The inevitable result of the combination tax cut fever/spending spree indulged in by Congress and the Bush administration came Thursday when Congress raised the limit on the national debt to an unprecedented $9 trillion – about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
There was nothing inevitable about this mess. Under President Bill Clinton, the federal budget enjoyed four years of surpluses – the longest such run since before the Great Depression – before Bush took over in 2001. Tax cuts, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane damage, coupled with unchecked increases in pork barrel spending and the new Medicare drug benefit have since generated $400 billion annual deficits.
Obviously, the congressional budget process is broken. It can’t be fixed quickly, but two rules long followed by the Colorado General Assembly would help restore accountability to Congress.
The first commendable Colorado rule is that any amendment to a bill must fit under that bill’s title, which can be narrowed as it passes through the legislative process but not broadened. Thus, if a bill originally says “Farm subsidies for apples and oranges,” it can be later narrowed to only cover apples. But it can’t be expanded to include a $180 million rain forest in Iowa.
Such a rule requiring amendments to be germane to a bill would stop the farces that routinely tie up Congress when anti-abortion riders or other hot issues are tagged on to unrelated bills such as military appropriations. More important, it would stop unrelated pork barrel projects from being tacked on to legitimate spending bills.
A second salutary rule of the Colorado legislature requires that conference committees meeting to resolve different House and Senate versions of a bill cannot go beyond the scope of the differences between those bills without receiving the permission of their parent bodies.
In the legislature, if the Senate wants $1 million for a program and the House wants $1.4 million, they may compromise at $1.2 million. In Congress, a Senate bill for $1 billion and a House bill for $2 billion may be “compromised” at $5 billion – with a host of unrelated appropriations tacked on. Those conference committees meet in secret, and final action on the bills in their respective chambers is cursory at best. It may be weeks before the details of such midnight appropriations deals emerge to public view.
Finally, we again endorse HR 4890, the Legislative Line Item Veto Act. The measure wouldn’t give the president a true line item veto such as that enjoyed by Colorado’s governor, because such a law has been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. But as Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., argues, the measure “will give the president the power to force votes on wasteful spending, while preserving Congress’ power of the purse.”
The two procedural reforms Congress should borrow from Colorado, coupled with the revised line item veto, would focus the spotlight of public attention on waste and inefficiency in the federal government.
These three steps won’t return the nation to solvency overnight. But they would constitute an impressive beginning toward that vital goal.
