U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

63–105CC WASHINGTON : 2000

BIENNIAL BUDGETING

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON RULES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

BIENNIAL BUDGETING: A TOOL FOR IMPROVING GOVERNMENT FISCAL

MANAGEMENT AND OVERSIGHT

FEBRUARY 16, MARCH 10 AND 16, 2000

Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules

(

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington, DC 20402

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COMMITTEE ON RULES

DAVID DREIER, California, Chairman

PORTER GOSS, Florida

JOHN LINDER, Georgia

DEBORAH PRYCE, Ohio

LINCOLN DIAZ–BALART, Florida

DOC HASTINGS, Washington

SUE MYRICK, North Carolina

PETE SESSIONS, Texas

THOMAS REYNOLDS

JOHN JOSEPH MOAKLEY, Massachusetts

MARTIN FROST, Texas

TONY P. HALL, Ohio

LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER, New York

VINCE RANDAZZO, Staff Director

ERIC PELLETIER, Deputy Staff Director

GEORGE C. CRAWFORD, Minority Staff Director

DAVID POMERANTZ, Deputy Minority Staff Director

BRYAN H. ROTH, Office and Systems Manager

ADAM JARVIS, Staff Assistant

SUBCOMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE AND BUDGET PROCESS

PORTER GOSS, Florida, Chairman

DEBORAH PRYCE, Ohio

DOC HASTINGS, Washington

SUE MYRICK, North Carolina

DAVID DREIER, California

MARTIN FROST, Texas

JOHN JOSEPH MOAKLEY, Massachusetts

WENDY SELIG, Staff Director

KRISTI WALSETH, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES AND ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE

JOHN LINDER, Georgia, Chairman

LINCOLN DIAZ–BALART, Florida

PETE SESSIONS, Texas

THOMAS REYNOLDS, New York

DAVID DREIER, California

TONY P. HALL, Ohio

LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER, New York

WILLIAM EVANS, Staff Director

MICHAEL GESSEL, Minority Staff Director

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C O N T E N T S

Page

FEBRUARY 19, 2000

Opening statement of the Hon. David Dreier, chairman of the Committee

on Rules [prepared statement p.01] 01

Opening statement of the Hon. Porter J. Goss, chairman of the Subcommittee

on Legislative and Budget Process [prepared statement p.06] 04

Opening statement of the Hon. John Joseph Moakley, ranking member of

the Committee on Rules [prepared statement p.8] 07

Opening statement of the Hon. Doc Hastings, a member of the Committee

on Rules [prepared statement p.13] 11

Opening statement of the Hon. Thomas Reynolds, a member of the Committee

on Rules [prepared statement p.15] 14

Opening Statements Submitted for the Record:

Opening statement of the Hon. Deborah Pryce, a member of the Committee

on Rules 17

Opening statement of the Hon. Pete Sessions, a member of the Committee

on Rules 29

Statement of:

Hastert, Hon. J. Dennis, Speaker of the House [prepared statement p.24] 21

Young, Hon. C.W. Bill, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida [prepared statement p.34] ........................................................... 30

Obey, Hon. David, a Representative in Congress from the State of Wisconsin [prepared statement p.43] ................................................................ 37

Regula, Hon. Ralph, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Ohio [prepared statement p.62] ................................................................... 60

Price, Hon. David E., a Representative in Congress from the State of

North Carolina [prepared statement p.66] ................................................. 64

Knollenberg, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Michigan [prepared statement p.70] ....................................................... 68

Bass, Hon. Charles F., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New Hampshire [prepared statement p.75] ........................................... 74

Smith, Hon. Nick, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan [prepared statement p.79] ..................................................................... 77

McCarthy, Hon. Karen, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Missouri [prepared statement p.82] ........................................................ 81

Barton, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas

[prepared statement p.84] ............................................................................ 83

Stearns, Hon. Cliff, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida [prepared statement p.87] ...................................................................... 85

Whitfield, Hon. Edward, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Kentucky [prepared statement p.89] ....................................................... 88

Ney, Hon. Robert W., a Representative in Congress from the State of

Ohio [prepared statement p.92] ................................................................... 90

Statements Submitted for the Record:

Castle, Hon. Michael N., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Delaware .................................................................................................... 95

Spratt, Hon. John M., a Representative in Congress from the State of

South Carolina .............................................................................................. 97

Luther, Hon. Bill, a Representative in Congress from the State of Minnesota ............................................................................................................. 99

Additional Material Submitted for the Record:

Letter from the Honorable Bob Taft, Governor of Ohio ................................ 19

MARCH 10, 2000

Opening statement of the Hon. David Dreier, chairman of the Committee

on Rules [prepared statement p.103] 101

Page

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Opening statement of the Hon. John Joseph Moakley, ranking member of

the Committee on Rules [prepared statement p.106] 104

Statement of:

Lew, Hon. Jack, Director of the Office of Management and Budget [prepared statement p.127] ................................................................................. 124

Crippen, Dan. L, Director, Congressional Budget Office [prepared statement p.147] .................................................................................................... 144

Irving, Dr. Susan J., Associate Director of Budget Issues, General Accounting Office [prepared statement p.158] ............................................... 153

Fisher, Lou, Senior Specialist in Seperation of Powers, Congressional

Research Service [prepared statement p.174] ............................................ 169

Additional Material Submitted for the Record:

CRS Memorandum: Estimated Hours Spent Considering Appropriation,

Budget, Reconciliation and Major Tax Bills on the House Floor, 101st

– 105th Congresses ....................................................................................... 108

CRS Memorandum: House Budget–Related Roll–Call Votes, Calendar

Years 1990–1999 ........................................................................................... 121

MARCH 16, 2000

Opening statement of the Hon. David Dreier, chairman of the Committee

on Rules [prepared statement p.187] 185

Opening statement of the Hon. John Joseph Moakley, ranking member of

the Committee on Rules [prepared statement p.190] 188

Statement of:

Hamilton, Hon. Lee, Director, Woodrow Wilson Center [prepared statement p.197] .................................................................................................... 185

Mann, Thompas E., W. Averell Harriman Senior Fellow in American

Governance, The Brookings Institution [prepared statement p.265] ....... 262

Joyce, Phillip, Associate Professor of Public Administration, School of

Business and Public Management, The George Washington University

[prepared statement p.271] .......................................................................... 268

Whalen, Charles, Senior Institute Economist, Institute for Industry Studies, Cornell University [prepared statement p.276] ................................... 275

Meyers, Roy T., Associate Professor, Department of Political Science,

University of Maryland, Baltimore County [prepared statement p.283] . 280

Frenzel, Hon. William, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget [prepared statement p.290] ................................................................................. 288

Bixby, Robert, Executive Director, Concord Coalition [prepared statement

p.295] ............................................................................................................. 292

Horney, James, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

[prepared statement p.307] .......................................................................... 300

Regalia, Dr. Martin, Vice President of Economic Policy and Chief Economist, U.S. Chamber of Commerce [prepared statement p.313] ................. 311

Snell, Ronald, Economic and Fiscal Division Director, National Conference of State Legislatures [prepared statement p.317] ......................... 315

Panetta, Hon. Leon, Director, The Panetta Institute (via video conference)

[prepared statement p.332] .......................................................................... 325

Additional Material Submitted for the Record:

Letter from the Honorable Gary Locke, Governor of Washington ............... 192

Report by Walter J. Oleszek, Issues for the 21st Century Congress ........... 201

Paper by Robert Greenstein, Biennial Budgeting .......................................... 301

Letter from the Senior Executive Association ................................................ 340

Questions and Answers submitted for the record:

Lew, Hon. Jack ................................................................................................. 342

Crippen, Dan L. ................................................................................................ 346

Irving, Susan J. ................................................................................................ 350

Fisher, Lou ........................................................................................................ 354

Hamilton, The Honorable Lee ......................................................................... 356

Mann, Thomas E. ............................................................................................. 358

Joyce, Phillip ..................................................................................................... 360

Whalen, Charles ............................................................................................... 362

Meyers, Roy T. .................................................................................................. 366

Frenzel, The Honorable Bill ............................................................................ 368

Bixby, Robert L. ................................................................................................ 369

Horney, James R. ............................................................................................. 372

Regalia, Dr. Martin .......................................................................................... 375

Snell, Ronald .....................................................................................................

Page

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Questions and Answers submitted for the record—Continued

Snell, Ronald—Continued

376

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BIENNIAL BUDGETING: A TOOL FOR IMPROVING GOVERNMENT FISCAL MANAGEMENT

AND OVERSIGHT

Wednesday, February 16, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON RULES,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:30 a.m. in Room H–

313, The Capitol, Hon. David Dreier [chairman of the committee]

presiding.

Present: Representatives Dreier, Goss, Pryce, Diaz–Balart,

Hastings, Sessions, Reynolds, Moakley, Frost, Hall, and Slaughter.

The CHAIRMAN. The Rules Committee will come to order now. We

are using our new technology for the first time, and I guess we are

audio streaming this. So what I am about to say is going out over

the Web.

The purpose of today’s hearing is to hear from our colleagues

about their views on biennial budgeting and to examine various

proposals for establishing a 2–year budget and appropriations

cycle. I am very pleased that in just a few minutes we will be

joined by the Speaker of the House, who will be for the first time

since he has been Speaker testifying before a congressional committee.

We originally planned to hear member testimony over a 2–day

period, but because there will be no votes scheduled tomorrow, we

will try to complete this hearing today.

After the President’s Day recess, we plan to hold at least one

more hearing to receive testimony from the executive branch, congressional support agencies and outside experts in an effort to develop consensus legislation that will streamline the budget process,

enhance programmatic oversight, strengthen the management of

government programs and bureaucracies and reform the Congress.

At the very end of the last session a bipartisan group joined with

us, in fact there were a total of 245 members, in introducing a

sense of the House resolution calling for the enactment of biennial

budget process in the second session of the 106th Congress. Well,

as we all know we have begun the second session of the 106th Congress, and we are committed to moving forward with that effort.

There is, as we know, very strong bipartisan support in the Senate

for a biennial budget process, and President Clinton as well as the

major presidential candidates of both political parties are supportive of biennial budgeting, and the President specifically mentioned

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in his submission of his budget for fiscal year 2001 support for this

biennial process.

The issue of biennial budgeting has received considerable attention over the past decade. Since 1977 more than 40 congressional

or special committee hearings have addressed the topic of biennial

budgeting. I would like to note most often what I consider to be the

most significant recommendation which came from a committee,

which I was proud to cochair along with Lee Hamilton and former

Senator David Boren and our colleague Senator Domenici who

chairs the Budget Committee in the Senate, in 1993 after exhaustive hearings we came forward with a recommendation that we

proceed with biennial budgeting. The gentleman sitting right here

to my left, the vice chairman of the committee and chairman of the

Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process, Mr. Goss, has

held several hearings on this issue over the past 5 years in the context of comprehensive budget process reform.

I happen to believe that enactment of a biennial budget process

could lead to the most significant governmentwide fiscal management reforms of the last quarter century. The enormous amount of

resources expended by the executive branch in preparing multiple

annual budgets at the same time would be diverted to long term

strategic planning and improving the performance of Federal programs. Congress, which for this fiscal year appropriated $121 billion for programs encompassing 137 programs whose authorization

had expired, would have more time and resources to do a better job

of programmatic oversight.

For those citizens who are served by Federal programs, biennial

budgeting will provide more predictability and peace of mind.

States, localities and private organizations will become more efficient in the long term planning and management of their programs

if Federal funding streams were more predictable, and obviously,

as has been pointed out by the chairman of the Interior Subcommittee of Appropriations, Mr. Regula, there can be tremendous

taxpayer savings, too.

While nobody believes that biennial budgeting is in fact the panacea for all the ailments of society or the Federal Government, if

it is done correctly I believe that such a process can promote a

more effective government and a less chaotic and repetitive budget

process at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

As I said, we are looking forward to having Speaker Hastert join

us in just a few minutes as our kickoff witness, and until then I

am going to call on members for opening statements. Mr. Goss I

know has a statement he would like to offer.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Dreier follows:]

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Mr. GOSS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank

you for taking the leadership and initiative for holding these hearings. This is a topic I think of very great interest to a growing

number of members. As you have mentioned, we spent a very large

portion of our subcommittee looking for ways to improve our current budget process which I feel and I think many members feel

is broken and broken rather badly.

I suppose the byword how quickly we forget around here is appropriate, but I can still remember 18 months ago when we had a

very strong reminder about just how badly broken the budget process was. We did a little better last year, but I don’t think anybody

felt we had a system that was serving us properly or the people of

the United States.

Working with our friends in the Budget Committee and bringing

in a number of members on both sides of the aisle, I think we did

develop a pretty good package last year. It was certainly fairly comprehensive. We called it H.R. 853, and the committee acted upon

it, and I think there still is a possibility for some floor action down

the road.

That package did include a number of very significant changes

that served as a benchmark for starting a discussion on how to

change the process for the better, which is part of the purpose of

it, and at that time we said that we had not been able to include

everything in that bill. Obviously in order to get consensus we had

to leave some things out. We did want to find a baseline consensus

with committees of jurisdiction because that is what is necessary

to get legislation passed, and I think 853 is a pretty good effort in

that direction. But we also hope to develop a vehicle that will yield

positive results if brought to a conference with the Senate, and that

added another dimension of compromise.

I remain hopeful that we are going to have a chance to bring

H.R. 853 forward or some of its component parts in some other vehicle as part of a larger discussion about where we are actually

going with the budget process. I don’t think there is any magic in

looking back 30 years and saying, well, what we did 30 years ago

suits the United States and America’s Congress today because I

don’t think it fits, and I am afraid the evidence is before us.

But with regard to the topic at hand today, I look forward to an

informative series of hearings on biennial budgeting. This is obviously going to be a very profound change in the process, and if it

lives up to its billings, and that is an if, it should improve efficiency, reduce redundancy, boost programmatic oversight and minimize frustration. That is a tall order for any process change, but

I am encouraged by the broad range of Members and experts within this institution and across the country that has concluded that

it is time to give biennial budgeting a try across the board at the

Federal level.

This is not something that has not been discovered in other

areas, and the question is whether it is now appropriate at the

Federal level here.

In my view the time has come to make a change, and I did not

believe that when I started the process. This process has been instructive and informative to me, and I am now convinced that it

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is time to make a change. Given the totally predictable but somehow unavoidable train wrecks, near misses, chaotic late night sessions despite your best efforts to have us meet at normal times and

nearly total public distrust that have come to characterize our annual budget attempts, it does appear that winnowing the process

can be a tonic for what ails us.

I would like to note for the record though, Mr. Chairman, that

I do not believe any one process change on its own magically is

going to right the system, and that is the reason I do this.

Of course, we all know that nothing will substitute for good judgment, plain old–fashioned hard work and an ability to negotiate

and compromise for the good of the order. That is part of our daily

work in trade here. In addition, Mr. Chairman, lest we trade one

set of problems for another in pursuing biennial budgeting, I hope

we will couple any such change with other important process fixes,

including a revamping of the way we budget for emergencies. We

have had a lot of input on that, as you know. I think it is a very

legitimate area. I think the way we talk about strengthening enforcement in an effort to put some teeth into making our budget

a legitimate two–step, authorize then appropriate process work the

way it was intended are areas to fix that we need to focus on as

well.

Having said all that, I congratulate you again for bringing this

slice of the loaf forward, and I look forward to some good input.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goss:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Goss. I know that in

my remarks I mentioned the work that you and others have done

on the overall issue of budget process reform, and I do believe that

is a very important package, and as you know very well, I have

been supportive of it all the way, but I feel very strongly about the

need for us to address this question in light of the fact that we

have not been able to move 853 as expeditiously as we would have

liked.

Mr. GOSS. I would agree, Mr. Chairman. These are not mutually

exclusive efforts.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I don’t have an opening statement, but I note that

44 States had a biennial budget cycle in 1940 and now only 21

have them. The States found that by having biennial budgets it led

to more supplemental budgets and less oversight by the legislature,

and I just think that you are really going in the wrong direction.

I think if we just work the system we have and work it diligently,

we probably could accomplish a lot of things.

As I said, the biennial budget has not led State executives to do

more performance evaluations, nor State legislatures to do more

oversight. States that have shifted from biennial budgets, to annual budgets significantly reduce the need for supplemental appropriations. Biennial States still perform substantial annual reviews

to balance their budgets or cede powers to others to make budget

decisions for them in off years.

I think we are out flailing again, and I just think if we try to

work within the budget procedure, no matter what deadline you set

for the budget, we are always going to be up against it. Nobody

ever does things on time. It is always a month after they are supposed to do it. So no matter what you to do in this situation, Mr.

Chairman, I just think it is going to be cosmetic, and I don’t think

it will improve the budget system much, and I have dissenting

views for your report.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moakley follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. So I will put you down as undecided on this

issue. Mr. Diaz–Balart.

Mr. DIAZ–BALART. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This is an important issue obviously, and the legislative process obviously fundamentally has the role or should include the role

of, in addition to legislating, overseeing the executive. One of the

reasons I am supportive of this idea and am so pleased that the

committee is going to have an opportunity to study the issue more

in depth is that the oversight role of Congress and also the authorization role, which is very much connected I think or should be connected to the oversight role, is not working as well as I think it

could or it should, and I would think that it would probably be the

consensus position that the oversight and the authorization process

also, the authorization process is not working well, and so perhaps

if the authorization committees had more time, and I think that

this structure will permit the authorization committees to have

more time and devote more resources to their function, they could

probably do a better job.

So I am supportive of this concept. I believe that the biennial

budgeting would provide Congress with great opportunities to do

the kind of systematic and regular oversight that is necessary to

ensure the best possible use of the taxpayers’ dollars. So that is

why, Mr. Chairman, I commend you for moving forward on this

and for holding this hearing.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Ms. Pryce.

Ms. PRYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I came in a little late so

if you want to go on to the others and circle back.

The CHAIRMAN. We will come back to you. Mr. Hastings.

Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to commend you and Vice Chairman Goss for the work you have done on

this. I am a very strong proponent of a biennial budget. If you look

at how our process works, we come in in January or February. The

President submits his budget. We go through the process of laying

out what the broad parameters are, and then we get towards the

end of the session, and we are nitpicking over small, little issues,

it seems like, and finally we get done in October or sometimes even

in November and sometimes even December, and we leave here totally exhausted and say, oh, we have done our work. Then we come

back in January and do the same process all over again. It just

seems to me that that is a waste of our resources to go through

that process year after year.

A lot of us have served in our State legislatures I guess maybe

kind of cutting our teeth on this process. Washington State, we do

have a biennial budget, and it has worked really very well. In fact,

because of the rules of our legislature, how it sets up, we have a

fine period of time by which we have to get the process done, and

to be sure, in the off year, we do have supplemental budgets just

like we would have if we had a biennial budget here, but to me it

makes a great deal of sense from an efficiency standpoint to allow

the Congress which has the oversight responsibility of our spending

to have at least another year or have a year that could be confined

to more oversight. I know you have to go through the supplemental

process.

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So I think that the biennial budget is an idea frankly whose time

has come, and I am a strong proponent of that, and once again, I

want to congratulate you for the work that you have done, and

hopefully we can move that this session.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hastings follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be

part of the committee that is holding this timely hearing. As a

former legislator and legislative leader in New York, a State which

also conducts annual budgeting, I experienced a yearly frustration

with the budget process long before coming to Congress. New

York’s budget process annually ties up the State legislature for

months at a time, holding all other legislation virtually hostage.

For the last 16 years New York has failed to produce a budget on

time. That was my entire 10 years within State legislature.

That background combined with my first experience with the

Federal budget last year, as a freshman member of Congress, has

convinced me more than ever that biennial budgeting is one of the

best alternatives available to improving the Federal budget process. A biennial budget would allow Congress to more carefully and

deliberately sort through all of the funding priorities and obligations but to do so only once during the Congress. That would allow

a second session to focus on equally important concerns that unfortunately because of our current budget process often fall by the

wayside, such as government oversight, reform and management.

I look forward to the testimony of speaker Hastert and my other

colleagues in the House.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reynolds follows:]

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. Ms. Pryce.

Ms. PRYCE. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not the Speaker, Chairman.

Ms. PRYCE. Excuse me, I got mixed up because the Speaker just

came in. Mr. Chairman, you never know, some day. Some day in

the future. I am sorry. Mr. Chairman, I support—.

The CHAIRMAN. Time has expired.

Ms. PRYCE. I will put my statement in the record.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Pryce follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. We are going to read that one.

Ms. PRYCE. And along with it, if you would be so kind, I have

a letter from our Governor Bob Taft. In Ohio, we have biennial

budgeting, and he supports it strongly, and I will put that in the

record as well, and I now yield back. Thank you.

[The information follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, Governor Taft’s letter will appear in the record, and I would like to say that our colleague Tony

Hall also made a comment to me about the fact that you have that

in Ohio and that Governor Taft is strongly supportive of that.

I am very pleased to recognize as our first witness for this very

important hearing Speaker Hastert. At the beginning of the 106th

Congress, Speaker Hastert and I and others sat down and talked

about the importance of programmatic and policy oversight, and

that is a very important responsibility which the United States

Congress has, and the Speaker has been very diligent in pursuing

that, and I am pleased that he joined as a cosponsor of the resolution that we introduced last year. Biennial budgeting clearly can do

an awful lot to enhance the oversight issue which is a priority for

all of us.

We are very happy to recognize you, Mr. Speaker, and look forward to your statement.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. J. DENNIS HASTERT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

Mr. HASTERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it is an honor to

be here, Mr. Moakley, members of the Rules Committee.

First of all, I want to take just a minute and thank you for your

hard work. There are a lot of committees that do diligent work day

in and day out to make this process work, but we ask you to do

a little extra. You have weird hours from time to time to make sure

that the rules get out in a timely basis so that we can move the

bills to the floor, and many times those hours are after everybody

else’s hours. So I just want to say, first of all, we commend you for

the job that you do and the ability to move the rules out to get the

job done and appreciate that very much. I know it is sometimes

above and beyond this task that we do.

If you will excuse me, I want to read the testimony today because

I think there are some important points that I want to make sure

we are precise about in this legislation. As the House was concluding the appropriations cycle at the end of the last year, you, Mr.

Chairman, along with Chairman Young of Florida and other Members of the committee on a bipartisan basis, introduced a resolution

calling for the Congress to enact a biennial budget in the second

session of the 106th Congress. Mr. Chairman, I recommend that

this happen, and I commend you for initiating this inquiry and beginning a public dialogue on this subject.

The current budget process doesn’t work well, and we needed to

fix it. Since I became Speaker last year, I have emphasized the

need for Congress to do its job under the Constitution, and I have

used the word over and over again, regular order. That puts the

faith in committees like yours and others to get their jobs done and

do it in the process that the Constitution and rules of this House

laid out. The public respects us when we get our work done, when

we produce a good work product and we do it in an incredible fashion.

When I came to Congress I was not sure if I would ever see a

balanced budget in this town. Matter of fact, some people laughed

at me when I talked about balancing the budget, and it was someVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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thing that didn’t seem that would ever happen, but we are fortunate now to live in a time of budget surpluses. These budget surpluses have been created by hardworking Americans, people that

go to work every day, people who invest and people with good

ideas, but they are also the result of positive legislation enacted by

the Congress and by the President in recent years.

However, despite the positive budget forecasts, we continue to do

our business under antiquated budget rules and procedures. It has

become clear that we can’t do our jobs with current cumbersome

budget systems in place and every year the appropriations process

consumes a great deal of our time with numerous and lengthy debates and often repetitive votes, and sometimes if you have been

around here for a dozen years or so, and you listen to the argument

year after year after year, it seems sometimes like the movie

Groundhog’s Day. It is the same argument, it is the same debate,

it is the same people.

Appropriations are obviously consumed with grinding their bills

through committee, to the floor, the Senate and seemingly never

ending conferences with the other body and all too often these conferences in particular are consumed with nonbudget, nonappropriations policy issues. This of course soaks up the time of congressional leaders, executive branch, budget experts, appropriators and

of course authorizers whose laws these amendments often affect.

A biennial budget process would free up more time on the calendar for thorough consideration of authorizing measures. Under

House rules, appropriation bills must conform to authorizing legislation, but all too often we dispense with those rules because the

authorization bills don’t get enacted. We need to restore the power

and the purpose of the authorizing committees.

Mr. Chairman, I served on an authorizing committee, several of

them in the House, and observed firsthand the difficulty of moving

bills through the House and getting them considered in the Senate.

Sometimes it is frustrating and hard work, and I am sure most authorizing chairmen are used to the thing that says get your bills

done early or you are going to have to be behind the appropriation

bills as they move through the House and to the conferences. If we

have a biennial budget process, the authorizing committees won’t

have to get behind the appropriators as often as they do now.

The House, through its committee system, must also do a better

job of conducting programmatic oversight and management of the

vast accounts of the U.S. Government. One of the powers of the

Congress is the power of the purse, and we need to ensure that we

have a system in place which allows us to carefully scrutinize the

programs we fund, and I can say probably one of the most productive experiences I have had in my congressional career is sitting on

an oversight committee and making sure that the branches of government do the job, and I have to say in a bipartisan basis there

were a lot of good things that we were able to put together and

move through and to make sure that this government could run

better.

Biennial budgeting would give congressional committees the ability to devote more time and resources to programmatic oversight,

and this must be a thorough and ongoing process. I have found

that it is the most successful when conducted also in a bipartisan

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manner. Mr. Chairman, another area a biennial budget process

would improve upon the current system would be in the area of

budgeting for emergencies.

I am sure many of the members here remember the Mississippi

flood situation of 1993 and the difficulty of moving the supplemental appropriations for flood relief through the Congress. Other

natural disasters occur and create pressures to move expensive legislation quickly. Unanticipated military operations such as our

intervention last year in Kosovo also created the need for supplemental appropriation bills during the fiscal year. Biennial budgeting would force the Congress and the President to plan ahead for

unanticipated needs.

Mr. Chairman, the U.S. Government should allow the model of

23 States who have a biennial budget cycle to go forward. The

President’s budget just 2 weeks ago recommended that the Congress enact a biennial budget. Your sense of Congress resolutions

in support of biennial budgeting has garnered support of almost

250 members of the House, which spans the ideological spectrum

and includes authorizers and appropriators. I urge you to use your

expertise in the rules and the procedures of Congress to work with

the House Budget Committee and with the Senate to continue to

work on a bipartisan fashion and produce a biennial budget package for the House to consider.

I know there are some other questions out there, the questions

of the whole idea of being able to move a tax bill in the second year

and the issues of how you deal with the Senate rules, but I think

those issues could be worked out. That is why it is important you

not only work in a bipartisan basis but I think also on this issue

in a bicameral basis.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for your opportunity to appear before

you today. I am greatly honored and thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Speaker Hastert follows:]

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26

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Speaker, we are greatly honored. As I said

before you arrived, this is the first time since you have been Speaker that you have testified before a congressional committee, and I

think this is a very important issue to address because, as you stated so well, you want to proceed with regular order and you want

to make sure this budget process works, and your support of our

effort here is very much appreciated, and I think that the commitment that you have made to expand programmatic and policy oversight is enhanced greatly by your testimony and your commitment

to support of this effort.

So I just want you to know how much I appreciate that personally, and we are going to continue working on a bicameral basis.

I have been working closely with Senator Domenici on this and also

a bipartisan basis, too. We have the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who is going to be following you with testimony,

and many Democrats have joined in working with us on it, too. So

we appreciate that.

Mr. Goss.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Speaker, it is a pleasure

that you are here for us, and I very much appreciate you putting

the weight of your office behind this. This is something I think we

need to do. Those of us who have been studying it for a number

of years may be a little slower to getting to the same position you

achieved on this issue. I am there now. I think we have a lot of

bedrock testimony. We have certainly canvassed a lot of Members.

There is much discussion. I think you have come to the right conclusion.

The only question I would have is do you feel in your role as the

Speaker of the House that you will be able to help us bridge the

gap with the other body and get the same kind of leadership support that we are getting here? We know we have what we call bedrock support over there, but I don’t know that we have enough at

the top.

Mr. HASTERT. Well, first of all, yes, I will work with leadership

on the other side of the Rotunda. I think they have some legitimate

questions about reconciliation and how you deal with those issues

in an off budget year for the situation. I think we need to address

that, find ways that are satisfactory to both bodies, but I think

there is some enthusiasm, and I think we need to work very diligently on both sides of the Rotunda to make sure that this thing

works. It can’t be something done here and not done on the other

side of the Rotunda.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you very much. I know we are going to need

your help.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Speaker, it is nice to have you before the committee.

Mr. HASTERT. It is always an honor to appear before you, sir.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Couple of things that bother me, but one thing

that bothers me is Ohio is the only big 10 State that has got a biennial budget, and since 1940 over 20 States have changed from

biennial to annual because of the influx of supplemental budgets

that keep coming up, and they don’t have enough chance for overVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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sight. So I was wondering, you know, since the direction seems to

go in the other way, why you feel it is a good idea to go biennial.

The CHAIRMAN. If the gentleman would yield, I think it is important to note that Texas has biennial. It is not a big 10 State but

it is a big State.

Mr. MOAKLEY. But I said a big 10 State. Now you know what I

have to put up with here. Half truths.

The CHAIRMAN. He is surviving well.

Mr. HASTERT. Let me just say that since I have been in the Congress, since 1987, I think every year we have had a supplemental,

even when we do an annual budget. I always believed that if you

would work a little harder at the beginning and try to set aside

and have the ability to address a rainy day fund or whatever type

of way you would do that, and I am not the budget expert, the

Budget Committee working with you can do that, but I think there

are ways to anticipate that. Plus the fact, we have supplementals

every time you turn around here as the way it is, and I think we

have been able to handle those supplementals, but so many times

I know that frustration that well, you know, if we can’t get it done

we will just stick it in the supplemental.

I think this will give us the discipline to try to look through a

2–year span of time, try to put the needs of the government in perspective, and if there is an emergency, then we can move forward.

It doesn’t prohibit us from moving a supplemental, but you know,

we have those supplementals today. Sometimes we even see last

year on both sides of the aisle, ours including your side of the aisle,

we add on to the supplementals in ways that years ago would have

made your head spin.

Mr. MOAKLEY. That is what I am afraid of, that a bill like this

would just add to the supplementals and you know how they get

that Christmas tree look and more things are hung up and it provides more chaos for the legislative body.

Mr. HASTERT. My reply to that is that I think probably you are

warranted in your concerns on this, but we do have a supplemental

process today. Every time we turn around, we have two or three

supplementals a year which slows down our appropriation process

to be able to get anything done. I know it slowed it down last year,

and I think if we can move this process through with one major

appropriation bill every Congress or process every Congress and

then we can have some time to deal with the supplementals if they

occur, but we need to anticipate what the needs are ahead of time,

and it will give us the discipline to do that.

You know that is all theory. I have learned a long time ago in

this business sometimes theory and practice don’t come together.

So I appreciate your concerns. I am not discounting them. I think

maybe this is a possibility to do it a better way, and I would hope

that we explore it and have the testimony on it.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Moakley. Ms. Pryce.

Ms. PRYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me take this opportunity to reassure everybody that I know the difference between

our chairman and our Speaker, and they both do a fine job on that

and may they continue in those jobs years and years and years to

come.

28

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your support. This is an issue that

will affect everything we do around here. It is so important that

we examine it carefully. We in the Rules Committee have been

looking at it through the years, and I have been working with Mr.

Goss and his subcommittee, and it is something we should proceed

with carefully, but it is wonderful to know that we have the support of your office.

I worked with you on committee projects in the oversight area

before when I first came to Congress, and I know how very important that is to you and to us as a body, and I believe very strongly

that this will give us the opportunity to do more of that, which is

just as important as the legislative work we do.

So thank you very much for your support. I have no questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Diaz–Balart.

Mr. DIAZ–BALART. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr.

Speaker, appreciate you coming here and honoring us and also appreciate your support and agree with you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hastings.

Mr. HASTINGS. I just want to add my thanks to you, Mr. Speaker,

for being here and supporting this because this is clearly when you

look at the tradition of policy, and this is a huge change from the

past. I congratulate you for being out in front.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sessions.

Mr. SESSIONS. Chairman, thank you. Speaker, I also want to

thank you and say that I am delighted that through your leadership we have another example of a bipartisan approach solving the

problems of Congress, and I appreciate your leadership. Chairman,

I would also ask unanimous consent that my opening statement be

included in the record.

[The statement of Mr. Sessions follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will appear in the record.

Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. REYNOLDS. No questions, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, thank you

very much for being here. We appreciate your support and your

thoughtful testimony and look forward to continuing to work with

you on this issue. Thank you.

Now, we are very pleased to recognize the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the man who joined with

me as a lead cosponsor of the resolution introduced in the waning

days of the first session of the 106th Congress, and Chairman

Young, we are happy to have you and look forward to your testimony.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. C. W. BILL YOUNG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. YOUNG. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and I appreciate the lead you have taken on this issue. If I could add a personal comment to my friend, Mr. Moakley, I did not bring my cell

phone this time.

The CHAIRMAN. So Beverly will not be calling you.

Mr. YOUNG. I don’t think so. We still have a few minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I was first elected to the Congress in 1970 and

came here in the 92nd Congress. We did not have a budget resolution at that time. We did not have a Budget Committee. We did

have a lot of big spending. If a Member could convince the Appropriations Committee to spend, we spent. But we had continuing

resolutions even back then. We had supplementals even back then.

At one point we changed the time of the fiscal year. Rather than

beginning July 1 we made it begin on October 1. That might have

been a plus. Sometimes I wonder about that. But anyway we eventually adopted a budget resolution process. We now have a Budget

Committee. We have all these safeguards now and our national

debt has gotten considerably larger since that happened. We still

continue to have continuing resolutions and we still have

supplementals. So that didn’t solve the problem. So I am happy

that you are taking the lead in considering a different approach to

the budget process and primarily the biennial budget approach.

So it is a pleasure to be here to give you my thoughts on this

biennial budgeting, and, Mr. Chairman, you and I have discussed

this many times in person so we pretty well know what each other’s ideas are. But for the benefit of the committee, let me say the

fiscal year 2001 budget is the 27th budget that I will have worked

on since I began serving on the Appropriations Committee. During

nearly every one of those budgets my committee was either rushed

for time or was late in completing its work or both. This year we

received the budget in early February. By that time over one–third

of the fiscal year was already gone, and we now have less than 8

months to get all the appropriations bills enacted.

We are supposed to receive the overall allocation against which

we mark up our appropriations bills by April 15th, and I don’t need

to provide the history of how many times Congress has not been

able to meet that deadline for a budget resolution. The record is

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very bad. In some years we haven’t even had a budget resolution.

The reason has been it is hard to do a budget resolution given the

conflicting priorities that are inherent in the effort and the fact

that we have had a divided government for most of the recent past.

Even if we get a budget resolution completed by April 15th, we

still would have less than 5–1/2 months left to get our appropriations work done. I have brought a poster I would like to show to

you. If you look at this chart, this shows the 12 months of the year,

but instead of starting in January the chart starts with October because that is the beginning of the fiscal year. October is red because October is gone. November is red, it is gone. December is red,

it is gone. January is gone. It is red. February, well, we are past

the 15th now. We were on the 15th when we colored this one up,

but starting tomorrow, the 17th, we are not going to be in session,

across here, across here. We will be in session here. We will not

be in session on these blue days. Look at the blue marks there, the

House will not be in session and committees will be scattered and

Members will be scattered.

Now, we are supposed to get this year, and I am satisfied the

leadership will do this, a budget resolution by March the 15th and

that is good news for us as appropriators, but let us say we get it

March the 15th. If we get the budget resolution March the 15th,

look at how much time is gone before the appropriators can actually begin to get their work because I can’t assign 302(b) allocations

to the 13 subcommittees until I get a 302(a) allocation from the

budget resolution. So you see what happens here, and look at all

of the blue space when there will be no sessions here. So we can’t

bring bills to the floor.

Now, with that limited amount of time, we have to do 13 regular

bills, plus whatever supplementals we have, and then deal with not

only getting them through the House but through the Senate and

with the President.

As you can see by the calendar, that would leave only 6–1/2

months for our appropriations work. That is better but it is not

enough. I think we need more time than this to develop and enact

appropriations bills because one of the reasons that the Appropriations Committee goes into so much depth on appropriations is we

are to provide oversight to determine if the money is being spent

properly, if there has been adequate justification to prove that we

actually need this amount of money because we don’t want to

spend any more money than is absolutely necessary.

And I believe that biennial budgeting legislation should be developed to provide additional time for Congress to consider appropriations bills and to give us more time to provide that oversight. How

many times have we passed appropriations bills and then read in

the newspaper a month later or 6 months later that such and such

a project was in there and no one claims to know how it got there.

Well, sometimes we don’t know how it got there, but it got there

because we didn’t have the time to devote as much as we should

to the oversight.

Now, the legislation you consider, is this the total answer, do we

have the final plan? Probably not but we have to start somewhere,

and whether this means shoving the date for budget submissions

back earlier, shortening the time for development of a budget resoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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lution or moving the beginning of the fiscal year ahead as was done

in the ’70s or a combination of all of these, it is something we need

to consider in order to make the proper decision. But we need more

time for the appropriations process so that we don’t get to the end

of the fiscal year, negotiating with the President, whoever that

President might be, leaving Congress in a real bind, not having

adequate time to negotiate because the fiscal year is running out

and the threat of closing down the government is hanging over our

head.

While doing this might seem like we are taking more time on appropriations rather than less, which is one of the assumed goals of

biennial budgeting, we would really be freeing up legislative time.

This is because even though we need more time during the year

for appropriations, we would only have a major appropriations effort every other year. The off years would be devoted to oversight

and authorizing work plus fine tuning of the appropriations bills

passed the year before.

While my main reason for looking at biennial budgeting is to get

more time for the appropriations process, one of the stated reasons

of others I have heard has been to give more time for oversight activities by our authorizers because oftentimes appropriations are

ahead of the authorizers, which is not what our system intended.

One of the reasons appropriations takes so much time is because

so many programs are not authorized at the time we consider their

appropriations. So then we get hit with the controversial legislative

issues that are inappropriately included in appropriations bills

rather than authorizing bills where they should be.

I strongly believe that any biennial budgeting legislation should

not only address the budget schedule of the Congress but also the

authorizing process. If all that biennial budgeting achieves is a 2–

year appropriations cycle, we will be as bad off with the 2–year

bills as we are with the 1–year bills. We need multiyear authorizations and we need them in advance of the consideration of appropriations bills in order for biennial appropriations to work. While

biennial budgeting will give additional time for oversight by authorizing committees, they must develop and enact authorizing legislation with this extra time so that appropriations bills do not become the vehicles for every controversial issue before the Congress.

I want this committee to know that the Appropriations Committee also does a lot of oversight. We will continue to do a lot

under a biennial budgeting calendar. I think it would be good for

authorizing committees to do more as well. They need to use the

information they learn to review and modify the permanent legislation that is on the books and to pass authorizations to appropriate.

Requirements to bring this about should be included in any biennial budgeting legislation.

I have also heard that biennial budgeting legislation might become the vehicle for other budget process reform. I want to make

sure this committee understands that we need reform that will

serve the American taxpayer better. I would urge you to be very

careful not to load up any biennial budgeting legislation with other

controversial budget process legislation. Support for and success of

any biennial legislation may well be contingent on what else, if

anything, might be included in this legislation.

33

For the reasons I have outlined, I believe that now is a good time

to look at implementing biennial budget legislation. I urge the committee to hear from a broad range of experts on the matter, listen

to their concerns and see if we can improve the budget and Appropriations process.

I thank you very much for your generosity with your time, Mr.

Chairman. I have completed my statement.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Young follows:]

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35

36

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Chairman, it is just the two of us at

this point.

Mr. YOUNG. I noticed.

The CHAIRMAN. The reason is we have got a vote going on downstairs. We have about five minutes left on the vote downstairs. We

are going to try and continue the hearing process here, but let me

just raise the one issue that you brought that I think is very important. It is the question of supplementals.

Now, we in the past quarter century, since passage of the ’74

Budget Act, have seen on average three supplementals per year,

and what would you anticipate if we were to move to the biennial

process?

Mr. YOUNG. Mr. Chairman, I would anticipate that we would still

continue to have supplementals, for this reason, that

supplementals supposedly are just to deal with emergencies, and

we never know when there is going to be a real emergency, whether it is here at home or whether it is abroad with one of our allies,

one of our friends. So I don’t think we can rule out the use of

supplementals. We have one before us now that we will be bringing

to the House as soon as we reconvene from next week’s District

home work period, and that supplemental is dealing with Kosovo.

Whether you support that or not, it has to be paid for because the

money is already being spent. It also deals with the antidrug programs in Colombia specifically and other areas in that part of the

world, but that is becoming a very serious emergency and does

need to be dealt with. There are floods, there are hurricanes, there

are earthquakes and we don’t know when they might come.

So I think that there still will be calls for supplementals but I

think this will give us an opportunity to focus on supplementals

and try to make sure that they only come up when we deal with

real emergencies rather than just someone’s idea to spend more

money.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to just raise one other question before we go downstairs to vote on the rule of the bill that we are

going to be considering, and that is, I particularly congratulate you

because there has been this view from members of both the Budget

Committee and the Appropriations Committee that this step would

somehow undermine their authority, their power, their opportunity

to participate in the process. Do you have any thoughts on that at

all?

Mr. YOUNG. I do, and without going into a lot of detail, I actually

believe this would help us create an environment where we would

have a better working relationship with the agencies in the executive branch that we deal with. It would also give them an opportunity for their suppliers, people they buy goods from, for the military to buy spare parts or to buy parts for an ongoing weapons system, that they could plan ahead and buy in quantity lots rather

than jumping at one buy at a time, 1 year at a time. Quantity purchases have proven to be very cost effective.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. We are

going to continue the hearing. Mr. Goss is going to take over. You

and I are going to go downstairs. We can proceed with Mr. Obey.

