HOW TO GET BETTER AT BUDGETS

YOU DON’T HAVE to be an avid consumer of news about the federal government to know that Uncle Sam’s annual budgeting process is a mess. The budget is rarely completed on time, and it always seems to get bogged down with partisan bickering and political scheming. The process is often interrupted or transformed into an emergency by fiscal cliffs and government shutdowns, and it faces numerous chronic problems as well, from dead-on-arrival White House budget plans to perpetually ignored statutory deadlines.

When the dust finally settles, the result is usually a bloated agglomeration of goodies for special interests that most likely had a better grasp of the budget’s contents than the elected representatives who voted on it (probably without ever reading it). Of course, almost every budget is bigger than its predecessor.

If the budgeting process is broken, it’s apparently been broken for a long time. Since the enactment of the Budget Control Act of 1974, which dictates the current rules and was meant to make Congress more accountable, legislators have passed all 12 of the required discretionary spending appropriations bills on time on just four occasions. Instead of an orderly process, we tend to end up with omnibus spending legislation that wraps everything into one giant spending bill or short-term “continuing resolutions” that punt on hard choices.

Various “fixes” have been proposed to right the budget process. One recurring idea is that we should replace an annual budget with a biennial budget, covering two fiscal years. Supporters argue that a longer budget period would give legislators more time to conduct oversight of federal programs and, thus, more time to weigh competing spending desires. With more time, spending would supposedly be better targeted toward those programs that “work,” while those that “don’t work” would either be “fixed”