The Reformers

till livid over last year's budget disaster, in which the House and Senate ended up combining several appropriations measures into a huge and highly unpopular omnibus spending bill, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are vowing to overhaul the budget process. The effort could gain support from the Clinton administration, which has favored budget reform proposals in the past.

But translating all this support into a consensus that would make budget reform a reality may not be easy. Not only are myriad reform proposals floating around, but each of the proposals attacks someone's turf-creating instant opposition.

Two factors could help drive the passage of proposed budget reforms that have gone nowhere in the past: Nobody wants a repeat of 1998, and Republicans want to change budget law that will, at the very least, pave the way for a tax cut. "Last year's process is the poster child for reform," says Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, a leader of a House bipartisan task force on budget reform created last year.

Last year, the House and Senate never agreed to a budget resolution. That slowed down the appropriations process. Moreover, to the chagrin of Republicans, it meant that tax cuts weren't protected from a filibuster and thus were virtually impossible to pass. Having failed to pass eight of the 13 annual spending bills by Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, Congress was forced to pass six short-term continuing resolutions to keep the agencies operating. A small group of congressional leaders and the White House hammered out a $487 billion omnibus spending bill that few members liked, but which most voted for so they could leave town and campaign for reelection.

Democrats complained about the process; Republicans complained that they were forced to give the White House and congressional Democrats billions of dollars in new spending to close the deal on the omnibus bill. That won't happen again, Republicans vow. "We have an obligation to pass all the appropriation bills by this summer," new House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., told colleagues after accepting the gavel Jan. 6. "We will not leave this chamber until we do." Similar promises have gone unfulfilled in the past.

Senate Proposals

On the Senate side, leaders are moving on two fronts-legislation and changes to the chamber's rules. The most wide-ranging proposal comes from Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who has renewed his push for two-year budgeting. The bill has the support of Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn. A Thompson aide says the bill will be a priority for Thompson, whose committee passed it in the 105th Congress. In September, 37 senators wrote to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Minority Leader Tom Daschle asking them to move the bill early in the 106th Congress.

"The annual appropriations and budget process increasingly dominates the congressional agenda and we regularly fail to meet our deadlines," the Senators said in their letter. "The result is that we spin our wheels, all at the expense of careful deliberation by the Senate on oversight of existing programs and consideration of legislation."

The Domenici plan would require the President to submit a two-year budget during the first year of a congressional session. Congress would adopt a two-year budget resolution and two-year appropriations bills. Congress would devote its second year to oversight of federal programs. The bill also tightens the definition of "emergencies," allowing senators to challenge emergency spending by requiring 60 votes for its approval--making it more difficult to exceed budget caps. It also would institute an automatic continuing resolution to keep agencies open if Congress does not complete its appropriations bills and shortens the debate time for budget resolutions. And a Senate rule prohibiting legislative proposals from being added to appropriations bills, abandoned in 1995, would be reinstated.

Without a two-year budget, it has become virtually impossible for Congress to meet its deadlines, Domenici said in an interview. "I don't understand why we don't try it," he said.

The Clinton administration has supported the idea in the past. "Biennial budgeting offers the potential to contribute to the enhanced performance of our government," then-OMB Director Franklin Raines told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in 1997. Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review proposed moving to a two-year budget.

"With regard to agency management, it is plausible to expect that moving from annual budget preparation to a biennial cycle would free up some time in the second year of the biennium for program managers to increase their efforts at management and long-range planning," Raines said.

But two-year budgeting has some powerful opponents-the appropriators-whose power would be diluted by changing to a two-year funding cycle. The Domenici plan is a "solution without a problem," former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Livingston, R-La., told National Journal's CongressDaily in November. Two-year budgeting only changes the way Congress deals with appropriations, he said, contending that the real problem is growth of entitlement programs.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., a former House Appropriations Committee member, made a similar argument when the legislation came before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee during the 105th Congress. "There is no more effective way to focus the attention of federal program administrators than to have their budgets at stake," Durbin wrote in a minority report when the committee passed the bill.

Appropriators also have argued that a two-year cycle would increase the need to pass supplemental spending bills during the years in which annual funding bills are not passed. A House Appropriations Committee aide calls that an "insurmountable task." Domenici, an appropriator himself, said that has not been proven.

In addition to the Domenici bill, Lott introduced on the opening day of the 106th Congress several Senate rule changes on emergency spending, decreasing debate time for budget resolutions and prohibiting the addition of legislative provisions to funding measures.

In the House

House members have been preparing their own budget reforms. Even before last year's budget debacle, House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, appointed a bipartisan task force to propose reforms. This year, Nussle wants to renew the plan he developed with Rep. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., another task force leader.

That plan would require Congress to send the President a budget plan for his signature. If the President chooses not to sign it, Congress would pass a budget as it does now. The purpose, Nussle said, is to ensure that spending fights occur earlier in the year. "It forces confrontation to the earliest stages of the budget process, leaving quality time for legislating details," he said. The proposal also would create an automatic continuing resolution, clarify Budget Act provisions that might be interpreted as preventing Congress from using budget surpluses for tax cuts and establish a reserve fund for budget emergencies.

Nussle said that many Senators are not opposed to the ideas in his plan, adding that he is willing to explore the idea of two-year budgeting.

Another veteran of the budget reform wars, House Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., will reintroduce his bill to force Congress and the administration to cut a budget deal early in the year by requiring a presidential signature on the budget. The budget simply would be a one-page document establishing spending ceilings in broad categories.

Other budget reform ideas circulating in the House have to do with changing the way the budget moves through committees. "The budget process rewards liars," argues Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. He says the Budget Act allows the budget committees to pass "macro" numbers that later can be abandoned. He renewed his suggestion to transform the budget committees into a joint subcommittee of the Ways and Means and Appropriations committees.

A House Democratic aide says the Budget Committee should be a "leadership" committee that directs the process. He agrees that the current process allows members to talk out of both sides of their mouth. People who were seeking projects as part of last year's massive highway bill were later pushing for cuts in discretionary spending, this aide says.

Congress must find some way to "impose some discipline on the system," says a senior aide to the House Appropriations Committee. The aide suggests that forcing the President to sign a budget resolution would guarantee that the administration stays engaged on spending issues throughout the year.

Another set of reform proposals that would strengthen the Appropriations Committee came from Livingston. He said that all work on a budget resolution should be completed by April 30, after which appropriators could begin work on their bills, even if a budget plan had not been adopted. He said the Speaker should insist that the Senate agree to the House's expedited schedule and that if one house failed to pass a funding bill by July 30, the bill that the other house passed should be the starting point for any conference. Livingston withdrew his proposals when he decided to run for Speaker himself.

One budget analyst is skeptical that any reforms will be adopted, citing the lack of agreement. Republicans are most likely to concentrate on changing budget rules to affirm their ability to use the budget surplus on tax cuts, says Stanley Collender, managing director of the federal budget consulting group at Fleishman-Hillard Inc.

"There's never a perfect time," Nussle admits, adding that such institutional changes always will face "10 hurdles." He contends, however, that the idea of overhauling the process will be a "very high priority for the Budget Committee," arguing that last year's budget train wreck will focus attention on the need for reform.

David Baumann is a staff correspondent at National Journal.