37

Mr. GOSS. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Obey, we

welcome you to the committee. We are prepared to accept without

objection your prepared remarks and your guidance on this matter

before us.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. DAVID R. OBEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

Mr. OBEY. Well, Mr. Chairman, let me say first of all that when

I hear discussions about this, I am reminded of my old friend Archie the cockroach. Archie said once, he said did you ever notice

that when a politician gets an idea he gets it all wrong, and with

due respect to those who have testified, I think what is being contemplated would be a horrendous mistake, and I would like to

make a couple points.

I do not come here testifying in my capacity as ranking member

on the Appropriations Committee. I detest dung hill politics. I detest chicken blank jurisdictional debates. They belong in the ash

can. But I have been here for 31 years, and I think I have learned

a little something about this place, and I think I have seen many

a process change which produce unintended and unforeseen consequences, and I am testifying here on a matter that I regard to

have absolutely no partisanship. This is an institutional question.

This institution that we are all privileged to be Members of is a

very precious national resource, and we had better be very careful

before we make dramatic changes that will weaken it in any way,

and I think this will weaken it in the most profound possible way.

I would note in listening to the testimony so far that we have

heard that the current process is a mess. I absolutely, totally agree,

and I think it needs major changes, and I will be happy to discuss

with you what changes I think those ought to be. I am concerned

from having heard the initial statements that we are essentially

talking to a closed jury here because it appears people already have

their positions pretty well firmed up. I regret that. I hoped that I

could help change some minds.

I want to say that I understand the existing process has severe

problems, but in legislation, as in medicine, the remedy should not

make matters worse, and I profoundly believe that this will.

Secondly, I have heard that appropriations consume too much

time. I believe that a 2–year budget process will lengthen, not

shorten the time that we take to deal with our budgets each year,

and I will explain why later.

Third, I have heard that people want to make a change because

they are tired of all of these nonbudgetary, nonappropriation riders

being added to the bills. So am I, but this will create a situation

where there will be more because if we have a 2–year appropriation, the stakes will be much higher. People will have only one kick

at the cat, and so you can count on them to load them up and then

you can count on those who missed to be doubly alert to their opportunities to do so on supplementals, and I will explain how that

disadvantages the House.

It has been alleged that this will create more opportunity for

oversight. It will do nothing of the kind.

It has also been asserted that this will help us to deal with emergency issues on a more effective and regularized basis. I would sugVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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gest that logic suggests if you set your appropriations in stone for

2 years, it is very much more difficult to anticipate 2 years down

the road than 1 year down the road, and so I think you will have

an even more chaotic consideration of emergency or so–called emergencies than we have right now.

I will do something that I very rarely do in this or any other

committee. I want to stick fairly close to the text of my testimony

because, like the Speaker, I think this is perhaps the most serious

issue about which I have ever testified before this committee, and

of all committees, this committee needs to be more concerned about

the role of this institution than any other committee.

I believe that is what is before you today will seriously undermine the Constitutional responsibilities of the legislative branch of

this government. I think it will give the executive branch more leverage than it has today. It will create more chaos rather than less

because there will be a constant stream of supplementals going

through this place, and because so much can change in the economy over a 6–month period, not to mention 2 years, we will find

ourselves locked into policy decisions that new circumstances will

dictate changing, and Members will use that as an opportunity to

Christmas tree every vehicle that goes through here with I think

disastrous results to our reputation.

If you look around the world, as Members of Congress, we are

unique among legislators. We have far greater individual power, we

have far greater responsibilities than our counterparts in any legislative body on the face of the globe. We didn’t make it that way.

Our Founding Fathers made Congress the first branch of government, and they conferred on it also the power of the purse to enforce that. And they insisted that it keep the executive branch on

a very short leash. And it is the length of that leash that determines the balance of power in this town and in this government.

This proposal will substantially lengthen that leash. It will expand

the power of career employees in the government who feel that

they are largely responsive to no one.

The one argument we hear in favor of biennial budgets is that

States do it so we should too. Mr. Moakley has already pointed out

that that argument is, in my view, deeply flawed. It is one thing

to come from a State of four million or five million people or even

Texas. Texas doesn’t have to deal with 170 countries around the

world. They don’t have to deal with international economic crises.

They don’t have to deal with all of the broad, national issues we

have to deal with.

Most of the States that practice biennial budgeting have populations smaller than the four million people currently on the payroll of the Federal Government, and as Joe has mentioned, at the

State level we moved from having 44 States in 1940 who had biennial budgets to 21 today. I think it is fine for some of them. I think

it is not fine for someone with our responsibilities.

Proponents of this legislation don’t appear to understand that

there are numerous agencies that are not responsive to their own

appointed leadership within those agencies. They are even less responsive to departmental management at the White House, and

they are certainly even less responsive to the Congress, and this

proposition will make that worse.

39

The healthiest thing that happens in this town occurs each year

in the annual budget review. That is the one moment in time when

senior program managers are confronted by the possibility that

they were not ordained by God to set government policies on their

own without benefit of election. And removing that requirement for

annual review will affect not only our ability to ensure that the

laws be fully executed, but it will do some other things as well. I

would like to describe to you the calendar that we will have if this

process works the way its proponents say it will work.

We will get elected in November. We will come here and ideally

they tell us by the middle of the first year we will have our appropriation process done. If that is the case, then ′′ain’t nobody′′ in any

of those agencies who is going to need a single Member of the

House of Representatives for anything for the next year and a half,

and that will make them far less responsive to the demands and

needs of your constituents than they are today.

And I would point out that the only ones who will have a continuing interest in what we feel are the agencies that are affected

by supplemental requests. And the problem with supplementals is

that they are always focused on program increases to meet concerns that we have, but frankly, those program managers are a hell

of a lot more interested in their own bureaucratic budgets and

their own administrative budgets than they are in whether you actually get an increase or a decrease in their programmatic budget.

And so supplementals will not give you the leverage on agencies

that the annual review of their operating budgets will give you.

Now, some proponents say that that will give us an opportunity

for more oversight. I don’t believe that is true either. The principal

job of oversight in this institution is done by the 16 committees in

the House who have jurisdiction. They are not the Appropriations

Committee. They are the authorizing committees. The Appropriations Committee does a lot of oversight, but it is a different kind

of oversight. We oversee to see how they are spending Federal

money and whether they do what we like or not, but often the Appropriations Committee is at variance with the authorizing committees in terms of how they want to see these laws develop. So

the Appropriations Committee doesn’t do oversight that benefits

authorizing committees. In enforcing, authorizing committees demand that agencies follow the law the way they are written, and

these programs are not supposed to be designed by appropriations.

They are supposed to be designed by authorizing committees.

Secondly, when authorizing committees and appropriations committees do agree, the appropriations process has been the primary

vehicle by which agencies have been disciplined to make certain

that they do follow the intent of the authorizing law, and when you

lose your annual opportunity to get at them, you lose your ability

to really discipline those agencies.

We also have the question of whether authorizing committees

will have more time for oversight if we pass this. I would point out

that right now we have a terrible time getting authorization bills

to the floor. Authorizing committees will tell the leadership it is because we don’t have votes here to keep committees going so Members go home. And the leadership will say ′′Well, my God, we don’t

have votes because you guys aren’t producing your legislation.′′

40

And the fact is the only time when we have a sustained period of

votes on the floor is when we are going through the appropriations

process, and with all of the interruptions and inconveniences that

that causes, that is when your authorizing committees have the

best opportunity to actually get their quorums to move legislation.

I agree with Bill Young we need more long term authorizations.

That is one of the changes I favor rather than this, but I ask you

to remember these hard facts when you look, not at the surface of

the oversight issue, but when you actually get down to the nitty–

gritty about how it operates.

Our problem right now is that we can’t even get to annual budgets, much less biennial budgets, and let me give you an example.

Last summer the Speaker and some of the members of the Foreign

Affairs Committee decided we ought to spend more money fighting

drugs and the insurgent guerrillas in Colombia. So they and the

administration began putting together a plan for $1 billion in additional spending. They began discussions with General McCaffrey,

the drug czar. Reports were leaked to the press about what they

were talking about, and then it was decided that the fiscal 2000

budget was getting too dicey, it was already too hard to pass it. So

rather than including that extra billion dollars in the regular budget, both the Republican leadership and the Congress and the White

House agreed to hold off and handle it in a supplement. So in other

words, while both sides, while both the White House and the House

leadership are talking about we need to go to biennial budgets,

they are not even committed to making an annual budget stick.

And so what we wind up with is that now we have a package

which is going to be about $4 billion, and it is going to be handled

outside the regular appropriations process. That is going to jack up

spending, not reduce it.

Now, I am not arguing for or against the substance. I am simply

saying that when you consider these items outside of the normal

overall budget, annual budget, the costs will go up rather than

down because it is easy then to shift money out of this year around

into the previous year or the following year, and you get away with

it, and that is not a credit to the U.S. Congress.

I also want to point out that what happens is that when

supplementals move through this place, and this will greatly increase the number of supplementals, because if you are stuck over

a 2–year period, every agency will be looking for a supplemental

every day of the week, and you will be stuck here until the cows

come home dealing with them, and what will happen is that there

is a difference between the way the House handles supplementals

and the Senate.

The House has a tight rule of germaneness. That means when

you have a supplemental come before the House, we won’t be able

to Christmas tree it with other items that are not germane because

you have the Rules Committee to stop that. ′′Ain’t got no′′ Rules

Committee that functions that way in the Senate. So what happens? They see a must pass bill. The administration wouldn’t have

asked for it unless they really wanted it badly. So they know the

administration is willing to give damn near anything to get it. So

what do they do, they load it up on the Senate side, and after the

initial appropriations, the House will lose its traditional power to

41

initiate appropriations, and you will have the Senate Christmas

treeing these bills to death. We will be reacting to them, and we

will have lost our constitutionally determined preeminence in originating appropriation items, and I do not see why Members of the

House would do that.

Also, there are numerous opportunities every year to save money

out of operating accounts for a number of agencies, and those will

disappear with the biennial budget process. Every appropriations

subcommittee finds in the course of its regular hearings that agencies haven’t been able to expend certain amounts of money, and so

we take that into account in the program levels we provide for next

year, but if once an agency has its money, it can sit there for 2

years before they have to spend it, you aren’t going to have Congress being as aggressive on the rescissions as they will be on

supplementals, and so money which you would ordinarily recoup to

reduce the cost of next year’s appropriation will sit in those agency

coffers and it will be lost, and that will also elevate the cost of government.

There is another aspect that I find troubling. People say this is

going to shorten the time we spend on appropriations. My eye.

Right now, the only reason that we are able to finish our work in

a calendar year most of the years is because we all know that we

want to get the hell out of here by the time the holidays come. Now

by God, if you wind up with a 2–year budget, all of those arguments are going to slop over the holidays, they are going to slop

into the next calendar year, and we will have year and a half fights

and 2–year fights before we finally get these resolved, and all of

the time in the House will be consumed by appropriation processes,

and frankly, I don’t have that much energy. I have a lot of energy,

but by God we log more time on the House floor than any other

committee now. I certainly don’t want to increase that, and I deeply believe that it will.

I just want to say I fully understand the frustration with the existing process, but very often human beings duck responsibility,

and we look for ways to blame the institution rather than looking

at the way we ourselves deal with the problems that we face. And

if you look at why it is a mess, I think there are a number of very

good reasons.

First of all, the budget process, you saw that red part on Bill’s

calendar. The budget process starts all too often with unrealistic

assumptions coming out of the Budget Committee and the administration. All the administration has to do to produce a budget is to

produce a document which they say meets the targets, and if they

do that, they get a bye from the press. Then the Budget Committee

comes up and they don’t have to answer the question: ′′Is this a

wise budget?′′ All they have to answer is: ′′Does this meet the targets.′′ So they invent all kinds of assumptions. My high school history teacher told me. ′′Above all else in life, Dave, question assumptions.′′ My God, if you look at what has happened, we have had a

succession of appropriation fights that have been dragged out because very frankly what has happened is because the initial resolutions were so unrealistic the clock had to run until people were

forced on both sides of the aisle to recognize what was real, and

I think there is a way to fix that.

42

We are the only institution I know that places responsibility for

planning a budget in the hands of those that are different from

those that are charged with executing it. With all due respect to

the Budget Committee, once they pass their overall plan, they don’t

have to deliver on the results.

If the people who craft this overall plan for a budget have no responsibility for its execution, then you can expect that it is quite

likely to simply support a plan that they would personally like to

see rather than one that might actually work and might actually

pass. I think that is one fix we ought to make.

Secondly, we have got to have a more rational way of dealing

with emergencies, and it is not more rational to double the time because then you will have more emergencies, it will be an even more

irregular process.

I think the Federal Government plays too large a role in dealing

with natural disasters, for instance. I think that we need to have

a system by which States can buy into an insurance program underwritten by the Feds on an experience rated basis, so that if they

have natural disasters, they have already paid into an account. I

don’t see why Uncle Sam ought to shell out dollars every time

somebody has a tornado or a flood or some other problem. We

ought to help but the primary responsibility ought to be your State

and local governments, and we ought to be able to structure an

emergency process that deals with that.

But the biggest problem by far in the appropriations process does

not exist in the House. It exists in the other body, and the problem

is that the Senate has permitted far too much latitude to its Members to inject any issue they want into any legislative vehicle. And

what that means is that when authorization after authorization

gets tied up, the only thing that they can do to get their input is

to attach a rider to an appropriation bill, and that is what in my

view has killed the ability of the appropriations process to function

effectively.

The rules in the Senate are such that you can’t proceed under

normal circumstances unless every single Senator agrees, and routine decisions about a budget have to be made by 60 percent. To

me the way to resolve this problem is for the Senate to adopt new

rules. It makes no sense to allow them to continue to do what they

do.

But I urge you to remember, if you move to a world of constant

supplementals, which this will create, the House will lose its traditional preeminence. The Senate will be in the driver’s seat. It is the

Senators who will determine what the add–ons are going to be to

appropriations bills, and all we will be doing is reacting to Senate

initiatives and that is not something that we, with our congressional responsibilities, ought to blithely hand over to them.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Obey follows:]

43

44

45

46

47

The CHAIRMAN. [Presiding.] Thank you very much, Mr. Obey. As

you know, back in 1993 we served together on that Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. We went through a debate

at that point on this issue, and I would like to totally agree with

the argument that you provided on the issue of disasters. I think

that not only should the people be looking, instead of the Federal

Government, State and local governments, but we also have been

working on trying to encourage private insurance as ways to deal

with disasters. So I totally agree with you on that question.

On the issue of biennial budgeting itself, let me say that obviously we don’t have a final plan put in place, and I very much want

to take your concerns into the mix. That is one of the reasons I

raised the question of supplementals with Mr. Young when he was

here, because that is a question that is out there, and I think it

is a very valid one because there are disparate views on that. But

I would simply like to welcome your input, to say that as we do

proceed with crafting something to address what you say obviously

is a system that does need to be fixed, we do very much want to

take your thoughts into consideration.

Mr. Hastings.

Mr. HASTINGS. David, I appreciate very much your testimony.

You have a reputation of being one who wants to guard the institution, and I do respect that very much. Obviously on this we have

a difference of agreement because I am in favor of biennial budgets.

One area you focused a lot of your testimony on, the

supplementals, in my opening statement I suggest that

supplementals are part of the process, but what has not been said,

which you do not say and I haven’t heard anybody else say it, regardless of their view, is that supplementals just because they are

submitted don’t have to pass. In other words, the hard part of the

biennial process is the first year. You pointed out some problems

that we are going to have to overcome because I agree that the

process could be extended, no question about it. One way to resolve

that is for a concurrent resolution where the House and Senate

agrees at every Congress on deadlines to take these things up. It

demands self–discipline on both sides.

But once you get a biennial budget in place, once you get the biennial budget in place, the supplementals become more of a political issue rather than a policy issue. Let me describe them. The

second year of any Congress is probably more political than the

first year. I think that is obvious. The sitting Congress in the first

year will really find out what the bar is as to what you can do in

the next year of the Congress. We recognize that you know where

you can go.

If the theory is that we can get a biennial budget in place, then

we have set the spending limits for that Congress. If there is a supplemental that is being driven mainly by politics, one of the options

is not to pass that supplemental budget, and yet the Congress will

continue and we won’t have a government shutdown like we had

in 1995. I have had two experiences with that when I was in the

legislature where precisely that happened and the government

ironically went on very well until the next year. So while you have

48

concerns about that, those are valid concerns. Just because you

have a supplemental budget does not suggest you have to pass it.

So I would like your comments.

Mr. OBEY. Yeah. I would say—let me put it in crass political

terms. Let me assume you maintain control of this place. Terrible

assumption.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I agree with the teacher, question those assumptions.

Mr. OBEY. Don’t you understand how you can be set up by a

White House on this?

Mr. HASTINGS. Well, sure.

Mr. OBEY. I mean, if you guys are tired of shooting yourselves

in the foot and want to shoot yourselves in the head instead, there

isn’t a whale of a lot I can do about that. But the fact is that if

you have a 2–year budget and if I am the President, I will tell you

what the devil I would do. I would do what the administration does

with something like NIH, for instance. They ask for $1 billion increase and I would let the Congress work its will on that and other

items, and I would hold in reserve for an election year all kinds of

stuff that I want to put you right on the spot on, and come that

time I would lay out those supplementals and I would dare you not

to pass them. And what you have done in that instance is you have

used the regular process to get through the nuts and bolts that

don’t have any political—the stuff that has to run the government,

and then the supplementals become a holy picture war on popular

issues.

It destroys the legislative process. It makes the process even

more gimmick ridden than it is now, and it puts you at one whale

of a disadvantage vis–a–vis the White House. And I might like that

from a partisan standpoint, but from an institutional standpoint,

we need to strengthen the ability of Congress to deal with the

budgets, not weaken it, and I just think when you move to a supplemental, you strengthen not just the White House’s hand but you

immeasurably strengthen the bureaucrat’s hand.

There is no agency in government that has driven me more crazy

than the FAA except maybe for the Immigration Service. How

would you like to have to deal with them if they don’t have to deal

with you for a year and a half? I mean the problems with these

agency people now, they say, ′′Oh, well, if the Congress doesn’t like

something we do and they direct us to do something, we can outlive

them, we can outlast them.′′

You are going to make it a lot easier if they don’t have to come

up here on an annual basis and testify, not just on their program

requests, which are largely political coming out of the policy makers in the administration, but what those guys care about is their

administrative budget, they care about their operating budget.

That is what they live or die on, and you have freed them from any

worries about that for a year and a half, if this works the way you

say it is supposed to work. And if it doesn’t work the way you say

it is supposed to work, then there isn’t any reason to pass it.

Mr. HASTINGS. Well, I would suggest that everything you describe we live under right now in annual budgets because the supplemental budgets last year, the farm bill, and I assume we will

have some supplemental budget come down, that is the nature of

49

the piece. I don’t think that changes anyway. One way you have

to guard against that and obviously the party in power whether it

is you or whether it is us, I prefer the latter rather than the

former, that is a political decision we are going to have to make,

and that is, you don’t have to pass the supplemental budgets.

As far as not having agencies for an 18–month period, part of the

process has to be a time when they spend their dollars and those

things have to be worked out. That has to be part of the budget

process, also, but I do respect what you say. You bring up some

points I think that are valid, and I am certainly not one that suggests that this is the end–all that will end all of our problems, but

everything I have heard thus far exists so far under annual process.

Mr. OBEY. But there is a difference. Right now, you have to on

an annual basis produce budgets which can at least pass the laugh

test with the press. If you have a biennial budget, the White House

will get the mundane stuff tied down the first year, and then the

second year they will bring in those supplementals with the most

powerful sexy political pieces they can think of, and if you don’t

pass them, they will be happy to talk about it.

Mr. HASTINGS. The only way I can respond to that is that is a

political decision which, as I said in the first part of my question

to you, is the first year you are having a policy year of Congress,

second year is a political year, and I would suggest we are going

through that same process this year.

Mr. OBEY. Well, except that this year in the end the administration has to get its basic stuff passed, and so in the end both sides

have to come from their political positions to a more real position

in the middle. I mean of course the second year is going to be more

political. What I want to make sure is that the second year doesn’t

do immeasurable damage to the institutional requirement that we

keep a tight reign on the power of the purse, and I think with this

proposition you are giving it away forever, and it is like privacy,

it is like liberty. We take it for granted but once you give up power,

even inadvertently it is hard as hell to get it back.

Mr. HASTINGS. And I think that argument does have some

weight. I would suggest that some of the executive orders probably

would be a way to counteract, but that is another argument. That

doesn’t deal with the appropriation process.

Well, I would say, Mr. Chairman, and I would say, Dave, that

this is something that there is going to be a lot of discussion on,

and I think there are some real differences obviously, but at the

end I think what we need to remember is that our responsibility

here going through the authorization and appropriation process, especially appropriation process, is to protect the taxpayer. We

shouldn’t ever lose sight of the fact that taxpayer is the one who

keeps us giving the means by which we spend dollars, and I think

this is one protection for taxpayer.

Mr. OBEY. I look at it just the opposite, the more expensive, the

less control.

The CHAIRMAN. As I prepare to call on Mr. Moakley, let me just

do two things. First, we are very pleased to have the mayor of one

of our Nation’s great cities. The City of Pasadena is represented

here. Mayor Bogaard has joined us and we are happy to have you.

50

And the second thing to do before I call on Mr. Moakley is simply

ask you, David, what role do you see our authorizing colleagues

playing in the budget process itself?

Mr. OBEY. I think the authorizing committees are jammed by two

problems. First of all, because budget resolutions—and this has

happened under both parties—initial budget resolutions have been

unrealistic. And so the leadership has to put so much energy into

getting people to vote for a budget resolution that doesn’t even

have the force of the law, and so you get it phonied up.

Let me give you an example, in ’81, the last fight that was made

in the Budget Committee to get the votes to pass a resolution, was

in agriculture. They were $400 million as I recall above where they

needed to be in order to get under the ceiling. So the Budget Committee simply told the dairy guys that it was going to come out of

feed grains. They told the feed guys it was going to come out of

dairy. They used the money twice. They had an unrealistic assumption, and it tied up the appropriation process forever afterward. I

think you simply have to have a more realistic budget resolution

to begin with.

Second thing is I think we really need to ask authorizing committees to do multiyear authorizations. I think that what an authorizing committee ought to do is spend the first year getting their

authorizations tied down, and then after they have got their authorization shaped, then they can do more effective oversight to

make certain that the laws are being handled the way they were

intended to be handled and interpreted the way they were intended

to be interpreted.

I don’t think the appropriations process has much to do with

whether the authorizing committees move or not. I think the Budget Committee with its unrealistic assumptions force the Appropriations Committee, the Ways and Means Committee and a lot of the

authorizing committees who also have access to direct spending responsibilities under the Budget Act, they have to react to an unreal

budget and they have to spend a lot of time on that. I think that

gets into their ability to do it.

To me, and this is a different subject, and I probably will cause

myself trouble doing this, but I believe that there was a choice to

be made when the Budget Committee was established, and the

question was: ′′What should the composition of that committee be?′′

And they decided there were two choices, either you could take the

chairs and the ranking members of the committees with direct

spending responsibility and put them on that committee, so you

have got the committee leaders who handles food stamps, Ag, I

guess, Ways and Means that handled some of them, Commerce,

that handle some of them. You could put them on the committee

or you could put members appointed by the leadership on the committee, and they decided to do the latter.

I think the system would be more realistic if they would have

done the former. If the same people who put together the budget

resolution then had to put together the actual legislation to implement it, you would end the baloney assumptions that go into building any budget resolution. The majority party, the minority party,

all people would be much more likely to put together an initial resolution which reflected a real center of gravity in this place rather

51

than just somebody’s idea of what might be nice if they didn’t have

to deal with reality.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. David, I agree with all of what you said except

when you talk about the authorizations becoming multiyear.

Doesn’t that automatically stir up a lot of supplemental budget requests because the authorizations are operating in a multiyear and

the appropriation is in a single year?

Mr. OBEY. I don’t think so. I think most of what the authorizing

committees do is to draft long term legislation. I mean, the problem

we have now is that we wind up having to carry so much authorization legislation because authorizing committees want to authorize every year, and so they can’t get it done in time. And to me,

if you had say 3 or 4–year authorizations as the rule, then the authorizing committees would have the time to do the digging on

oversight to make certain that the authorization is being followed

by the bureaucracy, and they would also have time to then deal

with new supplemental requests they had to authorize before we

could move on it, but they ought to be designing things for the long

haul. When they don’t, then we get people whispering behind their

hands on the authorizing committees that we aren’t including--.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Well, you get all those amendments, those legislative amendments to the appropriation bills.

Mr. OBEY. Let me give you one example. When I chaired the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, the authorizing committee had not

passed their authorizing bill in 10 years, and so one of the subcommittee chairmen, Steve Solarz, came to me and said, ′′Dave, we

can’t get our bill moving, would you put our section on Latin America in your bill, would you carry our authorization in the bill?′′ I

made the dumb assumption that he was speaking for the committee, not just the subcommittee, and I said, ′′If that is what you

want, let me check it out.′′ It seemed reasonable. So we did. Three

weeks later I walked into this room and here’s Dante Fascell testifying against what I did. And who is at the table with him? Steve

Solarz! There were three subcommittee chairmen who had asked

me to do the same thing, and all three of those subcommittee chairmen who had asked me to do it then came to the table with their

chairmen and raised hell with me for doing what they had asked

me to do.

Now, I mean when you have got a committee that can’t produce

a piece of legislation in 10 years, does it make sense to blame the

Appropriations Committee for that? What happened was very simple. You had an ideological fight between the liberal Democrats in

the House and the conservative Republicans in the Senate, like

Jessie Helms, when the Republicans were then running the Senate,

and so rather than compromising, the administration said, ′′Ha, let

them stew in their own incompetence and then we will get a better

deal out of the Appropriations Committee.′′ So that is what the

Reagan administration did, that is what the Bush administration

did, and they were smart to do that. But that didn’t help the Congress meet its responsibilities. So that is why I favor longer authorization.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Do you know of any democratic country that has

a biennial budget?

52

Mr. OBEY. Do I know of what?

Mr. MOAKLEY. I said are there any Nations that you know of

that have a biennial budget, a democratic type nation?

Mr. OBEY. I don’t really know. All I know is that if you are the

governor of Florida, if you are the governor of Wisconsin, I mean

do we really want to imitate States? In my State my governor has

had a veto so strong he could eliminate digits in numbers to create

different levels of appropriation than the legislature required. He

could until the legislature changed it a couple of years ago. He

could eliminate words to form entirely new sentences to create law

that the legislature had never passed. Now, I mean in most States

governors like 2–year budgets because they deal with a weak legislature, they get them out of town in a few months, and then they

run their States like kings. We don’t want that out here.

Mr. MOAKLEY. But they are usually small States.

Mr. OBEY. Yeah, usually.

Mr. MOAKLEY. The major States, with the exception of Ohio,

have annual budgets.

Mr. OBEY. The States don’t deal with the economy, they don’t

deal with foreign policy, but my God, things change more dramatically at the national level. You could have a Kosovo intervene. You

could have a Middle East war intervene. You could have the economy go to hell in a hand basket, require a totally different—I

mean, go back and look at Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford came out here

pushing ′′Whip Inflation Now,′′ and three months later the economy

changed and he is fighting against unemployment. Jimmy Carter,

the same thing. So I mean, with all due respect to our people who

draw State parallels, they don’t have nearly the complicated set of

realities to deal with that we do.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Do you know why, if you know, why States

changed from biennial to annual budgets?

Mr. OBEY. I don’t really know.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I thought it might have been the overload of supplemental appropriation bills.

Mr. OBEY. I would assume that it was in part because of

supplementals. I mean, Wisconsin has a biennial budget, and I can

tell you we have a Board on Government Operations, at least we

did when I was there. And we were meeting every doggone week

adjusting the budget and much less systematic oversight. We

passed legislation creating a whole new system of technical schools.

The administration had put in their language for the bill. We had

totally rewritten it. We wanted a different kind of governing board.

After we passed that bill, the governor on his own just administered the bill as though it was the originally submitted bill.

Now, the only leverage we had on them for the remainder of the

biennium was leverage on additional money they had asked for a

few programs, but we didn’t have a chance to get at their personnel

levels in the agency, we didn’t have a chance to get at their salaries, we didn’t have a chance to get at their operating budgets. So

we had no real leverage to make them follow the intent of the legislature, and I don’t want to see Congress become a State legislature.

I mean, we are the premier legislative body in the world with all

of our warts, and I would like us to stay that way.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Thank you very much.

53

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Goss.

Mr. GOSS. No, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hall.

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As Dave knows, I figure

we have worked together on a lot of issues. There is nobody who

knows more about process and who loves this House of Representatives more than him. I disagree with him on this. I am from a big

State that has biennial budgets. Almost everybody I know from

Ohio who has served in the State legislature likes biennial budgets.

The reason why I like it so much is that I think that the second

year is such an important year for doing oversight. I know that this

sounds redundant and trite, but the fact is everybody keeps talking

about oversight, but we always did a lot of oversight our second

year. There are so many things that we ought to be investigating,

ought to be targeting, ought to be having hearings about. I myself

have asked for hearings, and the answer I always get is we are too

busy, we are trying to get our budget out.

And we spend all year trying to get our 13 appropriation bills

out, and then after we get them out we adjourn. That is normally

October, November, and we don’t do oversight on many of these

programs. Only on the glaring issues do we have oversight. We

don’t have the slightest idea what some of these agencies are doing,

whether they are good, bad or mediocre. I think Congress ought to

have a lot more control of these programs. The only way we are

going to get control is to know about them. But the push is all

year. It is all year, get our 13 bills out. When we get them out, it

is over, we go home. What are we doing?

Mr. OBEY. But there is nothing whatsoever in this proposal that

increases oversight in any way, absolutely nothing. As I said earlier, there are two kinds of oversight. One is to make certain that

agencies are administering the laws in the way they were created

by the authorizing committee. And the authorizing committees

have a right to expect that the laws are going to be followed the

way they want, not the way the Appropriations Committee wants.

As appropriators, we may finance them but we don’t design them

and we shouldn’t because we don’t know as much about them as

the authorizing committee.

This doesn’t give authorizing committees any additional time to

do oversight. All this does is change the process of the Appropriations Committee. Show me one thing in any of these bills that gives

any authorizing committee one second more oversight.

Mr. HALL. Sure, it does. It does it in the same way as the biennial budget in Ohio. It doesn’t give any more time or spell out the

time that we are going to have oversight, but that is what they do

the second year.

Mr. OBEY. How? Authorization committees don’t bring appropriation bills to the floor.

Mr. HALL. Dave, if we pass a budget every 2 years we will have

a lot of time here now to look at some of the things we did. It

makes sense that we are going to have oversight.

Mr. OBEY. If you don’t have appropriation bills on the floor on

a regular basis, you aren’t going to have quorums in authorizing

committees. You aren’t going to get those committees to move beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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cause if you don’t have business on the floor, this place isn’t in session. You know that as well as I do.

Mr. HALL. Well, then maybe we shouldn’t be in session. Maybe

the committees that have jurisdiction ought to be back and meeting.

Mr. OBEY. The committee chairman will tell the leadership time

after time under Republicans and Democrats. ′′If you don’t have

votes on the floor, we can’t get quorums.′′ You talk to anybody in

the leadership they get that complaint every day in this week, and

this will make that worse, not better.

Mr. HALL. I think if a congressman is going to stay home, meeting constituents, he is going to have to say, well, I was back home

taking care of the bridge when I know I should have been in Congress because that is where I belong. No way.

Mr. OBEY. All I am telling you is committees won’t get quorums

if you are not in session. Ask your committee chairman.

Mr. HALL. Then that responsibility not only belongs to the chairman, but it belongs to the individual, and each person has to stand

for himself.

Mr. OBEY. That is correct.

Mr. HALL. They have to stand up and say I have to be accountable.

Mr. OBEY. All I am saying is that to say that this creates more

opportunity for oversight is I think a phenomenal misjudgment in

terms of what will happen.

Mr. HALL. It happens in every State that has biennial budgets.

Mr. OBEY. If we are in session, the more we are in session, the

more time authorization committees will have an opportunity to do

their work, but this has become a Tuesday through Thursday club,

and right now it has become a Tuesday usually at 6:00PM until

Thursday at 2:00 club. That is the problem. If legislators wanted

to spend more time at home than they do here and then blame the

appropriations process for that, frankly I think that misses the

mark.

Mr. HALL. Nobody is blaming the appropriation process. What

they are saying is that we can have a better government, I think

we can have a more efficient government. I would like to know

what some of these agencies are doing, and if they are mediocre,

we ought to get rid of them.

Mr. OBEY. So would I, but that is an ad hominem argument. You

are defining a good goal and then saying this will accomplish it. I

just don’t believe that that will do.

Mr. HALL. Good goals have to be done by good people, and you

can have the greatest law in the world. If you don’t have good people, nothing is going to happen.

Mr. OBEY. But good or bad people doesn’t have anything to do

with one or 2–year budgets.

Mr. HALL. What are you talking about then? You can’t make an

argument with you, you are going to say this is not going to provide more time for oversight. In fact it will. You are saying it

doesn’t work. In fact it does work in big States. You are going to

say we are not going to have more oversight because it doesn’t say

it. Now, it doesn’t say it in the Ohio budget either. We do oversight

the second year.

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Mr. OBEY. I don’t know what the separation of power is between

your budget committee and your authorizing committees. All I

know is that in here the oversight is done by your authorizing committees. Your authorizing committees don’t put together the appropriation bills. There is nothing that prevents authorizing committees from meeting every day on oversight while the Appropriations

Committee is considering appropriation bills, nothing.

In reality, the complaint that comes from committee chairmen is

they can never get a quorum when this place is not in session, and

if you have the appropriations right now, at least until May when

the committee—we are hung up until the Budget Committee produces a budget resolution. We are not supposed to bring bills to the

floor until they do. That is our major problem because so long as

the Budget Committee isn’t producing something on the floor, you

don’t have much going on. Look at the schedules that have been

cancelled this week. Look how light the schedule is. You have to

invent things to do to keep people here. If I were the leadership

I would go nuts trying to do this, and if you are saying that the

most intense legislative period when appropriations is on the floor

is only going to occur every other year, then that is going to reduce

the number of days when you must have legislation on the floor,

and members are going to say to their chairmen, ′′Sorry, you can

schedule that hearing, but I ′′ain’t′′ going to be here′′, and you are

going to have less time for oversight rather than more. I want more

oversight, but this is not the way to get it.

Mr. HALL. If I were chairman that would not be a problem because I am going to be there. I am going to be there. Members don’t

want to show up, I am going to investigate. I am going to have

oversight.

Mr. OBEY. You are going to have a quorum to hold a hearing but

not to move any legislation.

Mr. HALL. Would you agree that we disagree on this? We disagree vehemently and I have great respect for you, and we work

together on a lot of issues, but I think you are very wrong about

this. You talk about losing control. I say we do not have very good

control now.

Mr. OBEY. All I can tell you is if you move to biennial budgets,

we will have supplementals running through here every day. Because we have a tight germaneness rule, if we have got an Interior

appropriation bill up and you want something that is done in HUD,

you won’t be able to offer that amendment because it ′′ain’t′′ going

to be germane, but when it gets to our dear friends in the Senate,

they have no germaneness rules. They will be able to add everything but the kitchen sink. If you think you are ever going to get

credit at home for a single project, kiss it good–bye, baby, because

your Senators are going to get credit for all of that stuff. If you

think you are ever going to be able to create an initiative outside

of the jurisdiction of a supplemental in the House you are not because the rules won’t let you. But the Senate will add Christmas

tree after Christmas tree to the supplementals.

Mr. HALL. That doesn’t mean you can’t put your own amendment

in there. You don’t have to have a supplemental. We don’t have to

have supplementals that go beyond a year, period.

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Mr. OBEY. If you want to be out of business for 18 months while

your Senators are in business 365 days a year for 2 years be my

guest. If I were a Member of the House I wouldn’t want to do that.

Mr. HALL. They can’t do anything without us. They can’t do anything without us.

Mr. OBEY. Well, with all due respect, the House, if it loses the

ability to deal on the same terms with issues that the Senate deals

with, we will lose not only our power relative to the executive

branch, we will lose our power relative to the Senate, and I don’t

think that is what we ought to be doing.

Mr. HALL. I don’t believe that for a minute.

Mr. OBEY. Attend a couple of appropriation conferences and you

will change your mind in a nanosecond. Every Senate authorizing

chairman bypasses House authorizing chairmen right now, and

they try to add their authorizations to regular appropriation bills.

We can usually knock that off because you can say, look, if I do

this for you, then you are going to have to do it for other committee

chairmen, and you can back them off, but if you have got only selected agencies for which you have supplemental requests going

through, the authorizing chairmen for those committees, the Interior Committee for instance, if you have got an Interior supp going,

they will be able to add whole authorizations without impunity,

and they will get away with it far more than they do now because

those will be must pass items, and they will be much more visible

than general appropriations are.

And so there is going to be much more pressure from the administration to swallow that stuff and for the House to buy into it, and

I think that makes us spend more money and makes us be less disciplined and certainly doesn’t give the House an equal shot at deciding whether it ought to be in their final product.

Mr. HALL. Dave, you are so busy now and so are all Members

of Congress, whatever committees they serve on. It is almost the

tyranny of the urgent that creates many of their own problems,

and one of the problems I see is because you are so busy you don’t

have time, because I request hearings, you can’t do them. I am not

talking about you. You can’t do them because you don’t have time,

you can’t do hearings.

Mr. OBEY. Can’t do hearings? Look at our schedule.

Mr. HALL. I have requested hearings on things relative to the

Pentagon, on foreign affairs, et cetera, and you don’t have time to

do them.

Mr. OBEY. Do you think we are really going to have time to do

them if we are spending a year and a half to pass the regular appropriation bill rather than 9 months? If you have 2–year budgets,

do you really believe we are going to settle all these issues by October or November of the first year? Not on your life. They will drift

over into the second year. We won’t have any time to do anything

except negotiate.

Mr. HALL. There is a funny thing, it works in other States. Why

wouldn’t it work here?

Mr. OBEY. I don’t think there is any point in my chewing the cud

again and again. I just think there are different—I see different institutional dynamics than you do, and I see them from the perspective of having been on this committee for 30 years. I recall when

57

authorizing committees like George Miller and George Brown and

John Dingell came in raising hell about the fact that Senate chairmen were adding whole authorizations to their bills, and I guarantee you if we move to a supplemental world we will be much

more vulnerable to that than we are now, and the Senate will reign

supreme on that because of the difference in germaneness rule.

You want to give us more time, get the Senate off our backs with

all of these blasted nongermane riders, get the Senate to change

their rules, so that they don’t have to beg on bended knee to get

all hundred senators to agree on how to proceed every day. I mean

that is the problem. The Rules Committee is the salvation of our

House because it creates order. The disorder you have in the Senate is I think the fundamental problem we have in getting budgets,

along with the fact that budget resolutions are essentially press releases from each political party, and they are unattached to reality

in most cases.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you. Mr. Sessions of Texas.

Mr. SESSIONS. Chairman, thank you. I really should rest our case

after Mr. Hall’s comments. However, I would like to take just a second and talk about your testimony on page two, quote, the one argument that we hear repeatedly in favor of biennial budgeting is

that the States do it so we should, too. I would observe that this

is not a State government and any argument to that effect is deeply flawed.

Mr. OBEY. I agree with that.

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, you wrote it.

Mr. OBEY. No, no. I am talking about the arguments made by the

proponents of it.

Mr. SESSIONS. All I am suggesting, sir, is that these are your

words so I would expect you to agree with it. I was reading from

your testimony. I don’t expect to be any more successful than Mr.

Hall in changing your mind, so this is just for the sake of going

through this, to present one argument, that the move to annual

budging from biennial budgeting stopped in 1987 when all but 19

States practiced annual budgets, and that since that time they

have begun to shift back to biennial budgeting, and now there are

23. I know I think you said 20, but 23 States to my information

operate under the same type and three more States as of now, California, Michigan and New Jersey, are currently considering moving

to biennial budgeting.

States largely shifted from biennial budgeting after World War

II as Federal and State programs became more complicated. Biennial budgeting at the Federal level would increase efficiency. The

arguments that you employed in your comments I believe are similar to arguments about why we should do or not do away with

proxy voting.

The power of the institution, the power of those insiders, those

committee chairmen, those people, and I believe it is a matter of

efficiency, not power, and that this institution should continue to

evolve and recognize as we look in the mirror and see ourself, not

only that we straighten our collar and do those things that look

good, but we have a tremendous responsibility to government and

State governments for an efficiency ratio and efficiency model, and

that if we are able to do the things since I was in college 20 years

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ago and gave a speech for a rotary club on—a speech contest about

the efficiency of government and way back then the Pentagon and

the Labor Department argued about their ability to handle

multiyear projects and to sign contracts that would more carefully

resemble efficiency, not power, not arrogance, not their institution,

but rather the efficiency for the taxpayers that they felt like that

the savings, the cost savings from that money that had been appropriated would in fact increase. It would do those things in efficiency of the government.

I am just going to give one example. I am sure there are lots of

holes that anybody, including you, could inflict upon this example,

but I know as a Member of Congress I am not allowed to sign any

contract or do anything that would be outside the extension of a

section which I was elected for, and I agreed with that. I am not

arguing against it. But I also know that in instances of signing contracts, and I will just give probably the most egregious, that you

may have a Member who wins election year after year after year,

but they rent a vehicle for the official use in their district, they

sign a 2–year lease and the 2–year lease costs in some instances

three and four times the amount of money that it would if you

signed just a 3 or 4–year lease.

I am not arguing that we should extend what we have today.

