Why Biennial Budgeting?
As members of this committee know, the idea of moving the federal government from an annual to a biennial process is not a new one. Representive Leon Panetta (D-CA) introduced the first bill proposing such a change in 1977, and the proposal has been more or less an annual entry in the budget reform sweepstakes since then. Perhaps the high water mark for biennial budgeting was in 1993, when both the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress (co-chaired by the Chairman of this Committee, Mr. Dreier) and Vice-President Gore’s National Performance Review recommended that the federal government adopt a new biennial timetable for the process. Despite this long history of support, however, no bill to create a biennial process has ever passed either the House or Senate. What are the arguments in favor of a biennial budget? First, proponents argue that the current annual process features repetitive votes on many fiscal issues that eat up valuable committee and floor time. For example, the
