Budget Battles: Why budget reform died

Last week's failure by the House to change the budget process (H.R. 853) should not have been a surprise to anyone.

In retrospect, the shock was that the leadership and the bill's sponsors did not realize what little chance the legislation had of being adopted, and therefore did not pull it from the schedule before the embarrassing defeat.

The bill had a number of fatal flaws. Here's eight good reasons why the reform effort went nowhere.

• The appropriations committee perceived it as a threat to its jurisdiction and power. Budget process reformers have known since the Congressional Budget Act (CBA) was debated more than a quarter-century ago that appropriators' support is critical to changing the budget process. That was why the CBA included a number of important accommodations to these committees in the first place, including preventing the budget committees from making any line-by-line decisions and making sure that the functions in the congressional budget resolution were not the same as the spending jurisdictions of the 13 appropriations subcommittees.
• The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee opposed the bill. Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., has proven himself to be very adept at getting around the budget process when it stood in his way, and his opposition by itself might have been enough to stop the bill. But when Shuster joined with James Oberstar, D-Minn., the committee's ranking Democrat, the bipartisan coalition provided all of the political cover other members needed to vote against the bill.
• There are 136 representatives on the Appropriations and Transportation and Infrastructure committees - 74 of them Republicans. With only a five-seat majority in the House, these members' opposition was always going to be deadly.
• While there is widespread dissatisfaction with the way the budget process is working, or not working, there is anything but a consensus as to how the budget process should be changed.
• The revisions in H.R. 853 were only tactical changes. There was virtually nothing in the legislation that dealt with the larger issues of what the federal budget process should accomplish. For example, while there was a general agreement when the current process was enacted in 1990 that it should reduce the deficit, there is no similar agreement today now that the deficit has been replaced with surpluses. There has been no definitive debate on even the prime options, such as reducing federal debt, cutting taxes, increasing spending, preserving Social Security or cutting the size of government. Many representatives felt that dealing with the strictly procedural problems addressed in the bill would mean that the larger issues might not be dealt with at all.
• There is a surplus instead of a deficit, and so there is not as much need to do anything. If, as has happened each of the past few years, the budget process fails to produce an agreement, there is still a surplus rather than a deficit and those that want the surplus to be used to reduce the federal debt get what they want. Those that want the surplus to be used to cut taxes or increase spending may not get what they want, but at least their opponents are stymied as well. In addition, debt reduction benefits both tax-cut and spending-increase supporters - although they do not get their first choice this year, the lower interest payments that result will mean that more money will be available in the future.
• As much as everyone complains about it, in many ways the relative chaos of the existing budget process is serving the political needs of most members. The fact that the caps are no longer being enforced means that the power of the appropriations committees, which have often bristled under the restrictions imposed by the current process, has grown substantially. The reduction in the federal debt may be happening by default, but debt reduction is the fiscal policy supported by a majority of voters and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. And, as noted above, the current dysfunction at least stops others from political victories.
• The bill was debated six months before an election that is already being bitterly contested, one in which control of the House is considered to be up for grabs. With that much at stake, any compromise that gives the other side even a symbolic victory is extremely unlikely. By itself, reason number eight would have made any legislation dealing with sensitive budget issues hard to pass. Add in reasons 1-7, and it is clear that H.R. 853 never had a chance.

Question Of The Week

Previous Question. This was a tough question; one that only a true congressional budget process aficionado was likely to know. The question asked readers to identify the only remaining official role for the budget committees now that the budget resolution conference report has been adopted. In most years the answer would be to manage the reconciliation process. When more than one committee receives reconciliation instructions in the budget resolution, they send their recommendations to their respective budget committees, which package all of the submissions into a single bill, report it to the full House and/or Senate, and manage the debate.

This year, however, only one committee in the House (Ways and Means) and one in the Senate (Finance) received reconciliation instructions. That means each committee reports its reconciliation bill directly to the House or Senate floor and manages the debate itself. The budget committees have no official role. The only thing left for the budget committees to do is file a few reports directed by the Congressional Budget Act - adjusted allocations and aggregates according to section 302 and monthly current level reports according to section 308.

Only two readers answered this week's question correctly and both will get an "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirt for their efforts. Congratulations to previous winners Richard Kogan of the House Budget Committee and Ed Lorenzen from the Washington office of Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas. Richard and Ed: You have to get out more often.

This Week's Question. Say you are in the hot seat opposite Regis on "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" and you decide to use one of your lifelines to call someone to help you answer a question about the federal budget. Who would you call and why?

Send your response (along with the address to which you want the shirt sent if you win) to scollender@nationaljournal.com by 5 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 27, and you could win your very own "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirt to wear at the first pool party of the season. (Please note, at the risk of everyone thinking that I am flattering myself and being even more egotistical than usual, suggesting me as your lifeline will not get you a T-shirt.) If there is more than one correct response, the winner will be selected at random from the correct entries.