What I am arguing is that the marketplace and an efficiency model

and ratio for the States for their ability to be in tune with what

we have done, for them to know that when we have put our model

in place they can then do the same, it would be more efficient and

I think better for the taxpayer. That would be my sole argument

to you today. I did not ask that you have to agree with that. I do

ask for simply that you understand that I believe Mr. Hall and I

do believe this.

Mr. OBEY. But in fairness, you shouldn’t be voting for this proposition. First of all, with respect to proxy voting, I have never favored proxy voting. We have never used it in the Appropriations

Committee. I think if members want to vote there, they ought to

get off their duffs and be there. I have always felt that way. I have

heard a number of authorizing committee chairmen since the proxy

voting has been abandoned who have said, ′′Boy, my job in getting

a quorum is almost impossible these days,′′ and so I would suggest

I am not qualified to discuss the proxy voting.

Mr. SESSIONS. I am just saying, sir, those same arguments were

utilized in the same way for a different institution.

Mr. OBEY. I have been a raging reformer ever since the day I arrived here. I almost got thrown out of my own committee caucus

for that reason. And we have had books written about people who

had minimum high regard for reform. So I pushed this place on financial disclosure and all the rest.

All I would say is your argument about multiple year procurement has nothing to do with this. We already provide multiyear

procurement. The Appropriations Committee right now provides

multiyear procurement. I am not against a multiyear procurement.

Mr. SESSIONS. I completely disagree, as Mr. Hall did, with that

argument because things happen all the time where a plug is

pulled the next year.

59

Mr. OBEY. Well, all I can tell you, you said the government agencies ought to be able to sign multiyear contracts.

Mr. SESSIONS. What I am suggesting is that the appropriations

process, not the contracts, will drive those things, and I believe

that they will be more efficient.

Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, that is a very different issue. It

is a very different question whether—you said that agencies like

the Pentagon would be able to save taxpayers money if they engaged in more multiyear contracts.

Mr. SESSIONS. Sir, you know what I’m suggesting, and I think

this is not fair for you to try and twist that. What I said is that

the appropriations of that money on a 2–year basis would allow

them to more carefully run through those contracts.

Mr. OBEY. We don’t just appropriate for a 2–year basis. We allow

them to proceed with multiyear contracts.

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes, we do that, but what I am suggesting to you,

and you know people change their mind next year and wipe out a

program.

Mr. OBEY. Well, Congress can always change its mind.

Mr. SESSIONS. I agree.

Mr. OBEY. I don’t think you want to say that if we appropriate

money to an agency and we find out that there has been the egregious management or faulty development of the program—.

Mr. SESSIONS. Then what I will say is I believe we will become

more efficient.

Mr. OBEY. Well, again, all I will simply say is that you don’t need

2–year appropriation budgets to promote what you are talking

about. You obviously think we do, so we have a difference of opinion on that, but that is a very different situation. I would simply

point out if you think it is more efficient to have a 2–year budget

rather than a 1–year budget, I would simply point out that the estimates 2 years ago for this fiscal year were that we would have

a $70 billion deficit. We have now got $170 billion surplus instead.

I would say the world has changed a little bit—.

Mr. SESSIONS. Thank goodness.

Mr. OBEY. —in 2 years and I don’t think that having to make

our budget estimates and our revenue estimates 2 years out makes

any sense, given how fluid the nature of the economy is and how

fluid the nature of the income and outflow is of the government.

I don’t call that efficiency.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the gentleman for his indulgence. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HASTINGS. [Presiding.] Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. REYNOLDS. No questions.

Mr. HASTINGS. We will now start the second round of questioning

for Mr. Obey. Just kidding.

Mr. OBEY. Give me a martini.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Obey, thank you very much for your testimony, and obviously the give and take was spirited in some cases,

and there are some differences of opinion, but I appreciate very

much your taking the time to come before the committee, and you

can be excused.

Mr. OBEY. Thank you.

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Mr. HASTINGS. Next we will however call up a panel of the Committee on Appropriations, Mr. Regula from Ohio; Mr. Knollenberg

from Michigan and Mr. Price from North Carolina. If you would

come forward, we will be pleased to take your testimony. Your full

statements will appear in the record, and if you choose to summarize, that would be appreciated.

Mr. Regula, we will start with you since you are a subcommittee

chairman, and Mr. Price will go after that and then Mr. Knollenberg.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. RALPH REGULA, A

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

Mr. REGULA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask unanimous consent that my full statement be made a part of the record.

Mr. HASTINGS. It will and all of your statements will be part of

the record.

Mr. REGULA. In the interest of time, I simply want to say that

2–year budgeting is a management tool. I had an oversight hearing

yesterday in my subcommittee and another one today.

It is clear that one of the challenges that confronts the appropriators and in fact confronts the Congress is how can we manage the

resources more efficiently. The 2–year budget in my judgment

would allow us to do that. The first year we would appropriate

funds. The second year we would do oversight and plan for the next

budget cycle.

So from the standpoint of management on the part of the Congress, I believe that the 2–year cycle would be much more efficient.

As we are confronted with growing needs and less resources in the

absence of tax increases, which we want to avoid, the challenges

are to manage our existing resources most efficiently. It is clear in

the oversight hearings yesterday and today held by the Interior

Subcommittee that there is an opportunity to expolore management reforms. Along with that, I believe that the agencies could be

more effective because it would allow program managers and agency heads to do their planning on a 2–year cycle.

They could just, as a practical matter, contract for supplies for

a 2–year period instead of one. They wouldn’t have to spend as

much time in developing annual budgets, and they could, therefore,

focus on their responsibilities as managers, whether it be a national park or a national forest or a defense system.

Certainly in the private sector I don’t believe program managers

would be told you have 1 year to budget on a program that has a

long term impact. And so it seems to me that the 2–year budget

cycle would make a lot of sense in terms of our responsibility as

managers, directors, if you will, of the largest enterprise in the

United States; namely, the U.S. Government.

I think historically we have not looked on government as a management challenge. We have looked on it as a provider of services,

but with today’s world, with increasing populations and increasing

needs, it seems to me that approaching this in a businesslike way

to say how can we deliver the services to the people in the most

efficient way, a 2–year budget offers that opportunity. My statement enlarges on this, but in the interest of time I will hold it to

that.

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[The prepared statement of Mr. Regula follows:]

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Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Regula. Mr. Price.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. DAVID E. PRICE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

Mr. PRICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the chance to

testify here today on this question of biennial budgeting and appropriating, and to urge this committee to resist the siren call of this

so–called reform. I believe it does have some very real dangers.

Many goals and values have been discussed here today: consistency, continuity in policy, efficiency, both to guard our current surplus and evaluate future claims on resources very carefully, budget

with some flexibility responsive to changing needs and conditions,

and to preserve Congress’ power of the purse and to enhance our

oversight. These are goals in some tension with one another. They

call for a mix of both long term and short term strategy. My main

argument here today is that annual appropriations are an important part of that mix.

We have made a good deal of progress in increasing our time horizons and adding some predictability, a multiyear time frame to

the process. We work with multiyear authorizations in most areas,

and I fully agree with those here today who have said we need to

have multiyear authorizations in all of our areas. We have adopted

multiyear budget plans in 1990, 1993, and 1997. Those were important instruments for long term planning and fiscal discipline, but

as useful as these long term plans are, they shouldn’t be confused

with multiyear budget and appropriations cycle.

I believe that to argue that we should go down that path is to

draw the wrong conclusions from our recent experience. Instead, I

propose to you that annual budget resolutions on appropriations

are a needed complement to multiyear budget plans. They provide

flexibility. They help us achieve savings and fine–tune our investment strategy, and they enable Congress to be a full partner with

the executive in setting national priorities.

We have heard today, and ironically I think, advocates of biennial appropriating who claim that it would actually give Congress

more time and strengthen our incentives to oversee the executive.

I say ironically, because surely the most careful oversight Congress

gives the executive branch is through the annual appropriations

process, the kind of work that Mr. Regula’s subcommittee and others do every year. Agency budgets and performance and needs are

gone over line by line, program by program. Without the need to

produce an annual appropriations bill, this extensive oversight, far

from being enhanced, would likely be lessened.

At the very least the political potency of oversight would be less,

for oversight without the power to increase or reduce appropriations is toothless oversight. Oversight will be less engaging for

Members and certainly less compelling for the executive branch.

We know congressional decisions aren’t written in stone. Appropriations decisions are no exception. As many people have said

here today, we already enact supplemental appropriations bills, but

do we really want to increase the number of those bills? Former

CBO Director Robert Reischauer once noted that even in the current annual process, forecasters are required to project changes in

65

the economy and the budget 21 months before the end of the fiscal

year; a biennial resolution would increase this period to 33 months

for the second fiscal year of the biennium.

Pressures on Congress would increase to respond to changing

economic or social circumstances, agency failures or deficiencies in

the law. The only available vehicles would often be omnibus or

multiple supplemental appropriations bills in the off years, and we

would have replaced the deliberative, well–ordered process of annual appropriations with sporadic, ill–considered supplementals.

Biennial budgeting, while promising increased predictability and

increased efficiency, might well produce the opposites.

I understand the frustration that has led many Members to turn

to biennial budget as an antidote to our problems with the budget

process in the last 2–years and the partisan and ideological conflict

that, uncharacteristically I might say, has come to infect the appropriations process.

Chairman Dreier has suggested that biennial budgeting would

reduce the number of ′′train wrecks′′ at the end of the year and the

level of gamesmanship. Surely these fights would occur only half

as often, we can’t argue with that, if we were budgeting biennially.

But would the abuses of the process be fixed? Not likely. Would the

same problems crop out if supplemental appropriations were proposed and emergencies declared? Yes, in all likelihood, but in the

meantime, we would have greatly weakened Congress’ hand in

shaping national policy and holding the executive accountable.

I am well aware that President Clinton has expressed his support for biennial budgeting, as did Presidents Reagan and Bush before him. If this suggests that biennial budgeting is not a partisan

issue, it ought also to warn us it is indeed an institutional issue.

We are dealing here with the executive–legislative balance of

power, and we obviously need to consider this kind of institutional

change totally apart from which party currently holds the White

House.

It is sometimes said that opponents of biennial budgeting are

merely defending Appropriations or Budget Committee turf. We

have heard that. I have heard it. As a member of both committees

I am sensitive to that charge, but the fact is, we want to protect

the legislative powers of the entire Congress. That is what this is

about. The issue is not devolution of power from the Appropriations

Committee to the rest of the Congress. It is a devolution of power

from Congress to the executive branch.

So, Mr. Chairman and other members of the committee, I urge

you not to allow recent budget disagreements and frustrations to

lure us toward a supposed remedy that would make the appropriations process less systematic, less flexible, less potent. We must increase and enhance Congress’ power and performance in both

budgeting and oversight, but for the reasons that I have given and

that are developed more fully in my statement, I believe that moving to a biennial budget or appropriations cycle would take us in

precisely the opposite direction.

I thank you for your attention.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Price follows:]

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Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Price. Mr. Knollenberg.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE KNOLLENBERG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Mr. KNOLLENBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank those

members of the Rules Committee that are still here to hear us, but

I appreciate having you hold this hearing because I think it is important that we do bring forth our reservations, and I do have some

about the move to bring about biennial budgeting.

I am concerned that in our haste to push forward this legislation

we are overlooking many consequences that will drastically affect

our budget process. I want to pose some concerns that I have. They

are not new, but they are certainly ones on my mind, and having

the benefit as I do of sitting on both the Budget Committee and

the Appropriations Committee, I think I can see it from both ends.

I am not an authority on this issue, and I certainly want to hear

from everybody in terms of their suggestions as to what we should

do.

I know the appropriations process here is tough. However, we

shouldn’t let the frustrations of these past few years push us to

pass a bill that may not work. Clearly, much of the current dissatisfaction with the budget process is the result of divided control

of Congress and the executive branch that has been talked about,

and it is unlikely that a shift to biennial budgeting would make

any difference. We must sit back and ask ourselves what are we

trying to accomplish here and if this is the most effective way to

accomplish that goal. I truly believe then that biennial budgeting

is not a clear answer. I recognize the frustration. I have it, too. I

share it both on the Budget Committee and the Appropriations

Committee.

The uncertainty of budget projections, biennial budgeting could

jeopardize the very thing that many in Congress hold most dear;

that is, preserving the surplus for debt reduction, for tax cuts and

for other pressing needs. Despite today’s projections of huge surpluses, these numbers will invariably rise and fall with the economic cycle, with emergencies, those have been talked about, and

other factors that are really outside of Congress’ immediate control.

For example, I have been told that over the last 4 years CBO incorrectly estimated the deficit, or surplus for the upcoming fiscal year

by an average of $99.5 billion. Given these inevitable fluctuations

of economy and Federal revenues, Congress needs every tool at its

disposal to ensure that there are sufficient surpluses each year to

meet its target for tax cuts and for debt reduction.

The budget resolution provides the framework to make a year–

by–year change or changes in entitlement programs, in tax policy,

and in discretionary spending level. Only through actually passing

appropriations bills can discretionary levels be changed. In the case

of entitlement reforms, the budget resolution can protect these

measures from a filibuster. Welfare reform might never have

reached the President’s desk had it been considered in the second

session of the 104th Congress under biennial budgeting. It did pass

the Senate, as you know, in 1995 by a mere 52 to 47.

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On the subject of oversight, one of the supposed advantages of

biennial budgeting is allowing additional time to focus on oversight.

The irony is that most experts think that biennial budgeting would

actually reduce oversight because most practical oversight is accomplished through the appropriations process when the agencies

are dependent on Congress for more funding in the near term.

While the Appropriations Committee would continue to hold oversight hearings during the second session, they would lack the

threat of an appropriation reduction for agencies that fail to adhere

to the authorizing statutes or to consult with Congress on agency

operations or to meet other performance goals.

Further, with no regular appropriations bills in the second session, Congress would be forced to consider massive supplemental

bills or correction bills to take care of changing priorities or unanticipated events and emergencies. Supplementals tend to be more

directly under the control of the leadership, which means less

Member input and oversight.

On the subject of cutting taxes, not only do I think that the biennial budgeting process makes it tough to keep the budget in balance, it can also eliminate any hope for tax cuts in election years.

If the budget resolution includes an instruction to the Ways and

Means and Finance Committees to report a tax bill, it is protected

in the Senate from a filibuster. Any tax bill that is not reconciled

by the budget resolution from the previous year will effectively

need 60 votes to pass the Senate. This is a high hurdle for those

who came to Congress with the mandate to provide tax relief for

American families. For example, the marriage penalty relief bill

could not have been possible under biennial budgeting.Leadership

did not predict this piecemeal tax approach last year, and if it was

not included in the budget resolution, Senate Democrats would

have been able to filibuster the bill in the Senate.

I will close here shortly. I am aware that several of my colleagues have had positive experiences, as you have, Mr. Chairman,

with biennial budgeting in your State legislatures, and you are

aware of the current trend amongst States in shifting towards annual budgeting, even though there is talk of my State, Michigan,

reconsidering that. I don’t believe that is going to happen in the

near term at all.

Currently 30 States budget on an annual basis with 26 States

dropping biennial budgeting in favor of annual budgeting over the

last 40 years. According to GAO, the States tend to switch as you

know to biennial budgeting when their legislatures move from a biennial to an annual session of Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I conclude with those remarks, and I just again

want to thank you, thank the committee for the consideration of

bringing hearings to our attention so that we could provide our

thoughts about the consequences of any act that we move forward

on, and my concern is that the first thing we should do is do no

harm to the system we have. We certainly don’t want a lot of unintended consequences to make things worse than they are now.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Knollenberg follows:]

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Mr. HASTINGS. I thank you very much for your testimony. It has

been raised several times, Mr. Obey mentioned it and, Mr. Knollenberg, you mentioned it, about—my words—the problems we have

with the Senate. Our Founding Fathers were pretty wise. They developed a system like this so we would have problems. This of

course ultimately protects the people, but I would just make this

observation as far as the reconciliation process that you mentioned.

We have within our rules right now to have multiple reconciliations to take that issue away if we had, and I certainly wouldn’t

suggest that the biennial budget is the only reform, but the one

thing I wanted to ask Mr. Regula because he is the subcommittee

chairman here, and in your testimony you briefly alluded to the

fact that you have more oversight, and then testimony of the others

said that that probably wouldn’t be as good as is suggested, and

I would like you to elaborate from your perspective of having the

more time for oversight in the second year of a biennial budget.

Mr. REGULA. Well, I think it includes not only having hearings,

but it also includes visiting sites. So we simply don’t have time to

go to park sites. I know that what limited amount I have been able

to travel to sites has always been very productive in terms of getting ideas. There is no question we make policy with the checkbook

here because in the final analysis how we allocate the Nation’s resources really establishes a lot of our policies.

I think Mr. Price mentioned the fact that the authorizing committees will authorize for 2, 3, 5 years, sometimes indefinitely, but

in a sense I think that supports the contention that we can operate

on a 2–year budget cycle. I believe that the executive branch recognizes that management; that is, actually putting programs into action in the ground, basically needs more than 1 year in terms of

the resources available and in terms of the direction that is articulated through the appropriations process.

I know Ohio uses a 2–year budget, and it works very well and

we are a large State with a very substantial budget.

Mr. HASTINGS. One other observation that I made earlier and I

want to make it again because it was alluded to in the testimony

that while, yes, there will be supplementals, we have

supplementals right now, one of the beauties of a biennial budget

is that if the Congress chooses not to pass the supplemental, the

world doesn’t end, and I think that is in fact, I think that is a positive tool, and as I mentioned I experienced that at least twice in

the recent memory in Washington State in our legislature where

if you had annual budgets in both those cases you probably would

have had a train wreck, but the fact they had a biennial budget

and a supplemental wasn’t passed, the world went on, and I think

that argument needs to be made because it is a tool that works the

other way.

You are not going to get rid of the supplementals, just like we

don’t in the annual process. So you will have to make those judgments when you go through the Senate. If anybody has a comment

on that. Otherwise, if not, Mr. Price.

Mr. PRICE. Mr. Chairman, the purpose of a supplemental, of

course, whether it is on a 1 year cycle or 2–year cycle, is to fill gaps

that were left by the regular process and to take care of emerVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00078 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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gencies and to make fine–tuning adjustments, and that need is

going to be there whether we are on a 1 or 2–year cycle. I think

my point is that this will be far more common and far more problematic under a 2–year cycle because I think the frequency of these

supplemental requests will surely increase. The sporadic nature of

supplemental appropriating worries us all, and that would be increased, and I think our ability to respond to changing conditions

would face a very high hurdle, whereas now it is done as a matter

of course with the 1–year process.

So the need is going to be there for the responsible use of

supplementals, no matter what kind of cycle we have, but I think

a much greater institutional burden is placed on us with a 2–year

cycle, plus all the other problems of deferring so much authority.

I think we would be put in a position of seeking the sufferance of

executive agencies or trying to get these supplementals jimmied up.

Members would have that pressure on them far, far more than

they do now where we have that regular process, that regular annual process that we simply plug into and that we plug into in the

annual appropriations cycle.

Mr. KNOLLENBERG. Just a quick add–on to that, Mr. Chairman.

I think that there is a tendency here to compare the States with

the Federal Government, and one thing that the Federal Government has to consider and we do it periodically sitting, as I do, on

the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, there are world events that

change very quickly, producing the need to use the machinery, the

vehicle of a supplemental to bring about funding that will get into

those areas very quickly. It has been perhaps tame in terms of the

fact we haven’t had a war situation, not confrontational war, which

was the case during the Cold War.

I can tell you this, there are more instances where that will be

the vehicle sought for to use to bring about that funding, and when

it takes place, then you have the interested parties from all over

who go through the business of the Christmas tree which does

begin to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I think that is something

that is uniquely Federal, that the States don’t have to deal with

in quite the same way. As I mentioned previously, there are some

170, I think maybe 200, countries worldwide that we have an interest in. That is a problem I think that biennial budgeting really

does not get a close look at.

Mr. HASTINGS. Well, I want to thank you for your testimony and

for your indulgence of waiting, especially, Mr. Price and Mr.

Knollenberg, for testimony prior to yours. So thank you very much

for your testimony.

Next we have Mr. Bass of New Hampshire.

Mr. BASS. You want to have all the other guys come up at once

so we get it over with a little quicker?

Mr. HASTINGS. I have no objection if you don’t have any objection. We will recognize Mr. Stearns and Mr. Barton, but we will

lead off with—there is Mr. Smith from the Budget Committee. You

may as well join everybody else. We will lead off with Mr. Bass.

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STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHARLES F. BASS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Mr. BASS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to be here

today, and I know that this has been a long hearing.

Mr. HASTINGS. I will say that without objection your full statements will appear in the record, and you are welcome to summarize your statements, but your full statement will appear in the

record. Mr. Bass.

Mr. BASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I know that this has

been a long day. There has been a lot of testimony. I have a hearing in the Intelligence Committee in approximately 4 minutes.

That is why Mr. Goss isn’t here to beg your indulgence to allow me

to be excused when I complete my testimony, which will be mercifully short.

I want to thank you and all the members of the Rules Committee

for holding this hearing and hopefully more as we move this issue

further forward. I believe that now the stars are almost in line to

move forward on something that should have been done a long,

long time ago, and that is implement biennial budgets and appropriations in the House and in the Senate.

I am not going to go through point and counterpoint on the arguments for or against biennial budgets and appropriations. You have

heard them all by now. I would only say that there are Members,

there are appropriators and there are budgeteers who are concerned about the concept of change, but every single one of the arguments that they give, no tax cuts in off years, no ability to conclude oversight in an appropriate fashion, incompatibility with the

balanced budget, all of these arguments are refutable on exactly

the same grounds that they give for the arguments in the first

place. Clearly, if you plan a budget appropriately you can have tax

cuts in the second year. Clearly, if you say that the CBO predictions are not good for long periods of time, if you use that argument you ought to have a budget every week, you ought to have

a new budget every week or month or 6 months, but the fact is

Congress meets as a Congress for every 2 years. It is good for the

States and it is good for our institution to put together a plan for

a 2–year period that we can adjust during that 2–year process,

make this body work more efficiently.

And I know there are folks that love to spend a lot of time down

here dealing in a reactive fashion with all the issues year after

year after year. Congress needs to make policy. We need to be

proactive. We need to take the President’s budget on a 2–year

basis, develop a plan, amend it during the 2–year process as necessary so we can pay more attention to other issues that Americans

want us to address during a 2–year cycle in Congress.

I know that I have submitted my full testimony for the record,

and with that I would like to thank you for holding this hearing

and hope we can move forward with this important legislative proposal.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bass follows:]

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Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Bass, thank you very much. We will go to another member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Smith.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. NICK SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I will present

the other side of the story. In addition to David Obey, the Congressional Research Service, the National Association of State Budget

Directors, and GAO have testified that 2–year budgets will transfer

power away from the legislative branch to the executive branch.

We already have an imperial presidency. So I think we need to

rethink support for a budget process where the executive is going

to tend to insist that the second year of a 2–year budget increase

at least with inflation.

If we had had inflation increases in discretionary spending over

the last 10 years, we would not have a budget surplus today. So

one consideration is that transfer of spending power to the presidency.

Another serious consideration is asking the budgeteers to come

up with projections that are 2 years into the future.

If you look at this chart on budget projections you will see the

significant discrepancy between one year projections and what has

actually happened. The top of the chart, if we get above zero that

means we have a surplus. You can see the far right top blue line,

we are starting to move into the surplus. The red area represents

the projection of deficits. The larger spaces in ’92 and in ’97 are a

hundred billion dollars plus, and that is only a 1 year or 12 month

projection. If you do a 2–year projection, the accuracy declines even

further. Two years ago CBO projected that there would be a $70

billion unified budget deficit in fiscal year 2000. Of course we know

that reality is quite the contrary. It is a $170 billion surplus that

has happened.

So will we take up like the State of Ohio a Budget Adjustment

Act? Ohio is the only large industrial State left in the Nation that

has a 2–year budget. Twenty–six States have changed from a biennial budget to an annual budge since 1940 for one reason or another. In most cases, as I have talked to state legislators, the reason was increased power of the purse strings.

An argument for a biennial budget is that it will somehow give

us more time to oversee the different agencies. I worked in the

Nixon administration for 5 years, and we hopped to and did everything we could to become genial to Congress at budget time. I see

a danger of losing that pressure in those off years.

In those off years we are not going to have as much influence

and, Mr. Dreier, the other thing I would like to suggest is that the

Budget Committee should also have jurisdiction over this proposal.

I hope we would have the hearings in both places.

The CHAIRMAN. [Presiding.] That is your prerogative.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, what this chart says, just lays out

how far off we have been in terms of our deficit projections, and

that is with 1–year projections. A 2–year projection has been 200

billion or more off. Two years ago the Budget Committee was projecting a $70 billion deficit. Now we have $170 billion surplus.

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Huge problems in that kind of projection, which leads me to the

next chart.

I understand that we very well might again pass a balanced

budget amendment to the United States Constitution. We know

what it says, outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year unless. With the problem of projections,

with an administration that tends to want to spend, insisting that

it be at least discretionary spending plus inflation, with the history

of supplementals, 25 billion each over the last 2 years, I don’t think

it is going to fix the problem of reducing spending. This country for

220 plus years has had an annual budget. The problem that we

faced in the last dozen years with increased spending isn’t because

we have had an annual budget rather than a biennial budget.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Good. Thank you very much. How are we going

here? Ms. McCarthy.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. KAREN McCARTHY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

Ms. MCCARTHY. Actually, Mr. Chairman, I thank you. I have the

least seniority of this group.

The CHAIRMAN. Karen, you are recognized.

Ms. MCCARTHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to just

make three points, and I have submitted my entire testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection it will appear in the record.

Appreciate that.

Ms. MCCARTHY. Missouri is one of 23 States that has benefited

from a biennial budget, and I served for 12 years on the Appropriations Committee in the Missouri House. So I know firsthand the

benefits that can be gained when you move to this particular 2–

year program. We use it mainly in Missouri, as with most States,

to work on capital improvements and to be able to make major

plans for capital investments and to improve program oversight.

So at the Federal level that means the Defense Department will

be able to budget more effectively, and that will save dollars. We

are finding savings at the State level and that is why so many

States, 23, are using this.

You still are able to fine–tune the budget each year but you have

taken some of those major initiatives and allowed them to go forward and plan properly. That will be, I think a benefit to all of us.

I am here in support of the measure, Mr. Chairman. I hope this

is the year that it is possible to make it become law.

[The prepared statement of Ms. McCarthy follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We have got Republican,

now Democrat, we have three other Republicans, and all three of

those Members were very involved in encouraging us to proceed

with this effort, Mr. Barton, Mr. Stearns and Mr. Whitfield, and I

would like to recognize them.

Mr. BARTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would ask unanimous

consent that my written statement appear in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection your entire statement will appear in the record.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE BARTON, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Mr. BARTON. I will be very brief. I would just like to say that

what Congressman Smith said totally misses the mark. We have

the most inefficient, ineffective, anachronistic, ill thought out budget process of any major institution in the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. So you think we ought to tweak it a bit then?

Mr. BARTON. I think we should junk it and start over. I would

love for this committee to move to the floor the major budget process reform bill that I have put in 10 or 15 times, but if we can’t

be comprehensive, we can at least start in the right direction, and

here your biennial budgeting bill is a really good first step.

To say that we can’t put a 2–year budget cycle in when the

House is elected for 2 years is inane. We could do it. We can monitor it. The State of Texas, which last time I looked had a little industrial production, has a biennial budget.

The CHAIRMAN. Not a big 10 State I found out this morning.

Mr. BARTON. They have had balanced budgets for over a hundred

years. They hit the mark. They have got good estimates. They have

got an appropriation committee on the House and the Senate that

does a good job. I think we could do an equally good job, if not better.

So suffice it to say that I am a strong supporter of your bill. I

am an original cosponsor. I think it would send a great signal to

the American taxpayer to see that the Congress this year does one

thing that makes sense in terms of budget efficiency, and I quite

frankly think if you will put the bill on the floor you are going to

get an overwhelming vote, and with Senator Domenici in the Senate, with his position on the Budget Committee over there as chairman, if the House takes the lead, I think the Senate will follow,

and we will set the tone to do more comprehensive reform, if not

later this year, in the first session of the next Congress.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barton follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Joe, I appreciate your

support. As you and Cliff and Ed know very well, Pete Domenici

and I go back to 1993, when we started on this process. We had

that Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. In the past

7 years we have had many different proposals that have been introduced for aspects of biennial budgeting, but all sort of focused on

that same issue that we spent a great deal of time on in the early

part of the last decade, and I think it has taken a while to get to

where we are, but to have the chairman of the Appropriations

Committee, to have what was a very strong statement that came

here from the Speaker of the House as our lead off witness this

morning, I just want you all to know it is a very, very encouraging

sign, and obviously there is still opposition to it by some, but I

think that we have some very valid arguments to respond.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, do you have an indication of when

this might come to the floor?

The CHAIRMAN. Not yet. We still want to try and address concerns that have been raised, but as you know, the resolution which

we introduced, as the Speaker said today, nearly 250 cosponsors,

and it simply calls for in this second session of the 106th Congress

for us to move ahead with biennial budgeting, and you know to put

a time frame on it will be tough at this juncture, and also, we want

the Budget Committee to work its will, and there are some Members who are for it, some against it. I just had a conversation with

the chairman of the Budget Committee 10 minutes ago about this

issue and other concerns raised.

We have authors of two bills dealing with this here. Cliff Stearns

and Ed Whitfield have each introduced legislation. We are happy

to recognize you, Mr. Stearns.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. CLIFF STEARNS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have made my statement part of the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection it will appear in the record.

Mr. STEARNS. I think you have heard all the arguments. Listening to Nick Smith, there are two points I would make. One is that

if CBO is not accurate, we should try to work harder to make CBO

more accurate instead of saying that the CBO is not accurate as

an argument for not having a biennial budget.

In my home State of Florida they passed a biennial budget and

then they rescinded it. As I understand, there are 21 States now

that have a biennial budget. I think for us to win this argument

we are going to have to take those States like Florida where they

did not succeed and were not happy with the biennial budget, we

have got to identify why, and make sure that when we get on the

House floor and we pass this legislation, that we fully explain all

the reasons why this will work and why a lot of the States that

implemented it and then rescinded it found that it did not work.

So we have got a challenge here because like many pieces of legislation, some States will implement it, other States will pass it,

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tion. Here we have States passing a biennial budget, and lo and

behold, then some are rescinding it.

So the rescinding of these pieces of legislation dealing with the

biennial budget didn’t occur in a vacuum. I talked to our speaker

of the Florida House about it. He has a myriad of reasons why the

biennial budget will not work. So I think, Mr. Chairman, when we

go further on this we have to probably do hearings to determine

why it didn’t work in the States and preclude those arguments in

the House.

So I urge you when we bring this to the floor that we have a

hearing to bring speakers from the States forward like Speaker

Thrasher from the State of Florida, to say why it did not work and

why did you rescind a biennial budget, and hear all that before we

get on the floor because we want to make our piece of legislation

foolproof. We want to learn from what happened in the past, and

I, like many Members, support this but I do want to understand

all the problems in the past.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stearns follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Clifford. Again, thank you

for being so diligent in pursuing this issue vigorously, and I look

forward to meeting Speaker Thrasher.

Mr. STEARNS. He will be glad to come.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to have his thoughts on this issue,

too. I am happy to recognize my very dear friend, a man who is

so intelligent he married a Californian, a lovely Californian at that,

as are most Californian women, all Californian women, and Ed

Whitfield is again, as I said at the outset, one of those who provided me with a great deal of encouragement to charge ahead with

this issue, and having worked on it for so many years, the encouragement that you provided really helped get us going again. I am

happy to recognize you again.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. EDWARD WHITFIELD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF KENTUCKY

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I am sure

I am not going to say anything this afternoon that has not been

said by many Members before, but I wanted to come over here, and

I broke away from a meeting with some constituents, which I infrequently do, because I do not think there is a more important reform that we can adopt to help Congress as an institution than this

reform.

While I support controlling spending, I am not supporting this

legislation primarily because I think that it will help control spending necessarily. I think that this type of legislation will help us

stop being a reactive Congress and give us the time to look at substantive policy to help solve problems like Medicare, health care

and education, and give us more time to come up with substantive

solutions instead of Band–aid approaches.

In addition to that, Congress needs more time for oversight to determine which programs are working and not working. Right now

I believe everything is driven by the appropriations process, and

even in discussions that I have had with people in the executive

branch, at the Defense Department, at the Treasury, at Education,

while it may not be their official position, unofficially everyone that

I have talked to thinks it would be a tremendous benefit to go to

a 2–year budget in an appropriation cycle.

So I am here simply to lend my support to do anything I can do

to adopt this reform because I think it is essential for the American

people. Thank you for your leadership.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Whitfield follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Ed, as I said, you have done it. You

have been very, very encouraging and helpful in this process all

along, and I appreciate the thoughtful remarks that you have

made, not only here, but through the deliberations. I know we have

had a colleague Walter Jones who has joined with us in our first

meeting that we had, and again, in response to Joe Barton’s question, we don’t have an absolute time line put into place, but we are

hoping that we will be able to do this this year.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. And our next witness is the gentleman from

Ohio, Mr. Ney, and we welcome you. If you have prepared remarks,

they will appear in the record in their entirety, and we would enjoy

hearing a summary from you.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. BOB NEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

Mr. NEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is important. I came

away from a meeting with constituents to be here, too, and so important, if I was with contributors, I would also be here and break

away from that meeting, anything to get here.

Let me just say on a serious note, it is an issue that its time has

come for a vote, and I would also personally from my point of view

just say we ought to vote the thing, and I like your resolution. We

ought to just vote. We are going to have a 2–year budget or not.

Having hearings and having the States’ input on what worked and

didn’t work is fine. We I think feel internally, know what they feel

about the biennial budget, and they should cast their votes in due

direction.

I was chairman of Senate Appropriations Committee in Ohio.

Twenty years ago I was elected to the Ohio House and was the first

freshman in 32 years to serve on Approps at that time in the Ohio

House, went on to chair Senate Appropriations Committee. So I

have been in the throes of biennial budgets all those years. Ohio

has no intention to overturn ours.

I know you know all the arguments. I just want to make a couple

points, and I used to be a bureaucrat. So I can say this. I worked

for the State of Ohio on a couple of occasions as a bureaucrat, and

we have got a lot of good Federal and State workers. However, they

are not dumb, and a lot of people run over here and tell Members

of Congress, wow, you wouldn’t believe how we fear you during a

budget cycle, if you went to a 2–year budget we would get away

with a lot of stuff, and that is kind of a lot of nonsense when they

feed that to Members.

You know as a Member of Congress and I know these schedules.

They are far more intense than when I was in the State legislature, and your staff schedules are intense. So you spend the entire

year spinning your wheels, you do it the next time, and it just consumes all of your time. Now, if you make the argument, well, in

the second year, you know, they can do what they want, that is not

true. You have got better budgeting and all of these arguments. In

the second year you have the power of the gavel. If there is something going wrong, it is called a budget corrections bill. If you want

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to really stir them up and correct anything, you can do it in the

second year.

The other point I wanted to make I guess, too, the biennial budget has nothing to do with whether we spend more money or less.

Creating a biennial budget I will tell you doesn’t mean necessarily

we can tell you we will spend more or less money. That is a decision of the Members of Congress, and it is a vote, and there are

a lot of factors that come into play.

I think for the good of the institution, to free up true oversight,

to really dig in the next year into the bowels of the government to

find out how it works and to have the time, that is the key issue,

not the time to relax, the time to do our job and really dig into the

government in a constructive way, not necessarily always a negative way, and see how the agencies can work better. It gives them

more time and us more time.

So I fully support any efforts. I think it is good for our country

and good for the institution.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ney follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Bob. I appreciate

that and appreciate your Ohio experience coming here.

The only thing I will say on your issue of just going right to the

floor with a vote, there were some issues and concerns raised by

a number of people who have been opponents. I want to do everything that we can to address those concerns if possible, and there

may be some modifications that could be made in legislation that

we would bring forward that could again assuage some of those

issues that have been raised by them, and that is part of the deliberative nature of this institution. We don’t plan to immediately go

to the floor for a vote.

What we plan to do is—and we have spent years on this, that

is basically what we are here to do. We are supposed to spend time

thinking about these things and plan to get as much input as possible, but the resolution to which you referred, which you joined as

a cosponsor of, and again, the Speaker, had we 250 cosponsors, I

am happy to say, called for us to act in the second session of the

106th Congress, which means in calendar year 2000, and it is my

hope we will be able to act within this calendar year on this issue.

So we appreciate your thoughts and your time and input.

Mr. NEY. Mr. Chairman, I would note if I could that your approach is the better approach and the correct approach by the way.

It is just that you are much more patient than I am.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it has taken me a while to get patient. I

will tell you one little story. There are often times that I get to be

impatient and frustrated, and I live behind the Supreme Court,

and when I walk across the East Front coming in here, I look up

at the Capitol dome getting ready to damn a colleague in the other

body or maybe even one who serves in the House, although not as

often as those in the other body, and I get—.

Mr. NEY. Never a staffer of course.

The CHAIRMAN. No, no, they are damning me is the way that

works, but the thing that I think of when I look at the dome is that

this is exactly what James Madison, the father of the Constitution

and the first branch of government, this institution, envisaged for

us, and he wanted it to be a process which was very, very tough.

Fleeing the tyranny of King George, as we all know, was in part

to make sure that no single person got total power, and so that is

why it is working, and that is what has made me a little more patient. Thank you very much.

I don’t see any more witnesses here. I have a statement, there

is nobody here to object to my putting in Ms. Pryce’s statement in

the record, and I have got two very important charts here which

talk about supplemental appropriations and continuing resolutions.

Without objection, I would like both of those to appear in the

record, and our plan is to proceed after the Presidents Day recess

with another hearing, which will consist of representatives from

the executive branch and several others, and we might even entertain some other Members of Congress then at that hearing, too.

So anything else? Oh yes, and I am to state that the record is

to remain open for colleagues of ours who might want to enter

something into the record, and with that, since I have been informed votes will end by 3:00 o’clock today, virtually everyone is

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going to leave town. So have a wonderful Presidents Day break,

and the committee stands adjourned.

[Statements submitted for the record:]

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[Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m., the committee was adjourned.

(101)

BIENNIAL BUDGETING: A TOOL FOR IMPROVING GOVERNMENT FISCAL MANAGEMENT

AND OVERSIGHT

Friday, March 10, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON RULES,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m. in Room H–

313, The Capitol, Hon. David Dreier [chairman of the committee]

presiding.

Present: Representatives Dreier, Goss, Linder, Sessions, and

Moakley.

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will come to order.

This is the second of three hearings being held by the Rules

Committee to examine various proposals for establishing a 2–year

budget and appropriations cycle. On February 16th we heard from

16 of our colleagues. It was a long day in the House. We began

with the Speaker of the House, Mr. Hastert, and the chairmen and

ranking minority members of the Appropriations Committee.

This morning we will be hearing the perspectives of the executive

branch and congressional support agencies.

Our final hearing, which is going to be next Thursday, the committee will receive testimony from our former colleague Mr. Hamilton, from the former—your predecessor, Mr. Lew, Leon Panetta,

and our former colleague, members of academia and representatives of budget reform organizations, State legislatures, and the

U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Sounds like another lengthy hearing.

The prepared statements of our witnesses, along with the transcripts of the hearing can be found on the Rules Committee Web

site at www.house.gov/rules. This hearing can also be heard live—

you want to hear the Web site again?

Mr. MOAKLEY. I will be looking at it.

The CHAIRMAN. Good. This hearing can also be heard live on the

Internet by going to our Web site.

Anyone who follows budget process issues is aware of the fact

that at the end of the last session of Congress a bipartisan group

of 245 House Members joined in introducing a resolution calling for

the enactment of a biennial budget process in the second session

of the 106th Congress. As we move forward with this process, our

goal is to gather all of the technical expertise possible to develop

consensus legislation that will be successful in streamlining the

budget process, enhancing programmatic oversight and strengthening the management of government programs and bureaucracies.

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As I mentioned, in our first hearing on February 16, we heard

from Speaker Hastert, who called on us to work with the House

Budget Committee and with the Senate in a bipartisan fashion to

produce a biennial budget package for the House to consider this

year. Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young said this

was a good time to look at implementing a biennial budget process,

but urged us not to load up any legislation with other controversial

budget process proposals.

We also heard from a number of opponents of biennial budgeting,

such as our colleague, David Obey. He raised concerns that biennial budgeting will undermine Congress’ congressional responsibilities, increase the size and number of supplemental appropriations

and lock Congress into policy decisions that will need to be changed

as a result of changing circumstances.

I happen to believe the case for biennial budgeting is overwhelming. While not a panacea, I believe it will enhance government’s fiscal management, programmatic oversight, budget stability and predictability, and government cost–effectiveness.

To get a perspective from the executive branch and congressional

support agencies, I am pleased to welcome OMB Director Jack

Lew. We are going to be hearing from Congressional Budget Office

Director Dan Crippen; General Accounting Office Associate Director Sue Irving; and CRS Specialist Lou Fisher.

So we are very pleased to welcome you, Mr. Lew. This is, I guess,

your first appearance before the Rules Committee, and it is very

rare that we have anyone other than our colleagues testify before

the Rules Committee, but we do occasionally have hearings. The

subcommittee holds hearings. We are pleased to welcome you here,

and I would like to call on Mr. Moakley.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Dreier follows:]

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Mr. MOAKLEY. Oh, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I was getting ready to call on you.

Mr. MOAKLEY. You have overlooked me so many times.

The CHAIRMAN. I have never overlooked you, Mr. Moakley. It is

impossible. So before I call on you, Mr. Lew, I am going to call on

Mr. Moakley in case you were wondering.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman, I really want to thank you for continuing these hearings on the biennial budgeting.

