House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., and ranking member James Oberstar, D-Minn., called on House members last week to oppose a popular budget reform measure expected to come to the floor as early as Tuesday.
"We believe that such a process would weaken the role of Congress (particularly the House of Representatives), authorizing committees, and rank-and-file members," Shuster and Oberstar said in a May 11 "Dear Colleague" letter. The budget measure, sponsored by Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, a senior member of the House Budget Committee, would give the current nonbinding budget resolution the force of law by requiring that it be signed by the president.
Shuster and Oberstar warned that this would give the Budget committees unprecedented power, and likely make it more difficult to enact the kind of legislation Shuster and Oberstar pushed recently for aviation and highway spending. "We too are tired of going into end-of-the-year fights with the White House and ending up spending lots of money. But while this [bill] sounds good in principle, we would lose the ability to respond to things that come up," said a Shuster aide, who suggested the bill would result in a lack of flexibility for emergency spending.
On the contrary, a Nussle aide said, the bill would require that Congress budget five years in advance for emergencies, and would better define emergency so emergency spending bills would be less likely to attract pork barrel projects. It also would allow Congress to make a change in the plan if the circumstances were warranted, the aide said. The bill-introduced by Nussle, Rep. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., and Rules Legislative and Budget Process Subcommittee Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla.-has more than 200 cosponsors. Aside from giving the budget resolution the force of law and requiring emergency planning, it would require new spending programs to be reauthorized periodically, and increase the importance of long term budget forecasting. The Rules Committee last week agreed to bring it to the floor as originally introduced and allow amendments to be debated on the floor. An amendment expected to be offered by Rules Chairman Dreier and others to make the budget process biennial has received much attention, as has a similar measure in the Senate. Nussle has not decided whether to endorse it, an aide said.
Nussle's bill also faces opposition from some appropriators, who reported the bill out of the committee unfavorably last June. "[Appropriations Chairman Young] supports the concept of a biennial budget, but there are provisions of the bill he would object to," said a committee spokesman. Many appropriators are concerned about how the Nussle bill addresses emergency spending and about giving the Budget panels too much negotiating authority if the budget resolution becomes law. An expected amendment allowing for an automatic continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown may draw fire from appropriators, the spokesman said.