One of the hottest topics among those who want to revise the budget process next year is to change the type of legislation Congress uses to pass its budget from a concurrent to a joint resolution.
Supporters of this seemingly innocuous change (one that only a wonk-plus could love) say it will cure many of the ills that have beset the process in recent years. A joint resolution, the argument goes, will expedite the debate, force the now-routine eleventh-hour negotiations to start earlier in the year, and make the White House buy into what Capitol Hill is doing. All of this supposedly will prevent continuing resolutions and government shutdowns.
It is also largely nonsense, but a bit of explanation is required to understand why.
Under current rules, when (perhaps "if" would be a better word in light of this year) Congress passes a budget, it adopts a concurrent resolution. This is legislation that must be passed by the House and Senate but does not require a presidential signature. As a result, it does not require White House approval and cannot be vetoed.
There are both procedural and political implications to this. Because the president does not sign a concurrent resolution, it does not get enacted into law. Therefore, it is really nothing more than an internal working document-in effect, Congress' promise to itself about what it will do on spending and revenues.
But because the president does not have to agree to the budget resolution, there is no guarantee that it represents White House priorities. This sets up a potential confrontation between Congress and the administration later in the session, when the president does have to approve legislation implementing budget policies-when a reconciliation, appropriation or tax bill is sent to the White House for a signature.
In spite of vetoes that have been hinted at or directly threatened for months, it is usually only after the actual veto of one of these bills that negotiations start. Given Congress' usual schedule, this has generally occurred in September, less than a month before the new fiscal year begins.
The theory behind a joint budget resolution is it requires a presidential signature, and would therefore force the White House to participate earlier in the year. And if the president vetoed the joint budget resolution, the thinking goes, negotiations between the administration and Congress could begin immediately. If Congress passed the budget resolution on schedule, this would mean that it would be presented to the president in the middle of April and serious negotiations could begin immediately after the Easter-Passover recess rather than in September.
While all of this sounds good, it ignores some of the most basic elements of the way the congressional budget process has been implemented over the years.
First, Congress seldom passes its budget resolution on time. Since the deadline was changed to April 15, the resolution was adopted on schedule only once-in 1994. In other years it was May or June before Congress could agree on what it wanted to do. With tighter appropriations caps in the years ahead, no consensus on what to do with the surplus, and a slimmer majority in the House, getting an agreement on a budget resolution by the middle of April will be even more difficult in the future. At best, a joint budget resolution is likely to be sent to the president in May or June, with July being a real possibility. This will hardly provide the dramatic extra time for negotiations that joint resolution supporters claim, especially when the July 4th and August-Labor Day recesses are taken into account.
Second, the assumption seems to be that the president will be willing to negotiate on a budget resolution after a veto. But what would happen if the president vetoes the budget resolution and then simply tells Congress to come up with something better? The result would be no negotiations and the House and Senate either trying to override the veto or going back to the budget drawing board. Assuming no override, this means a joint resolution would cost Congress time, not save it.
Third, what will Congress do in the meantime? Although there is a procedural escape hatch that allows it to move earlier, the House does not usually start to debate appropriations for the coming year until it at least passes its own version of the budget resolution. In many years it has waited until the conference report has been adopted.
If Congress sends the president a joint budget resolution that is vetoed, members will have to decide whether to start considering the appropriations based on what they passed, or whether they should wait to see what the negotiations with the White House produce. In the first case the situation will be the same as it is now-Congress will be considering appropriations based on a budget plan the president has not approved. In the second case, appropriations will be delayed and one of the primary purposes of the joint resolution-avoiding continuing resolutions and a possible shutdown-will be defeated.
A joint budget resolution could conceivably work if Congress and the president were controlled by the same political party and/or shared the same budget goals. Of course, under those circumstances the current law-a concurrent budget resolution-would also work just fine.
Question Of The Week
Last Week's Question. Bottoms up to the many people who responded to last week's question, which asked Budget Battles readers to come up with a budget-related drink. The winner of the "I Won A Budget Battle" tee shirt would have gone to Tom Mullins of Sullivan and Cromwell for his suggestion of "The CBO" -- a "mug of beer with a hidden tube" so that just when you think you know how much is left more suddenly appears. Tom, however, won within the last six months so the Blum rule applies. The tee shirt instead goes to Tevi Troy of Sen. John Ashcroft's office. Troy created the "Republican Kamikaze," which includes equal parts lime juice, triple sec, vodka and cyanide (or the legislative version, which is equal parts high budget surplus, no budget resolution, $21 billion in emergency spending and no tax cut.
This Week's Question. Here's an early holiday gift. This week, "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirts will be awarded to three people who correctly answer the following very easy question: How many members are there on the House Budget Committee? If there are more then three correct responses, the three T-shirts will be awarded by random drawing next Monday. So don't hesitate to send a response to scollender@njdc.com, even if you read Budget Battles late in the week. Special Bonus Question: How many more members does the House Budget Committee have now than when it was first established in 1974?
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