Although I certainly like the idea of spending less time on the

budget, I am skeptical it would actually happen. I believe we would

spend a great deal of time in the off year revising the budget resolution and passing more supplementals than we do. But, for the

sake of argument, let us suppose we would spend only half as

much time on budget–related legislation. Is that really a good

thing?

It appeals to Members because agreeing on a budget and working

out the appropriation bills are among the hardest and most contentious work we do each year. Each of us has a different set of priorities, which is why agreeing on a budget always involves making

very painful choices. The only way these measures get passed at

all is by everybody making compromises. In the end, no one is completely satisfied with the final result. It has been that way every

year since the first Congress met back in 1789.

So it is very tempting to think we might be able to skip a year

of making these hard choices, but it is our constitutional responsibility to make these hard choices. We are paid to make decisions

about taxing, about spending; and we cannot, at least we should

not, delegate our duties in the off year to a control board, as Ohio

or some other biennial States do, nor should we expect other

unelected executive branch bureaucrats to set fiscal policy for the

Nation every other year just for the convenience of our avoiding

hard work.

I have not heard any Member actually make the case for a biennial budget based on the possibility of avoiding hard work, but I

sincerely believe this is what makes the idea initially appealing.

The argument that we hear is based on the amount of time devoted to the budget. We are told that the Congress spends so much

time on budget–related measures year after year, it crowds out the

opportunity to conduct oversight hearings and enact authorization

bills.

Mr. Chairman, that absolutely is not true.

I asked the Congressional Research Service, Mr. Chairman, just

what proportion of floor time is devoted to budget–related legislation. They counted all the hours spent on all the budget resolutions, all the appropriation bills, reconciliation and tax measures,

conference reports and all other related rules and motions. They

looked at each session from 1991 through 1998. In most years—5

out of the 8—we spent less than one–fifth of our time on budget–

related measures. The most contentious year, 1995, the year of the

shutdown, we still spent less than one–third of our time on the

budget.

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If four–fifths of the time we nominally are in session is not

enough time to do other legislation, I think there is something

wrong with us. It is not with the process.

I think that CRS’ memorandum ought to be placed in the record.

I have it here, Mr. Chairman.

So, Mr. Chairman, although the idea of biennial budgeting certainly warrants further study, I have to say I don’t think it will

turn out to warrant the hoopla. It is Congress’ job to come up with

the budget no matter how ugly the process, and delegating that responsibility every other year to Federal bureaucrats is not what

our constituents had in mind when they sent us here.

We have the time to do it. We just lack probably some of the inclination. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moakley follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, you want this article in the

record?

Mr. MOAKLEY. I want to frame it and put it on the walls.

[The information follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Against which portrait? I knew what the answer

was going to be on that one.

I very much appreciate your encouragement of the work ethic,

Mr. Moakley, and I am happy to call on one of the hardest workers

here, Mr. Linder.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am just pleased to be

here and listen to the testimony. I have no opening statement. I

am anxious to hear the testimony.

I would like to respond to one thing Mr. Moakley said, that floor

time versus nonfloor time is 25 or 20 percent of what we do. But

my guess is the nonfloor time on the budget takes four or five

times as much as the floor time, the conference reports, negotiating

back and forth with the White House; and to do that every other

year would give us an awful lot of time to do oversight, which

would seem to be lacking.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing our witnesses.

The CHAIRMAN. I am happy to call on Mr. Sessions.

Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you, Chairman. I am delighted to be here

today, and I am very proud of my chairman for bringing forth full

and forthright discussion.

I believe that this in–depth discussion about the idea of biennial

budgeting is very, very important. My colleague, Mr. Moakley, says

that we don’t spend too much time on the budget. I tend to disagree with that. I think we do spend too much time on the budgeting and too little time on oversight.

I have had a great number of dealings with Inspector General

Walker. We have talked about the duty of oversight and the opportunities that we have to make this government not only work more

efficiently, but provide a set of tools so that we can make government do the things and help it to perform in the ways that it

should.

I believe that probably the greatest avenue of success that will

be coming as a result of biennial budgeting will be not just the impact on Congress but on agencies. Agencies always, I think, would

tell you that if they get a budget that is early, with money that is

appropriated to where they know exactly what Congress is asking

them to do, they can perform their planning function properly.

And I remember doing a college paper back in 1977 on the effectiveness of giving the Pentagon a 5–year budget, and I am well

aware that we are not talking about 5–year budgets here, but of

how a 5–year budget would allow what was then the largest department of the government to move efficiently and effectively, not

only through their procurement, but also on their things—the day–

to–day needs and looking forward in technology. And I think if it

was true in 1977, it would certainly be true now in 2000 and 2001

and on a going–forward basis. I believe this would help us and the

government to more effectively look at waste, fraud and abuse.

I believe that it is a management tool that companies, many

companies, Fortune 500 companies employ. They do a 5–year view,

not just of budgeting, but of the actual money that will be spent,

where they are going to spend it, how they are going to spend it,

what the priorities are. We will have an opportunity to talk more

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gress what their needs are, instead of on a year–to–year budgeting,

on a longer–looking, more forward–looking basis.

So I think if we look at what is happening in the States, we can

glean the good part of those opportunities, and Mr. Chairman, I am

very proud to be a part of this effort for us to have an in–depth

look, an opportunity to know what the advantages could be, what

the pitfalls are. And I believe that the administration, being here

today as they are, will be able to present us with a view from a

great deal of wisdom—men and women who have participated with

President Clinton in running this government for the last 7 years.

They have been through not only trial and tribulation, but they

have seen some things that I think that in their last few months

might offer us an opportunity to make things better.

And it is this making better, the scrubbing down that I think is

very important, and I appreciate your bringing this forward.

The CHAIRMAN. We are certainly proud to have you as part of the

process, Mr. Sessions, and I would like to further buttress your arguments by providing, without objection, in the record a litany of

the last decade of roll call votes we have had on the budget on the

House floor showing how great that work ethic has continued to

prevail here.

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The CHAIRMAN. So with that, Mr. Lew, we again welcome you

and look forward to your testimony

STATEMENT OF JACOB J. LEW, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF

MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

Mr. LEW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the invitation to appear

at the committee this morning. It may be my first time testifying

before the committee; it is by no means my first experience working with this committee. I had the pleasure 25 years ago working

for the now ranking member, Mr. Moakley, and learned a great

deal about—.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I think you just blew it, Jack.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for being here.

Mr. LEW. And the chairman at the time was Chairman Bolling,

whose picture is sitting right over Mr. Moakley’s shoulder right

now. I learned a great deal about the House and this committee

and the important role it plays in making sure things work well,

both in the House and in the Government of the United States.

This may be an issue where Mr. Moakley and I don’t agree 100

percent, but I can tell you, I have the greatest respect and I am

grateful for the work you do.

I would like to start, if I could, by sort of recognizing where we

have been on this issue and how far we have come to get to the

hearing today. Since 1993, the administration has supported biennial budgeting. It was part of the National Performance Review

recommendations. There are a number of recommendations that

were made there, some of which we have already implemented,

that will help us reduce the size of the Federal workforce, reduce

the deficit, and this is an important piece of the overall set of proposals that were made.

Two of my predecessors, as you noted, Leon Panetta and Frank

Raines testified in support of biennial budgeting, and at the time

it was not an idea that seemed to have very much support. The difference sitting here today is that we are in the middle of a discussion where people are asking, is it really going to happen this year;

and I would like to change a little bit the focus of the way we testify.

Rather than making the case strictly for biennial budgeting, I

would like to associate myself with the remarks my predecessors

have made, and I would just focus on some practical considerations,

what I think would need to be worked through for biennial budgeting to work, because I think there is, whenever you make significant changes, the risk that you sometimes don’t address just the

problem that you are trying to solve, but other things that may create problems, or fail to deal with some of the practical considerations.

I think the important challenge before this committee is to work

on getting a proposal enacted into law and how to get a proposal

that works, and I would like to focus on some of those issues.

Any law that provides for biennial budgeting will set forth procedures. I think it is important that the procedures be realistic, and

I would start by saying that I don’t believe it is realistic to think

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that the second year of a biennium will be a year of no executive

branch proposals and no legislative actions. I think that the law

has to provide for a realistic updating process so that in the second

year there would be an orderly review of supplemental requests

and changes, so that there would be an active policy process in the

second year.

The challenge—the challenge is to have it be an orderly process

so that in the second year we don’t end up doing 13 separate appropriations bills that become a kind of disorderly way of accomplishing what we do today with the regular appropriations process;

and in there is a lot of the challenge of making biennial budgeting

work.

I think there is a need for flexibility in the executive branch for

biennial budgeting to work. There will be a need for reprogramming authority. There will be a need to give agencies some more

discretion, but there will also be a need to have the committees, the

appropriations committees, have oversight responsibilities through

notice, through approval mechanisms; and I think the challenge is

going to be to find the right balance, to have the balance be so that

the executive branch agencies can work in a smooth way and so

that the appropriating committees don’t end up micromanaging at

such a small level that we have a kind of paralysis in the second

year.

It won’t work if we end up with no ability to change in the second year. It won’t work if we end up with too much executive discretion. It won’t work if we have too much legislative micromanagement. I think it comes down, beyond process, to questions of comity

between the branches and whether we can make it work.

A lot of the problems in the current appropriations process are

not written in the rule book, not written in the statutes. The problem has been a difficulty in reaching agreement and reaching

agreement in a timely way.

To the extent that we have to do it once, not twice, in a 2–year

cycle for all 13 appropriation bills, I think that is a good thing. I

think it will certainly allow more time for management issues to

get attention in the executive branch. I believe it will allow more

time for management issues to get attention in the legislative

branch as well.

Now if it turns out that reaching agreement on 2–year appropriation bills is more difficult than we think and if the process leaves

us in a state of limbo for a long period of time, that will be a concern to me. And I would note that points of order as an enforcement mechanism are very useful as a tool for blocking certain action, it is not a very powerful tool for forcing action; and I think

that we have to all think very hard about what we can do to make

the process work, so that there will be action on a 2–year budget

if we have a law that creates these rules to provide for 2–year

budgeting. Because if you get into the 15th, 18th month of a cycle

and you don’t have an agreement on the 2–year budgeting, then

you are expanding the window of uncertainty that we often have

at the beginning of the fiscal year now when we run for a month

or two on continuing resolutions.

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eting is an answer to all the problems of the budget process, I

think is not correct. I think there are many things about the budget process that need to be addressed. The President’s budget made

several proposals, including having a Social Security solvency

lockbox, providing for Medicare transfers to ensure Medicare solvency; extending the PAYGO rules so that we have fiscal discipline

in the time of surplus; and extending realistic budget caps, discretionary caps, so that we have discipline in the appropriations process. I think it is very important that all these issues be considered,

not just biennial budgeting apart from all the others.

On the other hand, I would be very concerned about what the

chairman referred to as the controversial budget proposals that

could be added into a bill. Biennial budgeting has many, many benefits, but if attached to it are provisions that would either relieve

the pressures of the current PAYGO system or make it easier to

take what I would describe as a path away from fiscal discipline,

I think it does more harm than good. So I think the challenge has

to be to design a workable biennial budgeting proposal, keep it

clean of dangerous proposals, and hopefully expand the discussion

to include what we think are very positive budget reforms beyond

biennial budgeting.

Let me close, if I may, on a positive note. I think that my experience as OMB Director has only reinforced my belief that what we

do on the management side is every bit as important as what we

do on the budget side. The frustration that I have is that the budget process takes up so much of my time, so much of the time of the

people that we deal with in Congress that we don’t have as much

of the year as I would like to devote to making the programs work

better.

I think biennial budgeting, if it is properly designed, could very

much help alleviate these pressures. I think that beyond design we

have to take very seriously and take a look at our own practices

as both executive branch and legislative branch representatives

and ask ourselves, can we make it work even if the rules are written right.

I believe we can. I think we should try to and I applaud the committee for taking the step it has taken to advance the debate on

this issue.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lew follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Lew. That is very

helpful testimony, and you, of course, raised that important issue

of flexibility which is one of the concerns that the opponents have

addressed.

You touched on something that I would like you to expand on

just a little, and you said a new supplemental structure, and I wondered what you envisage as a structure. Because again, opponents

said what you are going to do is have a load of additional supplemental appropriation bills; and you said, obviously we don’t want

to have 13 appropriations bills in that second year when we want

to focus on oversight. But clearly that question is before us.

Mr. LEW. I think that the supplemental process is one that, if

properly managed, doesn’t have to become the equivalent of 13 appropriation bills. I think just yesterday we saw the Appropriations

Committee take action in the House on a very substantial supplemental appropriation bill where there has been an effort between

the branches to work on resolving issues that couldn’t have possibly been addressed last October.

The notion that in the second year of a biennium we will look

back and say that all of the decisions that we made at the beginning of the biennium are 100 percent correct, given changing

needs, changing priorities, I don’t believe is realistic. I think the

executive branch needs to take a review and make proposals.

I think what I would emphasize is that putting together changes

is a very different undertaking than putting together separate requests for 100 percent of the funding of each department. When I

look at a supplemental appropriation, it takes days of analysis.

When I look at an agency appropriation for each agency of government it takes weeks and months of work. It is a very different

magnitude if you are looking at the 5, 10 percent that you are

changing, than if you are looking at absolutely everything from the

ground up, oftentimes repeating the things that you have done very

recently, but you have to go through if you are going to go through

every line of it. The discipline of looking at what has changed and

doesn’t warrant new action narrows very much the scope of what

you are addressing.

I think the administration should propose changes. I think Congress should have an orderly procedure to review changes, and I

think that the danger of not having an orderly process is that it

kind of dissolves into a year–round process where there are always

changes being proposed and always changes being acted on. I think

that would end up taking a lot of time and that would not be a

good use of either the executive branch’s or the legislative branch’s

time.

So the desire to say that a 2–year budget doesn’t require another

look, I don’t think is realistic. The challenge is to design that second look so it is efficient.

The CHAIRMAN. So this is what you describe in your prepared

text as sort of a midcycle review process?

Mr. LEW. Correct.

The CHAIRMAN. As has been pointed out by all of my colleagues

here, we spend a great deal of time on this, on the budget process.

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You talked about the fact that you spend so much time on it, other

than getting into these other things.

As far as the other agencies of the government are concerned,

what would you say the amount of time they spend on the budget

process itself is?

Mr. LEW. I think it is hard to answer a question like that statistically. You answer it kind of impressionistically.

The budget year never ends. If you look at where we are when

Congress finishes its work on the appropriations bills, it is supposed to be September 30th, but in our recent experience, it has

more likely been November 30th or October 30th. Our budget process is well underway at that point. We usually start our OMB reviews, so that means the agencies have made their submissions to

us already, around Columbus Day.

We make our recommendations to the President before Thanksgiving, and we make our recommendations to the agencies by

Thanksgiving. From Thanksgiving until the end of the year, we

work through with the agencies the process of resolving appeals of

OMB decisions on budget levels and ultimately take to the President issues that can’t be resolved short of that.

Then the process from January until the budget is sent up in

February is a production process where we put together the many

volumes that have to support the budget. The agencies are very involved in that; we are very involved in that. That is a less time–

consuming process for the policy officials at the agency, but it is a

very time–consuming process for the budget officials.

The period of time from January until March used to be the time

when Congress shifted to the focus on budget matters, and the administration was relatively less involved. I would say that the extensive hearing process, which I am not criticizing, which I think

is a very worthwhile process, takes a very substantial amount of

time for not just OMB, but agency heads for most of February and

March.

I know I talked to my colleagues who are very, very much involved in preparing for their testimony. They take very seriously

the need to come prepared and to have good sessions, and that involves senior management as well as budget officers.

At the point after, you know, March, the Appropriations Committee begins working on its appropriation bills. The committees

are very much in contact with the departments, with OMB. That

process goes pretty much until the end when the cycle begins all

over again. So there is really not much of a break.

Now, I am not saying it takes 100 percent of the time of policy

officials, but there is virtually no part of the year that isn’t very

much affected by work on the budget process.

I think if you had a biennial budget system in place, you would

have a real chance of creating a 6–month window when budget

matters took a much lower share of senior policy officials’ time,

which would allow more time to be spent on management, and

then as that filters down through the layers of government even

more so. So I think there is definitely a benefit to be had from trying to stretch the process out.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask just one final question. You said that

since 1993 the administration has been a proponent—and I know

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the President; I talked to the President about this. He has been a

strong supporter of it. Was this something that you have always

supported or have you come to this position after your years of experience working for Mr. Moakley, among others?

Mr. LEW. I must say, personally I take process changes with a

little bit of a grain of salt because if they are not backed up by the

commitment to make them work, they can’t work. You can write

a perfect process, but it is not the process that make decisions. It

is the people working in the process that make decisions.

I have always thought that the appropriations process took up

more of the year than it should. I remember 20 years ago seeing

this diagram that looked like a worm, that described the budget

cycle where there is an 18–month period where parts of the process

are always overlapping each other. I must say my biggest concern

is whether workable procedures would be backed up by the participants in the process to make it work, and it does take comity between the branches. It takes a willingness to allow for some executive decision, to allow for some congressional oversight, to work in

a collaborative way.

We have been better at that at some times than we have at others. I think that that is a challenge that can’t be written on paper.

It is something that people have to commit themselves to, and if

we are committed to put that in, I think it is a very good idea, and

it is one that I very much support.

The CHAIRMAN. So you have always been a proponent of the biennial budget process, then, I guess?

Mr. LEW. Since I have had a firm opinion on the matter, the answer is yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Goss.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You make a good case for wanting to have some time to let your

senior managers do things other than punch numbers. I think that

is very reasonable and refreshing and probably welcome news to

the American public.

The same I think applies to the dual role we have here, which

is legislation and oversight. I think that one of the reasons we are

looking at this from this point of view is to decide if, we can have

a little more time for oversight of the way you have managed; and

I think that is one of the good things about our system, that it provides a series of checks and balances, and I think this is part of

it. And I do think the budget cycle as it is presently constituted

does tend to take away, certainly, our time; and it has become such

a workload for all of us that it probably has a negative impact on

our oversight in total. I won’t say from point to point, but I would

say, in total, I think we can do better in oversight. That may not

be welcome news to you, but I think it is welcome news to Americans. At least that is the way we have set it up.

I wanted to ask, you talked about the process and other parts of

the process, other reform, and I wanted to go into one of those

areas which I think might be considered other, and it is something

that has struck me as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. We

have, I am told by CBO, something like 130 programs, worth about

$120 billion, which don’t get authorized, but nevertheless get appropriated through the magic of the Rules Committee or some

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other system that we have created for ourselves here. In the Intelligence Committee we have a mandatory requirement for authorization. If the authorizing committee doesn’t do its work, theoretically no funds get appropriated.

Now there are lots of ways to deal with that theoretically, but

by and large, I think that gives us an extra incentive to do our authorization work timely and go through the budget properly.

And I am wondering, since that only applies to the Intelligence

Committee and one or two other discrete programs that I can think

of, if you have a view on whether or not we ought to be a little bit

more attentive to following the process of authorization and then

appropriation? Does that give us a salutary gain in our process?

Mr. LEW. I think that the authorization process is a very important one, and if you look over the last 15, 20 years, it probably has

not worked the way it was intended to work, to put it mildly. Part

of it has to do with the calendar which doesn’t permit authorization

legislation to get time on the floor. If it doesn’t get the time on the

floor, the incentive to produce it in committee goes down; it just

kind of flows through the system. I think freeing up floor time and

having a calendar where authorizations were expected to be considered would be a real gain.

I think that the notion of appropriating with and without authorizations is something that is divided in several categories. Authorizations that have expired, where there is an authorization that

has been in place, is a very different circumstance from programs

that have never been authorized at all; and I don’t find it to be as

troubling for appropriators to take the liberty of appropriating in

areas where there is a last authorization, but there is a clear policy

that has been written. I think it would be a kind of artificial constraint, given our ability to process all of the authorizations to have

programs just go away because the authorization date has passed.

I think that there is a lot of activity in the appropriations process

that is either on the line or across the line in terms of creating new

authorizations, and I think one has to take those matters on a

case–by–case basis. I think the rigid rule that says never appropriate without authorization, no waivers, would leave us unable to

address changing circumstances in a timely manner.

I think if you go too far, it does a lot to diminish the ability of

the Congress to have the kind of serious, detailed review of policy

that should go in to putting initiatives together, and I think one

has to find the right balance.

Mr. GOSS. I appreciate that. I think I am probably about the

same place. I know that there is no such thing as a permanent

fixed–in–cement solution for anything around here, but I am leaning towards trying to find incentives so that there are rewards for

authorization as opposed to, particularly, new authorization. I

agree with your distinction, and I think that is a useful comment,

and I appreciate your help.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Jack, welcome back. I know Tip would be very

proud of you. I hear that you are in favor, but it sounds like you

are very cautious about it. I find that the fight doesn’t come from

so much the budget process as it does the policy decisions. I think

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the process isn’t bad. We just can’t get people together to agree on

what should be in the budget and how much, and that is where the

fight takes place, wouldn’t you say?

Mr. LEW. I think the process today creates more friction because

of the calendar than it needs to. When the budget resolution is up

in the air until the spring and the Appropriations Committee can’t

begin its work seriously until late spring, then we get into the summer and we are seeing September, October on the horizon, it becomes more difficult to work through the policy differences. One of

the benefits of biennial budgeting is that it would give the appropriators more advance notice of what their targets are and give the

appropriators time to work through a lot of the policy differences.

I don’t disagree with your basic notion there is policy in the process. I mean, it wasn’t a process issue that caused the appropriations process to go until November, but it was a calendar issue that

forced those issues to come to ripen after Labor Day when we had

a September 30th deadline ahead of us.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Is it realistic, Jack, for an incoming President in

his first 4 months to come out with a 2–year budget?

Mr. LEW. I think that is one of the biggest practical considerations, the transition issue. I think there is a one–time transition

that has to be thought through very carefully. I went back and

looked at what our schedule was when Leon took over OMB in

1993, and he sent a short document up in February on time and

the longer documents for a 1–year budget up in April.

I think realistically—you know, that was an OMB Director, who

had vast experience in Federal budgeting. No one is going to do it

much faster than that, and the notion that you can do a 2–year

budget by February, March is just unrealistic. I think April is a

stretch.

I think that what it says to me is that for the first 2 years of

a new system there really needs to be very careful consideration

given to the practical realities of the transition. I think that it

ought to be fully in effect at the beginning of a Congress. I think

it would be ideal for it to be in the middle of a presidential term

so that you didn’t have everything changing all at once, and there

are ways that one could design the transition so that you could

have the process put in place where, on a technical basis, OMB is

going to redo how the computer systems are run, how the agency

guidance is put out, what the agencies give us to work the kinks

out when the time pressure to absolutely comply is not as great,

and to have the idea be that after a 2–year transition you are fully

in the new system.

I think that to wait and say, let’s start in 2 years creates the

same problem again 2 years from now. At any point it is going to

be difficult, but it is particularly difficult at the beginning of a new

administration where everything is new.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Does it also mean the biennial budget process

really creates an avalanche of supplemental budgets in the off

year?

Mr. LEW. I don’t think it is an avalanche exactly. I think one

ought to expect there would be a substantial need for

supplementals.

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We have seen in the last number of years that we have substantial needs for supplementals with annual budgeting, in part because we can’t predict where it is going to flood and where hurricanes will hit, in part because changing international situations require new commitments that we couldn’t possibly foresee. I think

those things will continue to come up, only a little more so, because

they are normal changes from year to year.

If you look at the Federal budget, I don’t have an exact percentage, but an awful lot of it doesn’t change from year to year. We

spend a lot of our time making the same decisions over and over

again. A lot of activity is in the last 10 percent, which is where the

change really is. In the second year, if we focused on that 10 percent and we had an orderly process, I don’t think it would be anywhere near as time–consuming as putting a full budget together or

in terms of Congress processing 13 full appropriations bills.

I do think there is a risk, as I noted in my formal remarks and

opening remark, that it could kind of dissolve into 13 ad hoc appropriation bills. Then I think you end up worse off than when you

started. So it is going to take discipline and the structure, the process can help provide that discipline and the people working in it

have to make it work. I think it is worth the effort.

I think the challenge of managing the current process is probably

one that future administrations and future Congresses will share

the frustrations that I and my predecessors have noted. I think

that the changes have to be well designed, and that is why I have

tried today to focus on what the issues that have to be carefully

dealt with are.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Thank you.

Thank you, Jack.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Linder.

Mr. LINDER. Would a 2–year cycle create less incentive for getting an agreement at the end of the first year? Because it seems

to me that the longer we drag this out, the more we are getting

pressured into our next–year cycle.

Mr. LEW. There is certainly a risk. The end of the fiscal year is

an action–forcing event. The notion of being in a continuing resolution doesn’t strike anyone as a particularly good idea. It is not good

from the agency’s perspective; it is not good from the Congress’ perspective. I think it diminishes public regard for government because it makes it clear we are having difficulty making the basic

decisions that we are expected to make.

I think the notion of slipping months into a fiscal year is not attractive under the current system. It would not be attractive with

biennial budgeting. I think the same pressures that drive you to

reach a conclusion now would drive you to reach a conclusion later.

I do think the challenge of reaching a 2–year agreement would

be slightly larger, significantly larger than the challenge of reaching a 1–year solution. I think that if we get into the habit of thinking in 2–year terms, it will get easier than it seems today. I think

it will be harder the first year than it is 2 years later when it is

done for the second time, but I think if you get well into a fiscal

year and you haven’t reached agreement, it is not just the 2–year

budget you haven’t reached agreement on, you haven’t reached

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agreement on a 1–year budget, which means you are in the same

situation you are in today, operating on continuing resolutions.

I think that there is another alternative, which I think would undermine the benefits of biennial budgeting, which is waiving points

of order and doing a 1–year budget because you can’t reach agreement on a 2–year budget. If you do that, then you end up back

where you have started, and if it is done in a timely manner, arguably you are no worse off, but you haven’t gotten the benefits because you are going to be right back the next year doing the same

budget negotiations and you won’t have created that window of opportunity for management and oversight.

Mr. LINDER. In virtually every administration, the Congress and

the administration have differences in their respective priorities

and spending. They want to control spending in one area and add

the spending in another, based on programmatic priorities.

Would our ability to get control of budget spending, get restraint

in spending, be lost if you had the opportunity for supplementals

the following year?

Mr. LEW. I don’t think it is supplementals per se that are the

threat to the discipline on spending. It is the people who write and

propose supplementals that we have to look towards. The supplemental is no different than any other spending measure in terms

of how we use it. If I can go back to the current system, we made

a real effort in this year’s budget to set discretionary caps that

would enable us to live within the caps and to maintain fiscal discipline.

I think if you mark up a budget resolution this year, you face the

challenge that I think is really the answer to your question. Pretending that the caps can be put in an unrealistic level will force

the kinds of machinations that get around caps, that I think has

given budgeting a bad name in the last few years.

I think if you have realistic caps, the fact that you need a supplemental doesn’t make it worse. I think if you have unrealistic caps

you are either underestimating what you are going to spend, because you are going to get around it, or you are implicitly signing

on to policy that many of us find unacceptable because it would

mean cuts that would not be tolerable, whether it is in education

or other areas.

Mr. LINDER. You have made several points on the need for the

administration, and particularly your staff, to have time for oversight and management, to manage programs. What you call

′′management,′′ we call ′′oversight.′′ Do you consider the oversight

process in the legislative branch to be a burden or can it be helpful

to you?

Mr. LEW. Well, I don’t know that that is a choice. It is certainly

a burden. I can say that preparing for an oversight hearing, it does

take time and effort.

Mr. LINDER. Is it helpful?

Mr. LEW. I think it can be helpful. It is no more intrinsically

helpful or unhelpful than our own internal review process. It depends how well it is done and whether it identifies issues in a useful way. The fact that it is a burden doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do

it, but I think we have to understand it is a burden, and a lot of

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burdens are good burdens. So that is why I say it is not really a

choice.

I think that the oversight function ought to be viewed not as an

inquisitorial function, but more as ′′how do we make a program

work better′′ function. There has been a trend towards using oversight as a way of sort of catching the wrongdoers. I think that the

most useful function of oversight is to engage in management reviews as sort of ′′we have designed these programs together, how

do we make them work well,′′ and if you find something that is

wrong, then you deal with it appropriately.

I don’t want to paint anything with a single brush. There are

very useful oversight hearings that go on in many committees, but

when you ask for my reaction to oversight, it is very much how it

is done.

Mr. LINDER. We have had testimony before one of our subcommittees of this committee with respect to the ability to do oversight. We have had five chairmen before this panel say that it is

very difficult to get information out of the administration to do

their job, particularly with the Justice Department. I don’t know if

you are familiar with those comments that we have received.

Mr. LEW. I know that we have had a lot of experience in recent

years where the requests for information have been at a level of detail that is unprecedented, and I don’t think it is a level that necessarily gets at the policy issues that are really at hand. The

amount of time it takes to assemble some of the data crosses the

line from a burden that is a constructive burden to a real time

problem. There are issues of executive branch privilege where certain internal documents, internal decision–making processes, I

don’t think are fully appropriate for discussion at hearings. The

President is entitled to have confidential discussions with the people around him.

I don’t know that there is a partisan issue. I mean, I am sure

we will come up with examples of Democrat committees and Republican committees that have done the same thing. I think that

the tendency to try and identify a not terribly useful piece of information that is very difficult to produce and make the charge of material nondisclosure has gotten to be a little bit of a concern.

Mr. LINDER. I can see that in some committees that were here

testifying before us. I think the Resource Committee had a legitimate complaint on a simple request they were being impeded on,

but thank you for your help.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sessions.

Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Director Lew, I would like to go back to some of your earlier comments with my colleague, Mr. Moakley, and by and large, he asked

the question when, when should we do this, and I found your response very interesting; and by and large, you said, well, we could

do it now, Leon Panetta, when he became the Director, did a remarkable job then because he had the experience and the background, but I am not sure that the next administration, whoever

that is, would necessarily view that as an advantage.

Now, that is a summary of what I heard you say. Can you elaborate a little bit more, because we are talking about the advantages

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of this system, what it would provide; and then I heard you say,

but maybe not in the hands of a new person.

Mr. LEW. That wasn’t what I meant to be saying, Mr. Sessions.

I think that what I meant to be saying was that budgeting for a

single year, it wasn’t until the middle of April that Leon was able

to get a full year budget to the Congress. If it had been a 2–year

budget, I suspect it would have been more like May or June. If it

had been May or June, that would have closed the window for congressional action, I think unreasonably. I don’t think Congress can

wait until June to meet a September 30th deadline on appropriations.

I think that the first time biennial budgeting is put in place for

anyone, ourselves included, it would have been a heroic effort to do

it in the first year of a new administration. There are an awful lot

of things that are different in the first year of an administration.

First of all, the budget decisions are being made much later in the

process. They are being made in late January and early February

instead of November and December. I think when you switch for

the first time to a biennial system, the bookkeeping all changes.

You have real decisions for 2 years, and there are a lot of processes

that have to be put in place that one could anticipate and do some

of the groundwork early. But inevitably when that goes into effect

for the first time it will require effort, substantial effort, to make

it work.

I didn’t mean to be suggesting that we could have done it but

someone else couldn’t. I think it is a generic transition issue.

Mr. SESSIONS. So let us go back to Mr. Moakley’s question, and

the question that I am posing. When? When should we do this?

Mr. LEW. I think in any problem that you try to solve, where

there are transition issues, you can say, oh, let us not do it because

it is going to be hard; or you can say, let us get started and provide

for a reasonable transition so we can be there as soon as possible.

We have supported biennial budgeting. We continue to support biennial budgeting, and think that the time for action is sooner, not

later. What I was suggesting is that enacting it doesn’t mean saying that on February 15th or whatever the date is next year there

should be submitted to Congress a biennial budget. I don’t think

that is realistic.

I think April is a stretch. I think if you make the deadline June,

it gives Congress very little time to work. I think that one of the

things that we would want to work through with the Congress in

developing a schedule is going through a lot of the nitty–gritty,

practical considerations and reaching sort of a mutual conclusion

as to what is realistic to do in the first year and the second year;

and then in the third year, where you go to the full implementation

of biennial budgeting, have it be a 100 percent in place. I don’t

have a schedule in mind today, but that is kind of notionally what

I think would need to happen.

Mr. SESSIONS. So you believe that if this committee did move forward, if this House and the Senate moved forward, that it could

be wise to do that now and then?

Mr. LEW. Absolutely.

Mr. SESSIONS. So you believe that now is the time and that the

transition then and the understanding should be flexible, we

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should understand that the time frame might change a little bit,

but that it would be a workable thing for the next administration,

whoever it is would have the advantage of this biennial budgeting?

Mr. LEW. With the understanding that, in the first year, I don’t

think it would be true biennial budgeting; it would be the beginning of a transition.

Mr. SESSIONS. Certainly we would make provisions, to where we

were giving next year’s budget early on.

Mr. LEW. I will just throw an idea out. You might want to have

a later deadline for the biennial budget than you do for the first

one, so that there is a little bit more—.

Mr. SESSIONS. To transition?

Mr. LEW. You may want to have a notional second year budget

that is not binding for the first year.

There are a lot of different ways to do it. I think the challenge

is to get the processes up and running, to have the decision–making process start to work in 2 years rather than 1–year terms, to

change some of the cultural parts of the budget process that are

slow to change. It is not just writing it down on paper. It is changing the way a lot of people in a lot of places do their work.

Mr. SESSIONS. Good. And now is the time?

Mr. LEW. It will just take longer if you wait.

Mr. SESSIONS. The second part is, we focused a lot—and you

have in your testimony—on the process that Congress goes

through.

Can you give us a little bit of insight about the office that you

hold as Director of managing the money, managing the agencies

and their performance, what would be an efficiency that would be

gained directly that you see within agencies?

Mr. LEW. Within agencies?

Mr. SESSIONS. Sure, which is your job.

Mr. LEW. I think that from an OMB perspective, we don’t have

a separate management process. It is an integrated budget and

management process. When we do our budget reviews, we discuss

the management issues simultaneously with the budget issues.

And we have in our budget 24 priority management objectives

which are very closely tied to our budget objectives, something I

am very proud we have been able to accomplish in the last few

years, to not have sort of abstract management principles, but real,

tangible goals that are tied to the budgetary priorities that we

have. And we have made progress on a good many of them.

I think that if we had more time, we would be able to work at

a senior level on more issues like that with the departments. I

think that we have real benefits when we have senior–level attention to those kinds of issues, whether it is our experience with the

INS who are working together from the senior levels on down—I

mean the Attorney General and myself right down through the

budget offices.

We made a lot of progress clearing up the backlog of people who

are waiting to become naturalized Americans. It involved coming

up with a management plan. It involved coming up with a personnel plan. It involved having the money behind it. It wouldn’t have

happened if it had not been involving the senior officials in both

departments.

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There are only so many of those things you can do when most

of your year is spent on the process of working through, either internally within the administration or in negotiations with Congress, the budget funding levels, and I think that the notion of expanding those kinds of opportunities for each one you do, it is a

major problem that you have a good chance of solving.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank you for being here today, and I will tell

you that I believe President Clinton is well served by your duty to

our country; and I appreciate your being here.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Goss has one more.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to follow up, if

I might, on just the point you made responding to Mr. Linder’s

question about oversight.

We have a lot of reason to believe that oversight can be viewed

by different perspectives, where you are in governance, and you

said that you are a little concerned that our focus on catching

wrongdoers was misplaced; and I would say that it is misplaced if

it is involving partisan politics, if the oversight is being done strictly for partisan political reasons. I would agree and I share, I think,

what is a universal concern that we not contaminate the substance

of government with too much partisanship.

But I am concerned that anybody would use the allegation that

it is partisan, when we are trying to make a substantial oversight

review of a matter and we have found time and time again that

we do a very high percentage of our business on the Hill in public

session, open door, and the executive branch does a very low percentage of its business necessarily in public session, usually behind

closed doors, that creates clearly a job. And quite often when we

do the job well, using the tools, the GAO or the various organizations we have here, to pursue these matters of oversight, we find

we get information; and then if we can’t get the follow–up information from the executive side of government, we become frustrated,

usually by that time the media has got it, because we do a high

percentage of our business in public.

So the question then is, what do you do next? One of the reasons

I am for biennial budgeting is, I would like to have the time to consider what do we do next when we get in that consideration? I wonder if you have an observation on that relative to the response you

made to Mr. Linder.

Mr. LEW. Well, I guess my response—I personally have a very

low tolerance for wrongdoing. I don’t mean to be suggesting that

you or we shouldn’t be concerned about it. What I meant to be suggesting is that most management issues that we need to work

through don’t involve people who are trying to do bad things or

who even did things that were wrong. It is just problems that are

not ′′front page of the newspaper′′ problems that you need to spend

time working through to make things work better.

I think that the question of what you do when you find out

things are wrong, whether it is because a process doesn’t work or

some people did something they shouldn’t have done, is the hardest

part. At some point, obviously, if it is a question of real wrongdoing, it becomes a legal question, but from a perspective of management and program oversight, it is a question of what in the

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structure of a program needs to change to create a higher likelihood that the job will get done.

I think there has been a very useful increase in focus on performance measures. I would just note this is kind of similar to my reaction to Mr. Linder’s question. I am very concerned that as we focus

on performance that we not make it a club we use to say to agencies, you failed to meet your standards, we are going to take your

money away.

Mr. LEW. Having performance measures work requires having

people make an honest appraisal and assessing realistically what

they could have done better with the opportunity to fix it. And I

think the management and oversight process has to be aimed at

how you get things fixed, not how you take people’s money away

or you find somebody that did something wrong.

If people did something wrong, the law should be used to take

the appropriate steps. In order to make programs work, you have

to have a window where you identify a problem and you try and

fix it. I don’t mean to suggest that it is all partisan. It is something

about the high–pressure environment in which we govern is focused more on finding the problem than providing a window to

solve it.

Mr. GOSS. I think that is a good answer. I think we spend an

awful lot of time, way too much time, in this, what I will call,

standoff between the circle–the–wagons mentality and the gotcha

mentality, and I think that is the mentality of this town, and I

think that there is such waste of time in that effort. On the other

hand, there are very legitimate questions. Somehow, somewhere

somebody has to lead us out of this, and maybe if we get into biennial budgeting, we can have the time to figure out how to do this

rather than responding to what is in the newspaper today.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. GOSS. Of course.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I think it gets down to what I said. I think most

of the problems are the policy differences instead of a process.

What do you do in a situation, should we do this or that? That is

where the fighting takes place, and I think that is where the slowdown comes, the way that the Congress handles some of these

things based on policy differences and not the budget process.

Mr. GOSS. I would agree that there is some of it that is policy

difference, and I think we all benefit from having an airing of policy debate. That is what we all come together to do, and that is

wonderful.

I am talking more about process, however, and it does happen

this way. I will give you a case in point. There is an alleged activity

going on called Echelon. Echelon involves something that is near

and dear to all Americans. It has to do with ′′is Big Brother eavesdropping on Americans?′′ and the answer is, in my view, no. But

nevertheless, the perception is that the answer might not be no. In

order to satisfy properly the people who are asking those questions,

you really have to get down pretty far into the detail of this and

respond to case by case of whatever allegations may be.

My view is if you are blocked from doing that, it creates a suspicion. That is a process problem, not a policy problem. You have

to be able to get through that process, and you have to have ultiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00147 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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mate candor in the oversight committees. When that candor breaks

down, you have a breakdown in process, and I called it circle–the–

wagons, gotcha, either way. I am hoping that we are going to buy

some time through the Chairman’s leadership on this biennial

budgeting so we can get out of that mentality and do something a

little more constructive.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Linder.

Mr. LINDER. I just want to follow up on comments on the Results

Act because my subcommittee will be having a hearing on the 22nd

of this month. Each of the authorizing committees tends to look at

the Results Act in three different prisms. We would like to formalize in some way to say what was your mission when you asked

for this money, how many people were you trying to serve or how

much were you going to spend, and when they come back, did you

do it. Not an angry argument about we are going to take your

money away, but a formalized plan for the agencies who, because

we haven’t had the time or been as perspicacious on oversight as

we should have been. Some agencies take this more lightly than

others do, and if we can take some formal way so that all agency

heads would respond in the same way, and all authorizing committees look at it in the same light, I think we could have a legitimate

discussion on whether a program was worth the money spent.

There are going to be changes from time to time in these programs and the needs of the programs, but the Results Act was a

good idea which has not come to fruition yet.

Mr. LEW. We worked on the development of the GPRA, and we

believe in the goals of it.

I would make a couple of observations. First, the challenge of

measuring performance, measuring results is different for every

agency and every program. We have tried to work with each of the

agencies to develop meaningful measures, and I would say in some

cases it is very hard, legitimately very hard, to identify the tangible

outcomes. Take a scientific area, is your measure breaking through

with Nobel–quality research? Is your standard having well–managed research projects with or without breakthrough results? It is

very difficult.

I think that having kind of a mechanical approach, which I don’t

suggest that you have taken, you have taken a very much different

approach, but to have a mechanical approach that you set a standard and you don’t meet it, there are consequences, kind of blurs the

fact that there are hundreds of different ways that results can be

measured. And if you want agencies to do it right, and you want

agencies to not circle the wagons as Mr. Goss said, you have to create kind of a safe zone to discuss what you do with your own measurement of your results, give you some freedom to fine–tune your

measurement if you designed your measure wrong, not just have

immediate dire consequences because you failed to meet what

turned out to be a badly defined measure.

I have been trying through our internal executive branch efforts

to, with each agency, make this part of the culture that they do

their budgeting and run their programs. I think we have made tremendous strides. You can have a conversation that is a results–oriented conversation in virtually any agency, which you couldn’t do

6 years ago.

