A set of budget reform ideas introduced Wednesday would create special fiscal commissions to meet debt targets, move Congress to biennial spending bills and end the annual Senate spectacle known as the “vote-a-rama,” among other major changes.
Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee who has been leading the effort to overhaul the budget process, outlined the possible points of bipartisan agreement Wednesday and suggested that he could introduce legislation shortly if he is able to muster support.
The former accountant has only a small window of opportunity, however. He said in May that any reforms would need to be enacted before the November elections, so that neither party would know whose majority or White House would be affected by the reforms.
Congress has scheduled only five more weeks of work before voters head to the polls, thanks to lengthy summer breaks for both chambers.
Discussing the possible areas of agreement on the Senate floor Wednesday, Enzi said his committee stood ready to introduce legislation for bipartisan consideration.
Previously, members of the Budget Committee, following talks between Enzi and Democrat Rep. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, had discussed a wide range of sweeping reforms. On Wednesday, Enzi narrowed those items down to four areas, which a spokesman said reflected the ideas that Enzi thought had the greatest support after meetings with members of both parties.
The most straightforward reform would be moving Congress toward a biennial appropriations process, a move that effectively would cut in half the opportunities for fiscal showdowns, shutdowns and other fiscal crises.
To force Congress to limit the rising federal debt, another plank of the proposals would set long-term budget targets. To enforce those targets, Congress would create new fiscal commissions empowered to recommend policies to achieve those goal, and that would be able to send recommendations to the House and Senate for automatic votes.
A similar mechanism was put in place in 2011 as the result of negotiations between President Obama and congressional Republicans over raising the debt ceiling. That “supercommittee,” as it was termed, failed to produce recommendations to submit to Congress.
Another reform would seek to make it easier for the Senate, in particular, to pass budgets. Following the budget process would break the pattern of recent years in which congressional leaders and the Obama White House broker emergency, government-wide spending bills behind closed doors.
To facilitate the budget process, amendments on budgets would be limited. That would eliminate the “vote-a-rama,” a unique artifact of current rules that results in hundreds of non-binding resolutions being considered on the Senate floor.
In recent years, senators have used those rules to expose members of the opposing party facing re-election to tough votes on subjects irrelevant to the budget, forcing each other to stay in the Senate voting late into the night.
Should the Senate succeed in passing a budget, spending bills tied to the budget would be given automatic floor time, incentivizing senators to pass the spending bills to get to other business. And if they tried to violate the budget agreement with a large spending or tax-cut proposal, that vote would require a supermajority to pass.
The last suggestion is for a non-partisan commission to study how the budget should treat government investment or credit programs.
