Hearing of the House Budget Committee - H.R. 1869: Biennial Budgeting and Enhanced Oversight Act of 2014

Hearing

Thank you Mr. Chairman, just a sort of global observation with respect to the budget -- I think everybody who serves on this Committee knows and in this Congress knows that the fundamental problem as it relates to our budget have a lot less to do with process and a lot more to do with politics. For example, we have a Conference Committee deadline under current law of April 15th, we don't miss that because of process. We miss it because politics make it, for whatever reason, unable to reach agreement -- and that has been the pattern over the years. So, everyone should be really careful about overstating the benefits of any procedural change in the budget process in terms of what it will mean for our ability to get these things done. That being said, if there are measures that hit the margins improve things, obviously we should take those actions and if at the margins, they don't improve things, we shouldn't.

I also want to commend Mr. Ribble because as you can see he's put an awful lot of time and effort into it, he has reached out, we've had conversations, it is a bipartisan piece of legislation and I think that we will find in the vote that it is going to be bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition. And I have to say that this is one of those hard ones because it is a close call -- it is a close call Mr. Chairman. After weighing it all I come down marginally in thinking that we should not take this measure for some of the reasons I think other people feel more strongly about than I do.

I just want to make a couple points and they're not new to this debate, this is a debate that we've been having for some time even though we've not had a hearing on this legislation in this Congress. Number one, I do believe that having the annual overview process is what engages the attention of federal agencies. Yes, having a two year planning window for oversight is important but there is a question as to whether agencies will take the Congress seriously if Congress doesn't have the power a particular year to hold them accountable for their budget and I'm sure the folks on the appropriations committee will talk about that.

Second, I do worry about the situation when you have a new president. A new president is elected, kind of has to come into office with all sorts of changes in the administration and is expected to, in a very short period of time, come up with a two-year plan, blueprint, dollar for dollar in a period of time that is 24 months down the road. I would point out, in most of the large states, my friend and colleague Mr. Schrader mentioned that most of the large states have annual budgeting processes. So most of the states, and a trend in the states has actually been away from biannual budgeting toward annual budgeting because I think their experience was that having that accountability is important to the process.

Finally, I would say that I do worry that when we're trying to think about what the second year budget would be, there will be sort of a tendency toward the status quo. In other words, because you are trying to figure out what is going to happen 24 months from now, it's kind of hard to say what that agency budget should be other than what it was the year before, when in fact there may be changes that take place. You know the bottom line -- the reason I think it's a close call -- is you could either have a situation where you have a biannual budget and then you make changes through a supplemental process or you have an annual budget where you make adjustments. I mean I think the appropriators should be the first to admit that they don't start with zero base budgeting. I mean they don't every year start from scratch. They start from where they were and then make adjustments up or down. This process would just flip it a little bit and say the second year you're going to be here and they're going to have to go through the process of adjustment. So I'm not sure on balance, the fact that agencies will be, I think, less responsive because you don't have the ability to change their budget in a particular year -- I don't think that down side outweighs what I see right now as the benefit. But again, I do want to commend the gentleman, it is a bipartisan bill and I think it's good that people are thinking about ways, at least at the margin to change the budget process. But I hope that all of us recognize that in order to really tackle some of these issues it's going to require compromise on politics at the end of the day.

Thank you.

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