A Small Step For Budget Reform

1. The special committee’s markup process, which began this week and will continue on Tuesday, has so far resulted in three amendments being added to the committee’s reform proposals: One would tinker slightly with the membership structure of the Senate Budget Committee; another clarifies that Congress can still pursue a reconciliation process each year even if it adopts biennial budgeting; and a third creates the option of a special “bipartisan budget resolution” in the Senate.
2. A bolder reform agenda geared to making Congress stronger could try to make the budget process more like legislative work (divided into small, discrete, concrete steps that call for bargaining over particulars) and less like executive work (consolidated into a single, large decision that calls for unity around abstractions).
3. The only recommendation in the bill put forward by the co-chairs of the committee is that Congress move to biennial budgeting in place of the annual budget process required by law today.
4. The committee, known as the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, consists of eight senators and eight members of the House, equally divided between the two parties.
5. And in the budget bill signed in February, Congress itself acknowledged this and created a special, bicameral committee to consider changes to the budget process.
6. That would mean rethinking elements of the committee system, the work of “scorekeepers” (like the Congressional Budget Office), and even the distinction between authorizing and appropriating that now too often separates policy priorities from budgeting.
7. Budgeting is central to what Congress does, and the dysfunction of the budget process is now central to the broader dysfunction of the Congress.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-small-step-for-budget-reform/