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I think to say we are far down the road towards having crisp

mechanisms that you can use for budgeting is an exaggeration. But

I think it is an important tool that needs to be given time to work

properly, and I would look forward to working with you and others

to do it in a balanced way.

I react to the suggestion that others have made, if they don’t perform, we should take their money away. The circle–the–wagons

mentality will kill any effort for success if that is the approach we

take. As a practical matter, I think you need to have a much more

balanced approach than that.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you very much.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I agree on the problem of not getting all of the information, but I don’t see how the biennial budget can fix that.

That is between the branches. I don’t see how this takes any more

time away from you. You still have the oversight powers to do it.

Mr. GOSS. I would say if you have more time, which I hope the

biennial budget will give us, to set up the safe harbor process that

Mr. Lew is talking about, you will get a good reward from it. I will

say, the committee I chair, which is probably as nonpartisan a committee as you can find in Congress, and for good cause—.

The CHAIRMAN. Next to this committee.

Mr. GOSS. Yes, of course. Yes, next to this committee. In fact, the

comparison is wonderful. We do have a safe harbor and good oversight and working trust, and it is that way because we have been

able to spend the time together and work out the processes, and

I think that is the highest priority. But not all of the committees

are as small and select and compact and have that capability. I

wish other committees could replicate the things we use. I would

like to provide them the time allowance and say create your safe

harbors and create a trust and working confidence so that you can

do your oversight job in a fair way without being blocked with the

wagons or having the people who are testifying think, oh, oh, they

are going to figure out a way to get me and hang me. That is all

I am looking for.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I think you have created that safe harbor using

annual authorizations.

Mr. GOSS. Remember, however, that we have a clear mandate to

get our authorizations done so we work at a little tighter pace on

our authorizations. We are the only committee that has that requirement. I only have one job as a chairman, and that is get the

darn thing done, and that means I have to create the atmosphere

to do it, and the way I do it is creating this safe harbor. That takes

time and constant management. You cannot just simply set up a

system and expect it to work, because the personalities will kill it

if you don’t work at it. It is a little like a marriage, it really is. I

don’t want to marry the executive branch, but a pleasant courtship

would be all right.

Mr. MOAKLEY. You would like to be there on the honeymoon.

Mr. GOSS. Probably, not necessarily.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me make just a couple of comments and

throw a couple of questions to you.

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First of all, on the issue of setting a date for the first year of an

administration, there are a number of pieces of legislation for biennial budgeting that have been proposed that do address that. The

question that is out there, what is that date going to be, and that

is why from your initial remarks about the issue of flexibility, it

seems to me that we need to spend some time and effort thinking

about what that date would be.

Mr. LEW. I think there is a window because the proposals that

I have seen have April. Later than April raises real questions

about the workability of the congressional timetable. You are constrained on both sides.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right.

The other issue that I would like to raise is what you would

see—how the government performance review timetables, how

those would fit within the biennial budget.

Mr. LEW. I think you would clearly have an opportunity to try

to alternate the emphasis in terms of performance reviews and

budget reviews. I don’t think that you would ever want to separate

them. I think if you ended up having performance reviews be totally independent of budgetary considerations, it would be a step

backwards. The challenge is how to switch the emphasis in terms

of how much time you have to do both at the same time. And right

now we have to try and fight to get the performance issues into the

budget schedule. If we had a year when the budget schedule was

less intense, we would have more time. But you have to do both

simultaneously.

The CHAIRMAN. This has been a very interesting and helpful exchange that we have had. There are a number of members of the

committee who are obviously not here, and we would like you to

take some written questions which may come from them. I would

also like to make a request that members of your technical staff

work with us as we fashion this package. We want to address Mr.

Moakley’s concerns and some of the other concerns which have

been raised by our colleagues as we proceed with what is obviously

uncharted waters here.

Mr. LEW. We will try to be responsive.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for being here.

Our next witness is the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, our friend Mr. Crippen, who, unlike Mr. Lew, has many times

testified before the Rules Committee on a wide range of budgeting

matters, often on Friday mornings.

STATEMENT OF DAN L. CRIPPEN, DIRECTOR,

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

Mr. CRIPPEN. Good morning. We have a statement, which has

been submitted.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will appear in the record.

Mr. CRIPPEN. Thank you. It is a good statement that will be seen

as more succinct than what I am about to say.

I recalled, Mr. Chairman, as Mr. Moakley and Mr. Lew were

talking, that in 1981 I was a newly minted Ph.D. starting to work

for Howard Baker, and a number of my classmates and I had established a tradition in December of going sailing. Not long after

I started for the Senator, I asked whether it would be possible to

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go sailing in December. He said, of course, we are going to be out

of session by Thanksgiving. So I made plans accordingly.

To make a long story short, by the time it came for me to go sailing, the Congress was still in session. President Reagan had vetoed

a number of appropriation bills. He was about to veto a continuing

resolution, and I went back to the Senator and told him that the

time had come for me to go. He said, of course. We are almost done,

and there are just a couple of continuing resolutions (CRs) to do.

I turned to walk away, and he said, ′′You just made one mistake.′′ I thought that was the end of my short career in the Senate. He

said, ′′Like a damned fool, you believed me when I said that we

were going to be out by Thanksgiving.′′ I tell that story for two reasons. First, the situation we find ourselves in is not new. These end–of–the–year conflicts over appropriations will take place under any circumstances. Second, President Reagan used the veto and the year–end train wreck to reduce

spending. The conflicts we have been engaged in in the past few

years arguably have been to at least change or increase spending.

I would say in this little example as well, those who assert that

biennial budgeting would accede power to the executive, ignore, I

think, the impact on the Chief Executive. That is why President

Clinton and others have resisted things like an automatic continuing resolution because it does have the ability to alter power,

but again, that depends on who is in power and on whether that

is desirable.

In my discussions with Members, I think I have discerned at

least three reasons behind the discontent with the current budget

process. The first is the annual end–of–the–year mess. Second is

lack of oversight, which we have talked about a great deal this

morning. And third, the comment is often made that we spend our

entire legislative lives doing budget, and that issue must also be

addressed. I would like to make a few comments on each of these

points, Mr. Chairman, and am open for whatever questions you

may have.

Of course, the first issue—end–of–the–year train wreck—is not

new. The last time we had 13 appropriations bills finished on time

was almost a decade ago. The automatic CR is one way to prevent

the end–of–year problem. There are other techniques, other process

reforms, that would help that as well.

We have, I think, over the past few years had less and less oversight. It wasn’t always so, although that is not to say that we have

ever had sufficient oversight, and maybe there is no such thing.

But oversight is hard work, and I think the amount of oversight

has been declining. In that sense, the prospect of the two year

budget might be quite useful and encouraging.

I would also note that as you discussed the Performance and Results Act in the last moments with Director Lew, this year is really

the first year for full reporting under that act. Reports are due at

the end of the month. It would attest to the ability of the executive

branch to critique itself. Are they meaningful, are they open, are

the wagons circled or not?

Second is the Congress’s ability to respond to the reports. Will

there be oversight hearings based on those reports, and will the reports be a useful management tool? We have a real, live experiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00151 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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ment starting in a few weeks on both of those issues. Looking at

oversight issues, I would encourage you to look at how the reports

are received and used.

Third, the constant complaint that all we do is budget stuff, has

been around since the Budget Act was enacted 25 years ago. I first

encountered it in 1981, but it was not new then. I would suggest

that perhaps it is the constraints of the budget process, not the

time involved, that is the real rub. People don’t like the budget

process because it defeats or deters or makes it harder to do things

that they would otherwise like to do. So the constraint may not be

the core time or the time involved but rather the questions about

resource allocation and the policy issues.

However, I would say, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, that we are

in a new world. We have these ongoing surpluses and rapid economic developments that we can’t keep up with in our own forecasts of spending and growth in the economy. We have the impending retirement of the baby boomers and the need to reform Social

Security and Medicare. So if biennial budgeting reduces the number of train wrecks, promotes more oversight, and allows more time

for nonbudget issues, then it is worth a try, at least temporarily.

We should remember that the reason all 13 appropriation bills

were completed on time in 1988 was because the Congress and the

President struck a two year budget deal. So there is some suggestion, at least, that it worked in those circumstances, and it might

again. But it is a process change to address what is largely political

problems, and I don’t mean partisan but rather power and policy,

as Mr. Moakley has said; that is, thin margins in both bodies, and

a President of the other party, and the constraints inherent in creating and implementing a budget. We only know, however, that if

we try a different process that there will be unintended consequences, and so we need to be cautious about how we proceed.

I will conclude with a second story from 1981. Howard Baker’s

first vote (and what turned out to be his last vote as Majority

Leader) was on increasing the debt limit—something that was difficult to round up 51 Republicans in the Senate in 1981 to support.

Ultimately he did, but it was a messy process, and he looked with

much favor on the House process. I think it is called the Gephardt

rule, in which a debt limit increase is deemed approved when the

budget resolution is passed, and so the House as a regular matter

does not vote on debt limits.

So Baker sent me off to talk with Bob Dole to see if we couldn’t

implement the Gephardt rule in the Senate. After some backing

and forthing, Dole looked at me and he said, ′′You know, someday

we are going to be back in the Minority, and we don’t want to foreclose all these opportunities of legislating by other means.′′ And so

he was not only prescient but resisted the change, and indeed the

Senate still has to vote on debt limits. All of that is to say that one

needs to be cautious about making these changes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Crippen. You continue to provide

very helpful input to this committee and this entire process.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Crippen follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. I will say that I recall many discussions that I

have had with Howard Baker in which he has long been an advocate of making this a part–time Congress.

I will tell you that it was in the first instance of your three that

you outlined, which was the waning hours of the first session of the

106th Congress, that I successfully garnered 245 cosponsors calling

for the biennial budgeting process.

Mr. CRIPPEN. That was not an accident.

The CHAIRMAN. That was part of our timing process here.

You have very important responsibility at the CBO, and I am interested to know what impact the biennial budget process would

have on your work as Director of the CBO.

Mr. CRIPPEN. It would obviously depend a great deal on how you

chose to implement the two year budget. We will do whatever the

Congress wants and needs in that process. I would hope and anticipate—whether it is a formal role in terms of another budget resolution or not—that there would be ample opportunities to update the

semiannual reporting that we do now on baselines and economic

changes and other things.

At the moment things are changing quickly enough that a few

months makes a lot of difference on a budget outlook, even for the

current budget. The revenues for this budget year, for example, are

running higher than we anticipated even as late as December. That

does not mean that they are going to be higher, but at the moment

they are. What that portends for this year could be important, but

it could be important for future years as well.

My point is that in a two year process, there would still be opportunities for the Congress to incorporate updated estimates for at

least the first few years in which these things are changing quite

rapidly. I don’t anticipate, however, having said that, that there

would be a great deal of change in the overall workload. We put

out three annual reports, and I would anticipate that we will continue to do that. There would be some midsession reporting that

would go away, but I don’t think that the workload would change

dramatically.

The CHAIRMAN. In your work with the executive branch, do you

have any recommendation as to what the time frame would be for

the first year of a new administration as far as its submission?

Mr. CRIPPEN. I had, frankly, not thought all that much about the

implication of having a new President and a new budget process

simultaneously. Clearly you could enact the law this year and have

its first true effective biennial date be two or three years into the

new President’s Administration. Just as the Congress did back in

1974 and 1975 when it passed the original Budget Act, there was

a one year practice run in which the requirements were not binding, and everyone went through the paces. Likewise, it might make

sense to enact the law this year and make it—effective officially,

fully effective—the third year into the President’s term.

The CHAIRMAN. With your tie to the first branch of government,

I am wondering whether or what thoughts you have on the argument that opponents of biennial budgeting make that we are acceding authority to the executive branch?

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Mr. CRIPPEN. You have subsequent witnesses here who have that

belief more than I do. Having worked on both ends of the avenue,

with the Congress and the President, I think that it is, frankly, the

other way around—that the executive branch would lose a modicum of power if you made appropriation bills less recurrent, more

combined, and only once every two years do you have these end–

of–the–year sessions or negotiation. But I think that is why the Administration has resisted efforts by the Congress to have continuing or permanent continuing resolutions or automatic continuing resolutions so that you have a crisis of sorts to create an

atmosphere in which to reach conclusion on these issues. They well

may find another forum.

The CHAIRMAN. What about the issue of their responsiveness?

Mr. CRIPPEN. I find it hard to believe that any agency would

stick its finger in an appropriator’s eye just because it is going to

be 18 months before they see them again. Most of the management

is year–round; it is not just in oversight or before appropriations

committees. There is ongoing work between the appropriations

staff, some of your staff, and agencies. I don’t think that lengthening the leash will have an impact.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. Goss.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you. You probably are in as good a position as

anybody to judge in terms of time and effort the people who have

put together budgets, whether there would be tangible savings if

we switch the system now. Do you think that there would be tangible savings?

Mr. CRIPPEN. I suspect there will be some. We are reacting to

budgets, not developing them. However this system works, we will

be in that same mode, presumably. But I have worked in the executive branch on putting budgets together, and indeed it is a very

time–consuming process. That is not to say process is not a useful,

but I can’t imagine that it would not save some time to not have

to go through all of it every year.

Mr. GOSS. I am certainly not wedded to change for change’s sake.

We are trying to see what the pluses and minuses are. I have assumed that there would be a time savings.

The other thing, you are in a very good position also to make any

comment you would like on the authorization question that I asked

Mr. Lew. I am a little puzzled sometimes about why we seem to

have slipped away from the authorization process. I would be curious to know whether you think it has anything to do with the

budgeting process.

Mr. CRIPPEN. I am not sure that I know the cause. There are different causes and different reasons as to why these things happen.

In some cases, people feel it is not needed; that is, the program will

go on, and therefore we should not break our backs reauthorizing.

But it is an increasing problem if you measure it by the amount

of money that is being appropriated that has not been authorized.

That amount seems to be growing, just as I think—and this is a

casual observation—that oversight in general has declined in authorizing committees. I don’t know the reason for that. Until you

know the reason, it is hard to have a solution. If time is indeed a

factor, and if the authorizing committee chairmen are more than

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willing to do oversight, then a two year cycle might help. I suspect

there are lots of reasons why oversight has declined.

Mr. GOSS. I think time is a factor. One of the aspects of oversight

is accountability, and sometimes when there is no authorization,

accountability gets a little blurred, too.

Mr. CRIPPEN. Clearly, these processes were meant to complement

each other—the authorizers to do both oversight and set the parameters of the policy, and the appropriators to set priorities

among available dollars. So the processes were intended to be fully

complementary, and I think that when they work, they are complementary, as in your case with the intelligence authorization and

appropriation.

Mr. GOSS. I have no objection to an appropriation of an unauthorized amount subject to the authorization of that amount. That

is not a handy way to do it, and probably not the smartest way to

do it, because it leaves a lot of uncertainty down the road, and if

you are moving numbers and dollars around, you don’t want that

uncertainty. But it seems to me even that would be an improvement over the nonauthorized approach; do you agree with that?

Mr. CRIPPEN. Yes, I agree. I think that what we are discussing

are mechanisms by which we can not only produce better decisions

and more efficient decisions, but also recognize that we need to

keep, as Senator Dole reminded me back in 1981, the ability to resolve conflicts. Given the thin margins you now have and the differences in parties between the executive and the congressional

branches, what mechanisms are there to force conclusions, to have

policy or conflict resolution? It is not just that you can fully eliminate conflicts. You may have better ways to do that, but it is not

possible to fully eliminate those conflicts and the discussions that

need to take place.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We are going to have

some written questions to submit to you.

Mr. CRIPPEN. We do have some ideas about how it can work.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. We are going to bring our last two witnesses up

together, Sue Irving, Associate Director of Budget Issues of the

General Accounting Office, and Lou Fisher, senior specialist in separation of powers at the Congressional Research Service. We welcome both of you and thank you very much. You are certainly free

to summarize your remarks as you see fit. Ms. Irving.

STATEMENT OF SUSAN J. IRVING, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUDGET ISSUES, ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION

MANAGEMENT DIVISION, UNITED STATES GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Ms. IRVING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Goss and Mr.

Moakley. It is a pleasure to be back. As you all know, I actually

like talking about the budget process, and I am delighted to come

back and join another group. As you noted, I would like to have my

whole statement put in the record.

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I would like to stand back a minute and remind all of us that

part of why the budget debate is always going to take a long time

is because it is through the budget that we resolve the often conflicting demands and views of the American people about the role

of government. You all live in this world, and you know your constituents want a smaller government as long as it fixes all of their

problems. Someone that I worked for once said all of American political thought could be summed up in two sentences: Get the government off my back, and there ought to be a law.

I think in a very real way when you talk about your frustration

about how long the debate takes, what you are really saying is that

you seem either to debate numbers without context or to debate the

same thing over and over again. I know Senator Domenici used to

talk about having to fight about whether the space station should

be continued first on the budget resolution, then on the authorization bill and then on the appropriations bill.

So I am not sure that the issue is really that the budget takes

too much time as much as it is that the debate may not focus on

the important issues and how can you think about restructuring it

to do that.

The other point I would like to make is that in a very real sense

you stand at the threshold today. Having slain, at least for the

time being, the deficit dragon, you have the ability to stand back

and look at two other very important things. The first is how do

you think about the long–term costs of the commitments the government makes.

We know that the good news is my generation is getting older.

The bad news is we are getting older, and that demographic tidal

wave, absent policy changes, will overwhelm either the surplus or

at a minimum the flexibility to do anything else in government.

When you are fighting the annual deficit problem, you don’t have

time to look at that issue and now you do.

Second, you also are just beginning to reap the benefits of some

far–sighted laws you all enacted: the CFO Act, the Government

Performance and Results Act, and the Clinger–Cohen Act. These

are just beginning to bring to you some performance and cost information. I think it is fair to say, unevenly done and unevenly used

because it takes time to adjust, but it is beginning.

These issues confront you whether or not you change the cycle

for the budget process. Whether you stay at an annual cycle or go

to a biennial one, you should think about how to use that information in cross–cutting ways, because I would argue that your current

authorization and appropriations committees are quite well suited

to do targeted oversight and program–by–program oversight.

When Director Lew talked about working very hard to prepare

for hearings, I thought to myself, ′′that sounds like oversight to

me.′′ But both Congress and the executive branch have a harder

time doing cross–cutting oversight. We have quite appropriately in

this government assigned many agencies and used many tools to

address the same problems. We use tax, we use spending and State

grants, we use regulation, and we run them through different committees and different agencies to get at a number of objectives, everything from counterterrorism to health to—I remember Mr. Mica

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trying to look at trade policy and figuring out there were 19 subcommittees involved in it.

It is not clear how you do this kind of cross–cutting oversight on

either cycle at the moment, whether you stay with annual or move

to biennial. Mr. Walker, in testifying before the Senate Budget and

House Budget Committees last month, suggested that you think

about whether vis–a–vis oversight you are in a similar situation to

what you were vis–a–vis budget before the Budget Act. And if so,

whether you might develop something like a performance resolution as an adjunct to the budget resolution. This would not have

numerical rigid targets—you didn’t feed this many people, we are

going to cut your budget. Rather the question is, should the views

and estimates process be modified to have agencies suggest targets

for cross–cutting oversight.

To the extent that you look at biennial budgeting as an attempt

to think about better or more systematic oversight, it won’t happen

by itself in any process. You have to think about how to structure

it given the fact that there are disparate jurisdictions.

Your staff asked me in my focus on biennial budgeting today to

talk about a couple of things in particular. First to note that Congress is actually pretty good at giving multiyear money and different timing of money when it thinks it is necessary; the frequency of decisions is not the same thing as the periodicity of

money. Sometimes the impression is given that the only way to

give the agencies advance planning ability or flexibility in the use

of their funds is to change the appropriations cycle. However, all

of these biennial budget bills propose two 1–year budgets. We are

not going to 24–month fiscal years in any of these proposals.

The other thing that your staff asked me to discuss was the experiences of some of the States. We are currently looking in depth at

three States. Let me start with a couple of caveats. State budgets

play a very different role than the Federal budget, and State procedures and policies cannot be translated wholesale to the Federal

Government; I would not want to be heard to suggest that you

could make your decisions based on the State experiences. Rather,

as you think about what it would take to implement this if you

chose to do it, some of the mechanisms that the states have used

should either give you ideas or pause. I think that one thing that

Director Lew and I absolutely agree on is this: The devil will be

in the details. How you decide to make biennial budgeting work

will determine whether it transfers power, how it works, and what

you get from it.

The three States of particular interest, I think, are Ohio, Arizona

and Connecticut; Ohio because it is the only large State that has

both an annual legislature and biennial budget process, and it always has; Arizona because it just last year moved its budget from

an annual to a biennial cycle with the avowed intent and a structure for seeking cross–cutting oversight in the even–numbered

year. Now, in Arizona they only appropriate half their money. Federal money flows directly to the agencies, as does any money created by voter referendum or any user fees.

The third state, Connecticut is of interest because about a decade

ago it went to biennial with the idea that it would increase oversight. The Governor is supposed to propose a biennial budget every

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odd–numbered year, and they are supposed to do nonbudget substantive reviews in the even–numbered years. However, in the last

decade in every even–numbered year the Governor has had a fairly

significant number of policy proposals and budget revisions; this

year in a $10 billion budget, the combination of gross technical

changes and gross policy changes, that is both pluses and minuses,

has been more than $750 million. Based on our preliminary conversations, Connecticut has not, in fact, done oversight in the second year except in the context of the appropriations process where

they were doing it before.

None of these States separate authorizations and appropriations.

Most States have one omnibus appropriations bill or a few. In most

States the Governor has a great deal more power than the Constitution envisions for the President.

In Ohio, there is an entry called a controlling board, which is

composed of six members of the legislature and the director of the

Governor’s Office of Management and Budget. This controlling

board does not adjust the total amount of general revenues appropriated. However, it moves money between years; it moves money

between purposes within a single agency, and if you are a fee–

funded agency, it may approve an increase in your spending if your

fee revenues increase. In addition, the Governor, as you also know,

has the power to cut spending unilaterally to achieve a balanced

budget.

We have more preliminary details on the States, and we will

share that with your staff.

Finally, let me turn to the Federal level. If you are thinking

about how to handle the first year of a new President’s, term, you

might want to look at the Department of Defense both as a possible

candidate for early transition and also as a cautionary tale on how

willing your colleagues are to do this. Under current law the Department of Defense is supposed to submit and supposed to receive

both a biennial authorization and a biennial appropriation, but you

all know it does not. The department does, however, prepare a biennial appropriation request, and the Department goes through the

process of preparing a biennial budget. The Department of Defense

would say this is a greater burden than they would bear under an

annual process because they have to do the second year twice. But

it means you do have a department that is ready to go. You also

have a Congress that has been unwilling for whatever reason to do

this.

Whether or not you get the benefits that you seek from a biennial budget process depends entirely, I think, on what provisions

you design for the second year; how you compensate for the fact

that you will no longer have a fixed period where the agency comes

up with appropriations requests. What will be the bias about

supplementals; will there be a single technical revision in the second year? How you respond to things that are unexpected.

So I think it is an open question whether you can make it work,

and because of that, it may be an open question whether you want

to do it. However, if you do go ahead, I think it is going to take

a lot of detailed planning. We are available to assist in any way.

I am happy to answer questions.

Mr. LINDER. [Presiding.] Thank you for your testimony.

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[The prepared statement of Ms. Irving follows:]

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Mr. LINDER. With respect to the States, do Ohio, Connecticut and

Arizona meet every year?

Ms. IRVING. Yes.

Mr. LINDER. Texas does not.

Ms. IRVING. That is correct.

Mr. LINDER. From your knowledge of Texas, does the executive

have broad, expansive powers in the off year?

Ms. IRVING. I do not know a lot of detail about Texas. Since I

have mostly been looking at the States with the idea of what they

can offer Congress. I have only looked at the ones that have an annual legislature. Texas is an interesting State because it is generally viewed as a weak Governor State despite having a biennial

legislature. I can get you that information.

Mr. LINDER. Twenty years ago I proposed that the Georgia Legislature ought to meet in the odd–numbered years and pass bills,

and in the even–numbered years repeal them all.

Ms. IRVING. I know too little about Georgia to comment.

Mr. LINDER. There have been some comments from both Republican and Democrat people that the GAO was getting less and less

valuable information in their studies. I am sure that you have read

some of the complaints. I am wondering if it is getting more difficult to get information.

Ms. IRVING. Mr. Linder, I think the experience in getting information tends to vary widely. For the kinds of studies I do, it is not

a problem. Both OMB and CBO and the committees and the States

have been cooperative.

I am not sure that I am in a position to make a general comment

about access. I know that there have been some incidents. I think

that most of them have been worked out. Mr. Walker is generally

not the kind of person who takes no for an answer. I don’t know

that you should be overly worried about his ability to work these

out.

Mr. LINDER. He is from my county.

Ms. IRVING. So you know what I mean.

Mr. LINDER. Let me pass to Mr. Goss.

Mr. GOSS. I don’t have a lot of questions.

I agree with one of the points you made about the longer view,

and do you have a desire to share with us a mechanism that works

for the longer view process?

Ms. IRVING. That is interesting. As you probably know, we have

done some work on looking at how the current budget accounts for

insurance programs and long–term commitments; very long–term

data is a little squirrelly. But we have proposed for a number of

areas it would be a good idea to include in the budget some supplementary data and improve the quality of information about these

commitments.

I would not propose going as far as we do with credit where we

have shifted from cash budgeting to accrual budgeting because we

are not ready to do that yet for insurance programs, but we are

ready to create the pressure to improve the data by requiring that

it be included as supplementary information. Then you might think

about whether you wanted to go to some sort of triggers within the

process, whether disclosure or a range of the size of the commitVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00172 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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ment. I don’t think you are ready to integrate it into scoring, but

I think it is important to recognize that PBGC is not a profit center

for the government, and on a cash basis it looks like one.

Mr. GOSS. I think that is a good observation.

I have to go in a few moments, and so I am going to hold my

questions because I would like to hear what the next witness has

to say. Thank you.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. You referred to Ohio as a biennial State. Don’t

they have the operating budget one year and the capital budget the

other year, and so is it really a biennial budget?

Ms. IRVING. In general, I accept the State’s definition of its cycle,

but I would say that Ohio comes closer to being on a staggered biennial cycle than some of the other states who list themselves as

′′mixed.′′ For example, Kansas says it has a mixed cycle, but what

it means is that the regulatory boards like Cosmetology are on biennial cycle, and all of the general fund is on annual one. Ohio is

a split; one year they do capital, and one year they do operating.

Mr. MOAKLEY. In the off year they do operating budgets, and

they have this control board. Does that almost take the place of the

legislature?

Ms. IRVING. One thing that is consistent in States is that they

give a great deal of power to the staff groups. In some of these

States the equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office actually

prepares the appropriation, and they have a joint legislative budget

office. What happens in Ohio is, the Governor proposes a budget,

the legislative budget office looks at it and analyzes it. Their appropriations committees pass the appropriations. They are all done

pretty fast in the States.

Even during that period the controlling board may be making adjustments on some of the nonappropriated revenues. The controlling board has to approve all contracts over $25,000. But I don’t

think that I can say that they usurp the power of the appropriators

in the odd–numbered years. But if you think—.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Don’t they have the ability to take money out of

one account and move to another account in emergencies?

Ms. IRVING. They can move money between purposes within an

agency, yes, sir.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Would not that be the action of the legislature?

Ms. IRVING. I thought you meant in creating the overall budget

in the off year.

Mr. MOAKLEY. No, I mean just administering the budget.

Ms. IRVING. Yes, they basically run reprogrammings and transfers.

Mr. MOAKLEY. By going to this biennial process, sometimes you

ask bureaucrats and unelected officials to do the things that elected

officials do today.

Ms. IRVING. In Ohio it is really as if you picked six of your colleagues and gave it to them, because the controlling board is members of the legislature.

Mr. MOAKLEY. That is a great board to be on. Thank you.

Mr. LINDER. Actually we have a similar situation in Georgia,

where a panel of legislators can move money, and reprogram

money within agencies.

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Since the 16 or 17 States have changed their budget cycle, has

there been a trend to which direction they go?

Ms. IRVING. Until this decade, the trend was from biennial to annual, and the major explanation was the difficulty in forecasting.

In this decade the only shifts have been Arizona to biennial and

Connecticut to biennial.

Mr. LINDER. If forecasting is more difficult under a 2–year budget cycle than a 1–year budget cycle, what is the propensity to pad

budget requests?

Ms. IRVING. Of course ′′padding′′ is not a neutral term. I think

if I were a good manager and I were trying to guess what I needed

in the second year, I would be inclined to round up to compensate

for uncertainty. I have no empirical evidence one way or the other.

If you are going to retain fixed dollar caps, of course in the aggregate that can’t happen. It becomes part of the argument between

the executive branch agencies.

Mr. LINDER. You mentioned the capital budgets that Ohio, I believe, has. And there has been some discussion for a decade about

moving to biennial budgets and capitalizing major purchases. Are

we at the point where we can do that?

Ms. IRVING. It is a difficult switch, and conceptually very different for the Federal Government. In the States they define capital essentially as infrastructure—roads, buildings—and they fund

them by floating bonds. Much of what we would think of as investment at the Federal level we don’t own. For example we give

grants to the States to build roads. It is very hard to imagine depreciating something that you don’t own.

Another really big issue is whether you are trying to use your

budget to match costs to outputs or to show the amount of resources you have committed. Accrual and capital budgeting help

with matching costs in the economic sense with output, but for

physical assets they may really hide how much resources you have

committed. And in general, and we think appropriately, Congress

has wanted to accurately show how much of the resources produced

in this country they have committed. We have been fairly strong

proponents of up–front budgeting for capital, because if you have

actually committed for the whole building, you should show that

you have committed future resources.

You can, below the aggregate level, improve your allocation of

costs by developing some mechanism so that the agency getting the

building is ′′charged′′; you could use capital acquisition funds below

the aggregate level to allocate the costs more appropriately, which,

as you look more at the Results Act, you may want to do. But for

the Federal Government at the aggregate level, capital budgeting

raises a lot of problems.

One other thing—many people only want to move the expenditures to the capital budget and not revenues.

Mr. LINDER. Let me just pick up on one last point. You mentioned the Results Act. Do you think that a more uniform rule with

respect to how it is viewed by agency heads and oversight committees, such as a fairly carefully thought through mission statement,

then an examination in reauthorization, how well they approached

their mission, are they still on the same mission, so we don’t have

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mission creep, because many Federal agencies wind up doing something totally different than they started doing.

Ms. IRVING. Of course they don’t do that all by themselves.

Mr. LINDER. That’s correct.

Ms. IRVING. I have trouble with abstract mission statements, because if you went to the Department of Agriculture and asked them

what their mission is, they would talk about agriculture and rural

America. And if you look at where they spend their money, they

are in the income support business. The agency culture and clearly

what they would describe, has to do with farmers and rural America, but that is not where their budget goes. Abstract mission statements have always made me a little uneasy.

Like Director Lew, I don’t think that you want to go to one–size–

fits–all approach, but you may want to go to one set of categories.

You want all of them to get to the question of what outcome they

seek to achieve in a program, which allows something like a science

organization to say in the end what we are seeking to do is increase knowledge, and I will create the potential for breakthroughs.

We are not going to measure ourselves on how many breakthroughs there are in any given year. Ask what are the interim

measures or goals, and how close are we able to link them. For example, we are clear that increasing prenatal visits helps reduce low

birth–weight babies and improve health. We are less clear on how

you make a scientific breakthrough.

Another thing—cost accounting in the Federal Government is in

an infancy stage. You have a long way to go before you get a clear

linking of resources to results in any consistently credible way. I

think Director Lew is to be credited with trying to make this work

with the executive branch, and I think it is great that you guys are

trying to see how to fit it into your process, because it offers you

great potential.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Thank you.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Fisher, we welcome you.

STATEMENT OF LOUIS FISHER, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH

SERVICE

Mr. FISHER. Thank you.

Sue mentioned the study she has done on three of the States.

One is Connecticut. I talked with a person in Connecticut this week

who has done budgeting up there for 27 years, and he explained

that Connecticut about 10 years ago switched from 1–year budgeting to 2–year budgeting, and there are several reasons. The big

reason was for Connecticut to be able to do performance budgeting,

and he says it has never happened.

I think he underscored some of the points made here today by

witnesses. You can adopt a new policy and process, and that

doesn’t mean that it is going to happen. It depends on what Members of Congress want to happen in the future. It is a political decision, not a process decision.

My statement looks at whether there will be a shift of power

from Congress to the executive branch, how efficient this biennial

budgeting will be for Congress and how efficient for the agencies,

and whether there will be new and better oversight.

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I think there will be a shift of power from Congress to the executive branch. Even proponents of biennial budgeting admit that.

How much depends always on what good faith there is in the executive branch. You will be giving them greater discretion. Director

Lew talked about under biennial budgeting, executive people will

need more discretion. They can use it wisely and prudently and in

good faith or use it in bad faith.

One of the things that has concerned me in recent decades, probably the last three decades, is that the executive branch is getting

more and more structured in having short–term political appointees and not as many long–term careerists who do have a

stake in good faith relations with committees. We have all seen

members of the executive branch having little interest in legal limits, or constitutional limits, or relations with Congress, or relations

with committees. So if you are dealing with that, that is going to

be a problem to catch up to make sure that abuses do not get out

of hand.

Let me turn to efficiencies for Congress. First of all, as people

have said here this morning, you are going to have a new administration, untrained, putting together a 2–year budget. How good will

that be? That is one problem. Mr. Lew said that it would be ′′a

stretch′′ even to complete that by April, so you are losing a couple

of months. In addition to maybe a late budget for a new President,

you have got the problem of how good that 2–year budget is. If the

estimates are not good because they are not trained people, you are

going to have particularly difficult problems 2 years out. Again, you

will be finding yourself with estimates that are inaccurate and inappropriate, and you will be doing oversight, but not oversight that

gets into programmatic concerns. You will be finding what adjustments you can make in the second year particularly because of the

poor estimates.

Point two, let’s say biennial budgeting were in place now, and

there is a new Congress coming in in 2001. Under this system the

authorization decision would have been made this year. 2001 would

be set aside for funding. I don’t think any process can prevent Congress from doing whatever it wants to in the first year. For example, if biennial budgeting had been in place in 1994 and the Republicans take control of Congress, they would be at liberty to do what

they did, which is to pass as much of the Contract with America

as they could, even if it is in the middle of the budget year.

Point three, just as now, you will have reprogramming within appropriations accounts. You also have money taken from one account to another. You have all of these adjustments. That problem

with biennial budgeting will be more than twice as bad because of

the poor estimates for the second year. You will be spending more

time finding out what agencies are doing and misusing the discretion that they have with relatively poor estimates.

Point four, all of this assumes that the economy is going on in

a fairly stable manner. If you have a downturn in year 2, you will

have to address that. You will have to make political decisions as

elected officials.

Point five, Director Lew suggested that under biennial budgeting,

the executive branch would want more discretion than they have

now. It would be interesting to see what kind of new adjustments

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would be made. Maybe the executive branch would like discretion

to move money from year 1 to year 2. That would be something to

be debated. Another possibility is that under reprogramming right

now, some of the reprogramming requests come from agencies, and

it is just for notification to committees, and other reprogramming

requires prior approval. Congress may decide that under biennial

budgeting they will want to move a lot of things donr by notification into prior approval.

The next point, if we have statutory caps, you have to live within

limits, and if some programs because of poor estimates have gone

beyond the limit, you have to find money somewhere else. It may

be the case that if the program is climbing, you can’t find one account to take money from, you may have to take money from two

or three accounts to replenish the account that is growing. So you

will have a lot of shifting of money and changing of account levels.

We have mentioned the National Performance Review Study that

criticized annual budgeting because there is padding. I think that

with biennial budgeting you would expect more padding.

What are the choices for Congress? You could decide on biennial

budgeting to fund agencies at a minimal level and ask them to

come back for supplementals. That would maximize congressional

control. It will also maximize congressional work. The other choice

is to give agencies ample funding to get through the 2 years. The

downside on that is that you would be giving greater discretion and

control and power to the executive branch.

We haven’t talked about tax bills. I don’t know, I guess those

would happen a lot in the first year when you are doing all your

budgeting work. But if you wanted to do tax bills the second year,

I think you would do it, just as you did this year with the marriage

tax penalty bill. I don’t think you can compartmentalize things

year one, year two. You make political decisions, which is what you

are supposed to do.

What about the possibility that the 2–year budget wouldn’t pass

the first year? We have a hard time now passing a 1–year budget.

I think a 2–year budget would be more contentious, a lot more difficult to get a consensus.

When the new President comes in, instead of the budget coming

up in early February, it would come up in early April. You have

already lost 2 months under this process, and I think there is a

general agreement that the reason you finish your budget now in

the first year, even if it goes into October, November, is that you

know the following February you have another budget coming.

How about if there is no budget coming the next year? Will you

be losing the incentive to finish up? Will that debate on the 2–year

budget in year one go into the next year?

Let me turn to efficiencies for agencies. I don’t know, I don’t

think anyone would know what agencies are going to do under biennial budgeting. They know, from what I have just said, that you

may have to take money from accounts because another account is

climbing. Would they want to prematurely obligate money, to lock

it up so you can’t get at it? I don’t know what the psychology would

be in agencies. I think there would be more uncertainty in agencies

for 2–year budgeting because everyone knows that the estimates

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are off and money is going to be moving around. I don’t know how

agencies will behave.

There is a thought that there will be more long–term planning

in agencies. Maybe there will. I don’t think it will be that marked.

Agencies will still have to come up every year when you do your

oversight on year two. OMB will be watching agencies very, very

carefully. I think any notion that there is going to be sophisticated

planning down the road is probably not going to happen.

I mention the problem of short–term political appointees. They

are in for 18 months, maybe in for 24 months. Many of them have

not been in government before. They have no idea about your prerogatives in Congress. They really don’t care about it. They do a

fair amount of damage. They leave and go back to the private sector, and you have to clean up the mess.

I think we are losing agency careerists as part of the reinvention

initiative that happened in 1993. A lot of the long–term careerists

are out of government. I don’t see any move to put them back in.

So you are depending more and more on short–term political appointees.

The last point is that the National Performance Review criticized

annual budgeting because you have to look out 2 years for obligations and 3 years for outlays. That is a problem. Biennial budgeting will make it a year worse. You will have to look out 3 years

for BA and 4 years for outlays.

Congressional oversight. I think you will do more oversight. I

don’t know what the nature of it will be, whether it will be trying

to bird–dog the agencies to see what they are doing with this discretion or whether it will be looking ground up at programs, deciding whether you want to keep them or radically change them.

What will be the change within Congress? Most of your authorization committees now do multiyear authorizations. Things won’t

change for them. That is what they have been doing for a long

time. You have two committees that do annual authorization, the

Intelligence Committees and the Armed Services Committees.

There would be a savings there if you went to 2–year authorizations.

I think the military area is probably the toughest area if you

wanted to go to 2–year authorizations. It is the toughest area in

terms of new military commitments and everything else. I look at

the Armed Service and Intelligence Committees and say if you give

them a score of 10 for their annual authorization year one and give

them a score of 10 for annual authorization for year two and then

go to biennial budgeting and give them a score of 10 for their 2–

year authorization, would they get a 10 for the oversight they do

the second year?

First of all, the second year is not ′′must′′ legislation. You heard

from Mr. Goss how much pressure he is under to complete that.

Oversight is going to be a little different the second year, and the

second year is when Members are running for reelection. I don’t

know what the priorities will be. It will depend partly on party

leaders, but I don’t think you are guaranteed more oversight under

this system in 2–year budgeting than you get at the present time.

It is also likely that under 2–year budgeting you will not segregate oversight and authorization bills in year two. I think Armed

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Services and the Intelligence Committees would feel free in the off–

year to pass whatever authorizations they thought were necessary,

not the large authorizations they do in year two but some authorization to address emerging issues.

You would lose a little bit of oversight this way, the kind of oversight you get every year from the Appropriations Subcommittees,

and that is oversight with a lot of teeth, with a lot of leverage, a

lot of sanctions.

From all this, I can’t tell you what is going to happen. I don’t

think anyone can tell you what will happen.

In 1996 you passed the Line Item Veto Act, which was declared

unconstitutional 2 years later. So we are back to the process we

had. It didn’t affect too many agencies. It didn’t affect too many

committees.

Biennial budgeting will affect everything. It will be a very dramatic change, very deep change. You may want to do it. You may

want to decide to try it incrementally in some areas. If there is

some program, some agency that has enough stability, you are comfortable with, learn a little bit from that, maybe get the Appropriations Committee, the CBO, GAO to make some suggestions where

it might work best, starting out on a pilot basis.

Those are my comments. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fisher follows:]

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Mr. LINDER. Mr. Fisher, you seem to have spent your career looking deeply into the inner workings of our government, deciding that

it doesn’t work.

Mr. FISHER. I am here for 30 years. I love it. This is the greatest

job you could have.

Mr. LINDER. Have you ever given any thought to whether we

should get rid of either the authorizing or appropriating committees?

Mr. FISHER. I have given thought to it. I think authorizing committees, these are the committees that create programs. I don’t

know how you get rid of program committees like that.

Mr. LINDER. They provide the authority for spending. Why don’t

they do spending?

Mr. FISHER. You could—we have gone through periods where you

have a committee that does both authorization and appropriation.

We have gone back and forth over our history. The new one on the

block, of course, is the Budget Committee. It is the third layer. To

me you have to do authorization. You have to do appropriation.

You could combine them.

There is a thought as to how much we need budget resolutions

every year, particularly if it is interfering with the work of the Appropriation Committees in getting started. But we have three layers. I think there is good reason for returning to two layers.

Mr. LINDER. I am interested in your comment about losing talent

because of the reinventing government proposals. Specifically, what

changes were made in policy that caused career professionals to decide it wasn’t worth staying?

Mr. FISHER. I think the policy was to get rid of close to 300,000

employees.

