Senators’ budget fix: Make it last two years

Senators from both sides of the aisle are renewing a push to reform the budgeting process by putting it on a two-year schedule.

Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) on Tuesday reintroduced the Biennial Budgeting and Appropriations Act, which would extend the fiscal years for the government from 12 months to 24 months.

“I have pushed biennial budgeting every year I’ve been in the Senate since 2005, because this new system would increase oversight and reduce spending, making our federal government more efficient and more accountable to taxpayers,” Isakson said.

If enacted, the bill would require the president to submit a two-year budget request at the beginning of a new Congress rather than one that only covers a single fiscal year. Congress would then have to adopt a two-year budget resolution, a reconciliation bill if instructed and appropriations bills that fund the government for two years.

Lawmakers would focus on authorization bills and federal oversight during the second session of each Congress.

{mosads}Last year, the bipartisan proposal passed in the Senate 68-31 in the Senate as an amendment to the 2013 budget resolution, which is nonbinding, Isakson’s office said.

Besides Shaheen, the bill already has 21 other co-sponsors: Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), David Perdue (R-Ga.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), David Vitter (R-La.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.).

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), former chairman of the House Budget Committee, has introduced similar legislation in the past.

Budget experts, however, including a former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), have warned against changing the budgeting time period because a lot can change in two years.

“Changing to a two-year cycle could have significant drawbacks. It could diminish the effectiveness of congressional control of spending in the appropriation process and could make adjusting to rapidly changing budgetary and economic conditions more difficult,” then-CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin told Congress in 2004.

The new chairman of the House Budget panel, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), has said he’d like to reform the budget process and rewrite the 1974 Budget Control Act, but he hasn’t touched on changing the timeframe.