Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress could pass its spending bills in an orderly fashion without threat of a government “shutdown”?
No false drama about national parks being closed down or soldiers denied paychecks. No fulminating politicians pointing partisan fingers. No media conniption fits.
To avoid the regular recurrence of those ills, and to make fiscal profligacy at least somewhat easier to ward off, Reps. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., and Paul Mitchell, R-Mich., on Thursday will introduce a bill to reform Congress’ budget process. The bill makes good sense.
Byrne’s and Mitchell’s Protecting Our Children’s Future Act of 2018 (henceforth: Byrne-Mitchell) would replace the clunky process that has been in use, but has almost never worked well, since 1974. The bill’s first insight is that annual appropriating for a fiscal year beginning in October doesn’t work well for a Congress with large turnover every other January. Byrne-Mitchell therefore would replace annual appropriations with a logical, biennial process allowing time for fuller oversight of spending and fewer artificial deadlines.
Next, it would eliminate a 41 percent Senate minority’s ability to create a shutdown crisis by endlessly filibustering appropriations bills. For the first time ever, appropriations bills would be subject to so-called “reconciliation” rules allowing for passage via a simple-majority vote if those bills fit within the guidelines of an official budget resolution. Even better, it would pressure Congress actually to do its job and pass a budget resolution in the first place: If Congress fails to pass one by June 30 of the first session of each two-year term, members’ salaries would be held in escrow.
(Note: Methinks it would be better both to hold their pay and reduce it slightly for every day the deadline is missed. Friendly amendment, anyone?)
Finally, Byrne-Mitchell would use two key tools to keep spending from flying out of control. It would start by eliminating annual budget “baselines” and instead require “zero-based budgeting,” with each program and expenditure needing to be justified afresh as each budget cycle begins.
More importantly, it would move a vast $1.2 trillion in current spending from so-called “mandatory” accounts (in other words, not subject to annual or biennial spending review and approval) into the new biennial, “discretionary” process. What this means is that no longer would any programs aside from Social Security, Medicare, Tricare, and veterans programs be treated as “entitlements” that renew automatically even without congressional action.
This last provision could make a huge difference. If America ever again were lucky enough to elect a Congress with the fiscal discipline of the 1995-96 one (which produced a balanced budget within five years), its tools for cutting deficits and debts would be sharpened immensely.
In sum, Byrne-Mitchell is a terrific piece of legislation that, if adopted, could help Congress do its job considerably more effectively, while better protecting taxpayer interests. Granted, I would offer some technical tweaks (not worth belaboring here), and I also think Congress needs a broader and separate rethinking of the interplay between spending/appropriations bills and policy/“authorizing” bills.
More importantly, even with the worthy reforms in Byrne-Mitchell, a spendthrift Congress could continue adding to the dangerously high national debt, with inadequate enforcement mechanisms to curb their prodigality. A spending-limit constitutional amendment of the sort outlined here last week (modified for a biennial budget process instead of an annual one) remains necessary for the nation’s long-term economic health.
The two proposals actually could complement each other. The constitutional amendment and Byrne-Mitchell both would work even better if both were adopted. And each, individually, would improve the current state of affairs, whether or not the other is enacted.
The present process is indisputably, probably irreparably, broken. Byrne-Mitchell would create a new process that works much better for everyone.
Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner and is the author of Mad Jones, Heretic, a satirical literary novel published in the fall of 2017.
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