House Republicans have made a lot of noise about breaking Washington’s habit of relying on an end-of-year, colossal catch-all spending bill to fund the government, but they have made little progress in finishing the work.

Now, after three stopgap bills to avert shutdowns and lingering disagreements over spending, passing all 12 of the annual spending bills one by one appears to be an impossible dream. 

And yet, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his GOP conference’s band of archconservatives stand firmly in their quest. Complicating matters, the Republicans’ majority is down to two seats with the loss of a New York district in a special election last week.

The Republican-led House has passed seven of the annual spending bills. The Democratic-led Senate has passed three. Neither chamber has approved or even considered spending legislation since November.

The House is on a two-week recess and, when lawmakers return on Feb. 28, they will have only three working days to approve some type of emergency spending bill to prevent a partial government shutdown that would begin at midnight on March 1. But House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Minnesota Republican, has said GOP leaders won’t consider any stopgap spending bills.

And when the Senate returns from its recess, it must dispense with the impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas before lawmakers can take up any other legislation such as spending bills. 

The deadlines offer an uncertain scenario for President Biden’s annual State of the Union address, scheduled for March 7. The prime-time speech wouldn’t take place in the event of a shutdown.

The spending predicament is not entirely unusual, but the shutdown deadlines are cropping up more frequently.

Congress hasn’t passed all its required annual spending bills on time since 1997. That was only the fourth time Congress completed its spending job on time since the current system was adopted in 1977, according to the Pew Research Center.

Why is it the Washington norm to rely on stopgap bills and hulking catch-all spending bills that lawmakers complain are too big to read?

Chris Edwards, an economist for the libertarian CATO Institute, thinks government spending has just become too bloated for lawmakers to handle.
The federal spending trains would never run on time, he said, because lawmakers simply do not have enough time to parse through normal spending duties such as defense and the 2,400 benefit programs the federal government has amassed.
“The federal budget has grown far too large to properly manage with any amount of efficiency or sober judgment,” Mr. Edwards said.
But any attempt to put an omnibus on the House floor would likely face heavy pushback from Republicans. 
“We’ve got to pass these bills individually,” said Rep. John Rutherford, Florida Republican. “I do not want to do a minibus or an omnibus. We put them together and let’s run them through. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”
The alternatives to an omnibus are not ideal for House Republicans, either. Mr. Johnson still supports passing spending bills one at a time, but should that push fail, he has floated a possible year-long stopgap bill that would trigger an automatic 1% across-the-board cut in spending in April — an outcome lawmakers fear would kneecap defense spending.
Another outcome would be a partial shutdown, an outcome the House Freedom Caucus has threatened to demand passing bills one by one. However, the archconservatives say they are losing faith in Mr. Johnson and his leadership team to stick to that principle.
“I think they’ve abandoned ship,” said Rep. Andy Ogles, Tennessee Republican. “I think they’re gonna break regular order in order to get the same old, same old passed again.”
Archconservatives using a shutdown as a cudgel should not come as a surprise, because they would likely refuse to vote for an omnibus anyway, said Molly Reynolds, who studies spending issues in Congress for the liberal-leaning Brookings Institute. 
Ms. Reynolds contended that Washington’s spending woes stem from increased polarization in which the perennial appropriations process has become a battle to score political points. An omnibus can be a way to smooth over some of the divisions, she said. 
“It’s helpful to keep in mind that probably what we’re driving towards is an omnibus,” she said. “Part of why omnibuses can be attractive is because some of the individual divisions, some of the individual bills get subsumed into the bigger bill.”
Breaking that cycle would require taking a hatchet to the “swollen mass” of government programs and bureaucracies, said David Ditch, a policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“Streamlining the federal government would not only help move the budget closer to balance, but it would also dramatically simplify the spending process,” Mr. Ditch wrote in an analysis of Congress’ cycle of government shutdowns.
While House lawmakers say they want to push forth with spending legislation, the Senate has virtually ground to a halt.
“I don’t think we will do them one at a time, but my hope is that we would package them in bunches as we’ve done in the past,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat.
Others see limited options.
Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, said Congress likely has just two choices to get through the current fiscal year: a year-long stopgap bill or an omnibus spending bundle.
“I think it’s two doors, door number one, door number two, that’s it,” Mr. Kennedy said. 

• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.