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Hearing of the Committee on Rules

"Biennial Budgeting: A Tool for Improving Government Fiscal Management and Oversight"

Statement of Congressman David E. Price (D-NC)

Chairman Dreier, Ranking Member Moakley, and other members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to testify on the question of biennial budgeting and appropriations and to urge you to resist its siren call.

In evaluating any budget reform proposal, it is important to be clear about the goals we are pursuing. First, we are striving for consistency and continuity in policy, so that citizens and communities can know what to count on and so that programs can be planned and executed efficiently. At the same time, we are attempting to cautiously guard our current surplus and to evaluate future claims upon government resources. We also wish to budget with full knowledge of current economic trends and with maximum responsiveness to changing needs and conditions. And we seek to preserve Congress's power of the purse and enhance our oversight of the executive, while making our operations less duplicative and more efficient. Obviously, these goals exist in some tension with one another and call for a mix of both long- and short-term strategies and mechanisms. The main point I wish to make today is that annual appropriations are a crucial part of that mix.

Biennial budgeting proposals date back to the Reagan era. Despite the progress Congress has made in reducing the deficit spending that catalyzed many of these proposals, the substance of the proposals themselves has remained remarkably unchanged. This is perplexing, because we have in fact moved further towards a multi-year framework in budgeting than critics seem to realize, and congressional policy making has improved as a result. We work with multi-year authorizations in most areas, although in too many we still operate without authorizing legislation. We adopted multi-year budget plans in 1990, 1993, and 1997 -- important instruments for long-term planning and fiscal discipline.

But multi-year budget plans, as useful as they are, should not be confused with a multi-year budget and appropriations cycle. To argue that we would benefit further by moving to a two-year cycle in appropriations is, I believe, to draw the wrong conclusion from our recent experience. Instead, I would propose to you that annual budget resolutions and appropriations are a needed complement to multi-year budget plans, providing flexibility, helping us to achieve savings and fine-tune our investment strategy, and enabling Congress to be a full partner with the executive in setting national priorities.

Ironically, some advocates of biennial appropriating claim that it would actually give Congress more time and strengthen our incentives to oversee the executive. I say "ironically," for surely the most careful oversight Congress gives the executive branch is through the annual appropriations process, when agency budgets and performance and needs are gone over line by line, program by program. Without the need to produce an annual appropriations bill this extensive oversight, far from being enhanced, would likely be lessened. At the very least, the political potency of oversight would be reduced, for oversight without the power to increase or reduce appropriations is toothless oversight. This oversight would be less engaging for members and certainly less compelling for the executive branch agencies we oversee.

Few Congressional decisions are written in stone, and appropriations decisions are no exception. We already find it necessary to enact numerous supplemental appropriations bills, and the number of these bills would markedly increase if we were to lengthen the budget cycle. As former CBO Director Robert Reischauer once noted,

Even in the current annual process, forecasters are required to project changes in the economy and the budget 21 months before the end of the fiscal year; a biennial resolution would increase this period to 33 months for the second fiscal year of the biennium.

Pressures on Congress would increase to respond to changing economic or social circumstances, agency failures, or deficiencies in the law. The only available vehicles would be multiple or omnibus supplemental appropriations in the off-year, and we would have replaced the deliberative, well-ordered process represented by annual appropriations bills with sporadic, possibly ill-considered supplementals. Biennial budgeting, while promising increased predictability and efficiency, might well produce their opposites.

I understand that many members have turned to biennial budgeting as a possible antidote for the problems we have had with the budget process in the last two years and the partisan and ideological conflict that has uncharacteristically infected the appropriations process. You have suggested, Mr. Chairman, that biennial budgeting would reduce the number of year end "train wrecks" and the level of gamesmanship. Certainly I would have to concede that in a biennial process, year-end appropriations battles would occur only half as often as before! But would the abuses be fixed? Not likely. Would the same problems crop out as supplemental appropriations were proposed and "emergencies" declared? In all likelihood. And in the meantime we would have greatly weakened Congress's hand in shaping national policy and holding the executive accountable.

I am well aware that President Clinton has indicated his support for biennial budgeting, as did Presidents Bush and Reagan before him. But if this suggests that biennial budgeting is not a partisan issue, it should also warn us that it most certainly is an institutional issue. We are dealing here with the executive-legislative balance of powers, and we obviously must consider this kind of institutional change apart from the question of which party currently holds the White House.

It is sometimes said that opponents of biennial budgeting are merely defending Appropriations or Budget Committee turf. As a member of both committees, I am naturally sensitive to these charges. But the fact is that we want to protect the legislative powers of the entire Congress. The issue is not the devolution of power from the Appropriations Committee to the rest of Congress. Rather, it is the devolution of power from Congress to the executive branch.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I urge you not to allow recent budget disagreements and frustrations to lure us toward a supposed "remedy" that would make the appropriations process less systematic, less flexible, and less potent. We must enhance Congress's power and performance in both budgeting and oversight, but for the reasons I have given, I believe that moving to a biennial budget and appropriations cycle would take us in the opposite direction. Thank you for your attention.

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