Budget Reform Committee Fails, Passes Into Oblivion

When we last peeked at the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, it was preparing to adopt an old hackneyed retread recommendation that Congress adopt a biennial budget process.

As it turned out, the committee couldn’t even accomplish that and went out of business without recommending anything.

Only seven of the 16 members of the panel were willing to support that anemic proposal and the committee broke down on procedural grounds.

And so, the committee that was supposed to help Congress finally find a way to budget efficiently has died.

The fact that few people noticed may indicate that the panel was doomed from the start.

But the federal government does have a budget process and rules.

Of course, those rules routinely are waived by Congress, allowing the House and Senate to ignore them altogether.

Here’s how the budget process may work – or not work – this year.

Next month, President Trump is most likely going to present a budget to Congress. If the past is any indication, Trump is going to email a budget plan to Capitol Hill (or send it some other way). That budget is going to contain all sorts of things that the administration wants – and that Congress won’t give to Trump.

Like a zillion dollars for a wall.

Someone will declare the budget dead on arrival and Congress will get to work.

Or maybe not.

Congress then is supposed to come up with a budget resolution that sets broad parameters for federal spending and could send congressional committees budget reconciliation instructions.

Those instructions direct one or more congressional committees to approve legislation to bring forward, spending, taxes or the debt ceiling to comply with the resolution.

What?

When it was designed, budget reconciliation was a way for Congress to make changes to entitlement programs or taxes in order to save money. Reconciliation bills are protected from filibuster in the Senate.

Without getting too in the weeds (I know, aren’t we there already?), tax-cutting Republicans found ways to pass tax cuts using reconciliation, thereby exploding the federal deficit and increasing our debt to the Chinese.

Now, Congress has had trouble passing budget resolutions even though the president doesn’t need to sign them.

For instance, last year, with the Republicans controlling the House and Senate, Congress did not even try to pass a budget resolution.

Do you think with the Democrats controlling the House and the Republicans controlling the Senate, Congress is going to be able to develop a budget plan that passes both Houses?

Probably not.

But Congress will have to find some way to tell House and Senate appropriators how much money they have to spend on non-entitlement discretionary programs.

Sometimes, each House “deems” such a figure as having been enacted.

Then, the House and Senate appropriations committees start to work on their annual funding measures. House and Senate conference committees agree on the bills, and the conference reports are sent to Trump, who will happily sign them.

Or not.

If the past is any indication, nobody’s going to agree on anything. Short-Term Continuing Resolutions will have to be passed to keep the lights on in the federal government.

Eventually, all or most of the annual spending bills will be combined into one or two huge omnibus spending bills, which will need to be enacted or the federal government will shut down.

Yeah, the process stinks.

Maybe Congress should establish a committee to try to improve the process.

Maybe not.

And so, the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform joins such groups as the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform Commission on the trash heap.

Don’t remember that commission?

That’s not surprising.

It accomplished nothing.

In fact, when it was formed in 1994, one of its members, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

By the time the commission’s final report was issued, Rosty, as he was known, had been indicted and defeated for re-election.

At least nobody on the bipartisan budget committee has been indicted.

At least not yet, anyway.

Yeah, Let’s Bring Back Earmarks

There’s been some talk about Congress bringing back earmarks in appropriations bills.

You know, those provisions tucked into spending measures directing a federal agency to spend money on a specific road or building.

Critics called them pork-barrel projects (there are various stories about how the term was developed, but that’s a tale for another time).

Following well-publicized scandals, Congress ended the practice.

But as the Congressional Research Service recently reported, the prohibition isn’t written into federal law. It’s written into congressional rules, which easily can be changed.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) last year put the kibosh on any plan to return to the days of earmarks.

But now, the Democrats control the House. And those folks perfected the use of earmarks in decades past.

As I’ve argued before, earmarks played an important role in enacting legislation.

When congressional leaders were a few votes short of passing something, they could gain the votes they needed by giving a House member or senator a project.

And sometimes it worked. It’s amazing what an off-ramp on the local Interstate can do to shake loose a few votes.

So, there’s been some discussion about bringing back earmarks.

Now, various groups and members of Congress have railed against the idea, saying that earmarks breed corruption.

Making the earmark process as transparent as possible will help alleviate that.

Congress has trouble passing any legislation. Why not try something that has helped grease the legislative skids in the past?

David Baumann is a correspondent-at-large for CU Times. He can be reached at dbaumann@cutimes.com.