Why Congress Keeps Funding Programs Nobody Wants: The Zombie Appropriations Problem

The $2.3 Billion Question Nobody Asked

Last September, Congress quietly renewed funding for the Rural Utilities Service’s broadband loan program, allocating $2.3 billion despite a Government Accountability Office report showing the program had failed to meet connectivity targets in 78% of funded areas over the previous five years. No hearings were held. No debates occurred on the House floor. The money simply appeared in the continuing resolution, as it has every year since 2018, because killing a federal program requires more political energy than keeping it alive.

This tells us something pretty important about how federal budgeting actually works versus how we imagine it works. We picture lawmakers carefully weighing priorities, debating trade-offs, and making tough choices about where taxpayer dollars should go. The reality is more mechanical and, frankly, more depressing.

Federal budget allocation operates under what budget scholars call “baseline budgeting,” where last year’s spending becomes this year’s starting point. This creates powerful incentives that favor keeping things the same over making them better, expansion over evaluation, and political safety over actually fixing problems.

The Appropriations Treadmill

Understanding why bad programs stick around requires following the money through Congress’s appropriations process. Each of the twelve appropriations subcommittees controls specific spending buckets, and subcommittee chairs build influence by delivering funding to their districts and allied interest groups. Cutting programs means cutting relationships, reducing leverage, and potentially losing support from organized groups who benefit from current spending.

Take the Army Corps of Engineers’ harbor maintenance projects. The Corps currently maintains 926 commercial harbors, but economic analysis suggests only 200 generate enough traffic to justify their maintenance costs. Yet appropriators keep funding the full portfolio because each harbor means jobs, contracts, and political support in specific congressional districts. Getting rid of inefficient harbors would save roughly $800 million annually but would also eliminate the political benefits that flow to appropriators who can claim credit for “bringing home” federal investment.

This explains why fiscal hawks often focus on abstract spending caps rather than specific program cuts. Caps let lawmakers appear fiscally responsible while avoiding the political costs of actually identifying what should be eliminated. The real work of budget allocation happens in subcommittee markups, where specific line items get protected or expanded based on political calculations rather than whether programs actually work.

The Performance Paradox

Federal agencies face a weird situation when it comes to proving they’re effective. Programs that work too well risk being declared successful and having their funding reduced or eliminated. Programs that fail completely risk being scrutinized and potentially terminated. The sweet spot? Programs that show just enough promise to justify continued investment while revealing enough problems to warrant increased funding.

The Department of Education’s Title I program illustrates this perfectly. Designed to improve educational outcomes in high-poverty schools, Title I has received over $400 billion since 1965 with mixed results on student achievement. Rather than triggering a fundamental rethinking of approach, decades of modest improvements combined with persistent achievement gaps have justified both continued funding and periodic increases to “address remaining challenges.”

Meanwhile, agencies develop complex performance measurement systems that often hide rather than reveal actual effectiveness. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, tracks over 200 performance metrics across its various programs, many of which measure inputs (dollars spent, staff hired) or processes (applications processed, appointments scheduled) rather than outcomes (veteran health, employment, housing stability). It’s a masterclass in looking busy without proving results.

The Coalition Arithmetic

Smart budget allocation requires building coalitions that can survive changing political winds. Savvy appropriators combine programs with different beneficiaries into single bills, making cuts more difficult by forcing opponents to vote against popular programs to eliminate wasteful ones. The annual Agriculture appropriations bill is a perfect example, bundling farm subsidies, nutrition assistance, rural development grants, and food safety inspection funding into a single package.

Defense spending reveals another coalition-building technique. Major weapons systems spread production across multiple states and congressional districts, creating broad geographic coalitions for continued funding even when military leaders express doubts about specific platforms. The F-35 fighter program, currently $183 billion over its original budget estimate, maintains Congressional support partly because it involves suppliers in 46 states and employs workers in 400+ congressional districts.

These coalitions become self-reinforcing over time. Contractors hire former Congressional staff and Pentagon officials. Trade associations develop expertise in navigating appropriations processes. Local economic development agencies build grant-writing capacity around federal funding opportunities. Each element creates stakeholders with professional incentives to maintain and expand existing spending patterns. It’s an ecosystem designed to perpetuate itself.

Following the Money Forward

Understanding these dynamics doesn’t lead to simple solutions, but it does suggest where productive budget reform might focus. Rather than trying to eliminate baseline budgeting or impose across-the-board cuts, reformers might target the information gaps and institutional incentives that keep ineffective spending alive.

Some promising approaches include requiring sunset clauses for new programs, strengthening independent program evaluation capacity, and creating budget processes that reward appropriators for eliminating ineffective programs rather than just expanding popular ones. The Congressional Budget Office’s recent pilot program analyzing the effectiveness of federal job training programs offers a model for how independent analysis might better inform allocation decisions.

The deeper challenge involves changing how we measure Congressional effectiveness. As long as voters and interest groups primarily judge lawmakers by how much federal money they bring home rather than how wisely that money gets spent, the incentives driving zombie appropriations will persist. Maybe the most important question isn’t why Congress funds programs nobody wants, but whether we’re asking the right people the right questions about what we actually need.