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. This is the third and final hearing to examine various proposals for establishing a two-year budget and appropriations cycle.
We've already heard from our colleagues and from the executive branch and congressional support agencies. Today, we will receive testimony from members of academia, and representatives of budget reform organizations, state legislatures and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Later in the hearing, we will be joined by our former colleague, Leon Panetta, who also served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Chairman of the House Budget Committee. He will be testifying from California by video conference.
I want to particularly welcome our first witness, my respected former colleague and the Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Lee Hamilton. Lee and I served together as the House co-chairmen of the 1993 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, which recommended the adoption of a two year budget and appropriations process. His was the deciding vote which allowed biennial budgeting to be part of the Joint Committee's recommendations to the House. I want to commend Lee for his continuing dedication to following through with the work product of the Joint Committee.
Before we begin, I want to make note of the fact that last night, during their deliberations on the fiscal year 2001 budget resolution, the House Budget Committee adopted a sense of the House amendment calling for the consideration of a biennial budget process as part of comprehensive budget process reform.
Let me state that I consider biennial budgeting to be comprehensive budget process reform because of its potential to improve government fiscal management, programmatic oversight, budget stability and predictability, and government cost effectiveness. I would also note that the Rules Committee is already on record in support of other budget process reforms by nature of the fact that we favorably reported H.R. 853, the Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act, last August.
I know I also speak for the Vice Chairman of the Rules Committee, Porter Goss, in saying that we will continue to work with the Budget Committee to advance these various reforms in the House.
