Hearings of the
House Committee on Rules
H.R. 853, The Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act of 1999
Mr. Dan L. Crippen
Director, Congressional Budget Office
1. Would you elaborate on your comments regarding the relationship between the use of a joint resolution and a concurrent resolution specifically with respect to the role the budget resolution plays in Congressional enforcement? How might that change under the proposals contained in H.R. 853?
Answer. Under current practice, the Congressional budget resolution enables the Congress to establish and then to enforce its own broad budget priorities. By contrast, H.R. 853 would change the resolution into a vehicle for the Congress and the President to establish and enforce joint budget priorities.
This basic change could have two broad effects on Congressional enforcement. First, it is likely to affect the timing of Congressional action on spending, revenue, and other budgetary legislation. As under current practice, lawmakers would have to reach agreement on the resolution before considering legislation affecting spending or revenues. However, depending on the nature of the policy differences between the Congress and the President, converting the budget resolution into a measure that could be enacted into law might accelerate or delay initial Congressional action on such legislation.
Second, a joint budget resolution could become a means for making budget enforcement procedures and practices more uniform. Although broadly similar, the procedures and practices used to enforce the Congressional budget resolution differ from those used to enforce the statutory discretionary spending limits and the pay-as-you-go requirement. Those differences lead to additional complexity and cause confusion. Certain of them could be resolved in a statutory budget resolution. However, making budget enforcement procedures more uniform could also make them less disciplined, since spending and revenue legislation could face fewer hurdles to enactment.
2. You raised the issue of the fall-back mechanism to a concurrent resolution should Congress and the President fail to reach an agreement on a joint budget resolution. However, you raised some concern with the fact that the fall-back was not triggered until the President vetoed a joint resolution. What might be an alternative trigger or an alternative sequencing that may alleviate some of your concerns raised here?
Answer. The bill's fallback procedure ensures that following a veto of a joint budget resolution, the Congress would not be deprived of a formal budget process. However, that procedure does not necessarily mean that the Congress would simply ratify a budget resolution that was vetoed by the President. If the Congress was unable to muster the two-thirds majorities needed to override the President's veto, it might have to forge a new budget consensus under the fallback procedure. The Congress could use the fallback procedure to simply agree to the resolution vetoed by the President, but that consensus might not hold without the President's involvement, perhaps resulting in considerable delay.
Another option would be to use a so-called spin-off law to ratify a budget agreement reflected in the budget resolution. That approach, initially proposed during the 102nd Congress in H.R. 5676 (sponsored by then-Congressman Leon Panetta and others), calls for a spin-off bill to originate as a provision of a concurrent resolution on the budget. The bill would include certain elements of the resolution, such as the reconciliation instructions and any increase in the statutory limit on the public debt, and would be automatically forwarded to the President for his approval once the Congress completed final action on the resolution.
The spin-off bill approach has some similarities to the joint budget resolution. It would effectively require the President to be involved in developing the budget resolution, since his approval of the spin-off law would be needed to complete the budget process. As a result, however, it would also raise some of the same concerns addressed in my prepared statement that may come from formalizing a role for the President in the Congressional budget process. One difference is that the spin-off bill approach does not require the Congress to wait for a veto, or face the hurdle of attempting to override that veto, before the budget resolution levels become effective for other Congressional enforcement purposes.
3. In an effort to simplify the budget resolution, H.R. 853 moves the allocations and reconciliation instructions to specific congressional committees from the text of the resolution to the committee report accompanying the resolution. In your prepared statement you state that "such a change could also make the resolution less clear as a guide to policy and might raise questions about the status of reconciliation instructions to committees under House and Senate rules." Would you elaborate on this statement?
Answer. The budget resolution is a statement of priorities. If it excludes the functional categories of spending-even if those categories are included in the accompanying committee reports-the spending priorities underlying the resolution become less clear. The absence of functional breakdowns would probably be more significant during House and Senate floor action on the resolution. It would be difficult for Members to fashion amendments that can be distinguished from the version the committee reported.
When the Congress approves a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions, those instructions represent formal directives from the House and Senate to their respective committees. Shifting those instructions to the accompanying committee reports could diminish the status of the instructions in the legislative process. Committee report language generally does not carry the same formal authority as a directive voted on and approved by the Congress or enacted into law. In addition, a concurrent resolution can be used to alter the operation of the standing rules of the House or Senate. It is not clear that committee report language alone would be sufficient to change House or Senate rules.
4. With respect to the provisions contained in H.R. 853 regarding budgeting for emergencies you state that the codification of an accepted definition of emergency spending would be an improvement over the current 'anything goes' situation. Do you think the definition of an emergency contained in H.R. 853 meets this acceptable standard?
Answer. The criteria for emergency spending should establish clear boundaries but should also accommodate the full range of likely emergency needs. The criteria in the bill, which are drawn from those the Office of Management and Budget has used informally since 1991, would probably accomplish those ends. Eliminating subjective judgment from the emergency spending process is neither possible nor desirable. However, statutory criteria would help to guide lawmakers' decisions.
5. H.R. 853 establishes a reserve fund in the budget resolution that cannot be less than the five-year rolling average of the amount previously spent on emergencies. Does CBO have this data available and is this data broken down into mandatory emergency spending and discretionary spending? Which would be larger?
Answer. CBO tracks spending designated as an emergency requirement for purposes of the Deficit Control Act and further divides that spending into discretionary and mandatory amounts, as appropriate. Most emergency spending is provided in annual appropriation acts and is discretionary.
The emergency amounts that would be used for the five-year average of emergency spending under H.R. 853 are likely to differ from the amounts designated as emergencies under the Deficit Control Act. Under the bill, CBO is directed to submit a report to the budget committees on enacted emergency spending for the previous five years that would be used to determine the five-year rolling average of emergency costs. The CBO report would follow guidelines prepared by the budget committees (after consulting with the affected legislative committees) that would be based on the statutory criteria for emergency spending set forth in the bill. What those guidelines would be, how they would be applied, and how much and what types of spending would be covered is unclear.
6. Your testimony mentioned the catch 22 between trying to encourage more authorization of spending while at the same time discouraging indefinite authorizations. In reference to the timetables for re-authorizations that Committees would establish, you suggested some form of staggered program review schedule. Would you please comment further on that suggestion?
Furthermore, I understand that CBO regularly compiles information on unauthorized programs. Would you explain how detailed this information is and to what extent and how often that information could be made available to committees?
Answer. If one goal of the bill's requirements for regular program review by committees is to ensure that permanent authorization laws are changed to periodic cycles, the Congress must be careful to avoid enacting laws that all expire at or about the same time. That would only exacerbate the problem of unauthorized appropriations and could overwhelm the legislative agenda in some years. Committees may wish to coordinate their program review schedules to avoid that problem.
CBO's report on unauthorized appropriations and expiring authorizations is issued in January of each year. It is required by section 202(e)(3) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. The report summarizes the total amounts of unauthorized appropriations for the current year and the authorizations of appropriations that will expire by September 30 of that year. Appendixes to the report sort those data by appropriations subcommittee and by authorizing committee with jurisdiction over the expired program. They also list each public law with expiring authorizations.
The database used for this report is updated throughout the year as authorization and appropriation laws are enacted. Most of those laws tend to be enacted near the end of the Congressional session. Interim reports could be published periodically but are unlikely to provide much new information until the Congressional session ends in the fall.
