The Enactment of Appropriations Measures During Lame Duck Sessions (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Revised May 10, 2018 |
| Report Number |
RL34597 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Jessica Tollestrup, Analyst on Congress and the Legislative Process |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
| Older Revisions |
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Summary:
Eleven of the past 12 Congresses, covering the 103rd Congress through the 114th Congress, have
concluded with a lame duck session. (No such session occurred in 1996, during the 104th
Congress.) Under contemporary conditions, any meeting of Congress that occurs between a
congressional election in November and the following January 3 is a lame duck session. The
significant characteristic of a lame duck session is that its participants are the sitting Members of
the existing Congress, not those who will be entitled to sit in the new Congress.
The enactment of appropriations measures has been an element of most of these lame duck
sessions. Although no regular or continuing appropriations measures were enacted during lame
duck sessions held in 1994, 1998, 2008, and 2012, a total of 25 regular and 18 continuing
appropriations measures were enacted during the 7 other lame duck sessions held in 2000, 2002,
2004, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2016.
Although some (and occasionally all) of the regular appropriations bills for a fiscal year may be
enacted before it begins, in recent decades it has been common for at least some of the regular
appropriations bills to be enacted after the start of the fiscal year. In the past, this has triggered the
necessity for continuing resolutions (CRs) to extend spending authority until the annual
appropriations acts have been enacted and led to the consideration of regular appropriations
legislation during the last quarter of the calendar year or even during the following session.
A lame duck session occurs during the period following Election Day—which is the Tuesday
after the first Monday in November of each even-numbered year—and before the convening of a
new Congress about two months later in early January. Several factors may contribute to the
occurrence of lame duck sessions, including the need to deal with unfinished appropriations or
other budgetary matters.
This report provides information on the enactment of annual appropriations acts in the years that
lame duck sessions occurred between 1994 and 2016 (FY1995, FY1999, FY2001, FY2003,
FY2005, FY2007, FY2009, FY2011, FY2013, FY2015, and FY2017). Lame duck sessions have
in some instances afforded Congress an opportunity to complete action on regular appropriations
for a fiscal year. In other instances, lame duck sessions played little or no role in this regard, as
action on regular appropriations was completed well before or after a lame duck session. In total,
46 of the 136 regular appropriations acts during this period were enacted before the beginning of
the applicable lame duck session, 25 were enacted during a lame duck session, and 65 were
enacted afterward.
Continuing appropriations measures were also an important element in some, but not all, of the
lame duck sessions that occurred between calendar years 1994 and 2016. In total, 32 of the 61
CRs were enacted before the beginning of the applicable lame duck session, 18 were enacted
during the lame duck session, and 11 were enacted afterward.
The report will be updated as developments warrant.
