Congress might be done passing budgets, Sen. David Perdue suggested to reporters Wednesday.
“I’m not real sure you’ll ever see another budget done again,” the Georgia Republican said during a briefing in his office.
He made that prediction even though Republicans still control the House and Senate, and after years of Republicans denouncing Democrats for repeated failures to pass budgets during Barack Obama’s presidency. Perdue’s pessimism underscores his larger point that the budget process needs to be reformed in a way that forces lawmakers to have serious debates about debt, spending, and tax policy.
“We’re about to add $11 trillion in the next decade to the debt,” he observed. “That’s $31 trillion. That will be half of all sovereign debt in the world.”
As it stands, the structure of the Senate rules, combined with the politics of Democratic and Republican fiscal disagreements, have created a situation in which leaders on both sides are content with year-end spending negotiations.
“The majority party will always have something they can roll into reconciliation, so you’ll deem a budget … and that gets you into reconciliation mode and then you [pass legislation] with 51 votes,” he explained.
“Reconciliation” is the parliamentary term for a process that allows budget-related legislation to pass based on a simple-majority vote. Senate bills normally need 60 votes to advance, but party leaders on both sides have used reconciliation to sidestep this requirement for major legislation. In 2010, Democrats used the process to pass their overhaul of the healthcare system. More recently, Republicans passed tax reform through reconciliation.
The budget process is designed in a manner that makes it difficult to execute properly, Perdue said. If the Senate were to follow the plan as written, it would take 42 weeks to develop and pass the annual funding for the government, leaving little time for any other issues. It has only worked as intended four times since 1974.
That might change, if a just-created Select Committee succeeds in developing an alternative budget process before the end of the year. “My personal intent of this select committee is to create a politically neutral platform to fund the government on time, every year, just like every other entity in the world does,” Perdue, who is a member of the committee, told the Washington Examiner last week.
Such a “politically-neutral” process might not be welcomed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Perdue said during Wednesday’s briefing, because the current system gives them immense influence over government spending every year. But that annual horse-trading has stifled the chance for debates over long-term spending reforms, according to Perdue.
“[T]he debt goes up,” he told reporters. “Now, so far, these politicians seem to think that’s okay. But I’m just saying, there is a date in time certain when we will no longer be able to do it.”
