Committee Action: Pursuant to clause 2(d) of House Rule X, the Committee on Rules met in public session on February 13, 2001, and, with a quorum present, by a non-record vote, adopted the following oversight plan for the 107th Congress for submission to the Committee on House Administration and the Committee on Government Reform.

Background

The Committee on Rules has existed as part of the House committee structure since the First Congress, when it was established in 1789 as a select committee. The essential portion of the present jurisdiction of the Committee is set forth in clause 1(m) of rule X, which grants the Committee jurisdiction over rules and joint rules (other than those relating to the Code of Conduct), the order of business of the House, and recesses and final adjournments of Congress. Clause 3(i) of rule X assigns to the Rules Committee special oversight responsibility over the congressional budget process.

Major portions of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 were enacted as an exercise of the rule making power of the House and Senate. Therefore, proposals to amend that Act, as well as special orders waiving provisions of that Act, are within the jurisdiction of the Committee. Propositions to change the rules of the House, to create committees, and to direct committees to undertake certain investigations also fall within the Committee's jurisdiction. The Committee also has general jurisdiction over statutory provisions changing the procedures of the House for consideration of resolutions or bills disapproving or approving proposed action by the executive branch or by other governmental authorities.

The Committee on Rules has been at the forefront of efforts to reform the process and procedures of the House to improve the effectiveness of the institution. The Committee considered and reported the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, which created the congressional budget process and a mechanism for disapproving or approving impoundment and rescission proposals of the President. The Committee also reported the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, which made major changes in the rules of the House.

Additionally, in recent years, the Committee has played the lead role in putting forth substantive changes to the rules of the House that occur at the beginning of each Congress. Such changes include streamlining the committee system, making Congress compliant with anti-discrimination and workplace safety laws, establisheding term-limits for committee chairman, opening committee meetings to the public and press, modernizing the rules of the House to make them more understandable, and consolidating the number of standing rules from 51 to 27.

Some of the positive rules changes that were adopted on the opening day of the 107th Congress include: encouraging the electronic publication and distribution of executive branch reports and House Journals and Calendars; establishing a new Committee on Financial Services to eliminate a major source of jurisdictional gridlock and establish a more coordinated and comprehensive approach to financial services in the wake of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Reform Act; encouraging committees to consider bills that may be candidates for the Corrections Calendar procedure in their initial legislative and oversight planning process; strengthening the existing procedures and rules governing committee reports to ensure the development of more clearly defined performance goals and objectives; and restoring accountability to the budget process by having an up or down vote on any statutory increase in the public debt.

During the 107th, the Rules Committee will continue to work proactively on its legislative and oversight responsibilities, using its two subcommittees -- the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process and the Subcommittee on Technology and the House -- extensively in this effort.

Budget Process Reform

The Rules Committee has worked for several years to improve the cumbersome and antiquated congressional budget process. Among the chief criticisms of the existing budget process are its complexity, the lack of accountability for the fiscal decisions it fosters, the low level of public confidence it inspires and the weakness of existing enforcement mechanisms. According to the General Accounting Office, executive branch agencies find the budget process to be burdensome and time-consuming, and Members of Congress find it too lengthy with too many votes on authorizations, budget resolutions, reconciliation, appropriations, emergency supplementals, and the debt limit.

The effort to reform the existing congressional budget process is certainly not new. Since the inception of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, proposals for modifying the procedures governing the consideration by the Congress of the nation's spending and revenue plans have been plentiful. In previous Congresses, modifications to the budget process have generally occurred as part of reconciliation legislation, or as changes to House rules on the opening day of a new Congress. Additionally, the House has from time to time considered high profile single-issue changes to the process, most notably in recent years were the Line Item Veto Act, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, the Deficit Reduction Lock-Box Act, and proposals to enact an automatic continuing resolution mechanism. In the 106th Congress, the Rules Committee and the Budget Committee teamed up on a bipartisan comprehensive budget process reform effort.

On February 25, 1999, Members from the Rules Committee and Budget Committee introduced H.R. 853, the Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act, in an effort to increase efficiency, improve accountability and strengthen enforcement in the budget process. The major purposes of H.R. 853 were to encourage early budget agreement between the President and the Congress, improve planning for emergencies, reinvigorate legislative oversight and review of federal programs, end the threat of disruptive government shutdowns, and allow more flexibility in the use of budgetary offsets. The bill would have accomplished those goals by converting the budget resolution into a joint budget resolution, creating a reserve-fund procedure for emergency spending, establishing new requirements for the review and reauthorization of federal programs, moving toward an accrual basis of accounting for federal insurance programs, putting in place automatic continuing appropriations, and modifying pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules to clarify the use of projected on-budget surpluses.

