th-hour deals clinched in votes held in the dead of night has become the norm when it comes to passing massive spending bills. It is unrealistic to expect members of Congress to give rushed legislation a thorough evaluation and offer a proper debate. It is no wonder that wasteful and duplicative government programs cost taxpayers billions annually.

This year, the continuing resolution passed Sept. 17 has kept the government funded through Dec. 11, preventing a potentially controversial vote before the midterm elections and leaving it to the lame duck Congress to handle the next vote to fund the government. A budget resolution was not adopted by Congress for fiscal 2015 due to the Bipartisan Budget and Policy Act of 2013, which capped federal discretionary spending levels for 2014 and 2015 at over $1 trillion but did not appropriate funds for either of those years.

Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, declared in February 2014 that “[f]iscal year 2015 is settled,” due to the Bipartisan Budget and Policy Act. She announced that the Senate would not adopt a budget resolution for 2015, thus absolving senators from a heavily politicized vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate prior to the November election.

House Republicans, however, passed a budget resolution for 2015. Their proposal, “The Path to Prosperity,” offered a 10-year plan to balance the budget and cut spending by $5.1 trillion over the next decade, with $800 billion saved from reduced interest payments on the debt.

Savings from the proposal would come from the repeal of Affordable Care Act subsidies and the employer mandate. The plan also called for opening federal lands for energy exploration, phasing out subsidies for transportation programs and reforming the tax code. The budget proposal addressed welfare programs by stemming the rise of food-stamp spending, reforming Medicaid and advocating for the development of a premium support model for Medicare.

While the budget resolution was passed in the House, the Senate never offered its own resolution and, thus, left 2015 without a federal budget. The failure of Congress to execute its legal responsibility in favor of scoring political points is emblematic of legislators’ inability to reform antiquated policies that have become major barriers for economic growth and budget stability, especially entitlements, the tax code and immigration laws.

It’s unsurprising that voters share an overwhelmingly negative opinion of Congress and shunned incumbents during the 2014 midterms. American citizens deserve representatives who develop responsible budgets for the federal government, carefully consider legislation that affects millions of people, and work to reform policies that needlessly inhibit economic prosperity.

The 1997 budget, the last full budget that was passed on time, was achieved through cooperation between a Republican-controlled Congress and a Democratic president. A divided government noted for its stark ideological differences was nonetheless able to develop a balanced budget that generated surpluses for several years. The next Congress may have a deep ideological divide with the White House, but the government’s responsibility to pass a budget is still priority No. 1.