Mr. LINDER. Most of those were in the military.

Mr. FISHER. A lot were in the military.

One of the interesting changes is it is not as though government

is smaller after losing 300,000 people. We simply contract out a lot

of things that agencies used to do, and that is a concern to me,

where you have people in the private sector doing things that agencies used to do with accountability to Congress.

Mr. LINDER. You have two or three comments in your written

statement about short–term political appointees being less attentive to constitutional restraints than career professionals. Do you

have any evidence to back it up?

Mr. FISHER. Oh, only a lot of anecdotal evidence, a lot of stories.

I have written about it at times. It happens. I think it is natural

that people coming in from the private sector, they just don’t understand constitutional limits or even statutory limits or prerogatives of the committees, and their priority is to get something done

for the President who put them in place.

Mr. LINDER. I tend to agree with your assessment. I am just

wondering if you have any empirical information on that.

Mr. FISHER. I have never really seen anything in a sophisticated,

statistical way. We have a lot of problems of this nature. I think

they have less problems with careerists who are here and they

know they have to come back over a long period of time and deal

in good faith with committees.

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Mr. LINDER. In your prepared statement you have talked about

agency heads being very nervous about losing funding in the second year. Why is that any different than today?

Mr. FISHER. It is not wholly different. I think it is different probably because in the second year the estimates aren’t going to be as

good and people don’t know what is going to happen. There would

be more uncertainty the second year.

Mr. LINDER. If tax bills are going to be introduced in any event

in year two, I think the only Department that doesn’t—that thinks

those tax bills are spending bills, it is a tax cut. How does this

have an impact on our spending budget?

Mr. FISHER. Not on spending. I assume that anything of a revenue nature would be done the first year when you are trying to

decide what your budget is.

Mr. LINDER. Whether it is income or outgo?

Mr. FISHER. Yes. And I am thinking that even if you try to do

it all in year one there will be occasion where Congress will decide

they want to pass tax legislation in year two.

Mr. LINDER. Have you looked at the performance budgeting of

New Zealand over the last decade or so?

Mr. FISHER. I have not.

Mr. LINDER. We are going to have some testimony from a gentleman who was in their parliament. I find it pretty interesting because his point is going to be that they paid attention to the oversight, and it gave much more control to the legislative branch over

the spending side of issues. It might be an interesting session.

Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I just wish the whole committee were here to hear

your side of the story. I agree with most all of it. I know that many

people really think that by going biennial is going to cure all the

budget problems. It is not. We are going to have problems that are

going to be stretched out a little bit.

I am afraid that the executive gets too much power out of this,

and I am afraid the bureaucrats will end up making decisions that

Congress should make themselves. And I would think that, if anything, probably much more study should go into whether we go biennial. And I think you can’t look at a State because it has gone

biennial and figure, hey, they did it so we can do it. They don’t

have to raise money for the military. They don’t have to do a lot

of things we have to do. And, as Ms. Irving said, when they go into

their capital budget, they float bonds. I mean, we pay our gas tax

and something else from somewhere else.

I think the United States is probably unique in its budget, and

I think to use lesser countries that have just such a small percentage of our overall budget, a small percent of our duties, would really just be an exercise in futility. I don’t think it would solve anything.

So I welcome you any time, and I am very happy you are here,

and as I said, I only wish that the rest of the committee were here

to hear your views.

Mr. FISHER. I wish I knew more why Members of Congress are

coming to the point of wanting biennial budgeting. I am not in

their shoes. I don’t know how awful it is to schedule things on the

floor and get it through and what the end of the year looks like.

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Mr. MOAKLEY. I think because somewhere in their mind they feel

this is going to cure a lot of the problems. But a lot of the problems

are policy differences and not budget differences. I think, especially

when you have such a small majority and when you are split between minority and majority, many of those problems get exacerbated because they are only a few votes separating one side from

the other and, therefore, the fights get heavier and probably more

dramatic. But I just don’t think there is a magic wand out there.

As far as oversight, I think much of the oversight—some of the

oversight is overlooked because it is not as sexy as going out and

plowing new fields and bringing new programs on and finding

other solutions to certain problems out there. Oversight is like

going over the old stuff, and we have done it. We have been there,

done that. So I just think that oversight doesn’t necessarily get addressed when people have more time that they may save by having

this bicentennial budget.

Just like you say, in Connecticut, they changed it for a purpose,

and they never addressed the purpose. I think it probably could

very well happen here.

Mr. LINDER. I think Mr. Moakley and I differ on one point, and

that is I think the sense of those who are supportive of biennial

budgeting is that it consumes not only on the floor, but in our process, it consumes an unbelievable amount of our time, and it is policy driven, and it flows over between House and Senate.

But there is a growing number of us who just believe we haven’t

had the time and taken the time to do the appropriate oversight,

and I asked Mr. Lew if they viewed our oversight as helpful or

hurtful. I would like to think that we could get involved in oversight activities that the administration would welcome and not just

be digging up dirt on other things. I think there is a sense that we

would do more of it and more constructively if we had a biennial

budget.

Mr. FISHER. What has happened in recent years to put us in the

position of maybe wanting to go to biennial budgeting? For more

than 2 centuries Congress every year has been able to do the budget work, and I would think that is about as important a function

an elected official can have, budgeting. I don’t think it is clear that

what has happened that makes it difficult to do every year. Something has happened. It is not clear to me.

Mr. LINDER. Number one, it has been around for some time,

being kicked around. It is an old idea that has taken a lot of time

for people to come around to.

Number two, I think Ms. Irving referred to the States having a

different role than the Federal Government. Because when I was

in the legislature, that was the job, to pass the budget. That is virtually what we did. And I think there were one or two policy issues

that were large that the governor was proposing that year that had

to do with how the money was going to be spent anyway. But here

we have many other things to be concerned about—the military,

HHS policy decisions—and we are not paying the kind of attention

that we think we ought to be.

Ms. IRVING. Oversight, not ′′gotcha′′ oversight, but what you call

constructive oversight, is really hard work, and it involves re–examining your base. Every year some universities put out a memo

183

to its faculty saying the students entering today as freshman were

born in year X, they don’t know what a record player is, they have

never seen a dial telephone, they have always had computers in

their lives and AIDS in their lives. They can’t imagine anyone who

didn’t have a VCR. They don’t know who Ronald Reagan was,

much less that he was shot.

Yet many of the programs in existence today, were created before

that child was born. So you need to re–examine your base and

think about what government is doing and how.

I guess the question really to ask yourselves is, is what about the

annual budget cycle is stopping oversight? And what is it about a

shift to biennial appropriations that will make it more likely or

more successful to do that kind of oversight? How do you do cross–

cutting oversight? Is what is really stopping you the annual process

or is it the fact that there are fundamental disagreements both in

Congress and among the American people?

Mr. LINDER. I will give you an example. Until 1995 we had a national helium reserve started in 1929 to make sure we would have

helium for our next war. In 1993 and 1994, the first 2 years I was

here, that became a fight on an amendment on an appropriations

bill. The majority, which wanted to pass the bill, had to stand in

lockstep against cutting this program for fear it would lose adherence.

All of these programs developed over constituencies, and rather

than having that fight on an appropriations bill, it seems to me

some honest public discussion of the issue could have brought the

two sides together on it in some other policy environment than on

the floor on an appropriations bill. Every one of these programs develops their own constituencies.

It was Ronald Reagan who said that the closest thing to perpetual life was to be in a program, and we have programs throughout that either Joe or I could cut if you gave us each a wand. They

would be probably different, but if we sat down and talked about

it we could realize together that some of these programs aren’t

serving a useful purpose anymore. But when it comes down to the

debate on the program being an amendment on an appropriations

bill, it doesn’t get the same kind of attention it would in another

setting.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman, may I at this time just make a

statement? I really extended the budget term to bicentennial. I

meant biennial when I said bicentennial.

Mr. LINDER. We will forgive anything.

Ms. IRVING. I think one of the things Lou mentioned is very important. These bills implicitly assume you have to move everything

to the same cycle. They shift the budget resolution, authorization

and the President’s budget. But multiyear authorizations are already the norm.

You could argue that, given that you have had multiyear fiscal

policy agreements, you could easily shift to multiyear biennial

budget resolutions if you could figure out a way to adjust for changing economics and revenue estimates; you could still keep your annual appropriations cycle; to the extent the appropriations process

is delayed because of waiting for the budget resolution, this shift

might help. You need an adjustment ability in there, especially

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given what has been happening to revenue estimates lately. You

don’t have to do the same thing to all parts of the process. That

is another way to think of phasing if you are trying to experiment:

you could move some things but not everything.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you both. Would you each be willing to receive written requests for more information?

Mr. FISHER. Be glad to.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]

(185)

BIENNIAL BUDGETING: A TOOL FOR IMPROVING GOVERNMENT FISCAL MANAGEMENT

AND OVERSIGHT

Thursday, March 16, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON RULES,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m. in Room H–

313, The Capitol, Hon. David Dreier [chairman of the committee]

presiding.

Present: Representatives Dreier, Goss, Linder, Hastings, Moakley and Slaughter.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. We have just

found that we begin with two Members, and now Mr. Hastings is

here, it is three. So we appreciate all of your being here.

This is the third and final hearing in a series that we have had

to examine the various proposals for establishing a 2–year budget

and appropriations cycle.

We have already heard from our colleagues and from the executive branch and congressional support agencies. Today we will receive testimony from members of the academic community, representatives of budget reform organizations, State legislatures and

the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Later in the hearing we will be

joined by our former colleague Leon Panetta, who also served as

Director of the Office of Management, and Budget and Chief of

Staff of the White House, and Chairman of the House Budget Committee. He will be testifying, if God and technology willing, by

video conference from California.

But I want to first welcome our witness, our very respected

former colleague with whom I have had the pleasure of working on

a wide range of international policy questions, as well as institutional questions here. He is the director of the Woodrow Wilson

International Center for Scholars. He and I served together as cochairmen back in 1993 of the Joint Committee on the Organization

of Congress, which actually recommended the adoption of a 2–year

budget and appropriations process. He was the deciding vote which

allowed biennial budgeting to be part of the joint committee’s recommendations to the House. I want to commend him for his continued dedication to following through with the work product of the

joint committee.

Before I begin, I want to make note of the fact that just last

night during their deliberations on the fiscal 2001 budget resolution, the House Budget Committee for the first time adopted a

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sense of the House amendment calling for the consideration of a biennial budget process as part of a comprehensive budget process

reform.

Let me state that I consider biennial budgeting to be comprehensive budget process reform because of its potential to improve government fiscal management, programmatic oversight, budget stability and predictability and government cost–effectiveness. I would

also note that the Rules Committee is already on record in support

of other budget process reforms by nature of the fact that we have

favorably reported out H.R. 853, the Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act, last August.

I know I also speak for the distinguished Vice Chairmen of the

committee Mr. Goss in saying that we will continue to work with

the Budget Committee to advance these various reforms here in

the House.

So I again extend a very warm welcome to you, Lee Hamilton.

We are glad to have you back, and at this point I would like to call

on Mr. Goss.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Dreier follows:]

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Mr. GOSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think you have summed

it up extremely well and underscored our commitment. The committee has moved forward on this, and I think that the evidence

of that is in the quality of witnesses we have before us today. And

I join you in welcoming Mr. Hamilton back.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. It is always nice to be with Lee, and, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you again for holding these hearings on this

very important proposal.

I know we have some long–term proponents of biennial budgeting on the schedule, but I expect we will hear some words of caution about the idea, and I would just like to remind my colleagues

of just a few points.

The evidence and common sense tells us there will be more

supplementals under a biennial system than under an annual one,

and this obviously is not a good thing. In my opinion, switching to

a biennial system will make it harder to reach agreement on the

budget in a timely fashion for two reasons: First, the agreement

has to cover a longer period, namely, the entire Congress; and secondly, without the need to turn quickly to next year’s budget, it is

more likely that the difficult issues will slop over into the next

year.

Most years we spend less than one–fifth of our time on budget–

related measures. Authorization bills are not crowded off the schedule. They are more likely to falter over policy disputes, not lack of

time. And good oversight is a challenge no matter how much time

we have.

The fact is biennial budgeting does not lead to more or better legislative oversight. Connecticut converted to a biennial budget in

1993 to improve oversight and program review, and according to

the General Accounting Office, State officials acknowledged that

there has been no improvement in either of these areas.

Biennial budgeting actually weakens oversight in two ways.

First, it removes 1 year of appropriations committee program review; and second, it shortens the leash on executive branch officials.

I hear some of my colleagues cavalierly saying, the current system just hasn’t worked, so let us try something else. I am surprised

to hear some of my conservative colleagues embrace radical change

without considering all the consequences, but if my friends are

dead set on going ahead with this proposal, I urge them to go very

slowly, and please don’t ask a brand new President to initiate a

brand new process. Do not put the entire Federal budget on an untested biennial system all at once. Some parts of the biennial budget will be better suited to a biennial process; some will not.

That is what Arizona did it when it moved incrementally to bicentennial budgeting over several years, starting with the portion

of their budget that was most stable. And keep in mind, what some

States call biennial budgeting wouldn’t be recognized as that by

other States.

Each year Ohio works on a 2–year plan for half of the budget.

One year they decide on a 2–year operating budget. Next year they

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decide on the capital budget. This is continual budgeting and not

biennial budgeting under my definition.

So, Mr. Chairman, I really believe it is a mistake to move in this

direction, but if you insist on change for change’s sake, let us find

the way to get there that causes the least damage. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Moakley.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moakley follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Let me just make a couple of comments on your

statement. First, I was talking to our former colleague Leon Panetta day before yesterday on the telephone in anticipation of his

coming, and he told me that he has been pushing this since the

mid–1970s, so we have really taken a quarter of century, and that

is the point of the hearings. We are trying to spend a lot of time

thinking about it. When Lee and I chaired the joint committee on

the organization of Congress in 1993, we had exhaustive hearings

on this. So we spent a great deal of time looking at it.

So your point on inflicting this on a new President, I think that

the statement that was made by your former employee, now the Director of the Office and Management and Budget, Jack Lew, he

was very clear in encouraging us to spend time thinking about that

transition process that would take place for a new administration,

and so I think that there is some very valid points that have been

raised.

Mr. MOAKLEY. But, Mr. Chairman, you have to take the testimony where it comes from. Absolutely the administration would

love to have a biennial process. It puts them in a stronger position.

So Jack Lew, my dear friend, is in the administration. Leon Panetta later became the Budget Director for the administration. So

I think that the executive department would love to have it. I think

it weakens the legislative process, and it doesn’t make anybody

more interested in oversight.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, we are going to continue that discussion.

Mr. Linder.

Mr. LINDER. I am just anxious to hear the testimony of the

thoughtful and sober gentleman from Indiana. His style is sorely

missed around here. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hastings.

Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will say right up

front, I am a strong proponent of the biennial budget. I suppose

that is because of my background in the legislature. Nevertheless

there are some concerns that are obviously legitimate concerns

from those that oppose that, and I hope that these public hearings

will address some of those concerns that the other side has.

At this time Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit a letter by

Governor Locke from my home state of Washington, and I look forward to the testimony we have today.

[The information follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you Mr. Hastings and without objection,

it will appear in the record.

Let me say that we are audiocasting this to the World Wide Web,

and so I encourage you to turn your microphone on, Lee, so that

your wonderful words of wisdom can go throughout the entire

world. And welcome. It is nice to have you back, and look forward

to your testimony.

STATEMENT OF LEE HAMILTON, DIRECTOR, WOODROW

WILSON CENTER

Mr. HAMILTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and my

friends and colleagues on the committee, former colleagues. Of

course, I will ask that my statement be made part of the record in

full.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection.

Mr. HAMILTON. I will try to just hit some of the highlights of it.

I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to appear before

you, and I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, the leadership you have

given on this issue.

And I recall with great favor our work together on the Joint

Committee on the Organization of Congress. One of the main recommendations of that joint committee was for biennial budgeting.

It was not adopted at the time, but I still think it is a very sound

proposal.

I understand this is an issue you have gone over pretty carefully

in the past, and I don’t want to take unduly time from your deliberations. I do think biennial budgeting would improve government,

primarily for a simple reason, and that is I think it would free up

Members’ time for important work that is now being squeezed out

by competing pressures. I will not try to recap the arguments that

you are very familiar with and which I set out in the early part

of my statement. They are familiar to you, I am sure.

I have come to the view—came to the view, I guess, some time

ago that the present budget process was just too cumbersome, and

that the process made every problem in this body a budget problem. That, perhaps, is a little exaggeration, but not too much. Now,

obviously, the budget is enormously important, but to view every

problem that you confront as strictly a budget problem, and that

tends to be the case, it seems to be, more and more, is not good,

and Congress, I think, is in a kind of a perpetual budget cycle with

a budget crisis nearly every year. So I don’t think this process of

the way we handle the budget now serves the American people

very well. I think it is too—far too little oversight is involved. I am

going to talk a little bit more about that.

I believe under the present system—and here I would take odds

with my friend Mr. Moakley—I believe under the present system

you have way too much power in the President as it is today in the

budget process. The President is by far the dominant figure in the

budget process today. His budget is adopted—95, 90 percent of it

is just adopted. I can remember Members of Congress saying over

and over and over again, the President’s budget is dead on arrival.

Well, that is malarkey. A President’s budget is adopted by the Congress year after year, 90, 95 percent of it, and when you come down

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to the final negotiations on a budget, all the power is with the

President—or not, all of it but most of it, simply because he has

got the veto power, and he has the bully pulpit.

To say that the President does not have disproportionate power

today in the budget process is to totally ignore the reality. The

President is overwhelmingly the chief budget officer of the United

States Government. So the question is how do you begin to get

back some of that clout and power in the executive branch, and I

disagree with my friends who think that the biennial budgeting

process would cede power to the President. The President already

has most of the power with regard to budget.

I think the Congress spends way too much time on the budget.

I think it leaves very little time for long–term thinking—I am

going to pick up that in just a moment—and having served on authorizing committees, I think the authorizing committees today are

almost out of the picture; not completely, I guess, but almost out

of the picture because of the total focus on the budgeting process

here.

Now, let me emphasize two things about the biennial budget

process that I think is very important. Number one is oversight,

and number two is long–term thinking. I know you have had a lot

of testimony on the oversight point. I believe that the oversight

function of the government is—of the Congress is enormously important. I think it is at the very core of good government. I think

the Congress obviously has to do a lot more than just write the

law. It has to make sure those laws are carried out the way Congress intended.

Oversight has a lot of purposes, and the blunt fact of the matter

is the way Congress operates today, we just don’t have time for

good oversight. Let us take a look at the congressional schedule in

the House. Most of the time we know you are meeting from Tuesday night to Thursday night. That means everything gets compressed into Wednesday and Thursday. Legislation has to be produced. Very little time for extended oversight hearings under the

present schedule of the Congress.

Now, biennial budgeting is not going to solve all the problems,

but I think it would give the committees more time for rigorous

oversight.

Oversight makes sure programs conform with congressional intent and ensures that programs and agencies are administered in

a cost–effective and efficient manner. It ferrets out waste, fraud

and abuse. It sees whether or not certain programs have outlived

their usefulness, and it compels the administration to make an explanation or justification of policy; incidentally, something that administrations often do not like to do, to articulate policy completely.

So I believe oversight is one of the most important and effective

tools of the Congress if it is properly done.

I would not argue that biennial budgeting will increase the

power of the Congress relative to the President. I would argue that

it would give the Congress the opportunity to increase the power

relative to the President, and that opportunity would come about

if the Congress aggressively pursued its oversight responsibility.

I think oversight can protect the country from an imperial Presidency, and I think it can protect the country from bureaucratic arVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00200 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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rogance, both of which are all too common, in my view, in government today.

The responsibility of the Congress in its oversight function is to

look into every nook and cranny of government affairs and uncover

wrongdoing and put the light of publicity on it. It is an enormously

important power, and I believe the Congress underuses and underestimates its power in oversight. I think that Federal agencies

begin to get very nervous whenever someone from the Congress

starts poking around, and I believe that is to the good. Federal bureaucracies do not stay on their toes unless they expect review and

oversight from the Congress.

My personal belief, and I am sure I am in the minority here, is

that oversight is every bit as important a function of the Congress

as passing legislation. President Wilson thought, quote, ′′The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function,′′ end of quote. So a very strong record of congressional oversight or of continuous watchfulness I think would do a

lot to restore public confidence in this institution.

I am, therefore, encouraged in the interest that the committee

and many of you have shown in effective oversight, and I believe

that moving to the biennial budgeting process would give oversight

a significant boost by freeing up the committee’s time and giving

the Congress an opportunity to be more assertive with regard to

the executive branch.

Now, the second point I want to emphasize is the long–term strategic thinking. The first year I was in the Congress, a very wise

person said to me that the problem with the United States Congress—this was back in 1965—the problem was that Members

never had enough time to put their feet up on the desk, to look out

the window and to think about the long–range needs of the country. I have had many, many occasions to reflect on the wisdom of

that statement, and I have come to appreciate it more and more.

The fact of the matter is that the Federal Government simply

does not spend enough time in long–term thinking. Now, it may be

unavoidable. Policy–makers have to focus on urgent problems. You

have what is becoming now a popular phrase: The tyranny of the

in–box. You can’t give attention to challenges that lie over the horizon.

I think we have to learn something from the private sector here.

The private sector is much, much better in thinking out ahead to

the problems that they are going to be confronted with, and we

need to find ways and means of improving the ability of not just

the Congress, but of the executive branch as well to think long

term. There are all kinds of challenges out there.

I had a conversation the other day, I would recommend it to you.

Just sit down with one of the leading demographers in the country

and talk with them about what they can see the problems are

going to be in this country on the basis of the demographic makeup

of the country today and the trends that are coming. It will astound you what they can already see in terms of challenges the

country is going to confront. Congress doesn’t do enough of that,

but neither does the executive branch, and we have got to find

ways and means of making the Congress and the executive branch

able to think long term, to think ahead of the next election, to

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think ahead of the next 6 months, to think ahead of the next year,

to think in terms of 5 years, and 10 years, and 20 and 30 year time

frame.

Now, I know that some of that is being done in the executive

branch, some of it is being done in the Congress, and I applaud all

of that. I mentioned to one of you a moment ago that we had

George Tenet come down to the Wilson Center a few days ago and

talk about the CIA, and he was saying— Mr. Goss will be interested in this, I am sure he has heard it from him—that he must

free up more time for his analysts to look to the future because the

Agency has been too focused on the short term, and I think the

Congress needs to do the same thing.

Congress is predominantly focused on short–term needs for many

reasons, but one of the principal ones is that you have a 1–year

budget cycle.

Now, the point of this kind of long–term thinking is not that the

government is going to solve all of these problems easily, but I

think we should at least be considering the issues and examining

how best to deal with them, and moving to a biennial budgeting

would allow the Congress, I believe, to focus more on some of

America’s future challenges, much more than it currently does.

So, Mr. Chairman, I conclude my testimony. There are a number

of reasons for it. I know you are familiar with them. I would emphasize the oversight function which I think needs to be markedly

improved in the Congress, and the ability to think long term, and

I think the biennial budgeting process would assist, would give us

the opportunity, I guess this is the best way to put it, to improve

those functions and to improve the performance of the Congress. I

thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Hamilton.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hamilton follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. That is a very, very helpful statement that you

have provided, and I will tell you that the focus on the issue of deliberation is one which I think can’t be underscored enough when

we go back to the framers and realize what it is that they were trying to establish here. Deliberative process was a very, very high

priority for them, and I am reminded of our former colleague Mo

Udall, who, when I came here in my first year, said to me that

Congress is like a fire station. We rush to put out a fire, and the

moment that fire is under control, we simply rush to another one,

and sometimes that fire is not completely put out. And so I do

think that the need for deliberation is very important, and I appreciate your bringing that to this debate on the issue of biennial

budgeting.

I will call on Mr. Goss.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you very much. I am very glad that I was here

to hear that testimony. I think you hit on two themes that are absolutely critical that, frankly, we haven’t had brought before us before. I would like to talk to you further on the subject of long–term

vision and strategic concept, as it were, both domestic and international, because I think that is the single greatest gap. Things are

moving so fast, we don’t seem to have the opportunity to understand the vision as we set about the task of trying to provide the

capabilities to get to the vision, so consequently we are running at

a fire quite often, whether it is the tyranny of the in–boxes, as you

say, or just too darn much to do.

On the oversight question I also couldn’t agree with you more.

One of the reasons for my interest in biennial budgeting is to give

us time that can be applied to oversight. You mentioned you talked

with Mr. Tenet. You probably recall that the intelligence authorization is mandatory. We have to authorize. It is unlike any of the

other committees that are supposed to authorize, but, as you know,

the Rules Committee can waive the ′′supposed to′′, and then we get

on with our business. That is not true in intelligence, and consequently in intelligence we have a rather penetrating focus, very

intense, very broad scope of everything that is going on in the Intelligence Community, which is entirely appropriate because we are

the safeguard that the Intelligence Community operates within

bounds.

But we also have that mandate to authorize, and I find that it

assists us in doing our oversight to have that, and I find that we

have a better understanding both with the people we are overseeing and the appropriators about what we are doing as a result

of this process. But I am perpetually pressed for time on annual

budgeting. That comes to a conclusion that you can come to, an

ergo, that therefore biennial budgeting is something that we might

profit from.

My thought was if that is true, do you think that there would

be any wisdom in going back and looking at the authorizing committees, which you have portrayed as not as important as they

should be, and requiring mandatory authorizations before these appropriators move for some or all of the committees, as we do it on

intelligence? It is a thought I am kicking around in my mind and

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with a few other of the chairmen. I would be interested to know

if you think that is too extreme a step.

Mr. HAMILTON. Porter, I just haven’t thought about mandating

it. I knew that was the situation with regard to the Intelligence

Committee. I have been greatly distressed at the decline in the impact and influence of authorizing committees. I guess I just have

to think about the question of mandating. It might be part of the

solution to do it, to require an authorization before you get to the

appropriation. So I am open to it.

Mr. GOSS. I would like to take advantage of our friendship and

this occasion to invite myself to extend this dialogue, if I could,

down the road, because I think these are both areas that need looking at.

Mr. HAMILTON. You know what happens all the time now is that

the executive branch just moves up on the authorizing committee,

so why fight the battle? We are going to have to fight it. Let us

push it over on the appropriators, and we will fight the battle over

there. That is understandable why that happens, but it is the process that bothers me a great deal because I think it turns all kinds

of issues into strictly a budget issue, and this is not desirable. That

is not the perspective which you ought to have on—not the total

perspective that you ought to have on a given problem.

Mr. GOSS. The other point, if I may continue for just a moment,

Mr. Chairman, the other point is we have heard a lot of concern,

and I think Mr. Moakley has underscored this very well, as have

several of the witnesses, about being sort of penned in for 2 years,

that midcourse corrections would be very hard to make under biennial budgeting. I don’t have that problem, but I would be curious

to know if you think projecting our midcourse corrections is going

to be a problem, if you would go into it.

Mr. HAMILTON. I don’t believe so. I think you are still going to

have flexibility in the system. You are still going to have

supplementals coming up. Members are still going to be able to assert themselves on all sorts of issues that pop up from time to time,

and I am not overly worried about that.

The thing that I just cannot understand about the position of

those who oppose the biennial budgeting, who say that it will increase power to the President, is that the system today gives all

the power to the President, or a very large share of it, and I think

you have got to find—I agree with them that you need to strengthen the congressional branch in the budgeting process vis–a–vis the

President. I agree with that premise, but I think the present system is such that all the chips lie with the President, and I am looking for ways and means, frankly, to give the Congress more leverage, and I think the biennial budget gives us the opportunity to do

it. It doesn’t guarantee it, because you could not take advantage of

the opportunity, but it will give you the opportunity.

Mr. GOSS. Well, from the perspective as a Member of Congress

in today’s world I agree with you. It seems we are looking up rather than looking down at the process. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Lee, it is nice to see you looking so well.

Just to continue on the long–term look by the Congress, I agree

that our authorization committees are being eroded little by little.

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Let me ask you about the creation of task forces to do the work of

the committees. In this morning’s paper, Speaker Hastert created

a new Republican task force headed by Representative Cox to look

into our long–term foreign policy with Russia. Why shouldn’t the

International Relations Committee be doing that?

I think these are the things that erode our committee process

when, all of a sudden, task forces are put in that preempt the committee’s work and come straight to Rules Committee with some

kind of a report, and the members of the committee never touch

it.

Mr. HAMILTON. I think I agree with you, Mr. Moakley. I believe

that the creation of these kinds of ad hoc committees undercut the

committee process, and the committee process is being undercut in

lots of different ways, and I think the task force might be one of

them. A task force of that sort says in effect we don’t have confidence in the committee to work it out. Now, there may be reasons

for that sometimes, but that is—it does send that message.

The committee system is in jeopardy here. As a chairman of a

committee a few years ago, I couldn’t have a committee hearing on

Monday, I could not have a committee hearing on Tuesday. I could

not have a committee hearing on Friday. I could only—if I tried to

set a committee hearing any of those days, I would just—Members

would be outraged. So it means that every committee has to do

their job on Wednesday and Thursday, and that is why you end up

with 20 appointments on Wednesday and Thursday, and why you

can’t go into a committee for more than a short period of time.

The CHAIRMAN. If the gentleman would yield that point, I would

say last Friday we had a hearing here, had a very large turnout,

and Congress was not in session today.

Mr. MOAKLEY. This is the exception though.

Mr. HAMILTON. He has got more clout than I have.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. We meet at midnight.

The CHAIRMAN. And we still have a large turnout.

Mr. MOAKLEY. When you were here, this used to be a day job.

Mr. HAMILTON. That is the difference between International Relations and Rules Committee.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Lee, I remember when you were Chairman of the

committee, and I was Chairman of this committee, and you came

to the this committee many, many times, and you got your bills in,

and you got them to the floor on time. What is changed between

then and now?

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, we get the bill to the Rules Committee and

to the floor, and often through the floor, but it would never be enacted into law.

Mr. MOAKLEY. That is—the Senate is the problem.

Mr. HAMILTON. I won’t disagree with you there, but the primary

piece of legislation of the International Relations Committee has always been the foreign aid bill, and my recollection is it hasn’t been

enacted into law since 1980 something.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Would that be any better under biennial budgeting?

Mr. HAMILTON. I can’t say to you absolutely, yes, I think it would

be better. It depends on how aggressively the Members would take

advantage of the opportunity. I don’t look upon biennial budgeting

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as solving all the problems. We often have in the Congress a predilection to seek a procedural solution to substantive problems, and

we all know that you can’t do it. I mean, I have spent a lot of my

time in Congress on reform of the process, and I believe in that,

and I think it is helpful, but I never fool myself to think that it

would suddenly make the resolution on these difficult political

issues, important policy and political issues, easy. They are tough

by definition. Process helps a little bit.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Do you think that because we serve a 2–year

term, that long–term oversight is not a very important part of our

program?

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, I think there are a lot of reasons why oversight is not important. That may be an important one. Oversight

is tough work. It is boring.

Mr. MOAKLEY. And it is not glamorous.

Mr. HAMILTON. It doesn’t get glamorous.

Mr. MOAKLEY. It doesn’t get headlines.

Mr. HAMILTON. Media is not interested in it. And let us be frank,

constituents aren’t too interested in it either. So there are a lot of

reasons why oversight has declined, and I think you have to try to

resist it and to think of ways and means of improving the oversight.

I have now—I am a part of the executive branch now in the Wilson Center. Half of our budget comes from the Federal Government, and half is private, and I testified yesterday before Mr. Regula’s subcommittee for our budget. That was a very routine kind

of a hearing. You would be amazed how much work goes into that

and how a single question from a member stimulates all kinds of

reactions in the Executive branch. You may just fire the question

off suddenly and not give an awful lot of thought to it. I know that

is not the way you usually do it, but occasionally you do, but it is

amazing what that does in the executive branch. Everybody gets

shook up when they think the Congress is looking at them, and I

think it is a good thing when you do look at them myself.

So I am a strong believer in the necessity of oversight. I think

everybody is. Does the biennial budgeting help it or not? You can

have a difference of opinion on that, but one of the things I hope,

Mr. Chairman, will come out of your hearings will be the commitment on the part of this institution you have got to do a better job

of oversight no matter what happens to biennial budgeting. It is an

important part of your work.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Well, I think that is—as I said, the Congressional

Research Service said that we spent about one–fifth of our time on

budgets. I think many people think it is like 50 percent or 60 percent, but it is one–fifth. If there were some way to direct the Members into oversight, which there isn’t because you have just made

the case why oversight isn’t that glamorous or anything else—so I

am saying we may save time, but what do we do with the time?

We will probably have to address more supplemental budgets because it is a biennial budget.

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, I think Members are still going to have the

opportunity—are going to find ways to assert themselves, and the

supplemental budget would be one if you are in a biennial cycle.

But you are not going to be dealing with 13 bills in the second

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year. Suppose you have two or three supplementals, which I think

might be possible. That is not 13, and, therefore, you would free

up some time, I believe.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Maybe we should change the committee system

and have a committee on oversight, and then the chairman of oversight makes sure there will be some oversight done.

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, there have been moves in that direction,

you know, to require a subcommittee in each committee to deal

with oversight. There are a lot of steps that have been taken in

that direction that are helpful. At the end of the day, it depends

on the chairman of the committee.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I think you are right.

Mr. HAMILTON. The chairman of the committee has to say, okay,

this is an important role for this committee, we are going to do it,

I am going to do it, the staff is going to do it. Oversight creates

a lot of work for the staff, and sometimes they resist.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Thank you. Thank you very much, Lee.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just say in response to that exchange

that Speaker Hastert at the beginning of the 106th Congress spent

a great deal of time with me on the issue of oversight, and its establishment is a very high priority in this committee. And you recall we did a training session on the question of oversight, and we

have in each committee, as you correctly pointed out, encouraged

oversight by having a subcommittee to do that. Obviously we need

to enhance that in every way we can. That is why you and I have

come to the conclusion that moving toward this biennial cycle will

play a role in doing that. And also, I have felt strongly that a shift

from what has been sort of mixed political oversight to programmatic and policy oversight is a very important thing, and we

again have, I believe, made very positive moves in that direction,

but clearly more could be done.

Mr. HAMILTON. Not all oversight is good. Oversight can be done

in such a way that it complicates. But generally speaking, I think

Members carried it out very well. I would like to see a lot more emphasis in the training of newer Members that takes place today at

the Harvard School and other places on the techniques that are

available to a Member for good oversight.

Members come into this institution skilled in many things, communications; they know how to use the media. They are skillful

politicians or they wouldn’t been here. But I don’t think they necessarily come in well–trained and well–schooled in what the techniques available to them are to conduct good oversight through,

you know, reports, GAO, the Library of Congress, trips, visits.

There are all kinds of techniques that are very, very important,

and Members have to take advantage of them.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. Linder.

Mr. LINDER. Do you think we travel too little?

Mr. HAMILTON. In general, I think I would say yes.

Mr. LINDER. And when we do, it has become a political issue, so

people are reluctant to take trips, and you learn things on that trip

you cannot learn anywhere else.

Mr. HAMILTON. Absolutely. I think trips both within the country—you look—you have the responsibility for budgeting these

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things, and you have to remember that the executive branch always has a point of view, and it may not be your point of view, and

you don’t want to get yourself in a position so that you are dependent upon the executive branch for information solely, and I think

trips are a very important aspect of a Member’s duty.

In my own case I think I could be criticized for not taking enough

trips, although that might sound a little strange to some of my constituents, but—former constituents.

But the answer to your question is they should travel, but it

makes all the difference, John, on how they travel and what they

do when they travel. Trips have to be well–organized, they have to

be well–staffed. You have to have questions in mind that you want

to pursue, and it is part of the oversight function, if it is well done.

Mr. LINDER. Should we have been surprised both in the executive

branch and on the congressional side by OPEC and the sharp increase in gasoline prices? Nobody saw it, and we should have seen

it. My guess is the private sector saw it coming for a long time by

looking over the horizon.

Mr. HAMILTON. I don’t think anybody who follows OPEC should

be surprised by it, and I think my answer is we should not have

been surprised by OPEC doing that at some point. The difficulty,

of course, always is knowing exactly when they would do it, but

anybody who follows the OPEC oil ministers knows that they are

very sophisticated people, and they know exactly what they are

doing.

And look at the increase of revenues created in each of these

countries. These countries are now experiencing, John, 50, 60, 100

percent increase in their government revenues because of oil, and

so it shouldn’t surprise you that they are going to move that way.

Mr. LINDER. I do think we are so focused on the day that we

didn’t see next month. How much of everything you have said this

morning is the changed function of Washington? When you came

here, you brought your family and lived here. People do not do that

very often anymore, and so half of this Congress never gets both

feet out of the airplane. They have one foot on the ground and one

foot on the airplane.

Mr. HAMILTON. My view, and I am sure it is a minority view

today, is the Members of Congress don’t spend enough time in

Washington, and they don’t spend enough time in doing the nitty–

gritty that committee work requires them to do. And I know that

kind of runs against the political trends of the day. You are right,

when I came to Washington, the popular thing, the normal thing

to do was move your family here. You became a resident, in effect,

of Washington, and you spent most of your time here. You went

back on weekends. I really followed that pattern through my career

here, but it reversed, and today it is a political liability to be associated with Washington and to have your family here.

What that has done is it has put pressure on Members to spend

less and less time in Washington and less and less attention, therefore, to the hard work of government, including oversight. You

want to get here as late as you can, you don’t want the votes until

Tuesday night, you want to get out of here Thursday night, you

want to be in your districts, you want to be with your family, all

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of which are very understandable reasons, but there are consequences to that that I think people have to examine and look at.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Slaughter.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Lee. It is good to see you again, and I think you

and I both spent a lot of time on how to reform the House. We

couldn’t decide what to do with the Chairs. We had to rotate them,

too. We did away with a whole committee, a number of subcommittees. I am not sure it made a whole lot of difference, frankly. We

debated whether we needed a Budget Committee or not. We were

all concerned, and I still am, with the fact that we don’t really have

debate time. Everything is structured and timed so that even in a

committee, you only have so much time to spend on a point and

which may then be left somewhere. And I think all of us have had

the experience that you sit in a room with people who listen to you,

sort of glaze over waiting for your time to be over, not really paying

attention to what it is you are saying.

The oversight that we have had, I think, in Congress for the last

2–1/2 years has mostly been the White House and one investigation

after another coming to practically nothing. But my concern with

the biennial budget—and I have an open mind, I really don’t know

whether that is best or not, I have served my 6 years on the Budget Committee—is that people I do respect here say that it would

be a denigration of power from us and handing over, again, to the

executive branch, who would have more to say about the second

year and have more control over what we do and basically take our

job away.

I was surprised at the statistic that Joe mentioned on how little

time we really spend on budget. It seems to me like we spend all

of it, budget and appropriations. That starts the beginning of the

year, and we go through this dance of legislation, and then the

turn is over. We come up to a crunch at the end.

I would be curious to know, because, as I pointed out, a lot of

people that I respect a great deal believe it is not a good idea, your

point of view, because I certainly respect you as well. If you could

just give me a sort of concise, round–up why you think that would

be a better thing for Congress.

One other reform we talked about, too, Lee, while I digress a moment, the fact that we are not in Washington enough. You remember we discussed whether we should work on a monthly basis. We

looked at all the months that we worked here, and with the exception of June, we had these long holiday periods, times when we are

in the District, and we were looking as to whether we ought to

have a schedule which was 3 weeks working in Washington, a

week in the district, and we would have a 5–day workweek here,

and then we would know exactly where we were. We would know

how we could schedule. We would know what we could do when we

got to the district. I think it did give you more of a sense that your

job was here as well as the time you spent back in the district.

I think Congressman Linder is exactly right. I am back and forth

to Rochester three times a week—not that much. I can’t afford it,

USAir is costing too much, but it does seem to me we barely get

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here, and I don’t have time for my ear infection to clear up before

we get back on the plane.

I guess in the 14 years I have been here, a large part of it has

been how can we make this better, and we certainly do talk it to

death, but we don’t seem to, I don’t think, arrive at very much that

makes an inordinate amount of difference here in how the place is

run.

Mr. HAMILTON. Several reactions. First of all, US Airways needs

your business, Louise. They are having a struggle.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. My district, though, is subsidizing all the low–

cost fares. We get tired of that.

Mr. HAMILTON. I saw where the Majority Leader in the Senate

said the other day that two–thirds of the time of the Congress is

on the budget. So he—I am sure he is speaking largely from a Senate perspective, but that is a very large amount of time.

Well, you asked me about the question of power. First of all, I

think it is the right question, and I understand that reasonable

people can come to different conclusions on it and in supporting biennial budgeting. In part I support it because if we seize the opportunity in the Congress, I think we would regain some power vis–

a–vis the executive.

What I am impressed, Louise, about the present process is the

dominance of the President in the budget process today. When a

President sends up to the budget, some of these experts sitting

around here will know better than I, but my guess is that a President’s budget is basically 90 or 95 percent enacted every year. He

has always all the chips. Moreover, when you get into the negotiation process, which creates a lot of headlines around this city every

year, the President has the power because of the veto, because of

the difficulty of the Congress coming together. He has the upper

hand in budget negotiations, and he almost always—not always—

he has to make some compromise, but he almost always gets his

way.

Well, so I am impressed that the present system puts terrific

power in the President, and the Congress’ power is marginal. We

like to talk about the power of the purse, but to be very blunt

about it, the power of the Congress on the budget is marginal, in

my view. Not unimportant. If you shift a billion dollars here and

a billion there on a certain programs, it can be very important, but

overall in the total.