The Rules Committee held two hearings on H.R. 853 and three hearings on biennial budgeting. On June 23, 1999, the Committee marked up the procedural provisions of H.R. 853. On May 10, 2000, the Committee met to consider a special rule (H. Res. 499) providing for the consideration by the House of H.R. 853. The House agreed to H. Res. 499 by voice vote on May 10, 2000. On May 16, 2000, under H. Res. 499, the House considered an amended version of H.R. 853, which was defeated by a vote of 166-250.

Biennial Budgeting

While the Rules Committee's work has focused on a host of budget process reforms, much attention has been concentrated on biennial budgeting as a viable alternative to the current system. The current budget process is overly repetitive, inefficient and bureaucratic, and filled with time-consuming budget votes. Effective oversight and management of federal programs gets crowded out.

The annual process of developing budgets and justifications has kept federal agencies on a perpetual budget cycle treadmill, leaving little time to step back and review the management and effectiveness of the programs they run. Executing an annual budget requires nearly three years of combined effort by the Congress and the Administration. The federal government expends an enormous amount of effort to prepare, review, submit and ultimately legislate the budget.

With regard to the competition for Members' time and attention, as well as floor time, the annual budget process places great constraints on the workings of Congress and its committees. As a result, the authorization process has suffered – leaving large portions of the discretionary federal budget unauthorized each year. The programs which receive taxpayers' dollars to function each year are not receiving the careful scrutiny they should get from the committees in Congress with the greatest expertise. Every year the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) generates a thick report identifying the programs that are operating without current authorization. In fiscal year 2001, $112 billion in appropriations were provided for 112 federal programs whose authorizations had expired.

Proponents of biennial budgeting cite all of these trends and facts as overwhelming arguments in favor of making a fundamental change in the way the federal budget is developed and implemented. During the 106th Congress, no less than four biennial budgeting bills were introduced in the House of Representatives. Each of these bills were referred to the Committee on Rules and the Committee on the Budget.

In addition, 245 Members signed onto a sense of the House resolution (H.Res. 396) calling for the enactment of a biennial budget process in the second session of the 106th Congress. Accordingly, the Committee held a series of lengthy hearings to examine proposals from various Members of Congress, the Executive Branch, and outside experts on establishing a two-year budget and appropriations cycle in an effort to develop consensus legislation that would streamline the budget process, enhance programmatic oversight, strengthen the management of government programs and bureaucracies, and reform Congress.

These hearings laid the groundwork for a bipartisan biennial budgeting amendment during floor consideration of H.R. 853, the Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act. This amendment was narrowly defeated on May 16, 2000, by a record vote of 201 to 217.

President George W. Bush, while as Governor of Texas, experienced the benefits of biennial budgeting and made it part of his election platform as a tool to promote long-range planning and increase off-year oversight. He has also indicated that biennial budgeting, along with other budget process reform proposals, will be addressed in his fiscal year 2002 budget submission to Congress.

During the 107th Congress, the Rules Committee plans to build on the efforts of the past and move ahead with specific reform efforts. The Committee intends to work closely with the Administration and the Budget Committee to accomplish meaningful change. The Committee intends to hold further hearings on biennial budgeting and may review and mark up legislation implementing part or all of a biennial budget process. The Committee's legislative efforts may combine biennial budgeting with other budget process reforms, or consider biennial budgeting as a stand-alone proposal.

The Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985
(Gramm-Rudman-Hollings)

Another key aspect of budget process reform that the Rules Committee will look at this Congress is the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (also known as Gramm-Rudman-Hollings or GRH). Prior to GRH, the congressional budget process dealt with broad fiscal goals. However, enactment of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act in 1985 changed the focus of the budget process to include particular goals.

Both GRH and the 1987 amendments to it sought to achieve a specific outcome: A balanced budget by a time certain. However, GRH sought to use a change in process to force agreement on substance - and measured against its stated objective of a balanced budget, it did not succeed. Nevertheless, taxpayer surpluses resulting from greater than expected economic growth led to the first balanced budget in nearly 30 years.

