I wrote during the government slowdown that the “current political crises will end when it is politically advantageous to all sides concerned for them to end. … it will be when Barack Obama, Senate Democrats and House Republicans figure out how to do something that will politically benefit all of them.”

That is because what pundits incorrectly call the “shutdown” is the result of a faulty decision by Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti to end nearly 200 years of practice in which appropriations continued at the previous fiscal year’s level (as happens in Wisconsin) if Congress doesn’t approve appropriations for the next fiscal year.

The slowdown is therefore the fault of every attorney general since Civiletti for failing to reverse his legal opinion, and every Congress since then for not passing a law to restore past practice.

To the rescue comes U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin), according to Right Wisconsin:

Echoing the sentiments of a wide majority of Americans, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson supports a plan that would prevent, forever, future government shutdowns over budget impasses.

Authored by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and co-sponsored by Johnson and 19 others, the End Government Shutdowns Act makes specified provisional (automatic) continuing appropriations in the event that any regular appropriation bill for a fiscal year is not enacted before the beginning of such fiscal year, or a joint resolution making continuing appropriations is not in effect. (Thus prevents a federal government shutdown.)

The proposal Johnson is promoting is the Senate companion to a bill that started in the House, sponsored by James Lankford of Oklahoma (HR 1164). The House bill was introduced in March. It has 17 cosponsors, including Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan and Reid Ribble, as well as notable members like Justin Amash, Tom Cotton and Jeb Hensarling.

Under the bill, if Congress doesn’t affirmatively appropriate money, discretionary spending defaults to last year’s level. Under current law, it defaults to zero, to ‘shutdown.’

This isn’t some crazy, impossible to implement plan. In Wisconsin, for example, if the legislature does not pass a budget by July 1 of every other year, the government continues to fund its agencies on a cost-to-continue, zero increase basis. This bill would have the same effect on the Federal Government and its discretionary spending … with a twist.

After 120 days, funding would be reduced by one percent, thus incentivizing a new agreement. The automatic spending decreases would continue by 1 percent every 90 days an agreement is not reached.

This would bring some stability to Washington and Wall Street. It takes out the fear of the unknown, yet still creates a sense of urgency to get a deal done.

There is an interesting counterintuitive aspect to this bill. Fiscal conservatives might well argue that appropriations should in fact end at the end of the fiscal year unless money has been authorized for the next fiscal year. That would be the idealistic view. The politically realistic (that is, cynical yet accurate) view is that, contrary to Nancy Pelosi’s claim, nothing ever gets cut. Indeed, federal employees got paid to not work during the slowdown, and meanwhile three-fourths of the federal government continued to operate while the government was supposedly shut down.

What happens to this bill will prove my thesis that the slowdowns are a political game meant to rile up each party’s base and increase campaign contributions. There is no good reason for this bill to not pass. Anyone who votes against this bill will prove that the manufactured crisis of the government slowdown benefits them.