There isn’t anything in the biennial budget system that cedes additional power to the President. I think what you are really talking

about in biennial budgeting is giving the Congress the opportunity

to exercise more clout through effective oversight, through long–

range thinking, than they now have. I don’t think biennial budgeting is going to end congressional control, and I don’t think it is

going to guarantee improved oversight. I just think it gives you the

opportunity, it gives you the time, and the question is how are you

going to use that time? Are you going to use it effectively? And if

you do use it effectively, I think you would modestly gain more

power than you now have, modestly, nothing dramatic. You and I

know the procedural changes, they are not going to change the

world. They are going to impact on the margins.

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You asked me to kind of sum up. I believe I would say under the

present system you have too little oversight. I think you have too

much power in the executive branch today. I think too much time

of the Congress is spent on the budget. I think too many people approach policy problems here strictly as a matter of budget and not

on other aspects as well. I think there is too little long–term thinking. I think the authorization committees where most of your expertise should lie have been reduced in power, and the appropriators have enormously gained power.

It is no accident that Members coming into the Congress today

want to get on appropriations committee or Ways and Means.

When I first came to the Congress, they wanted to get on Education an Labor because that was where the action was. So it has’s

just shifted completely, and I don’t think that is altogether healthy.

And on the scheduling, that 3–week/1–week business, I don’t

think I really have much of a judgment about that. I know that has

been kicked around a long time. My principal point would be that

I think the Congress needs to spend more time in Washington. You

cannot have a hearing delving into OPEC policies and doing a serious job of it and forcing an administration to articulate their policy

on OPEC if you are only here for a couple of days and you can’t

get your Members to focus on anything because they have got 20

meetings scheduled. And people have to understand the consequences of that kind of scheduling.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I don’t know what the answer is to that schedule. I have got six people probably waiting for me right now.

Thank you, Lee. It is good to see you.

Mr. HAMILTON. Nice to see you again, Louise.

The CHAIRMAN. We will excuse you if you would like to go.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I will be back.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hastings.

Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

A couple of things. You spent a bit of your time there on not

enough time for long–term or strategic planning. I can assure you

from the west coast, in my 6–hour experience of going back and

forth across the country one way, I spend a lot of time in my mind

strategically thinking, and you get back here and don’t have time

to do what you are talking about.

A couple of things I have picked up in the testimony and the remarks by witnesses and Members here is that there seems to be

two major areas of concern: the role of the authorizers, which probably is, I would agree, not going to be solved by a biennial budget;

but the other one is the supplemental. Mr. Obey testified earlier

and at length, and as you know, Mr. Obey is one who has a great

deal of affection, I guess is the proper word, for this institution,

and he was suggesting that the supplemental process will be

dragged out in such a way that it will slow this whole process

down. My answer to that was once you get through the initial biennial budget, then you have a budget in place, and if you don’t pass

the supplemental, the government still runs, which I think is the

positive from that standpoint.

But I would like you to elaborate more than what you did in response to Mr. Moakley’s observation about the supplemental on

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how you see the supplementals would work once the biennial budget is adopted.

And one other issue, too, that was brought up, because the biennial budget has every possibility of being pushed probably back

into the second year, that is just being the politics of it, you kick

it ahead, kick it ahead until who knows. Respond, if you would, to

those observations.

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, I think Mr. Obey probably is correct when

he says that there will be more pressure for some supplementals,

but what would impress me is that Members are going to find a

way to assert themselves, and if they feel restricted, they will take

advantage of the supplemental or insist on another supplemental.

But you are talking here about a few supplementals versus 13

appropriations bills, and passing two or three supplemental bills

will be time–consuming, but there are always going to be issues

arising. There are emergency issues or issues that Members want

to bring forward, and they are going to do it on supplemental. I

think that is appropriate. I don’t think there is anything wrong

with that. But you would, I believe, have much less intrusion by

the budget if you had biennial budgeting than if you had to pass

13 appropriations bills every year. I guess that is the principal

point.

Now, if they do what you suggested and punted the budget into

the next year, that would be a serious mistake, and so the Congress would have to discipline itself to get the budget done in the

first year if you are going to have the advantages, if there are advantages to biennial budgeting, in the second year.

I might just take off from your question and say that I am appalled with the omnibus bills. The omnibus bills are an abomination in the process, if not in substance. And we have become—you

have become, I guess I should say, now far too dependent upon the

omnibus bills. They are popular because they hand a lot of power

to very few Members, and I think in terms of good process they

really violate every concept of good legislative process.

I used to—I know you have had the experience many times.

When we would get these omnibus bills at 2 o’clock in the morning,

they would be 3 or 4,000 pages long and be asking you to vote on

them at 10:00 in the morning, and all you have is the raw legislative language in front of you which doesn’t tell you anything about

the content of the bill. And it is just an outrageous process, and

I think a lot more exploration needs to be done why it is done so

much in the Congress. I think I know some of them, but not all

of them. It is the process. It is just outrageous.

Mr. HASTINGS. It appears to me, too, that going through this and

discussing this, the issue of the other body has been brought up,

and I would—in fact, you alluded to it earlier that the Senate is

part of the problem. I suppose that is the wisdom of our Founding

Fathers to have this conflict of the legislative branch, but ironically

it appears that there seems to be more acceptance at least in the

Senate than in the House for a biennial budget. That is my reading

of this, and that seems to be very, very positive. Thank you very

much.

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Lee. Let me just conclude

with a couple of comments and then a question that I would like

to raise with you.

First of all, in—I will say that I got 250 cosponsors on the legislation calling for biennial budgeting. Do you know when I obtained

those cosponsorships? Often at 2 o’clock in the morning when we

were sitting downstairs. So I want you to know that provided a little impetus for people to come on board. It was in the waning hours

of the first session of the 106th Congress, and in the last calendar

year actually over 40 percent of the roll call votes we had downstairs were on budget–related issues themselves. So we clearly

have spent a great deal of time on it.

I would like to—I have been asked by the staff to go through on

a question on a proposal that we had in our joint committee 7

years ago, and I would just like to go through that, and included

in the recommendations was a proposal that the Budget Committee

use the off–year session for long–term studies and to hold hearings

and receive testimony from committees and jurisdictions regarding

problem areas an the result of their oversight activities. The Budget Committee would then issue to the Speaker under this proposal

by January 1 of each odd–numbered year a report identifying the

key issues facing the Congress for the next biennium, and I am just

wondering if you can expand on the thinking behind that proposal,

if you recall it particularly, on its impact on the ability of the committees of the House to focus on long–term concerns which we have

been talking about here this morning as well as the issue of programmatic oversight.

Mr. HAMILTON. I am pleased to be reminded of that recommendation, but I think the thought behind it was the same thing I was

trying to express, perhaps not so well, earlier about the need to develop mechanisms to get the Congress to think long term. What

prompted that recommendation was the very thing that prompted

my observations here; that is, Federal Government and Congress

just doesn’t do enough of it. If you agree with that, most people I

think do agree with it, then you ask yourself what kind of mechanisms you put into place to require it, and that is what we are trying to do with that proposal with respect to long–term studies and

a report, making the committees focus on the long–term needs. I

thought then and I think now that it is good for both.

Incidentally, I was glad to be reminded that I cast the deciding

vote for the biennial budgeting. I am glad to be reminded of that.

The CHAIRMAN. I remember going down there through that in

the brand new HC–5. We were going through that. Tom Mann

spent a lot of time there, and some of the other people in the

room—I remember we had a very, very interesting debate because

I remember David Obey was a member of our committee then, so

it was a rigorous one. Let me express again—.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman, before I—.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moakley.

Mr. MOAKLEY. I just want to put in the record the Congressional

Research Service table that shows that the House only spent one–

fifth of its time on all budget–related legislation. I know there has

been a lot of figures thrown around.

Mr. HAMILTON. There are different ways to measure it.

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Mr. MOAKLEY. Okay. I am sure there are. And also as far as you

say that there wasn’t enough time for appropriations bills, authorization bills, there were only three appropriation bills that took

more time on the floor than the authorization bill, the foreign aid

bill, out of your committee. So, I mean, we do have time to spend

on authorization.

Mr. HAMILTON. We can’t get them enacted into law.

Mr. MOAKLEY. That is not our fault, thank you, and it is not for

lack of time. So I don’t think a biennial budget is going to help that

either. Do you?

Mr. HAMILTON. I think it gives you the opportunity to help it,

Joe. Does it do it? Does it guarantee it? No, it doesn’t.

Mr. MOAKLEY. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just say that no one here has claimed at

all that going to the biennial budget in the appropriations cycle

will, in fact, be a panacea to all the ailments or the kind of challenges we have here in this institution, but with so many very

thoughtful people having spent so many years at this, as an alternative—and the success we have seen in States and other areas—

is something worth considering.

And following Mr. Moakley’s directive, I would like to say that

we are going to continue to be deliberative and thoughtful and open

to a wide range of views on it, and as such I would like to request

of you that you be available to respond to written questions that

we might be providing.

Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Chairman, may I just say that Mr. Moakley’s

last point in his opening statement about a phased–in approach

should be looked at very hard.

The CHAIRMAN. We discussed that at length with Jack Lew the

other day in the testimony that he provided here.

So will you respond to our written questions?

Mr. HAMILTON. I would be happy to do the best I can.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

We are going to go to a panel now, which will consist of Tom

Mann, the W. Averell Harriman Senior Fellow in American Governance at the Brookings Institution; Professor Phil Joyce at the

George Washington University Department of Public Administration; Professor Charles Whalen of Cornell University; and Professor

Roy Meyers of the University of Maryland.

So if the four of you would come forward, and we look forward

to your testimony, and I will say that without objection, the prepared remarks that you have will appear in the record in their entirety, and if you would like to provide a summary for the committee, you have all witnessed this discussion we have had, when

there was obviously a larger membership here, so any thoughts you

have in response to the exchanges we have had would certainly be

welcome, too.

It is nice to see you, Mr. Mann. Welcome to the committee. I

don’t know if you have been here since I have chaired the place.

Have you?

Mr. MANN. One time, not enough, but happy to be back.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you very much. Were we talking

about the same thing?

Mr. MANN. No. As I recall we were talking about the ethics.

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The CHAIRMAN. Oh, right, right. I remember that. Thank you

very much. It is nice to see you.

STATEMENTS OF THOMAS E. MANN, W. AVERELL HARRIMAN

SENIOR FELLOW IN AMERICAN GOVERNANCE AT THE

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; PHILIP G. JOYCE, PROFESSOR,

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION; CHARLES J. WHALEN, PROFESSOR,

CORNELL UNIVERSITY; AND ROY T. MEYERS, PROFESSOR,

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

STATEMENT OF THOMAS E. MANN

Mr. MANN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have had the good

fortune of working with you over the years. I have enormous respect and appreciation for the seriousness with which you try to

improve this institution, and also to defend it as a critical part of

our constitutional system. So I want to be clear about that.

Let me tell you I feel very uncomfortable because first I testified

before you, and I find myself bracketed by two former Members,

Lee Hamilton and Bill Frenzel, who are some of the classiest people ever to serve you.

The CHAIRMAN. We don’t want to leave out Leon Panetta.

Mr. MANN. And Leon will be here later, at least the disembodied

voice of Leon.

You know, they are wise people. You are wise people. Reasonable

people can disagree on this.

The CHAIRMAN. That was Jefferson’s line.

Mr. MANN. Yes, and what a source. I mean, I acknowledge there

are uncertain consequences to biennial budgeting that my take

may be absolutely wrong and yours and others’ take may be much

closer to the reality, and if you go ahead with this, I urge you to

do it, as you said, deliberatively and in a way in which you don’t

freeze yourself into a process that ends up backfiring on you.

In a sense I feel like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day. I wake

up each day, and there I am saying, why is it that biennial budgeting isn’t a good idea? Mr. Chairman, let me summarize it this

way, because I listened very carefully to the last set of comments.

Lee said something in passing. He said, there is always a temptation around here to find procedural solutions to substantive problems. That is because sometimes it is easier to fashion a procedural

change than it is to solve a substantive problem. I would frame it

slightly differently. I would say there is always a temptation, understandable one, to find apolitical solutions to political problems.

The realty is the fiscalization of policy debate in this body over

the last 20 years has little to do with process and everything to do

with the broader context of budgets and politics, and my—sort of

my feeling is that today. And you said it yourself, it was the end

of the session at 2:00 a.m. In the morning when you got all those

cosponsors.

There is such frustration with the year–end train wrecks and the

political gamesmanship that is going on at the end of the year on

appropriations matters that you figure, well, we can have half as

many if we go to a 2–year budget process. I mean, that is understandable. But you have to understand that if those train wrecks

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and if that gamesmanship is being driven by broad political forces,

narrow margins in the House and the Senate, divided party government, difficult decisions that have to be made, genuine differences that exist, mobilization of interest groups, if all of those

things are true, you are going to find vehicles to have those fights,

whether you have a 2–year budget cycle or not, and that is my concern.

One of the things that you have to be careful about is not building up public hopes that you really are going to take care of some;

don’t worry, we won’t have these political problems anymore because we fixed it.

Now, I know you are focusing on the more traditional administrative rationale for this, and there are presumably experts—I have

read some of the testimony—others who will appear, that will

make a sort of strong case for it. It is a debatable proposition as

to whether those very desirable outcomes, like more long–term

planning and sort of freeing up time for oversight, avoiding duplication, will flow from this kind of change. For a whole host of reasons that are listed in my testimony, I am skeptical. I just—I

would like to believe it would happen, but I guess I don’t believe

it will happen.

And in particular and you had a very interesting exchange on

congressional oversight. I would say, first of all, there is some pretty good oversight that goes on on a regular basis in the Congress.

You are a little too self–critical. There are pockets of the House in

subcommittees of authorizing committees and on appropriating

committee where Members with serious policy interests and concerns about how programs are being implemented are asking tough

questions and getting good answers, and that should continue.

What it takes is either the serious interest of Members or the political motivation, and it is best if you have both, and then you

really get oversight, but I don’t think freeing time is really the

issue. That extra time, if any is freed, and I am skeptical of that,

could easily be filled with more time fund–raising or spending more

time with lobbyists or doing other things. There are lots of

possibles, and Members are adults. They have to make choices

about what is important to them, and you have to count on them.

You do serious deliberation and oversight. Others can do it if they

are willing to set that as a high priority. So that is my broader concern.

Finally, the point I would simply make is this is a case where

we can really learn something from other countries. Alan Schick

has really studied the experience abroad. No other major democracy has moved to a 2–year budget cycle. They all have annual appropriations, Schick reports, but all of them have figured out ways

of providing a longer time horizon, of multiyear budgets, of flexibility for programs with which it will work, that are relatively noncontroversial, that have the opportunity to plan in advance. And

what I would urge you to do is move into this gingerly, take some

predictable noncontroversial programs, do some 2–year budgeting

with them in appropriating, do some evaluations, and then see if

it isn’t worth expanding them from there.

Finally, one of your biggest political institutional problems is indeed the other body, working with the Senate, and it has been biVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00269 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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cameral strains that have caused more problems than annual appropriating and budgeting. And there are no procedural fixes for

that, but I think you could do something about it. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for offering your healthy skepticism

as opposed to a corrosive cynicism.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mann follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Professor Joyce.

STATEMENT OF PHILIP G. JOYCE

Mr. JOYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to submit my

entire testimony for the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be included in the

record.

Mr. JOYCE. First, let me say I am very sympathetic to the frustrations that lead supporters of biennial budgeting to advance this

reform. If you look at the Congress, you can hardly avoid concluding that the budget process is time–consuming, that deadlines

are missed, and that—at least the kind of oversight that I think

you called policy and program oversight—that there needs to be

perhaps a lot more of that. I think if you defined oversight more

broadly to include what I might call gotcha oversight, you might

have a sort of different conclusion, but I think the kind of oversight

where you look at programs from the ground up, sort of examine

how they are working, I think it really would be a benefit to do

more of that.

And I am also sympathetic to the plight of the executive branch,

which must believe that it is engaged in nonstop budgeting as well,

and some of the advantages certainly that people suggest from biennial budgeting are benefits to executive branch agencies. I think

that was one of the things that led Vice President Gore’s National

Performance Review, at the same time that the Joint Committee

recommended biennial budgeting, to make that same recommendation.

But much as I would like to, I do not necessarily conclude that

biennial budgeting is the cure for these ills, and I want to expand

on this by noting at least some reservations I have about what I

think are the two major parts of this reform. The first is biennial

budget resolutions and the second, biennial appropriations.

On budget resolutions I think the budget resolution over history

has done what it was intended to do. It has allowed the Congress

to compete with the President in the setting of overall fiscal policy.

I think reconciliation, perhaps, has been a particularly useful part

of the process because I think it can be credited for making it easier for the government to get from deficit to surplus.

But I have two reservations, even in a world where we have surpluses, about biennial budget resolutions. The first, that I think

you have heard about before and I know you will be hearing about

later, so I won’t expand on it here, is simply the difficulty of doing

longer–term budget projections. I think the CBO and OMB track

records provide ample evidence of the difficulty in doing budget

projections even for one fiscal year into the future.

The second is that I think a biennial budget resolution would increase the chance that policy would not only lag behind those budget projections, but also lag behind the desires of the electorate.

Things can change very quickly in terms of the political situation;

whether the electorate wants a tax cut or not a tax cut, et cetera.

Doing the budget resolution 2 years at a time might increase the

probability that you were lagging behind that judgment of the electorate.

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The second part of biennial budgeting really has to do with biennial appropriations, and I think that on the congressional side the

argument for biennial appropriations hinges on the possibility that

less frequent budgeting will lead to more time being devoted to

other matters, as you have heard, particularly oversight. When I

think about this, I think the argument for increased oversight is

actually easier to make in the Senate than it is in the House, and

the reason for that is because in the Senate there are a lot many

more Senators that serve on a lot more committees. As you know,

in the House, Members who serve on the Appropriations Committee by and large do not have assignments on other committees.

And so I don’t think it is as clear, at least at the committee level,

that the time that Members are spending on appropriations is necessarily being taken away from the opportunity to do oversight.

In order for the twin benefits that are offered of less budgeting

and more oversight to materialize at all, I think you have to be

convinced of two things. The first is that the biennial process will

not become a de facto annual process, and the second is that if the

biennial process is effective, more time available will actually

equate to more oversight. I am also skeptical of both of these arguments.

In the first case, I think the uncertainties associated with budg- eting for a $2 trillion enterprise would call the sustainability of a

biennial appropriations process into question, and I am particularly

concerned because I know this committee is worried about fiscal

control. More and larger supplementals will not only eat up time,

but might result in less fiscal discipline. These kinds of ′′must pass′′ supplementals have a tendency to become legislative Christmas

trees, and I think we need to at least worry about that a little bit.

That may be particularly true as Mr. Obey, I know, noted in the

Senate, where there is not as tough a germaneness rule.

Of the other possibility, the possibility that there will be more

policy and program oversight, I believe as supporters of biennial

budgeting do that an increase in oversight would help the Congress

to better discharge its responsibilities, particularly because of legislation like the Government Performance and Results Act, which I

think is already paying dividends. I do not believe, however, that

the primary impediment to better oversight is lack of time. As Mr.

Hamilton pointed out, I thought very well, oversight is hard, it is

not sexy, it doesn’t pay a lot of electoral rewards. So I am skeptical

that simply making more time available for oversight will make

more oversight happen.

So in conclusion, I did want to note that in my written testimony—I won’t go over these in the interest of time—I did offer

some technical suggestions and raised some technical issues that I

think you should think about if you want to move ahead and enact

this reform. I would join Mr. Mann and others in encouraging you,

however, to proceed cautiously, as you did with the Line Item Veto

Act, perhaps by delaying implementation, implementing slowly or

providing some sunset provision that would enable you to evaluate

the full implications of this change prior to making it a permanent

part of the budget process.

I thank you very much for your attention.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

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[The prepared statement of Mr. Joyce follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Professor Whalen.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES J. WHALEN

Mr. WHALEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here

to discuss this issue with you this morning. The starting point for

my remarks is the understanding that many Members of Congress

feel the current budget and appropriations process leaves both the

executive and the legislative branches with inadequate time to devote to oversight, program management and evaluation, and other

nonbudget matters.

An academic study published in 1989 indicates that biennial

budgeting within the Defense Department did indeed allow more

time for the agency to work on nonbudget matters, including planning for the future program, evaluations and problem–solving.

Studies examining the State–level biennial budgeting experience

also find that biennial budgeting is less costly and less time–consuming than annual budgeting, even after annual adjustments are

taken into consideration.

There is no guarantee that a streamlined Federal budget process

would improve government fiscal management and oversight. But

we do know that the just–mentioned study of the Defense Department experience suggests there is potential for significant gains in

terms of both efficiency and cost savings. State–level studies meanwhile find that biennial budgeting States give greater attention to

oversight, management and planning, Connecticut’s experience

being a notable exception, as Representative Moakley has indicated

today. Moreover in these States there is widespread belief that this

heightened attention to nonbudget issues improves government

performance.

While some have expressed concern that biennial budgeting will

lead to increased budget requests, due to agency padding, two published studies, one issued in 1994 and another released in 1984, do

not find evidence of this at the State level.

Finally, I agree with Dr. Alice Rivlin, former head of both the

CBO and the OMB, who has testified in the past that minimizing

unexpected changes in U.S. fiscal policy can be beneficial to States,

government contractors and program recipients, indeed to nearly

all individuals and organizations affected by federal policies.

Under biennial budgeting, stability and certainty would also be

increased when policy changes are made, because such changes

could be imposed gradually and without an automatic revisiting of

those changes. Of course, some see an annual revisiting of appropriations as an essential congressional tool. While I agree that it

is of value to have this annual appropriations tool, I believe annual

appropriations and frustrations over the lack of time for oversight

may be two sides of the same coin. If that is the case, then the ultimate question for Congress is which does it value more, the flexibility of annual appropriations or an opportunity, as has been said

earlier today, for increased attention to oversight and other issues

that are neglected under the current process?

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Whalen follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Professor Meyers.

STATEMENT OF ROY T. MEYERS

Mr. MEYERS. Thank you very much for the invitation. I would

just like to read a few snippets of my testimony and particularly

focus on the concerns that were raised during Mr. Hamilton’s testimony about oversight and strategic planning.

Twelve years ago I wrote a very long paper about this topic for

Senate Governmental Affairs when I was working at the Congressional Budget Office. Although I used the ′′on the one hand/on the

other hand′′ typical approach of CBO, it was a pretty negative report. Twelve years later I would have to say that my thinking has

evolved a bit, and I am a bit more supportive of the idea, although

it still presents some problems. In fact, I would argue that a simple

biennial budgeting bill is insufficiently ambitious, and I will get to

some points about that in a few minutes.

The budget process has changed significantly in two ways that

are relevant to this bill. First, back in the 1980s, there was still

a fair amount of concern in Congress that biennial budgeting would

prevent the Congress from reacting quickly to an unanticipated recession, and, of course, opponents of biennial budgeting said that

was a drawback. Now, though, it would be generally held that this

would be a good thing about biennial budgeting if it would deter

Congress from being tempted to displace the Federal Reserve’s role

in reacting to a recession, for there is a lot of evidence from economists that discretionary countercyclical fiscal policy does not work.

In the case of an unanticipated national security crisis, I think it

is unlikely that a biennial budget would prevent the Congress from

reacting, so I am not worried about that.

The second way in which budgeting has changed since the late

1980s is that throughout the 1990s, the Congress and the President engaged in negotiations that produced several significant

multiyear budget agreements. I think the multiyear budget agreements have been a mixture of good and bad. They have been good

because they recognize the political necessity and economic necessity for a fiscal glide path; that you couldn’t balance the budget in

a year. But you may remember, I would expect with negative feelings what happened in 1995 and 1996 when you were having this

long debate about whether 7 years or 9 years was an appropriate

period, and it turned out that both the President and Congress

were wrong. Luckily, things have been much better than we expected in economic terms. However that did not guarantee the politically lasting nature of the agreement.

I think the reality here is that there is, if you will, a timing balance for our political cycle, and it is the 2–year electoral cycle for

the House. Comprehensive budget agreements don’t last much

longer than that. Therefore, it would make sense to move from a

5 or 7 or 9–year agreement to a more natural period of 2 years.

Now, ways in which I think this bill is insufficiently ambitious.

I would suggest that you need to go back to H.R. 853, and append

parts of it to this bill, because I don’t think biennial budgeting will

work without them. I understand that H.R. 853 is a comprehensive

bill, and that is a difficult bill to pass in any Congress. NevertheVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00286 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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less, one segment of it, the limitations on emergency

supplementals, would be a reasonable answer to the concerns that

many people have raised—that the even year would feature a

Christmas tree supplemental, or an endless series of

supplementals. So I would suggest that you take at least that part

of H.R. 853 and append it to this.

In addition, I believe that a joint budget resolution makes a lot

of sense, although I would admit that there is nothing to guarantee

that a Congressman and a President could agree on a joint resolution if that was the statutory process.

But I do think it is quite unlikely that Congress could go it alone

in trying to adopt a 2–year budget resolution, under the threat of

Presidential blame that we have all become familiar with, when

Congress already has a great deal of difficulty adopting a 1–year

budget resolution.

Now, to finish up with some discussion of oversight and planning. As someone who studies the budget a great deal, I have spent

a little while in the past weeks looking over the President’s budget

proposals. There is an interesting disjuncture between the first half

of this budget and the second half. The first half of this budget

might be called ′′1,001 policy initiatives,′′ and the second half of the

budget is a review by budget function, that is, by national defense,

international relations and so on, of the performance goals that

were adopted by the agencies in response to the Government Performance and Results Act. Unfortunately, there is little connection

between the performance planning process and the President’s

budget initiatives.

I think there is a similar problem in the Congress, and it relates

in particular to the committee structure that you have been discussing. In fact, I would suggest that Congress is unlikely to do

more strategic planning and quality oversight unless the Congress

returns to the kinds of proposals Mr. Dreier was making in 1994

and 1995 about committee organization; in fact, go far beyond

those and seriously consider again the idea of combining the appropriations and authorizing committees. I know that is an issue that

Tom Mann has studied in the past.

The final issue I would like to raise is what kind of incentives

are necessary for Members of Congress to do better oversight. I

don’t think it is a problem of time. I think it is a problem of what

makes the job of the Congressmen more attractive. Obviously Members of Congress need to be reelected, and they spend a great deal

of time trying to gain earmarks for their districts, and from the

agency perspective, particularly in the GPRA context, those kinds

of earmarks are often perceived as being inefficient and ineffective.

Whether that is true or not, I suppose, could be a matter of debate,

as it has been a matter of debate in the Republican Presidential

primary in the past few months. I happen to agree with Senator

McCain’s point of view, but I might be wrong.

But the reality is that if Members of Congress spend so much

time trying to earmark provisions in the bill, they are obviously

going to have much less time to do the kind of measured oversight

and review of performance plans that GPRA intends. So ′′biennial

budgeting or not,′′ I think, is not the real issue. Rather, if the Congress were to increase the amount of time available for oversight,

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there would, also need to be a widespread commitment within the

Congress to perform the kind of oversight that the sponsors of biennial budgeting say they want.

Thank you very much.

Mr. LINDER. [Presiding.] Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Meyers follows:]

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Mr. LINDER. I just have a couple of questions. I apologize for having to run out, but we have a bunch of students on the steps waiting to have a picture taken. You can’t inconvenience the photographer.

You mentioned the sunset provision in your testimony. My experience with sunset provisions is that they never work. When an

agency comes time to be sunsetted, you have a focused group of

people directly affected who are going to overwhelm you with the

yeses, but the population at large doesn’t even know it is happening. You are not going to have—in terms of reauthorizing—you

are not going to have any negatives. Can you tell me any place

where it has worked?

Mr. JOYCE. What I was thinking about was not a sunset provision of, for example, authorizations, but a sunset provision for the

biennial budgeting process itself. The idea would be that before you

would decide to put what could potentially be a radical change into

the permanent process, you test it. Once you have enacted a piece

of legislation, it becomes harder to enact a new piece of legislation

to make it go away than it would to put a sunset on it. And I was

suggesting that if you want to go ahead, and there are concerns

that have been raised, sunsetting might be a way of pilot–testing

the idea of having biennial budgeting.

On the question of sunsets for individual programs, I cannot give

you any examples where that has necessarily worked, because I

think that you know at any point in time, whether a program has

sunset or not, the question you have to ask is what can political

forces bring to bear at the time when that program was available

for sunset. This is the same way of saying, who cares about this

program being continued, and whatever political forces are out

there that care about it being continued are going to rise up at that

particular point in time.

Mr. LINDER. When special interests find that their program is

about to become sunsetted, they suddenly find all of their relatives

to write. The average American doesn’t have any idea what they

are talking about. They don’t respond. So it is always overwhelming, and the political pressures have a continuance in all

that.

Mr. MANN. But in this case who are the interests affected; who

are the constituents? You are absolutely right for most public programs, but here we are talking about a new procedure to use within the legislative and executive branches, and I think what we are

saying is we don’t know honestly what the consequences would be.

Our preference would be that if you are determined to move

ahead, first you do it with some particular programs that have stability and predictability and bipartisan support and see how it

works, but if you insist on going forward with the whole process,

think of it as a pilot and say, you will do it for one budget cycle,

two budget cycles, and then review and see whether you want to

stick with that or move back. I think in that case you wouldn’t

have the same political dynamics of people holding onto an existing

system.

Mr. LINDER. Reference was made to your comments previously

about combining authorizing and appropriations committees, which

my State essentially does, and I think State government is difVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00292 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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ferent than Federal Government with respect to the kinds of issues

you deal with. I would like to hear your comments on that.

Mr. MANN. Yes, yes. It is one of those principles that sounds

great, but when you really get down to it, it ends up being very

problematic. The reality is different kind of considerations are

properly brought to bear by authorizing and appropriating committees. There is a reason for them being separate entities. The problem today is that a lot of authorizers feel they have been squeezed

out by the budget process, by demands from the reconciliation process, by appropriations. But the solution, I think, is not to combine,

but to figure out ways of creating opportunities and room for authorizing committees to operate.

I would feel, however, that a 2–year budget cycle wouldn’t have

much of a bearing on that. I mean, the House’s great comparative

advantage is the capacity for a division of labor and specialization,

and authorizers don’t need to hold back in a year because there is

appropriations that year. I think we need more leadership and creative efforts on the authorizing committees, not a structural combination of the two types of committees.

Mr. MEYERS. Obviously the main barriers to doing it are seniority rights on committees, and connections between individual Members and constituent groups.

Mr. LINDER. Are you hinting that maybe the asphalt interests

aren’t interested in the transportation bill?

Mr. MEYERS. Actually, I was going to bring up transportation in

a minute.

So in that sense, I think committee reorganization is probably a

theoretical issue, but I think it is one that at least this committee

needs to have on its plate.

I would disagree with Tom in the following sense: I don’t think

the authorizing committees and appropriations committees do

many different things right now. Point one, look at the annual authorization for defense and the annual appropriation for defense,

and show me the differences; there aren’t too many. Do the same

thing for the transportation appropriations bill and what comes out

of Mr. Shuster’s committee. I think there a lot of parallels between

the products of the two committees. Of course, there are multiyear

authorizations for the different transportation modes, but the reality is that there is an annual dog fight between the two committees. I think this is by and large dysfunctional for the Congress.

If I could just make one comparison, I spent a little time in Mexico City in January working with the Chamber of Deputies down

there. As you might know, Mexico is finally making a transition toward a multiparty competitive democracy, and away from a Presidential state, so that the legislature is apparently going to have a

little more power in the practical sense. Although the Mexican Constitution gives the legislature the authority to pass the budget, in

reality they have had no impact on it at all. They are starting from

scratch, in that they do not have a stable, powerful committee

structure, and to that extent it is beneficial for them to try and

think about how they are going to design their committee structure

and compete more effectively with the President. I think they have

a better chance in the next 10 years of doing so than does the U.S.

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Congress, if the Congress continues to believe that it is well–served

by the existing, overly complex committee structure.

Mr. LINDER. One more question. You said this is being insufficiently bold.

Mr. MEYERS. Ambitious.

Mr. LINDER. Did I miss your recommendation on how we could

be more ambitious?

Mr. MEYERS. Well, I thought reorganizing committee structures

was probably overly ambitious, but I think going back to parts of

H.R. 853 and trying to address some of the complaints that people

have made about biennial budgeting by incorporating parts of that

bill into a biennial budgeting bill would make sense. I would not

suggest that you take up all of H.R. 853, for example, I think the

automatic continuing resolution is a very bad idea for a variety of

reasons.

Mr. LINDER. May I ask each of you to be willing to respond to

written inquiries? Thank you.

Mr. LINDER. The committee is going to be in recess just long

enough to vote. Please take your seat. Welcome. I will vote and be

right back.

[recess.]

The CHAIRMAN. [Presiding.] Let me welcome our second panel

and just say that it is a great pleasure to see our distinguished

former colleague Bill Frenzel, who is with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And I had the privilege of recalling that

he sent a letter to me in the mid–1980s when he and I were the

only two Members of the House to vote against every single appropriation bill. I wanted to save that letter. I don’t know exactly

where it is, but I think I may have saved it someplace. And 7 years

ago when I was proceeding with the work on the Joint Committee

on the Organization of Congress, when we were working on biennial budgeting, I had the privilege of working closely with Mr.

Frenzel on passage of a very important public policy question,

which has been a great success. That is the North American Free

Trade Agreement.

So I welcome him here; and Robert Bixby, the executive director

of the Concord Coalition; and Jim Horney of the Center on Budget

and Policy Priorities.

The CHAIRMAN. So, Mr. Frenzel, if you would proceed.

STATEMENTS OF BILL FRENZEL, COMMITTEE FOR A RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET; ROBERT L. BIXBY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CONCORD COALITION; AND JIM HORNEY, CENTER

ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES, ACCOMPANIED BY

CAROL COX WAIT

STATEMENT OF BILL FRENZEL

Mr. FRENZEL. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Linder. I am accompanied by Carol Cox Wait, who is the director of the Committee For A Responsible Budget. I chair that

committee with former Congressman Tim Penny. The committee is

a bipartisan, nonprofit, educational institution that studies the

Federal budget and related matters mostly focusing on process. The

committee is completing a project with financial support from the

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′′Big–5′′ accounting firms, in which we have invited experts inside

and outside the government to review the process with us. We are

completing a report which we expect to have finished before the

end of the month. We will be glad to share with the committee and

with other interested people.

In a nutshell, Mr. Chairman, our committee supports biennial

budgeting, but with a few caveats. The first is we support biennial

budgeting along with biennial appropriations and tax cycles. We

believe that biennial budgeting has to be accompanied by biennial

cycles for appropriations and revenue. We would not like to see 2

years of appropriations take place in 1 year and then a repeat of

appropriations in the following year. We want to be very careful

about that particular point.

We also believe that it is essential that caps be put on discretionary spending, and, of course, we support caps on entitlements

as well. They need to be worked into the process. The difficulty

that we perceive here is that under the reconciliation process, you

might not get to agreeing to caps until after the 2–year appropriations, or some of them, have been passed. If so, the caps will therefore be meaningless.

We have recommended previously to you and others that it

would be a good idea to have a budget resolution that needed to

be signed by the President, but we have made some suggestions in

here as to how you might establish the caps before the appropriations are passed. A joint budget resolution is one of them, but we

leave it up to you as to how to do it. But we are concerned that

the caps have been the only effective limitation on spending, and

we believe they should be part of whatever kind of a program you

go for here.

We also support separate caps for defense and nondefense. We

support entitlement caps, which I have mentioned, and we believe

that this should be an important part of the system when you move

the process to a 2–year biennial system.

Again—very simply, we support the biennial program. But we

believe it must be accompanied by these other changings so that

it doesn’t run away with the process.

Again, we will have a full report on the budget process within

a couple of weeks, and we will be glad to share it with you. We

thank you for the opportunity to appear before you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Frenzel follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bixby.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT L. BIXBY

Mr. BIXBY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I am here representing the Concord Coalition, which is a

nationwide, grassroots bipartisan organization dedicated to

strengthening the Nation’s long–term economic prospects through

prudent fiscal policy.

Our organization is cochaired by former Senators Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and Sam Nunn of Georgia. They, along

with our approximately 200,000 members, have been working for

the past 8 years to build the grassroots constituency for policies

that will encourage elected officials to make the tough choices required to balance the Federal budget, keep it balanced on a sustainable basis, and strategically deploy any budget surpluses that

develop to help prepare for the fiscal, economic and demographic

challenges that will occur as the population becomes sharply older

in the coming decades.

I am tempted to just say that I associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Hamilton and shut up, because he said a lot of what

I want to reiterate about the potential benefits of going to a biennial budgeting system. It is easy to forget that just 10 years ago

the budget was mired in large and growing deficits, and the budget

process was appropriately geared towards eliminating those deficits.

With the budget caps and, we would reiterate, the committee’s

endorsement of maintaining budget caps—with budget caps, with

the pay–as–you–go limitation on mandatory spending and revenues, those budget process reforms have helped us to achieve the

more favorable fiscal climate that we find ourselves in now.

The lesson to be learned from the overall success of the BEA is

that budget process reform, while not everything, certainly can be

an important tool in helping to achieve strategic long–term goals.

So if you look forward now and say, what is our new challenge,

you see the retirement of the baby boomer generation; overall demographics as people are living longer; and the challenges ahead

for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is not just entitlement programs—inevitably we are going to have spend more on

those programs with the aging of the population. But it will put

pressure on the discretionary side of the budget as well. It will put

pressure on revenues. That means it is all the more important for

you as policy–makers to make wise decisions about committing

Federal resources.

The promise of biennial budgeting in that regard is that it hopefully would free up more time for you to take a more long–term

view of things and not be bogged down in the annual year–to–year

fights over budget resolutions and appropriations bills. While no

amount of process reform can substitute for the hard policy choices

you face, we do believe that moving to a biennial budget would help

shift the emphasis from the immediate and often repetitious battles

to the broader questions of strategic planning, oversight, and reform.

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Let me make a couple of points about the process of biennial

budgeting and how it fits in. First of all, if you look at it, it makes

sense from the overall view of the cycles of Congress. You are on

a 2–year cycle, so it makes sense to come in the first year of the

2–year cycle and adopt a budget resolution that in some ways sets

out your priorities, in some ways, I guess, responds to the President’s priorities. And that becomes the tool for the political statement of that Congress. And then hopefully in the second session,

you could do the oversight work and make sure to monitor how

your plan was working.

I would also reiterate what Mr. Frenzel said. Frankly, one of the

attractions for the Concord Coalition is if you have a biennial cycle,

hopefully it would lessen the opportunity for fiscal irresponsibility,

we might say. I think if you try to do it 1 year—the problem with

moving to a biennial cycle is, might you get involved in second–

year supplementals that would be so large and cumbersome as to

defeat the whole purpose. That is the downside of moving to biennial budgeting, and that would have to be addressed in some way.

Some sort of procedural mechanism would have to be in place to

guard against that. But hopefully in having a 2–year cycle, you

would be able to spend more time on oversight.

Now, granted, as Mr. Hamilton and others have said, the work

of oversight is painstaking. It is not as immediately rewarding as

appropriating. And, I don’t know if a lot of process reform will be

guaranteed to take place or that it will be any more thorough than

it is now, but I think it would provide you the opportunity for that

oversight. And, frankly, you have heard from a lot of experts in the

three hearings. I would like to suggest that you are the final experts as to whether or not biennial budgeting would free up more

time for you. You know what your time constraints are and what

your time pressures are. We can only guess. So while I am happy

to say from the Concord Coalition’s point of view we think it would

free up more time, in the ultimate judgment, it is really yours, and

if a sufficient number of Members of Congress think it would free

up more time, we are prepared to take you at your word.

Let me just conclude the remarks by saying that now that the

budget process need not be focused exclusively on deficit reduction,

you do have a unique opportunity to do some weeding out, modernization and updating of government programs before the retirement pressures of the baby boomers hit. So we have a narrow window of opportunity here. Both the GAO and the CBO have recently

reminded all of us about the—not only the fiscal pressures, but the

need to do some more extensive government oversight. CBO always

has their cookbook of options, which they just came out with last

week, and so if biennial budgeting gives you more time to consider

those long–term options, the better.

And finally, let me just reiterate that in the process, the key is

making the second year work. The key is beginning to get everything done in the first year, including the reconciliation bill, all the

appropriations bills, and having some sort of orderly second year

corrections, review.

I don’t know whether it is the President who sends up a corrections bill and the Budget Committees deals with it. I think there

is an opportunity, though. I don’t think biennial budgeting needs

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to result in a flood of supplementals. I think there is an opportunity perhaps in conjunction with some of the other improvements

in the budget process reform that were recommended in H.R. 853,

which we supported, to bring the emergency spending loophole

under control and to focus maybe on one big supplemental in the

second year. And so it would be an orderly thing and not 13 separate minisupplementals which could easily get out of hand, and

then the whole thing would not be worth doing.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bixby follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Horney.

STATEMENT OF JIM HORNEY

Mr. HORNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Linder. I appreciate

the opportunity to testify before the committee today. The Center

on Budget and Policy Priorities is a nonprofit policy institute that

works on an array of policy issues with particular interest in matters of fiscal policy, and policy impacts on low and moderate income

families. Along with my written statement, I would like to submit

for the record a paper on biennial budgeting, written by Bob Greenstein, the Executive Director of the Center.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection it will be included in the

record.

[The information follows:]

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Mr. HORNEY. That paper is a slight revision of the paper that

was published last March before I joined the Center. I am in complete agreement with all the points in it, including its conclusion

that on balance, the disadvantages of biennial budgeting are likely

to outweigh the advantages, but rather than go through the various arguments made in that paper, many of which have been addressed by other people testifying here today and in your previous

hearings, I want to focus on one particular issue of biennial budgeting that I am particularly familiar with. That is the likelihood

that the budget projections will change dramatically from the time

that Congress begins considering a 2–year budget and the time

that the second year of that cycle is actually completed.