Many of the current mechanisms ensuring fiscal discipline were derived from GRH and are part of Title X of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-33). The mechanisms include "pay-as-you-go" procedures and discretionary spending caps. Since the Balance Budget Act of 1997 expires at the end of fiscal year 2002, the Rules Committee intends to review the success of these mechanisms and assess what mechanisms will be needed to ensure fiscal discipline in the future.

This new era of surpluses presents a new set of challenges for the budget process and an opportunity to re-examine that process. In addition, the need to reauthorize GRH provisions provides another forum for the Rules Committee to explore changes and improvements to the budget process.

Rescissions Process

Following on its efforts in the 104th Congress to produce the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, and in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to invalidate the Act, the Rules Committee in the 106th Congress examined alternative proposals to the Act, including enhancing the existing rescissions process. The Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process held a hearing on July 30, 1999, to assess the existing rescissions process – its history, mechanics and effectiveness – specifically as a tool for promoting accountability and fiscal discipline. In addition, the hearing explored proposals for strengthening the rescissions process.

This subcommittee hearing provided the first step in that effort, which could result in legislative recommendations by the Committee in the 107th Congress. In addition, the President has indicated that some kind of enhanced rescission process will likely be part of any budget reform proposals contained in his fiscal year 2002 budget submission to Congress. The Committee remains interested in exploring ways to increase budget accountability through improving and strengthening the rescissions process, particularly as Congress enters an era of unprecedented budget surpluses.

Social Security/Medicare Lockbox

During the course of the 106th Congress, a number of measures were successfully passed by the House of Representatives to create a lock-box to wall off surpluses in the Social Security and Medicare Part A trust funds so they are not used for any purpose other than reform of the respective programs.

Early in the 107th, Representatives Herger, Sessions and Schrock introduced H.R. 2, the Social Security and Medicare Lock-Box Act of 2001. The bill is very similar to the five lock-box measures that passed the House overwhelmingly last Congress, and it was referred to the Committee on Rules and the Committee on the Budget. The bill passed the House on February 13, 2001, under suspension of the rules.

The quick House action on lockbox legislation will require vigorous review and study by the Rules Committee with respect to lock-box enforcement mechanisms, House procedures, and applicable points of order. It is important to note that the Budget Act already includes a number of enforceable budget points of order. The Rules Committee does not intend to provide for needlessly duplicative enforcement mechanisms. Instead, the Committee will seek to craft a workable point of order that is both efficient and effective. Once the lock-box point of order has been created, the Rules Committee will monitor its implementation.

Government Performance and Results Act

When the Government Performance and Results Act (P.L. 103-62) was enacted in 1993, it required the federal government to develop measurable performance goals for its departments in the hopes that the measurement of program success would no longer be inputs and funding but rather outputs and results.

In the 106th Congress, the Rules Committee recognized that the success of agency compliance with GPRA depended heavily on the ability of committees to define congressional intent with respect to the missions and goals of agencies and programs, particularly those subject to overlapping committee jurisdictions. At a Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House hearing on the duties, jurisdictions, and oversight responsibilities of the standing committees of the House with respect to GPRA, it became even more evident that enhancing the ability of agencies to understand the goals of Congress was imperative to the successful implementation of GPRA.

The House adopted, as part of the opening day rules package for the 107th Congress, a new requirement that committee reports include a statement of general performance goals and objectives, including outcome-related goals and objectives, for which the measure authorizes funding. The manager's statement during consideration of H.Res. 5 clarified that all performance goal statements should: (1) describe goals in an objective, quantifiable, and measurable form; (2) describe the resources required to meet the goals; (3) establish performance indicators to measure outputs or outcomes; and (4) provide a basis for comparing actual program results with performance goals.

During the 107th Congress, the Committee will continue to monitor how GPRA is being implemented and to what extent the new rule has assisted agencies in obtaining a better understanding of congressional intent. The Committee intends to do so by throughly examining any reported legislation containing authorizations, prior to floor consideration, to ensure that the performance goals and objective statements sufficiently address the four criteria cited above.

Unfunded Mandates Reform Act

In 1995, Congress passed the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), which requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to estimate the cost of unfunded mandates proposed to be placed on both local governments and the private sector. These cost estimates are required to be included in the committee's report that accompanies a bill reported to the House. UMRA also established a point of order mechanism for legislation that imposes an unfunded mandate on state and local governments in excess of $50 million. In addition, UMRA requires federal agencies to prepare written statements that identify costs and benefits of a federal mandate determined to result in costs of $100 million or more in anyone years, imposed through the rule making process.

