Before Congressional Republicans can write a budget, they have to learn how — and the learning curve is steep.
In the House, more than two-thirds of Republicans were elected after 2009, the last time Congress conducted a formal, bicameral budget process from end to end. The situation is similar in the Senate, where Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then the majority leader, killed the annual exercise of writing and passing a budget resolution through both chambers after Republicans won control of the House in 2010. Democrats were in full control of Capitol Hill from 2007 to 2010.
To close the GOP’s information gap, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., is convening rotating groups of about 30 rank and file members for budget-writing 101 tutorials.
The first such meeting was held on Tuesday, the day after President Obama unveiled his $4 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2016. Scalise, joined by House Budget Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., held two sessions this week. More are planned in the coming weeks as the mid-April deadline for Congress to produce its own budget plan rapidly approaches. Classes with Scalise and Price cover the budget resolution, appropriations and reconciliation.
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., said his colleagues need a lot of educating on what can be a very complex undertaking.
“Most of the guys and girls that have been in the [state] legislature come from legislatures that budget and appropriate at the same time, and up here that’s not what happens,” he said. “You budget, and the appropriators decide how to spend the money within that budget cap … It is a learning experience.”
With the exception of a bipartisan House-Senate budget deal negotiated in late 2013 by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Congress has basically been passing continuing resolutions to keep the government operating since fiscal 2010 ended. A continuing resolution generally adopts the previous year’s spending limits, making few alterations to the previous policies contained in past budget documents.
This is in part the outcome of the political gulf that separated the Republican House and Democratic Senate from 2011 to 2014.
In the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans campaigned on bringing back regular order as it applies to the budget. That means the House and Senate have to write their own budget documents and negotiate a compromise between them in a conference committee. Congressional budget resolutions cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and they aren’t subject to a presidential veto. So theoretically, there’s no reason the Republicans shouldn’t be able to get it done.
The budget resolution, however, is not the end of the process. This blueprint details spending levels and policy priorities that are to be carried out by the House and Senate Appropriations committees. Under regular order, the government is funded through a dozen appropriations bills from the House and Senate that must be merged and are subject to both a filibuster and President Obama’s approval. And then, there’s reconciliation.
Reconciliation is a complicated Senate tool that allows the majority party to take legislation that might otherwise be filibustered, tie it to the budget resolution, and pass it with a simple majority rather than the typical 60 vote threshold. The measure, or measures, have to impact spending and taxes in some way. And, even though reconciliation is a Senate procedure, both chambers have to agree on which policies are going to be passed via the tactic.
Completing the full budget process by the Sept. 30 conclusion of the fiscal year, without the need to pass a CR, can be a logistical challenge, not to mention a heavy political lift. Even Republicans who have been through it concede to being out of practice. A Congress under full Republican control hasn’t attempted regular order budgeting since 2005.
“It’s been so long since we’ve done a budget nobody can remember how,” said Arkansas Republican John Boozman, who was elected to the Senate in 2010 after four terms in the House. “But also you have different ideas. I think we’ll be able to agree to a number; then you have to decide your priorities. The number will be the easiest thing to agree to, but then the priorities are difficult even with our own party.”
