Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Can Budget Process People Be Shrill?

Yes. They can. National Journal budget expert Stan Collender shows us how:

Budget Battles (10/05/2004): Congress this week or next will likely achieve a rare, federal budget triple dive. It will recess for the election having failed to pass the fiscal 2005 budget resolution, all but 1 of the 13 regular 2005 appropriations and a needed increase in the limit on the national debt. This three-part failure is the best evidence yet that Congress has become either unwilling or unable to deal with the federal budget. It has abrogated its fiscal responsibilities at every step in this year's debate except when the decisions -- like a tax cut -- were politically easy....

Congress' failure to get almost all of its budget work done before the start of the fiscal year has happened with the budget committees not just on the sidelines, but barely on the team. The committees, which have the responsibility for implementing the Congressional Budget Act and managing the budget debate, have mostly been silent as deadlines have passed and supposedly required steps have been ignored or abandoned.... The good news is that, by allowing themselves to be marginalized, the budget committees' may have inadvertently provided the impetus Congress needs to make the major changes in the budget process many have been seeking....

>One of the more interesting questions is, Why has Congress ignored the secretary of the Treasury when he has repeatedly said that an increase in the debt ceiling is needed? Remember, this is the Republican president's Cabinet secretary telling a GOP House and Senate majority that something was needed. Congress could assume, therefore, both that the request was made because it was necessary rather than for political reasons, and that it was something the White House wanted.... [T]he more immediate reason seems to be that the current Treasury secretary has little authority on the Hill. John Snow continues to be perceived by many of Capitol Hill's key budget policy-makers as a cheerleader for the administration rather than the person most responsible for economic policy-making. As a result, his pronouncements on the debt ceiling often seem to be considered required statements rather than official expressions of White House preferences.

In the meantime, no one involved in the budget debate seems to have asked GAO, CBO or anyone else to determine just how much flexibility Treasury really has when the government reaches its statutory borrowing limit....

When Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolten released the Bush administration's fiscal 2005 budget back in February, he said that the White House would be requesting an additional $50 billion supplemental appropriation for Iraq once the year began. This allowed the administration to avoid including the spending in the budget numbers and, therefore, to make the deficit look significantly smaller than it will actually be.

If President Bush is re-elected, that supplemental will certainly be requested by the White House in time for it to be acted on in the lame-duck session of Congress that will be held in November. If John Kerry wins, the Bush administration likely will not request any additional funds but instead let the new White House deal with the problem and take responsibility for raising spending and the deficit....