In both the 105th and 106th Congresses, the Rules Committee held original jurisdiction hearings and reported legislation to amend the UMRA in an effort to improve congressional deliberation on proposed Federal private sector mandates. This legislation, which passed the House in both Congresses, established a point of order against bills that contained mandates on the private sector in excess of $100 million. However, in both instances, the Senate did not act.

UMRA was amended during the 106th Congress with the passage of the State Flexibility Clarification Act (P.L.106-141), which requires authorizing committees and CBO to provide more information in committee reports and mandates statements for legislation that would "place caps upon, or otherwise decrease, the federal government's responsibility to provide funding to state, local, or tribal governments" under various large entitlement grant programs (such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Food Stamps). More specifically, under that Act, if a bill or joint resolution would cap or reduce federal spending for such a program, the authorizing committee must state specifically how it intends for the states to implement the change and to what extent the legislation provides additional flexibility, if any, to offset states' costs. The new information that CBO must provide depends on whether a bill would provide flexibility to states. If it would cap or reduce federal spending for a large entitlement grant program but not also provide additional flexibility to states to offset that reduction, CBO must describe whether and how states can offset the reduction under existing law. If the legislation would provide additional flexibility, CBO must estimate whether the resulting savings would offset the reductions included in the bill, assuming that states take full advantage of the flexibility.

With the CBO authorization of appropriations for preparing studies and estimates expiring at the end of fiscal year 2002, legislation to reauthorize this activity may act as a catalyst for significant adjustments to the original Act. More specifically, the Committee recognizes that legislation reauthorizing UMRA may include additional adjustments to reporting requirements, a point of order against bills that contained mandates on the private sector in excess of $100 million, and language to assist the state and local governments concerns about strengthening UMRA at the regulatory level to ensure Title II of UMRA is being used as intended.

Congressional Review Act

The Congressional Review Act (CRA), enacted as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (P.L.104-121), requires agencies to send their final regulations to Congress for review before they take effect. Congress may then reject the proposed regulation with enactment of a joint resolution of disapproval, signed by the President prior to it going into effect. Congress preserved for itself the ability to disapprove of a rule within 60 legislative days (or session days in the case of the Senate) of its publication in the Federal Register or submission to Congress. Moreover, if a session of Congress ends before the 60 legislative days have concluded, the rule is "held over" to the next session. CRA also established expedited procedures for the passage of resolutions of disapproval in the Senate.

While the Congressional Review Act has been in effect since 1996, only seven resolutions of disapproval have been introduced and none were considered by either body. During the 107th Congress, the Rules Committee intends to examine the procedures governing the Congressional Review Act to determine if the current process has been an impediment to congressional consideration of regulations and what role, if any, the Presidential veto has had on Congress's incentive to act. In light of the significant number of regulations handed down in the waning days of the Clinton Administration, an examination of the Congressional Review Act may be needed to clarify what action can be taken in light of President Clinton's actions.

Expedited Procedures and Trade Promotion Authority

Section 151 of the Trade Act of 1974 established a "fast track" procedure for the consideration of legislation implementing trade agreements negotiated by the President. Section 1103(b) of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 provided the last "broad" extension of trade negotiating authority with "fast track" procedures. This extension applied to implementing bills submitted with respect to trade agreements entered into before June 1, 1991, and was further extended until June 1, 1993, through operations of provisions of section 1103(b).

Subsequent to the expiration of "fast track" authority on June 1, 1993, Public Law 103-49 (H.R. 1876) provided for an additional extension of "fast track" procedures only for the purposes of concluding the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. Unfortunately, "fast track" authority has not been renewed since December 1993.

Fast track procedures limit the capacity of Congress to amend legislation implementing trade agreements. In order to offset this limit on congressional authority once implementing legislation is introduced, Administrations have been directed by statute to undertake significant consultation and cooperation with Congress during trade negotiations.

In the 104th Congress, the Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House and the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade conducted a comprehensive review of Section 151 of the Trade Act of 1974. The subcommittees held public hearings on the policies, conditions, and negotiating objectives of fast track, as well as on fast track procedures. The subcommittees also examined Administration plans to undertake trade negotiations under a new grant of "fast track" authority, as well as the implementation of trade agreements recently enacted under "fast track" procedures, to determine if the "fast track" process has led to successful trade negotiations, and if "fast track" authority should be further granted to the Administration. In the 105th Congress, H.R. 2621, legislation providing for "fast track" authority, was sequentially referred to the Committee. This bill was considered in the full House of Representatives and ultimately rejected. During the 106th Congress, the Committee examined proposals for the broad extension of "fast track" and, alternatively, the more narrow extension of this authority relating only to specific trade negotiations that were underway at that time.