For more than 7 years before I joined the Center staff last July

I worked at the Congressional Budget Office. At CBO I was in

charge of the unit with responsibility for coordinating the baseline

budget projections. In that position I could hardly fail to be struck

by how dramatically those projections changed from time to time.

I was responsible every 6 months or so for trying to explain why

the projections of the deficit or surplus had changed substantially

in just a few months. I firmly believe that those changes occurred

not because CBO wasn’t doing its job properly, but instead because

that the Federal budget and the United States economy is so large

and so complicated and so dynamic that no person or organization

will ever be able to project outcomes with any degree of certainty.

The very best estimates are going to be off.

For example, since last March CBO has increased the estimate

of surplus for fiscal Year 2000 by $84 billion. It has increased the

estimate of the surplus for 2001 by $105 billion. And lest you think

that based on the record of the last few years that budget projections always get better, as recently as the early nineties we had a

long period where the projections continuously were getting worse.

For instance, from March 1990 to March 1991 CBO increased its

projection of the deficit for fiscal year 1991 by $181 billion and its

projection of the deficit for the following year by $238 billion.

Unfortunately such large changes are not unique. CBO had a

very interesting chapter in the economic and budget outlook they

published just this last January in which, among other things, they

analyzed the record of the budget projections over the last 14 years.

Basically they took the difference between the projected deficits

and the actual outcomes for 1986 through fiscal year 1999 and took

the average of the errors, absolute average of the errors, meaning

they didn’t take into account whether the estimate was too high or

too low because they would average out and they would not be terribly far off. Based on that, looking at the absolute average, the average absolute error over that period for projections of the deficit

for the budget year, that is the year that starts on October first

and the year the projections were actually made, the average error

equaled 1.1 percent of GDP. Based on their current economic forecast, the average error for 2001 would be $112 billion.

For the second year—the first outyear, the year after the budget

year—the error is even larger. It is equal to 1.6 percent of GDP,

again based on the current estimate that is $170 billion.

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So that means that if CBO’s current projection for surplus for fiscal year 2002 is as accurate as projections have been on average

for the last 14 years, you should expect that the surplus will be either $170 billion higher or $170 billion lower than the $212 billion

that CBO has projected for 2002.

This is not intended as a criticism of CBO, particularly since I

was at least partially responsible for some of those projections that

turned out so wrong. It is simply to indicate that projecting budget

outcomes is incredibly uncertain. The best estimates are going to

be off by many billions of dollars.

Congress cannot do anything about the uncertainty of the budget

estimates but it can decide in structuring a budget process how to

deal with that uncertainty, and I think it is reasonable to ask

whether locking in a budget plan for 2 years is the appropriate response in the face of such uncertainty.

Members of Congress often argue that the Federal Government

should be run more like a business. Businesses today I think you

could argue are facing more uncertainty than they ever have. Who,

for instance, could have imagined just a few years ago the challenges and the opportunities that the Internet is presenting for today’s businesses. But how are businesses responding to this increase in uncertainty? They are responding by becoming more flexible and responding more rapidly to changes in their environment,

not by locking themselves into a plan rigidly and not changing that

when they need to.

Can you imagine a CEO today going to his stockholders and saying in the face of the dynamic economy that we are facing right

now, ′′I think the best thing to do for this company is to lock us

into a business plan for 2 years, spend a year trying to decide

whether that business plan is working and only then consider significant revisions to that budget plan?′′

I think there are good reasons why Congress shouldn’t update

the Federal budget as often as many businesses update their business plans, but I think it is hard for me to believe that it is best

for the Congress to respond to changing budget situations and the

changing needs of American citizens only every 2 years.

Now, of course, all of the major biennial budget proposals allow

for modifications of the budget instead of a year, but if those modifications become routine and you end up spending almost as much

time in the second year on revising the budget as was spent on the

budget in the first, you won’t get any of the promised benefits—

more time for oversight and more thoughtful consideration of long

term problems. So you wouldn’t get the benefits.

At the same time, you are also likely to get budget outcomes that

may not be as good because more of the budget decisions would be

made in an ad hoc fashion rather than part of a thorough structured analysis of the budget. Frustration in Members of Congress

with the budget process is completely understandable. But I am

afraid that biennial budgeting would do nothing to ease that frustration and could, in fact, lead to budget outcomes that would be

less desirable.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Horney follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We appreciate your testimony and the time that you have put into this. I don’t have any

particular questions, although I would like to ask all of you again

that you accept written questions that will come from the committee. We have one more panel that we are hoping to have considered before we go to our teleconferencing testimony from Mr. Panetta.

Mr. Linder, do you have any questions?

Mr. LINDER. Just one. Which reforms, process reforms, were

turned around. Which ones?

Mr. BIXBY. Specifically I think the idea of having caps on discretionary spending and the pay as you go limitation on mandatory

programs and revenues certainly helped control spending.

Mr. LINDER. We broke those caps. In fact, we have broken the

caps every year since Gramm–Rudman I, Gramm–Rudman II, and

the 1990 agreements.

Mr. BIXBY. Technically, the caps aren’t broken because of emergency spending, but I certainly agree and have been quite critical

of the emergency spending loophole which really didn’t get out of

hand until the last 2 years. In the mid–1990s the caps had the effect of keeping spending down even if they weren’t strictly adhered

to. The last 2 years I think the caps got unrealistically low, so

there are a lot of emergency loopholes, and I think that is one of

the keys, and I think Jim and I would agree on this. The key if

you are going to do the biennial budgeting is to use realistic assumptions about discretionary spending so that in the second year

you don’t have to do, you know, outside supplementals.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FRENZEL. Mr. Chairman, might I comment? You are dead

right, we busted caps, we busted Gramm–Rudman. When it didn’t

work, we made Gramm–Rudman II. We have invented all sorts of

things to restrict spending, and they haven’t worked. The only

thing that has worked has been the caps beginning with BEA 90.

While they may not have done everything you and I would have

liked them to do they at least made Congress think a little bit

about exceding them. Last year they didn’t think quite hard

enough I am afraid, but nevertheless I think the caps have some

effectiveness and should be part of the system.

Mr. Chairman, in light of a comment on the panel, would you

permit Ms. Wait to make a statement, a very short one.

The CHAIRMAN. Surely.

Ms. WAIT. I just wanted to refer to Mr. Horney’s argument that

you shouldn’t have a biennial budget process because it could interfere with fine–tuning to adjust to changes in economics and budget

outcomes. I would like to associate myself with Alice Rivlin in this

regard. Alice has written that budget forecasts and economic forecasts are kind of like weather forecasts. We can look out the window and we know what the weather is like today. We can predict

with some certainty what it is going to be tomorrow, and over the

long haul we can predict business cycles will occur though we can’t

predict them with the kind of certainty we would like any more

than long range weather forecasts are dependable.

But Alice also has written, that it is folly to think we can or

should fine–tune Federal fiscal policy to respond to relatively small

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changes in the overall economy and in budget outcomes. As big as

$170 billion sounds you are talking about changes at the margin

equal to small percents of GDP that simply don’t merit constructive

action by Congress to change fiscal policy. If biennial budgeting

discourages that, we think it would be a very good thing.

Mr. HORNEY. If I could add just one thing, I agree completely

with the point that the Congressional budget is not an effective tool

of fiscal policy as far as affecting economic cycles. I think the Federal Reserve is much more effective, but I do think that large

changes in the projected spending and projected revenues should be

taken into consideration in policy, and I can certainly tell you that

many Members of Congress feel that way because we got phone

calls weekly at CBO saying ′′how have things changed since your

last projection.′′

The other thing is these changes occur because revenue projections change and projections of particular programs change. Medicare is a good example. There has been a dramatic change in the

rate of spending there. I could question whether the response of

Congress last year was appropriate, but it is certain that many

Members of Congress thought that the dramatic slowdown in the

rate of spending in Medicare warranted some congressional action.

So I may not agree with all of the decisions Congress may make,

but I do think it is important to take those things into consideration.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you all very much again. I ask that you

accept written questions we will be submitting from the committee,

and wonderful to see a former colleague Mr. Frenzel here.

Mr. FRENZEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You and your committee’s dedication to making the Congress work better is greatly appreciated.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Bill.

Our last panel consists of Dr. Martin Regalia, the Vice President

and Chief Economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Ronald

Snell, Economic and Fiscal Division Director From the National

Conference of State Legislatures. Gentlemen, it is nice to see you

and please feel free to offer a summary.

I say we are dealing with somewhat of a time constraint because

we are trying to hook up our video to California where we are

going to be hearing from Mr. Panetta, so I hate to impose that kind

of limitation on you, but I hope you can extend that. Thank you

very much.

STATEMENTS OF DR. MARTIN REGALIA, THE VICE PRESIDENT

AND CHIEF ECONOMIST, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE; AND

RONALD SNELL, ECONOMIC AND FISCAL DIVISION DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES

STATEMENT OF DR. MARTIN REGALIA

Mr. REGALIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Martin Regalia. I am the Vice President and Chief Economist for the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce, and we appreciate the opportunity to testify today, and I ask that my full statement be in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection it will be included.

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Mr. REGALIA. I will summarize it quickly. The existing congressional budget process is overly time consuming and often unable to

produce a budget in a timely fashion. The Chamber believes that

the adoption of a biennial budget cycle will streamline the process,

allow Congress to develop a workable budget in a timely manner

and make more time available for congressional oversight.

The current process is fraught with problems. Deadlines are repeatedly missed. The government regularly fails to enact all individual appropriations bills to fully fund the government by the beginning of the fiscal year. Even the multiple continuing resolutions

to keep the government in operation has become a common place

event, and this annual quandary does not serve anyone of any

party or the American public.

Resources are wasted on repeating the budgetary process each

year. Immense amounts of time and manpower required for budgetary preparation, review, submission and legislation, and this in

turn siphons these valuable and limited resources away from the

task of managing and adjusting existing programs to keep pace

with today’s changing times and from attending to other nonbudgetary matters. The current process leaves too little time for oversight and congressional oversight is vital to maintaining the integrity of our country’s fiscal health.

Adoption of a biennial budget system would allow the President

and the administration more time for management of Federal programs and the Congress more time for programmatic oversight

over the course of the budget cycle. A biennial budget would also

promote better long term planning. Budgeting for the longer term

would entail greater uncertainties in forecasting of revenues or projecting funding requirements of agencies and programs. However,

supplemental appropriations and rescissions can compensate for

these shortfalls as well as for the need to adapt to changing economic and programmatic conditions.

In conclusion, I would just say that adoption of a biennial budget

is a process that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the

Federal Government. We urge the Congress and the administration

to join together in enacting biennial budget legislation, and we

thank you for these hearings.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Regalia follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Regalia. Mr. Snell.

STATEMENT OF RONALD SNELL

Mr. SNELL. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Linder, thank you for the opportunity to be here. I am a member of the staff of the National Conference of State Legislatures. One of our primary concerns is the

continued vitality of the legislative institution, and we feel that the

examination you are making of the budget process in Congress is

essential to that vitality. We applaud and thank you for your efforts.

I was asked to comment specifically on what lessons States’ experience with annual and biennial budgeting might have for your

study. You have heard a fair amount of evidence about the structure of biennial budgeting in States, not only today but in previous

sessions, and you know that something less than half the States

have biennial budgets and something more than half have annual

budgets.

My point I think is that the experience of these States leads to

no conclusive lessons for your committee. The State budget practices vary greatly amongst themselves. The situations States face

in the size of their budgets and the structure of their processes varies not only within a State and from year to year but amongst the

States as well.

I will make five points quickly and be happy to answer any questions. I would ask, Mr. Chairman, that my full statement be part

of the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection.

Mr. SNELL. My first point is that from the perspective of State

legislatures, annual and biennial budgeting systems work equally

well. That has been demonstrated by surveys done of legislatures

over the past 30 years. In response, secondly, to a specific issue

raised in this committee, States do not demonstrate that biennial

budgeting in and of itself necessarily transfers authority to the executive branch, and I would choose only one example to make that

point.

Texas has a biennial budget. It is one of the 10 largest States

in population and in budgeting, and it is the legislature with the

greatest amount of legislative budget discretion of any of the

States. The Texas legislative budget board essentially writes the

budget for the State of Texas. It administers the budget. It makes

changes in the budget in the off year when the legislature is not

in session.

The third point I would make is that biennial budgeting certainly

creates the opportunity for long–term planning and for legislative

review of agency performance but State experience in taking advantage of that opportunity is definitely mixed. Again, to pick the

example of Texas, the Texas legislature is exemplary in its review

of State agency performance. But in other States, executive branch

staff and legislative staff report to us that legislative oversight is,

as far as they can tell, no different in biennial States than from

annual States.

My fourth point is that it is certainly true that biennial budgeting can create a need for budget revisions and supplemental approVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00321 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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priations in the second year of the biennium, but this is as true for

annual budgeting States as it is for biennial budgeting States. The

occasion arises due not to the process of the budget but extraneous

circumstances, the majority of them being the fiscal conditions at

the time.

My final point is that from the executive branch perspective, biennial budgeting does improve the efficiency of the budgeting process because it reduces the amount of time that has to be spent from

year to year in assembling the budget and this is undoubtedly the

reason that executive branch officials in both annual and biennial

budgeting States highly recommend biennial budgeting. From a

legislative perspective it is not so certain that this is a valid statement in its favor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to be

here.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Snell follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Thanks to both of you for

your testimony. What is the relationship between the fact that the

Federal Government has an annual budget and the States and the

budget process of the States have.

Mr. SNELL. It is not clear that there is any definite relationship.

It seems that States tended to shift to annual budgeting in the

1950s and 1960s more because they were shifting to annual sessions than because of the Federal budget schedule. The issue of the

Federal budget schedule that creates greater issue for States is

that our fiscal years do not coincide, but that is an issue that I

think States have come to live with.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. And Mr. Regalia, as obviously the

Chamber of Commerce represents many businesses, large and

small I know very well, I was wondering if you could elaborate on

the point that biennial budgeting increases predictability and stability for those served by Federal programs and those that receive

Federal money such as research grants and all this. This is an argument that actually the chairman of the Interior Appropriations

Subcommittee Ralph Regula has made at very, very great length,

that going to the 2–year cycle will assist in contracting and create

a modicum of stability that does not exist today.

Mr. REGALIA. Well, I want to think when you look at Federal programs and you look at Federal budgeting in general there is a

great difference between the private sector and the public sector

and the difference in the intent. I mean what you are really looking

at the Federal Government level is providing public service, a public good in a way that is most efficient and most effective. It is not

some decision that a business makes on the basis of an investment

and a rate of return on that investment. It is an entirely different

process that generates it.

I think what we are seeing is that if you have Federal programs

that understand their outlay schedule and their appropriations

over a 2–year cycle, that they don’t get the kind of end of year

spend out that you see in many programs, that you get a more reasoned approach to providing the service and that you do tend to

create some market efficiencies in the first year because the administrators of those programs understand that they have to keep a

certain level of service ongoing through the entire 2–year cycle.

So it is a different process than we see in businesses and as a

result I don’t think the analogy between how businesses balance

their books or report their books and the budget of the Federal

Government or State entity or even a local entity I don’t think is

a good comparison.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Linder.

Mr. LINDER. I may be interested in submitting some questions in

writing to you on it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just ask before we conclude, Mr. Regalia,

we have had testimony clearly stated that biennial budgeting

makes more sense from an economic perspective and you as an

economist and a businessman might offer some comments on that

assertion that someone made.

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Mr. REGALIA. Well, I think that again when you look at the Federal process and the point of spending at the Federal level is to

provide a certain level of public goods, and then it is the financing

job to figure out how to get the money and there is really only a

very limited place to do that. I mean you either borrow it or you

tax it and both of those come out of the private sector. One has a

bigger impact on savings, bigger negative impact on savings than

does the other. But when you look at trying to impute a certain efficiency to that expenditure process, I think you have to trust the

manager of the program to a certain extent, and I think managers

do best when they know what level of outlays they are trying to

provide, what level of outlays they are trying to mete out to the recipients and what their budget is.

As a manager in both a company in the private sector and in a

trade association, which really doesn’t use the same model, I would

much prefer to know what it is I am required to produce, what it

is I am supposed to be providing and give me my budget and I will

figure out the most efficient way to do that and we will also make

sure that I don’t overspend in the first year, when I know that I

have to make the budget stretch for 2 years. You will still have

some of the spendout problems in the second year, but you remove

it for 1 year. I think that it just provides managers in the programs

with a better sense of what their available resources are and what

the requirements or what our expectations are as to what they are

going to provide. Rather than having to go through kind of a Kabuki dance at the end of every year by spending out the money

they have, and justify what they are going to do next year. If that

is the incentive we give them, managers are very good at providing

that.

The CHAIRMAN. We certainly found that to be the case for many

years. Let me just ask one final question for you, Mr. Snell, and

that has to do with the amazing disparity that exists in the appropriations processes State by State. I understand that a third of

States have one appropriation bill and yet Arkansas has 500 and

there are 10 or 12 States that have one or two measures, and I was

wondering if you could elaborate just a little bit on the appropriations processes as they go around the country.

Mr. SNELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I think the greatest single

difference between the Federal and the State appropriations process is that State governments, State legislatures do not regularly

use the authorization process that is so much a part of money management in the Congress. Any authorization process that occurs in

State legislatures is at the inception of a program when a program

is statutorily created and it isn’t repeated after that. What States

tend to have is a combined authorization and appropriations process that does not separate them into components. The number of

bills is a striking feature, but I think you would see in States that

use one omnibus appropriation bill that it is quite similar to the

result you would get if you pasted the 500 Arkansas bills end to

end. The number of bills doesn’t mean that the process is more

fragmented in Arkansas or more consolidated in the State of Texas

with the 2000–page appropriations bill.

I say also that the process in States is as a rule a little more centralized than it appears to me to be in Congress in the sense that

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leadership in State chambers works very closely with the chairs of

State appropriations committees to divide available funds and to

watch the use of available funds in the course of the process. Much

less centralized attention is given to the policy side of the decision

making in State legislatures. That is a fragmented matter.

And finally, I would say that legislatures echo the practice in

Congress, as I understand that, in that there is a substantial gulf

between the work of the policy committees and the work of the fiscal committees of legislatures. Over the past 20, 25 years there has

been a steady fiscalization of the policy–making process in State

legislatures that is observable in, I think, every State. Fundamental decision making has moved to the budget or finance or

ways and means committees.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Thank you both very

much and again we will have written questions. We hope you will

respond to those and we look forward and appreciate your very

helpful insight.

Okay. We are now going to go to our final witness coming to us

all the way from beautiful Monterey, California. We are happy to

welcome my very good friend and former colleague. As I said, he

was the Director of Office Management and Budget, Chairman of

the Budget Committee, and White House Chief of Staff and has

what I think will be a very interesting and helpful perspective. I

will tell you, Leon, we have had our colleague Lee Hamilton and

three panels precede you on this program and so you are our cleanup batter here, and we look forward to your testimony. If you have

prepared remarks, they will appear in their entirety in the record,

assuming you have faxed them back here to us, if you haven’t already, and we look forward to the statement that you would like

to offer us. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. LEON PANETTA, DIRECTOR OF THE

PANETTA INSTITUTE (via video conference)

Mr. PANETTA. Mr. Chairman and members of the Rules Committee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss biennial budgeting. While I regret that I can’t be there in person with you,

David, I appreciate the opportunity at least to try to do this by

video. Since I am here on the Monterey Peninsula I think I have

the better part of the deal on location.

As I mentioned to you, in my first term, when I was Congressman for the 16th District in California, I believe it was in the 95th

Congress, 1978, I introduced the first biennial budgeting bill in the

House of Representatives, and I continued to reintroduce that bill

in subsequent years with well over 40 cosponsors. You might be interested to know that the range of cosponsors went from people like

Dick Gephardt and Al Gore to David Stockman. So we had a very

good cross section of both Democrats and Republicans who supported those original biennial budgeting bills.

I am pleased that now this year, Year 2000, the Committee on

Rules and hopefully the House and the Senate are seriously considering this very important reform.

As you may know, there has been a number of studies on various

budget reforms over the years. I have participated in a number of

hearings both before the Budget Committee as well as the Rules

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Committee. There were reform task forces that were established

that looked at these issues under our former colleagues. Congressman Butler Derrick had, as I recall, one task force. Tony Beilenson

headed up another task force, and I guess what I would recommend to your staff is that they take the time to analyze all of

that previous good work because I think it will give all of you a

better sense of history on this proposal as well as the viewpoints

of the Members.

I think it suffices to say as you well know that one Member’s reform can be another Member’s demise. Reform proposals are often

viewed as threats to the status quo and to committee jurisdiction,

but when the existing budget process is not working effectively or

efficiently I really don’t think you have any other alternative but

to consider possible improvement. The challenge for your committee is to determine whether those reforms that the Congress

considers will truly improve the way you do the business of the

people or whether continuing crisis, as you have now in the budget

process, is the preferred alternative. I think that is the choice. You

either continue the kind of current crisis operation that you have

with regards to the budget or you try to improve the process.

While the biennial budget is not going to resolve all of the budget

problems that people confront, I think at the very least it will provide a more rational time frame for responsible budgets. After all,

establishing a process for controlling decisions on expenditures and

spending is why the budget was put into place in the first instance.

The modern day budget process developed in the cauldron of intrigue and concerns and disputes that eventually produced, as you

know, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of

1974. The principal goal of that legislation was to restrict the

President’s ability to impound spending, but it was also obvious to

the Congress that it couldn’t very well limit the President’s ability

to try to control spending and not do something to try to limit their

own spending habits.

The original authors, people like Dick Boling, John Rhodes, Ed

Muskie, tried very hard to bring some order to the Congressional

decision making process. They were hamstrung by the imperative

of always having to try to protect all existing centers of power, to

try to make the new process appear as benign as possible because

you have all of these power centers that were concerned about

what the budget process would do to them, but the drafters of the

Budget Act knew that while it would be a difficult time that they

also recognized that Congress had an obligation to the people to try

to operate within overall budget constraints.

The first budgets were the result of extensive negotiations. When

the Budget Act passed and the first budget, I was around for some

of those first budgets, they were the result of long negotiations between the leadership and the key chairmen and they were able to

at least work out a negotiated approach to trying to resolve budget

differences, but as deficits began to grow and multiply, it was obvious that stronger steps had to be taken in terms of enforcement.

I give you one example, Mr. Chairman. I was chairman at the

time under Bob Giaimo when he was chairman of the House Budget Committee. He made me chairman of the Reconciliation Task

Force. Reconciliation was the tool that was included in the original

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Budget Act but was never used mainly because the chairman and

the leadership did not want to see any kind of mandatory requirement passed in the form of reconciliation. It wasn’t until the early

eighties that we used reconciliation for the first time and it proved

obviously to be a very important tool in the budget process.

There was a constant dilemma about how do you try to enforce

the decisions that are made by the Congress, and what we went

through was a period when we engaged in a number of budget

summits and negotiations that really reflect a lot of what is in the

present budget process today and as a member of the Budget Committee, as chairman of the Budget Committee, I think I participated in almost every budget summit that was held between the

Congress and the administration at that time.

To give you a few examples, there was the Balanced Budget and

Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, basically that was the

Gramm–Rudman law, and what that did was it established deficit

reduction targets and a process of sequestration which cuts across

the board if those targets were not reached. As a matter of fact,

we today still have sequestration in place. If certain targets aren’t

reached the administration can in fact cut across the board.

1987, there was another budget agreement that was negotiated,

I was a part of that, between the Congress and the Reagan administration that produced further deficit reduction targets. The 1990

Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Agreement was a huge agreement, negotiated as you may recall, over a summer. That was between the Congress and the Bush administration, and it established two very important tools of enforcement, discretionary caps

and the pay as you go requirement. The 1993 Omnibus Budget

Reconciliation Act extended those caps and the pay go requirements as did the 1997 Balanced Budget Act.

So for those that argue that somehow reforms don’t make sense

or you shouldn’t look at them, the reality is that over the 20–year

history of the budget process we have tried to make constant

changes in reforms to try to improve the process. I have to tell you,

that if you looked at the key reforms that were put in place, particularly discretionary caps and the pay–go requirements, there is

no question in my mind that were it not for those enforcement tools

there would be no balanced budget today because those were the

tools that were needed to enforce the targets that were established.

I think whatever you do with regards to 2–year budgets, I would

really strongly urge the Congress not to do anything that would

impact on discretionary caps and the pay–go requirement. Those

are very important tools. Don’t get rid of them if you want to maintain budget discipline.

While I would like to emphasize is that reforms alone can’t substitute obviously for the substantive decisions that have to be made

on budget policies. They can ensure that once those decisions are

made they will be effectively carried out. The point is that reforms

can make a difference I think to the efficiency and effectiveness of

the budget process, if they are carefully designed and implemented.

As you well know, any reform is only as good as the majority

vote on the floor of the House. Since any requirement can be

waived by the Rules Committee if it is supported by a majority

vote, I think for any reform to succeed it must enjoy the broad supVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:41 Nov 20, 2000 Jkt 066737 PO 00000 Frm 00333 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HEARINGS\63105 pfrm02 PsN: 63105
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port of the leadership, key chairmen and ranking members and a

strong bipartisan cross section of both parties.

In addition, I don’t have to remind you that there are no silver

bullets in the budget process. For as long as I can remember there

have always been Members that have tried to find that one simple

and elusive answer to all of the budget worries that face the Congress. Whether it is a constitutional amendment to balance the

budget or a line item veto or the Gramm–Rudman law, the reality

is that the budget process is not just simply going to be saved by

a single legislative act.

The budget process is a legislative process, and in that reality

lies both its strength and its vulnerabilities. Nothing can replace,

and I think that that should be emphasized, nothing can replace

the fundamental trust between Members. That is essential to making any budget process work effectively.

I had the good fortune to have good Members like Bill Frenzel

and Bill Gradison as my ranking members on the Budget Committee. We enjoyed and maintained a relationship of trust and confidence that no reform can replace. If somehow you can restore that

kind of personal trust in the budget process there isn’t a reform

that you can enact that will not work, but in the absence of that

trust few, if any, reforms can succeed.

But I am assuming that there will be a better relationship between the parties and the administration, and I believe that the result, biennial budgeting, is one of those reforms that makes very

good sense for both the Congress and the executive branch to adopt

for the following reasons, and let me just touch on the key points.

First of all, the present budget process is simply not working. It

is broken. It is driven by crisis. Each year the budget resolution is

delayed past the statutory deadline. The resulting delays occur

then in the appropriations process. When a budget resolution is finally enacted, the targets often are so unrealistic that the appropriators have to delay the larger and more controversial appropriations bills until late in the fiscal year. The results obviously are

continuing resolutions or several continuing resolutions until ultimately a negotiated agreement is worked out between the Congress

and the President.

The sad reality is that in a government split by parties, crisis

has become the key ingredient for forced budget decisions. The result is that more and more decisions are delayed well into the new

fiscal year, and spending is already occurring in many programs.

Ongoing spending needs rather than a careful evaluation of programs, let me repeat that, ongoing spending needs rather than a

careful evaluation of programs is what drives decision making.

While it may be too much to expect that a 2–year budget cycle will

eliminate all crises, and I am not naive enough to believe that it

will, in the very least it can confine the larger budget battles to one

year instead of having them occur every year. And I have to tell

you that simply providing that ceasefire, that time, I think is extremely important to providing perhaps a little better stability and

a better relationship when it comes to budget negotiations.

Secondly, much better budget planning and management can

take place under a 2–year biennial budget. Too many budget decisions by both the Congress and the administration are made on a

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short–term basis rather than focusing on long–term funding needs,

crisis management approach to budgeting forces, ad hoc spending

decisions that are based not on the kind of long–term planning that

ought to be involved in deciding how we spend taxpayers’ dollars.

The current process is very inefficient. The task of budgeting consumes a great deal of time and energy that could be better devoted

to addressing programmatic issues in the longer term and in a

more in–depth perspective. Not only is the Congress constantly in

a crunch of making hit and miss budget decisions on programs, the

executive branch is caught up in exactly the same problem.

During the months of September and October when Congress

and the administration are typically negotiating final appropriations levels for the new year, the agencies and departments of the

executive branch are beginning the new fiscal year operating under

continuing resolutions while also expending great amounts of time

trying to figure out what the spending levels will be for the next

fiscal year. The problem is that until final decisions are made on

the current spending year, it is impossible to determine what

spending levels will be made for the next fiscal year. So both the

Congress and the executive branch need the time to more carefully

evaluate current programs and plan and manage funding needs for

existing programs. Clearly a 2–year budget cycle will provide that

needed time.

Currently greater program oversight is needed by both the Congress and the administration. I think the reality is that very few

committees, and certainly it was the case when I was in the Congress and it was the case when I was in the administration, not

enough time is given to oversight of existing programs that operate

within the Federal Government. Only when a scandal breaks out

or a GAO audit appears that there is a committee that takes the

time to review existing programs, and that is often too late. Most

committees will work on new authorizing legislation but give little

attention to thousands of programs that are currently in the Federal budget.

The additional year will allow the committee to spend the required time reviewing the effectiveness of the programs that spend

somewhere between 1.4 and $1.8 trillion. In addition, the various

appropriations subcommittees, while they do their annual reviews

of programs under their jurisdiction, and I commend them for that

because that is their job, I think they could do an even more careful job on hearings and studies if they had an additional year to

review programming.

My view right now is both the administration and the Congress

have fallen into a pattern each year where they repeat the same

act. They present pretty much the same testimony on each program before the Appropriations Committee, same questions are

asked, the same favorite programs are funded. And I don’t think

it would hurt either the members of the committee or those testifying to be subject to greater scrutiny.

The same oversight responsibilities could also be implemented

within the executive branch. When I was Director of the Office of

Management and Budget, that agency is responsible for reviewing

the effectiveness of existing programs, but on a year–to–year basis

where you are constantly developing budgets you don’t have the

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time to really do the kinds of in–depth reviews that need to be

done with regards to existing programs.

Lastly, improved economic projections I think make 2–year budgets much more realistic. The reality is that the current state of economic and spending projections have improved greatly. We have a

pretty good sense of how much is going to be spent over what period of time. As a matter of fact most current budgets usually do

5–year projections or even 10–year projections. While I am not saying that a 10–year projection is that exact, it is to say that a 2–

year projection I think is well within the margin of error. You can

predict pretty well what a program can expend over a 2–year period, and I think we have got the basis on which to know pretty

well what a 2–year budget would look like.

It is important for Congress and the administration again to

maintain obviously the right to make necessary adjustments in

that off year, but it is also important that revisions are very limited and based on emergency needs. The last thing we want to have

happen is to have a huge supplemental covering all 13 appropriations bills appearing every other year. I think that would destroy

the 2–year budget process. I recognize there will be a temptation

to do that. That is one of the criticisms of going to a 2–year budget,

but both the President and the leadership are going to have to ensure that any supplemental is limited to essential revisions and

emergencies.

As with all reforms, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, a biennial budget will take careful work and preparation.

Like any reform, biennial budgeting will not work if the process either becomes too inflexible or too open ended. For the process to

work, the two branches will have to avoid the extreme and find the

proper balance under which the major task of budgeting is carried

out every 2 years. That balance will require essential cooperation

between the branches.

In addition, I would strongly recommend—I think my colleague

Jack Lew, Director of OMB, suggested this—that there be an appropriate transition period before the Federal Government and the

Congress converts over to biennial budgeting. It has got to be recognized that this reform will constitute a very fundamental change

in how the budget process operates, and a conversion to biennial

budgeting will have to take into account the magnitude of the

change that would be required, both in terms of the need to make

necessary conforming changes to the laws as well as in terms of the

need for both the Congress and the executive branch to develop

and implement new practices for proposing, considering and enacting 2–year budgets.

I think a biennial budget built around a 2–year life of the Congress offers a better way for Congress to commit itself to continuing

fiscal discipline and to better planning for the coming years. The

bottom line here is the present system is not working, it just isn’t.

In the very least, this reform will provide the time necessary to

move forward towards a more sound, effective and responsible

budget.

Is there a risk involved in doing this? Of course there is. But is

it a risk worth taking considering the crisis that currently surrounds the budget process, I believe it is, and for those reasons I

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would therefore urge the committee to support and the Congress to

adopt a biennial budget process.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Panetta follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Leon. That is very helpful

and you come before us with an extraordinarily unique perspective

obviously having served as chairman of the Budget Committee and

as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and I would

like to take advantage of the very unique and important experiences that you have had by just making some comments and then

raising a number of questions, and I will just throw a few things

out and let you expand on them if you will.

For starters, one of the concerns that has been raised by some

of the opponents is that we would see a dramatic increase in the

number of supplemental appropriations bill. They believe that

would be a problem and I wondered if you might comment on that.

Second, critics have also said—your most recent experience has

been the executive branch level so you are not concerned about the

prospect of ceding greater authority to the executive branch. We

have had testimony from Lee Hamilton this morning in which he

said in fact that he believed the opposite to be the case, that biennial budgeting would enhance our abilities here to have greater authority, but we would appreciate your thoughts on that.

And having been at the OMB and having done your work as

Budget Committee chairman, there are some who argue that if we

were to go to a 2–year cycle that somehow agencies would be less

responsive than they are today under the annual cycle that we

have.

And then another point that you raised I would like you to expand on if you could, and that is the question of the 2–year projections and the fact that you are saying that they are basically within the margin of error, and I wonder if you could possibly elaborate

a bit on that.

So I think that gives you enough to respond to. I see you taking

notes on those things.

Mr. PANETTA. Thank you. I think the first issue that I recall even

in some of these first hearings we had on biennial budgeting was

the concern about whether or not there would be additional

supplementals that would be offered as a consequence, and clearly

there is that danger, unless both the President and the Congress

make very certain that supplementals ought not to be presented

unless they adhere to what I think are pretty much the present

guidelines.

Number one, that it should deal with emergency needs. Obviously if there is a Kosovo or a Persian Gulf or some kind of military contingency, then obviously that would demand a supplemental, and if indeed there are disasters that take place in the

country, that too ought to provide a basis for supplemental requests. But I would restrict the supplemental to emergencies and

those kinds of needs as opposed to simply using the supplemental

as a vehicle to increase spending in other areas.

Now, to get that accomplished, as you know, both the Congress

and the President pretty much have to agree as to what those

guidelines will be. They can be abused. They can be abused both

by the President and by the Congress, but I think if this is going

to work there has to be an agreement that you are not suddenly

going to have additional supplementals provided. I think there is

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no need for more than one supplemental being offered in the off

year to try to meet any contingencies that are involved, and I

would limit—very frankly, I would limit any supplemental to one

proposal in the off year. I don’t think there is a need to do more

than that.

So there are ways to try to limit that but clearly it is going to

take both the President and the Congress agreeing that

supplementals have to be limited to emergencies, they have to be

limited to urgencies that are deemed to be the case by both the

President and the Congress.

Secondly, on the greater authority, I have heard also the criticism about ceding greater authority to the executive branch. I don’t

believe that for a minute because I have to tell you, the one thing

that worries the hell out of an agency head is having to appear before the Congress, not just on spending requests because that has

turned into kind of, you know, an annual presentation where they

go and say pretty much the same testimony, and I have been on

both sides of that. You give the same testimony, you present the

same facts, you are limited in time and you know that if you basically get through those first few questions you are basically on your

way to getting your funding.

What would frighten the hell out of me as an agency head is if

I had to go up to Congress in an off year where that committee

spends an awful lot of time going through every program under my

jurisdiction and begins to question me about how are these programs working, what are they doing, how are they impacting, how

much is being spent, how many bureaucrats are involved in the implementation of these programs. That kind of in–depth questioning

process scares the hell out of anybody in the executive branch, and

I think it would provide greater opportunity for those in Congress

to be able to oversee existing spending programs, to oversee each

agency and I would say that both, not only the appropriations committees which are pretty expert in terms of dealing with the particular programs under their jurisdiction, but I think the authorizing committees ought to do the same thing very frankly.

Authorizing committees—I was on the Agriculture Committee

during the time I was in the Congress. I think we spent very little

time looking at the myriad of programs that were established at

the Agriculture Department. We were always interested in developing new programs. We were always interested in developing new

spending but we spent very little time, very frankly, looking at existing spending programs.

So I would say I do not believe that in any way changes the balance, and if anything, I think it would provide Congress greater leverage in terms of reviewing ongoing spending than you have at

the present time because right now this thing is so confined and

so price oriented that I would wager to say that there are very few

committees or members that really know exactly how these programs are working out in the field.

One of my frustrations as Director of the Office of Management

and Budget was to be able to really look at a program in terms of

how is it affecting, for example, if it is an education program or a

program that involves children, how were the children being impacted by this program, who was involved with it, how was that

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program being handled, to go into the field and actually look at

how the programs work. Very frankly there is too little of that

today, and I think more needs to be done in order to really be responsible how the dollars are being used.

On the 2–year time frame, the reason I think that—I think

under the 2–year approach agencies, as I have said, would have to

be even more responsive to the Congress. Right now, as I said,

agencies have to make their presentation in a year and they basically then dance off. If they had to face a year of oversight with

regard to the Congress—now, it does demand that Congress is

going to have to therefore focus a lot more on oversight on existing

programs and that the committee chairmen are going to have to establish a lineup for that second year in which they literally go

through the agencies and through the departments and through

the programs and establish, you know, a test of which programs

they are going to review.

I think it will make the agencies even more responsive because

they will know that it isn’t just the same old act before the Appropriations Committee. It is going to be a much more in–depth analysis by the committees that they have to testify before.

And lastly, on the 2–year projection, my experience is that—you

know, there was a time when I was first chairman of the Budget

Committee when you hear all these projections and try and to figure out what kind of spending would take place in the program

over a period of time, was the subject of a lot of conjecture, but I

can remember working with both the staff of the CBO and OMB,

sitting in a room and beginning to try to bring together those kinds

of projections. Now, there are still some areas—I don’t know

whether it is still the case—for example, in defense spending areas

or some areas where there hasn’t been the concurrence with regards to projected spending as there has been in most other areas,

but I would wager to say, you put CBO and OMB in one room, they

can pretty much come to agreement on what a projected spending

target is going to look like over a 2–year basis and almost any program in the Federal Government, and because of that I would feel

very confident in enacting a 2–year budget because you have a very

good sense of what can be expended.

Incidentally, a 2–year budget would provide, I think, even for the

agencies and those departments a little more stability in the way

they then fund their programs, because as you know right now on

the year–to–year basis, the attitude still in the administration is

spend it all as fast as you can because you don’t want to wind up

at the end of the year looking like you have got a surplus of some

kind, and I think a 2–year budget would provide just the opposite

incentive. It would make better managers out of people in the Federal Government who have to deal with that over a long period of

time and be able to control their assets and be able to control their

expenditures over that period of time. It would make a better manager.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Leon. Let me just pose one final

question to you, which you touched on, and see if I could get you

to elaborate. When Jack Lew was here, the natural question was

raised about the prospect of a new President. We all know that we

are going to have a new administration coming next year, and the

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question of a transition period is obviously out there, and you are

a supporter of the idea of a transition period. Jack was uncertain

as to exactly what that day—he said it really couldn’t go beyond

April in his testimony, but we do want to make sure that if we look

at passing this legislation this year, which I am hoping we are

going to be able to do—some have talked about having it not go

into effect for the new administration until the next year, certainly

not imposing this kind of tough double burden on them as they

move into position.

So I wonder if you maybe could elaborate on what you would envisage as the transition period that would be best for dealing with

this.

Mr. PANETTA. Well, I think that when I went from the Congress

as chairman of the Budget Committee to Director of OMB I had a

pretty good sense of what the challenges would be and what the

time frames would be. I don’t know that you can assume that that

kind of expertise is going to be present necessarily if a new administration comes into place, and a new President is going to want

to take the time to kind of look at what the budget process is all

about and also to be able to begin to define whatever that President’s priorities are going to be, and in addition to that, the Congress is going to have to make the adjustment as well.

So I guess my view would be that you would do well to consider

probably not implementing this in the very first year that a new

President takes office. I would probably give it at least a year or

couple of years to make the transition and then require that a 2–

year budget be submitted by the administration, either that next

year or the third year for a 2–year period.

Now if you want to be able to, I think for a 2–year budget to

work you have got to basically follow the 2–year cycle of the Congress. So it almost means that if you are not going to do it the first

year of the new Congress, then you probably ought to transition

this in probably either at the beginning of the third year really of

a new President. I don’t know that you can do it if you try to do

it much earlier, although, again, it isn’t that complicated, Dave, to

be able to do this. It really isn’t. If you work on budgets, the ability

to then take an annual budget and stretch it out, instead of just

1 year and stretch it out over a 2–year period, you know, from a

point of view of the agencies and departments, I think that can be

done.

So I guess probably the one way to try to do this responsibly is

to provide at least some transition period at the beginning, but I

would not extend it too far out because if you do you are going to

lose the impetus in passage of the 2–year budget.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Leon, let me say thank you very much. We

appreciate the perspective that you have offered and the time and

effort that you have put into what is very helpful, prepared testimony and your response to the questions.

Let me say that we are going to have some written questions

that we would like you to respond to if you would be willing to do

that, and also, I will tell you that you look great and you are in

a California. I won’t be there until tomorrow morning, so I am jealous right now. But I am looking forward to being back in our great

State tomorrow.

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Mr. PANETTA. It is great weather and I guess our candidacy was

always subject to the question of leaving California.

The CHAIRMAN. I remember so well that early on in 1981 someone said to Ronald Reagan, well, would you like to move the capital

to California, and the response that people like you and I would

offer, no, please don’t do that because we might get serious opposition in our campaigns if we were to move the capital to California.

But let me thank you very much again for your very thoughtful

testimony and your fine service to the country.

Mr. PANETTA. My best to you and the other members of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Leon, and with that the

committee stands adjourned.

Additional material submitted for the record.

[A letter from the Senior Executive Association:]

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[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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