Hearing of the Committee on Rules
"Biennial Budgeting: A Tool for Improving Government Fiscal Management and Oversight"
Chairman, Committee on Rules
The hearing will come to order. The purpose of today's hearing is to hear from our colleagues about their views on biennial budgeting and to examine various proposals for establishing a two-year budget and appropriations cycle. I am especially pleased that, in a few minutes, we will be joined by Speaker Dennis Hastert for what I am told will be his first time testifying before a committee as Speaker of the House.
We originally planned to hear Member testimony over a two-day period but, because there will not be votes tomorrow, we will try to complete this hearing today.
After the President's Day recess, we plan to hold at least one more hearing to receive testimony from the executive branch, congressional support agencies, and outside experts in an effort to develop consensus legislation that will streamline the budget process, enhance programmatic oversight, strengthen the management of government programs and bureaucracies, and reform Congress.
At the end of the last session of Congress, a bipartisan group of Members -- 245 to be exact -- introduced a sense of the House resolution calling for the enactment of a biennial budget process in the second session of the 106th Congress. It's now the second session, and we are committed to moving forward. There is strong bipartisan support in the Senate for a biennial budget process, and President Clinton recommended biennial budgeting in his FY 2001 budget submission.
The issue of biennial budgeting has received considerable attention over the past decade. Since 1977, more than 40 congressional or special committee hearings have addressed the topic of biennial budgeting. Most notably, it was the most significant recommendation to come out of the 1993 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, on which Senator Domenici and I served as co-chairmen along with former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former Senator David Boren. Porter Goss, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process, has also held several hearings on this issue over the past five years in the context of comprehensive budget process reform.
I happen to believe that enactment of a biennial budget process could lead to the most significant government-wide fiscal management reforms of the last quarter century. The enormous amount of resources expended by the executive branch in preparing multiple annual budgets at the same time would be diverted to long-term strategic planning and improving the performance of federal programs. Congress, which for this fiscal year appropriated $121 billion for programs encompassing 137 programs whose authorization had expired, would have more time and resources to do a better job of programmatic oversight.
For those citizens who are served by federal programs, biennial budgeting will provide more predictability and peace of mind. States, localities and private organizations will become more efficient in the long-term planning and management of their programs if federal funding streams were more predictable.
While nobody believes that biennial budgeting is the panacea for what ails the federal government, if done right, I believe such a process can promote a more effective government and a less chaotic and repetitive budget process at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.