WASHINGTON — Robert
Bixby, Executive Director of The Concord Coalition, testified before the House Rules
Committee today at a hearing on “Biennial Budgeting:
A Tool for Improving Government Fiscal Management and Oversight.” His testimony highlighted reasons why The
Concord Coalition is in favor of establishing a two-year budget and appropriations
process. Excerpts from his testimony follow:
WASHINGTON — Robert
Bixby, Executive Director of The Concord Coalition, testified before the House Rules
Committee today at a hearing on “Biennial Budgeting:
A Tool for Improving Government Fiscal Management and Oversight.” His testimony highlighted reasons why The
Concord Coalition is in favor of establishing a two-year budget and appropriations
process. Excerpts from his testimony follow:
“… it should be readily apparent why The Concord Coalition is interested
in establishing tight fiscal discipline procedures and observing them scrupulously. While
no amount of process reform can substitute for the hard policy choices you face as the
demographic tidal wave approaches, The Concord Coalition believes that moving the budget
to a biennial cycle would help shift the emphasis from the immediate, and often
repetitious, year-to-year battles over budget resolutions and appropriations bills to the
broader questions of strategic planning, oversight, and reform.
“Indeed, from Concord’s perspective,
one of the most attractive features of biennial budgeting is that it would lessen the
opportunities for fiscal irresponsibility. Some
traditional opponents of biennial budgeting have contended that by moving from an annual
to a biennial process, policy makers would relinquish half their opportunities to enact
reconciliation bills and reduce the deficit. Now
that we appear to be entering a period of budget surpluses, the reverse argument can be
made in support of biennial budgeting: with a two-year process, policy makers will have
only half as many opportunities to reduce the surplus.
That’s desirable.
“It is also important to note that the potential benefits of biennial
budgeting are not limited to congressional oversight.
A two-year cycle would improve the efficiency and efficacy of both the executive
and legislative branches. Too much time is consumed needlessly in repetitious budget
preparation, justification, and appropriation. This energy could be more usefully put to
work on improving government performance.
“A key element of any transition to
biennial budgeting would, therefore, be establishing a way to ensure, or at least protect,
against the danger of ‘death-by-supplementals.’ It should be made clear that the method of
adjusting second-year spending levels would be through one mid-session correction bill,
rather than through an ad hoc series of smaller, less scrutinized bills. Bipartisan cooperation at the leadership level
(including the Administration) would be required to keep the supplemental process from
deteriorating. While there is always a danger that second year supplementals would get out
of hand in a biennial cycle, this need not happen if:
realistic discretionary spending assumptions are used in the Congressional budget
resolution, rosy economic assumptions are avoided, and a regular mechanism is put in place
to consider the second session update. These
elements would help prevent an avalanche of supplementals, something Concord believes
should clearly be avoided.
In conclusion, “… it is clear that no amount of process reform will cure
all of the perceived problems with the current system.
But the fact that perfection will not be achieved should not deter you from trying
to reform the system in a positive way that is responsive to the challenges ahead, and
that addresses the frustrations so many of you have expressed with the current
system.”
