A bipartisan group of senators is considering major changes to the congressional budget process to fix what members of both parties view as a broken system, including eliminating the budget committees, overhauling the federal debt limit and instituting biennial budgeting.
Senators reviewed a wide range of possible reforms on Thursday, according to a draft list of ideas discussed at the meeting obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Top lawmakers on the Senate Budget Committee have previously discussed some of the ideas in public, but with this week’s meeting members of both parties have begun talking about which reforms could muster enough support to clear both the House and Senate and become law. Any legislative effort would need to be finished before the elections, committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said earlier this month.
Most of the 30-plus ideas discussed by senators would represent a major departure from the 1974 budget law that governs the congressional process. That process has frustrated members on both sides of the aisle in recent years, as it has broken down at points and resulted in government funding bills being negotiated by just a few players behind closed doors, sidelining most of Congress.
Among the most disruptive ideas would be to revise the current system of budget committees that set spending levels and appropriations committees that pass actual spending bills. One proposal would be to combine appropriations committees with the authorizing committees with jurisdiction over them.
Another possibility would be to create an “executive committee” responsible for setting spending levels made up of leadership and key committee chairmen, a structure that would reflect the reality that leadership has negotiated spending bills in recent years anyway.
The senators also discussed repurposing the Budget Committee as the “Committee on National Priorities,” according to the document, to prioritize spending by economic sector, as well as eliminating it outright.
The budget itself could become legislative text, forcing the president to engage with Congress much earlier in the process. Today, the budget is merely a blueprint for government spending and an agreement between House and Senate and is not signed into law.
And, to lessen the political pressures facing budget writers, lawmakers are considering biennial budgets and appropriations bills, setting spending levels and appropriating funds for two years during non-election years. They’re also mulling a range of reforms to incentivize Congress to pass appropriations rather than year-end “omnibus” spending bills, such as mandating floor time for appropriations bills or penalizing members of Congress if appropriations aren’t passed.
Another political pressure point that would be changed would be the federal debt ceiling, which during President Obama’s tenure has precipitated several fiscal crises. Currently, the debt ceiling must be raised by Congress or else the Treasury cannot issue new bonds. Under one reform weighed by the senators, Congress and the president would set targets for the debt and interest payments in the budget, and allow the president to raise the debt ceiling if those targets were met, subject to a congressional resolution of disapproval. If the targets were not met, Congress would need to vote to lift the ceiling.
One idea discussed that is favored by Democrats is breaking out so-called “tax expenditures” in the budget document. Tax expenditures are tax breaks targeted toward a specific policy goal that operate the same as spending, but because they are part of the tax code they do not need to be reauthorized.
Some of the other changes under consideration would be aimed at convenience. One is moving the fiscal year to coincide with the calendar year. Another is reforming the “vote-a-ramas” generated by the current budget process, which see senators voting late into the night on symbolic measures meant to discredit the opposing party, a phenomenon described as a “comedy of mutual insult and demeaning behavior” by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
Other items under consideration:
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A capital budget, taking stock of government investments versus depreciation of assets.
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A commission to update the projections issued by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget.
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Zero-based budgeting, requiring agencies and programs to justify all their funding, rather than assume increases from year to year.
