Congress Should Fix Its Budget Habits

No sooner had President Bush proposed his final federal budget than commentators began suggesting it had no chance of passing Congress. Since the most noteworthy point about the President's budget is that it would spend the astonishing sum of $3.1 trillion and raise the annual federal deficit to $407 billion, you'd almost think that Congress was standing up for fiscal discipline.

I only wish it were true. Actually, members of Congress don't want the anxiety that comes with responsibility for the nation's fiscal health. While they are finally showing some willingness to challenge the President, if they hold true to form they won't come up with a detailed and well–analyzed alternative; instead, they'll just pass a “continuing resolution” to keep the funds flowing while they wait for the next President.

If so, they will have given up the chance to present an independent congressional vision for the country. The budget may be complex and unwieldy — this year's budget documents clock in at 2,200 pages — but it sets the government's priorities. It is the single most important document the U.S. government produces. The power of the purse given to Congress by the Constitution, in other words, is Capitol Hill's power to check the President's direction and suggest a different one.

Clearly, the nation wants this. Everywhere I go, people tell me that Congress must reassert its authority, and I agree. The budget is precisely the place to do so.

For too long, Congress has shrugged at its own power and thereby ceded it to the White House. Year after year, it has voted to spend more and tax less, and then it decries deficit spending. It has been unable to finish the appropriations bills that lay out its own priorities on time, and so has routinely passed continuing resolutions or omnibus bills rather than the carefully crafted budgets of a generation ago. The result is bad for the government and worse for the federal balance of power, since the budgetary agenda–setting that takes place is basically the President's.

To be sure, Congress has made some progress toward cutting back on “earmarks,” and is to be commended for this. But eliminating an earmark doesn't eliminate the spending, only how it is allocated. Against the backdrop of Congress' far more costly habit of passing unaffordable entitlement spending and equally unaffordable tax cuts, it's only the tiniest of steps.

No Congress that really cared about fiscal responsibility would raise spending and cut revenues as Congress has habitually done. Our current deficits are unsustainable. They threaten us with potentially crippling dependence on other countries, and impose heavy bills for current spending on our children and grandchildren. Yet when Congress focuses on reform, it tends to look at questions of process: Should it cap spending on Medicare? Should it change to a biennial budget cycle? Should it give the President a line–item veto or expand his rescission authority? Should it return to its Clinton–era “pay as you go” rules, which required it to find the money for spending proposals?

While some of these may be helpful — the “pay–go” rules did, indeed, impose a measure of fiscal discipline on Congress — the truth is that none of them produces sound fiscal and budgetary policy, and some give even more power to the President. The fundamental money issues facing Congress don't have to do with process, they have to do with hard choices. Simply put, Congress has to make sound fiscal decisions.

Why does this matter? Partly, of course, it's the issue itself. The budget is not now, and has not been for years, in fundamental balance. Isn't there someone in Washington who is uncomfortable with a $400 billion deficit that our grandchildren will be paying off? Unfortunately, most Americans do not seem bothered by the fiscal irresponsibility. This just imposes an additional burden on Congress. Not only must it take on runaway federal spending and seek to control health–care costs, social security, national security spending, and other generous programs, it must also tell the American people how serious the problem is, insist that deficits do matter, and work in a bipartisan way to achieve a balanced budget.

Just as important, getting control of the budget and behaving like the fiscal stewards our Founders envisioned is the first step Congress must take if it is to be a co–equal branch of government. As long as it allows the power of the purse to lie elsewhere and pretends it's just along for the ride, Congress' claim to independence will ring hollow.

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Look For Candidates Who Respect the Congress

You might not have noticed, given the media's fascination with the presidential campaign, but there are 435 U.S. House contests and 35 U.S. Senate races taking place this year. These are important elections, for even more reasons than you might be hearing about. Indeed, unless I miss my guess, the candidates and press in those many contests are barely talking about one of the most important issues we face: the role of Congress itself.

The litany of matters worrying Americans and absorbing the attention of congressional candidates is, of course, long and complex: the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the challenges posed by Iran, the state of American public education, climate change, a long-term energy policy, immigration.... Not surprisingly, many voters want to hear how Congress can protect them from financial ruin or how candidates propose to keep America strong. They're less interested in how Congress functions.

Yet unless Congress learns how to reassert its constitutional responsibility to be the President's equal in policy-making, the progress voters yearn to see on all those issues will be much harder to come by. This is why, as you listen to the various House and Senate candidates campaigning for your vote, I hope you'll pay attention not only to what they say about the economy or Iraq, but also to how they talk about Congress itself.

It's been the habit both of incumbents and their challengers in recent years to run for Congress by running against the Congress. They criticize its profligate spending or its do-nothing ways or its shoddy ethics or the undue influence of money and lobbyists. These are all choice targets, and they have their place in the campaign debate, but you have to wonder how long this denigration of Congress can continue before Americans lose their faith in representative democracy.

There's another path, and that's to recognize that Congress is flawed but that, as an institution, it needs upholding and shoring up, not stigmatizing. A robust, functional, and assertive Congress is crucial to making our system work.

It needs to be able to keep an eye on the executive branch, advance an agenda based on its members' understanding of what the country needs, police its members' behavior, be the place where the cross-currents roiling the American community meet in constructive debate, and in general play the muscular role our Founders envisioned for it in policy-making.

It cannot do any of these things if it is filled with politicians who are adept at making themselves look good and the Congress look bad, or who care little about its institutional powers.

I've noticed something interesting as I have moved around the country in recent months: a lot of people seem to have caught on to this. They express disappointment that Congress for decades has allowed the White House to dominate it. They fret that the expansion of presidential power sought by the Bush administration has gone too far, and are bewildered by Congress' timidity in pushing its own powers. This is an extremely promising development - if it translates into an electorate willing to look carefully at how congressional candidates propose to set Congress back on track, and it begins to wake up Congress as a whole.

For make no mistake, this is not just a matter of political theory or a topic for a good speech on the importance of constitutional checks and balances. It has to be practiced in the day-to-day workings of Capitol Hill.

If you ask candidates whether they are in favor of reasserting congressional authority, the answer will almost certainly be yes. But that's not enough. What you want to know is whether they'll be aggressive in shaping the federal budget; whether they believe Congress has a strong voice, along with the President's, in declaring war or pursuing military intervention overseas; whether they'll work with their colleagues to develop and fight for Congress's own agenda, and not simply respond to the President's; whether they see that getting Congress's ethical house in order is crucial to building its institutional strength, not just a matter of political expediency; whether they understand that Congress must be a truly deliberative and consensus-building body, not a place where the majority ramrods its wishes through without debate; and whether they understand that violating longstanding and fair procedure - by passing sprawling, multi-topic omnibus bills, for instance - merely hands the President more power.

If they get all this, even if you disagree on a few policy issues, I hope you'll consider voting for them. If they're oblivious and seem unconcerned about Congress' loss of power, then it's worth asking whether they really understand our constitutional system of separate and co-equal branches of government and the need to revive Congress's vigor and dynamism.

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