Hearings of the Committee on Rules
"Biennial Budgeting: A Tool for Improving Government Fiscal Management and Oversight"
The Honorable Bill Frenzel
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
1. In your testimony you talk about the need to prevent significant spending bills from moving in the non-budget years of the biennial cycle. You suggest an approach of limiting supplemental spending to those items requested by the President. You note the unlikelihood that the President would fail to request funding for an actual emergency - but such an incident occurred this year with regard to the North Carolina disaster relief. Additionally, President Clinton has routinely failed to request adequate funding for military missions he has authorized, knowing that such funds would eventually have to be forthcoming. How would you respond to criticism that your proposal would cede undue authority to the Administration and would open the door for additional political posturing?
I stand by my suggestion. Money actually flowed to North Carolina, I believe. It is my understanding that the North Carolina Appropriation merely fills up the President's goodie bag, as do most of the emergency requests. We are talking here more of a "gotcha" game than of a problem of not responding to emergencies.
Every change is alleged to change the balance of power between the branches. My own experience is that no opportunity to spend money has ever been ignored by either branch, and I believe that there are always going to be plenty of doors open to additional political posturing. It is the nature of Congressmen, Presidents and ducks do quack like ducks.
2. Are there other possible mechanisms that you might suggest to accomplish this objective?
Other mechanisms are:
a. Congress could bite the bullet and appropriate for emergencies in advance. I, of course, won't hold my breath waiting for that great day.
b. Congress could require super majorities to appropriate a non presidentially recommended appropriation. This is not one of my favorite options, and I doubt that it would give the Congress much comfort.
c. If there were a joint budget resolution, it would be my hope that the discrete discretionary spending caps would limit both presidential and congressional spenders. However, posturing, for experts, is possible under any conceivable set of conditions.
3. You continue to recommend the joint budget resolution as a needed reform. Could you elaborate on how you think the joint resolution would interact with a biennial budget process. For instance, could you discuss your view on the timing of the process in the first year when agreement would need to be reached between the Congress and the President on the joint budget resolution covering the two year period. Some critics have suggested that reaching agreement on two-year spending bills would take longer than the process does now in an annual cycle. Do you believe there is enough time to accomplish this and still allow for the appropriation and possible reconciliation process to be concluded within the confines of the normal calendar?
I would expect that a joint budget resolution would be confined to function aggregates, and that there would be less of the detail to fight over. If the branches want to fight, they can do so anytime, but a JBR is pretty big stuff and there would be powerful incentives to work out the differences.
For the 2nd year, the argument will probably mostly be over the limits of increase since the pie has been sliced for the first year. If 5 year spending caps are included, the second JBR ought to be a piece of cake.
Finally, if the JBR can be signed by May or June, or even July, there should be much less time needed for the Appropriations which now take a great deal of time because there have been no prior Presidential agreements.
