Daily Caller Piece: How Energy Policy Is Fueling Congress’ Budget Wars

[Note: This story is also published at the Daily Caller]

“We’re fighting for the budget. I believe that we can pass 12 appropriations bills, and that’s what we should do.” Republican Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents Tennessee’s 5th congressional district, is passionate about efforts by a seeming minority of the House Republican Caucus to bring back normal order to the federal government’s budgeting process. He made that crystal clear in an interview with me on Thursday.

“Keep in mind, all 50 states have a budget that they passed,” he says. “When you go back to what’s called ‘regular order,’ where you’re passing single-subject appropriations bills, the last time congress did that was 1997.” Since that time, an increasingly divided and contentious congress has kept the government funded either in part or in whole with enormous, multi-trillion-dollar continuing resolutions that have served the Democratic Party’s goals to grossly inflate the scope and scale of the federal budget over time. (RELATED: REP. ANDY BIGGS: Congress Can’t Continue The Budget Insanity. We’re Standing Against A Continuing Resolution)

What this process also does, though, is rob congress of much of its leverage in its oversight function.