WANT A READABLE BUDGET? START CUTTING:

In Congress, Growing Doubts on Spending Process: Members of both parties say the system for financing the government, which in recent years has relied on huge
last-minute bills, is broken. (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 11/24/04. NY Times)

Though the parties are bickering about the omnibus, both sides agree that the process that produced it is in tatters. Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who has served on the Appropriations Committee for his entire 46 years in the Senate, found the measure, which was passed on his 87th birthday, so odious that he voted against it.

"We have seen within these last few years, especially, this excrescence of the body politic grow until now it has become malignant," Mr. Byrd said, calling it "a disgrace upon the escutcheon of the Senate."

The problem with an omnibus, lawmakers and independent analysts agree, is that it creates an opportunity for what Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called "legislative mischief." Others call it pork, and this year's bill is chock full of it. The measure will send taxpayer dollars all over the country, from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to a homeless shelter in Hawaii.

Passing spending bills is one of the few jobs that lawmakers can trace directly to the Constitution, which does not permit the president to spend money unless Congress approves. Under the current system, lawmakers are responsible for passing 13 separate spending bills each year. But in recent years, the Senate especially has been unable to complete its appropriations work.

This year, for instance, the House passed 12 of the 13 appropriations bills but the Senate passed only 4. Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, blamed the Senate for failing to adopt a budget resolution, which helps guide the appropriations process.

Mr. Byrd said "it was never that way in the old times."

Mr. Reischauer says appropriations bills were less contentious in the past, when one party or the other had a large majority in the Senate and deficits were not the problem they are today.

The amusing fiction here is that it would be possible for anyone to read and comprehend the Federal Budget by the end of the year it covers, nevermind for a congressman to do so before voting.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 24, 2004 8:05 AM