Why it always feels like the government is about to shut down

In the wee hours of the morning last weekend, Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown when the Senate passed a $1.2 trillion annual government funding package. That vote happened on March 23, nearly six months into the fiscal year (which began on Oct. 1), and represented the fourth time in this funding cycle alone that Congress barely dodged what seemed at times like an inevitable government shutdown. But we’ve seen this movie before. The use of short-term stopgap funding bills to kick shutdown deadlines down the road, often repeatedly, has...