[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 129 (Tuesday, July 30, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5170-S5172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Budget Proposal

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the need to fix our 
broken budget and spending process.
  Picking up efforts we began in the 114th Congress, the Senate Budget 
Committee has spent the last several months holding hearings and 
meetings with Members of Congress, State officials, the administration, 
and stakeholder groups to listen to their budget

[[Page S5171]]

reform priorities. Along the way, we have collected a lot of good 
ideas.
  Today, I come to the floor to outline the fiscal reform plan that 
incorporates a lot of the feedback we received. It reflects suggestions 
from Members on both sides of the aisle and from groups that span the 
political spectrum. These reforms are not driven by politics but, 
instead, are rooted in fixing our broken budget and spending process in 
favor of a system that works for everyone.
  In developing this plan, my focus was on creating a durable system to 
substantially manage our country's finances, to improve transparency, 
to improve oversight, to improve accountability in the budget process, 
and to end the brinksmanship in our fiscal debates.
  I have broken the plan down into four separate discussion drafts, 
which I am sharing this week with Senate Budget Committee members. Each 
of the drafts tackles a different aspect of the broken budget and 
spending process.
  The first proposal is the most ambitious. It would reorient the 
budget process around long-term planning and shift the Federal 
Government to a biennial budgeting and spending system. There are 20 
States, including my home State of Wyoming, that have some form of 
biennial budgeting and appropriations. I have long believed that one of 
the most important reforms we could do at the Federal level would be to 
move to a biennial process to have the problem only every other year.
  The plan proposes to maintain the budget resolution as a concurrent 
resolution but with a few important changes.
  First, it would change how we write the budget. Topline discretionary 
figures would be clearly stated in the resolution, while mandatory 
spending would continue to be displayed on a portfolio basis. This new 
approach will allow each individual Member to have more of a say in the 
budget through the amendment process.

