Congress is well behind now on passing the bills that govern spending for the 2010 fiscal year. It starts on October 1st, in just 12 short days.

As you can see from the chart to the right, Congress was supposed to have been well through the process in early summer. It’s not working out that way.

Back in May it looked like Congress might finish the appropriations process on time this year. And the House has actually passed all its spending bills. But the Senate has only passed four, and all twelve have to go to conference, where the House and Senate versions are reconciled. That’s not going to happen in twelve days. (See the status of all the FY 2010 spending bills on our “FY 2010 Spending Tracker” page.)

That means almost certainly that Congress will pass a “continuing resolution,” or a series of them, to temporarily fund the government. That’s bad for a couple of reasons: One, when they don’t have a budget for the year, federal agencies and sub-agencies can’t plan. They literally hold up many plans and programs because they don’t know if there’s money for them. Two, when Congress passes these bills in haste, lots of shenanigans can happen. In 2000, a provision was slipped into one of these big bills that ultimately helped cause the financial meltdown.

That’s what Congress is playing with when it fails to get its work done on a regular schedule. Is that alright with you? As always, you can let your representative know what you think.