Congressional budget process
This would be funny if it weren't so sad in so many ways: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has proposed a series of changes in the congressional budget process.
Don't get me wrong; the existing budget process not only is not perfect but is close to a disaster.
But after a full year when it has completely and utterly failed to do anything substantive on the budget itself and every end-run around the existing process restrictions hasn't worked, Ryan is now saying in effect that it's the process' fault and everything would be okay if it were changed...even though the standard process wasn't really used.
To a certain extent this is one of the traditional congressional budget dodges. As any experienced federal budget watcher will tell you, Congress almost always proposes to do something about the budget process when it can't or won't do something about the budget itself. This is the fiscal equivalent of a member of the House or Senate saying "Stop me before I kill again."
There is a growing movement on Capital Hill and elsewhere to make substantial changes to the congressional budget process. Why you might ask (and you should)? Because yet again the process is being blamed for everything that's wrong with the federal budget. Fix the process, we're told, and all our fiscal maladies will go away and the world once again will be an economic garden of Eden.
As I explain in my weekly column in today's Roll Call, calling "BS" on this claim is almost too easy. (FYI..."BS" is a technical term in federal budgeting.)
Get Prepared for Hand-to-Hand Budget Warfare
By Stan Collender
Roll Call Contributing Writer
Aug. 2, 2011, Midnight
By the time you read this, one of two things will have happened: Either the shouting about the debt ceiling will have turned into complete silence because the deal was enacted, or it will have grown into the decibel equivalent of a multiengine military jet going full-throttle during a rock concert because the deal was voted down (or postponed).
Regardless of whether the agreement announced Sunday is a done deal or just the latest failed political courtship that ultimately is replaced by something else, it’s absolutely certain Congress and the president, the House and Senate, and Democrats and Republicans will all be fighting constantly over the budget during the next 18 months
The process can be important...Just ask Mitch McConnel how he stymied so much legislation last year. But, as my column from today's Roll Call explains, the budget process changes the House GOP is imposing unilaterally isn't likely to do much of anything except frustrate those who expect more.
New Rules Show Process Changes Aren’t Enough
I hear this question in some form at least once a week: If Congress and the president are unable or unwilling to comply with the current budget rules and procedures, why not just change the process so it is harder to evade and actually accomplishes something?
The question supposes two things that are anything but true.
My column from today's Roll Call goes back to the budget process ABCs.
Let’s Decipher the ABCs of CBA, GRH and BEA
July 7, 2009
By Stan Collender
Roll Call Contributing Writer
You don’t have to try very hard these days to get those involved in the federal budget process to talk about how it should be changed. Over the past few weeks there have been hearings and conferences devoted to that subject. Task forces and working groups have been studying ideas, developing their plans and drafting reports. And now that the president has proposed a new version of the sometimes admired but often maligned pay-as-you-go concept, it once again is being both highly recommended and heavily criticized.
We should applaud all of this activity. The discussion is healthy and much needed. But applause doesn’t mean we’re close to a new process being put in place.