  Second, it would require the budget resolution to include debt-to-GDP 
targets to focus Congress on creating a path to stabilize our debt 
levels and sustainably manage our finances. It could even provide an 
estimate of anticipated revenues.
  Third, the plan would allow for, upon adoption of a concurrent 
resolution on the budget, the automatic enrollment of a bill that would 
set discretionary spending caps--something that has taken until right 
now to get done this year--enforced by both Congress and OMB and 
increase the debt limit in line with the levels assumed in the 
resolution. It saves a lot of time.
  The proposal seeks to encourage Congress and the President to reach 
agreement on a fiscal framework early in the budget process while 
maintaining the budget resolution as a congressional document. The 
budget resolution would be enforced whether or not the President signs 
the joint resolution.
  To encourage Congress to adhere to its budget blueprint, the proposal 
would create a special reconciliation process that would be triggered 
if the Congressional Budget Office finds that Congress is not on a path 
toward meeting the budget resolution's fiscal target that everybody 
voted on. This process would allow Congress to make surgical changes to 
achieve the debt target and could only be used for deficit reduction. 
The Byrd rule, which prohibits changes to Social Security in 
reconciliation, would apply.
  The plan also seeks to get legislative committees more involved in 
the budget process. It would require them, at the beginning of the 
process, to share their plans to address spending on unauthorized 
programs in their jurisdiction, as well as programs that Agency-based 
inspectors general and the Government Accountability Office have 
identified as ``in need of improvement.'' For that budget cycle, the 
committee would have to suggest a dollar amount for those programs 
listed as ``such sums.''
  It would change our committee's name to the Fiscal Control Committee 
to better reflect the committee's focus on setting spending and revenue 
guardrails. It would also require the chairs and ranking members of the 
Appropriations and Finance Committees, if not already members of the 
Fiscal Control Committee, to serve as nonvoting members of the 
committee. This change is intended to increase the input in the primary 
spending and taxing committees in developing fiscal plans.
  The second discussion draft I am releasing deals with congressional 
budget enforcement. Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote that ``sunlight 
is said to be the best disinfectant.'' In keeping with this principle, 
the proposal would require reports tracking Congress's adherence to its 
budget plan to be regularly printed in the Congressional Record and 
posted on a publicly accessible website. This would help ensure that 
Members of Congress and the leadership of each committee are 
accountable for their fiscal decisions.
  The other two components of this draft deal with Senate budget points 
of order, which are the means through which the body enforces 
congressional budgets and rules. These points of order are supposed to 
create a meaningful obstacle to breaching the budget, but in recent 
years they have been routinely ignored or waived.
  The discussion draft proposes to make it harder to rewrite 
``inconvenient'' budget rules. There have been a number of attempts in 
recent years to rewrite budget rules outside of the normal budget 
process to allow for more spending. There is already a point of order 
against this practice under the Congressional Budget Act, but that 
point of order lies against the whole measure, making it a very blunt 
instrument. The discussion draft would make the current point of order 
surgical so it would target only the offending provision without 
threatening to shut down the whole bill.
  In a similar vein, the discussion draft would disallow global waivers 
for surgical points of order. Right now, any Senator can make a single 
motion to waive all budget points of order that lie against a measure. 
These global waivers allow numerous budget rules to be broken with one 
vote, regardless of whether the points of order that lie are surgical 
or apply to the whole measure. These waivers have even been used to 
preemptively prevent surgical points of order that could alter the bill 
text from being raised. The discussion draft aims to end that practice 
and ensure the ability of Senators to raise points of order that could 
remedy a budget violation without killing the bill.
  The third discussion draft I am releasing deals with Congressional 
Budget Office operations and transparency. The CBO serves a vital role 
in the budget and legislative processes. While the Agency's 
longstanding mission has been to produce timely, objective, and 
accurate information for Congress, there have been growing calls for 
increased transparency in the estimating process. The discussion draft 
aims to build on bipartisan transparency reforms already underway at 
the CBO in a number of ways.
  No. 1, it would require CBO to report on its transparency 
initiatives, review past estimates to see where the Agency got it right 
or got it wrong, and produce underlying data for its estimates of major 
legislation.
  No. 2, it would require interest costs to be included as supplemental 
information in cost estimates, ensuring that lawmakers and the public 
have better information about the true costs of legislation.
  No. 3, it would require public cost estimates of appropriations 
legislation. Unlike legislation reported from authorizing committees, 
there is not currently a requirement for CBO to provide public 
estimates of legislation reported by the Appropriations Committee.
  No. 4, it would require CBO and the Government Accountability Office 
to conduct ongoing portfolio reviews of Federal programs to help 
lawmakers identify spending on duplicative, overlapping, and fragmented 
programs, as well as long-term funding trends and liabilities.
  That was my third discussion draft.
  My fourth discussion draft relates to how budget resolutions are 
considered on the Senate floor. The Congressional Budget Act provides 
special expedited procedures for consideration of a budget resolution 
on the Senate floor. These procedures were meant to ensure that the 
budget is considered and adopted in a deliberate but efficient manner. 
However, arcane floor procedures and a quirk of the act have undermined 
this intent by allowing a

[[Page S5172]]

marathon of votes known as a vote-arama. Once debate on the budget has 
ended, we have a vote-arama. Without time for debate or analysis of 
what is being proposed, this process is not conducive to substantive 
consideration of fiscal policy and serves as a major deterrent to 
considering a budget on the floor. The discussion draft aims to 
establish a more orderly process for Senate consideration of the budget 
resolution that ensures the ability of Senators from both sides of 
the aisle to offer and have votes on amendments.

  It would change the current 50-hour rule on debate of a budget 
resolution to a limit on consideration and force the Senate to consider 
amendments after all allotted general debate time expires. Amendments 
would alternate between those offered by the minority and those offered 
by the majority, and the maximum debate time on the first-degree 
amendments would be reduced from 2 hours to 1 hour, to allow for the 
consideration of more amendments.
  Under this proposal, even if the maximum debate time was burned on 
each amendment, 24 amendments could be considered. Coincidentally, 24 
is both the average and the median number of rollcall votes on budget 
resolutions since 1976. Of course, it isn't 1 minute of debate. It 
would be an hour of debate.
  This proposal would apply only to the Senate consideration of budget 
resolutions. It would not preclude adoption of a managers' package, 
apply to reconciliation bills, or change House procedures.
  We can all agree that the current budget and spending system has 
broken down. Reforming this dysfunctional system has been a goal of 
mine since entering the Senate and is one of my top priorities before I 
leave this body at the end of this Congress.
  I encourage my colleagues to consider the reform ideas I have laid 
out today and invite their feedback. I am hopeful that through this 
process, we will be able to reach bipartisan agreement to end the 
current dysfunction and put our country back toward a sustainable 
fiscal future--and on time so we will not have government shutdowns.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.