Advancing a new multilateral round of trade liberalization in agriculture, services and other sectors in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a principal trade objective of the new Administration and many in Congress. The strategy for achieving this objective includes the negotiation of specific complementary bilateral free trade agreements such as those underway with Singapore and Jordan, and those proposed for Chile, other Western Hemisphere trading partners and Australia. Genuine progress in both multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations is dependent on the President having "fast track" authority.

During the 107th Congress, the Rules Committee anticipates working closely with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Committee on Ways and Means in advancing "Trade Promotion Authority" (i.e. "fast track") for the President. Early in the first session, the Committee envisions holding hearings, either jointly or concurrently with the Committee on Ways and Means, with a view towards considering legislation on the House Floor later in the year.

Impact of New Information Technologies on the House

By constitutional design, Congress is usually a slow-moving institution, and the process of consensus is often messy and difficult. Since crossing the threshold into the computer age, however, the institution faces numerous pressures and challenges in adapting emerging technologies to a deliberative legislative process.

Congress has made a remarkable transformation into the information age. Prior to the 104th Congress, fewer than 50 House Members had e-mail addresses, and there were no committee or personal office Web sites. The House of Representatives was a "paper-based" institution where electronic information and documents existed in separate computers that were not interconnected. Most documents were only available for mass distribution in hard-copy (paper) format.

Today, Congress's efforts to bring itself on line in the age of the information superhighway have become an important, albeit largely unheralded, part of the institutional reform efforts of recent years. The technological infrastructure of the House is state of the art. Members and staff are better trained and technically more savvy. Every Member and standing committee has a Web site. The public has unprecedented access to Members of Congress and real-time legislative information, such as roll call votes, the Congressional Record, bills and committee reports. Committees now have the ability to "cybercast" their hearings over the Internet, thus bypassing conventional media.

This new medium of communication is transforming the culture, operations, and responsibilities of Congress in a positive way. Providing realtime access to information allows the broader public to play a more meaningful role in making government work better. Technology is helping us bridge the gap of time and distance to bring representative government closer to the people. It is helping us to create a more orderly process and to reduce costs and bureaucracy.

At the same time, there is concern that misapplied technology can exacerbate inequities in our political system, maintain those aspects of the status quo that require change and undermine the nature of representative government that has served our country so well over the past two centuries.

In an effort to institutionalize a permanent examination of how technology is impacting the institution, the Rules Committee replaced the Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House with a new Subcommittee on Technology and the House. In addition to retaining the jurisdiction of the old subcommittee, the new subcommittee has general responsibility for measures or matters related to the impact of technology on the processes and procedures of the House.

During the 106th Congress, the Rules Committee examined the impact of technology on the role and responsibilities of committees; the dissemination of information electronically; and deliberation as the institution becomes more accessible to the public. The Committee examined the use and impact of technology in the state legislatures. The Committee reviewed how recent acquisitions of new forms of technology affected House and committee rules and decision-making in committees and on the House floor. The Committee reviewed how the Internet and other information technologies affect the way Members of Congress communicate with constituents and examined the advantages and disadvantages of providing immediate on-line access to various forms of congressional documents and information, particularly in light of the House rule requiring the electronic availability of committee publications. Finally, the Committee canvassed other committees' Internet broadcasting procedures and recommended a new model rule for the 107th Congress requiring Internet broadcasting of committee hearings to be fair and non-partisan.

In the 107th Congress, the Committee will continue building on these efforts to ensure that a proper balance is struck between the desire to enhance democracy and participation, and the need to maintain the deliberative traditions and representative nature of the institution.

Resolving Jurisdictional Disputes

Beginning in the 104th Congress, the House sought to streamline what was considered to be a bloated and ineffective committee system. H.Res. 6, the opening day rules package for the 104th Congress, abolished 3 full committees (Committees on Post Office and Civil Service, the District of Columbia, and Merchant Marine and Fisheries) and transferred their jurisdictions to other remaining committees. The rules package also gave the Budget Committee shared legislative jurisdiction over certain budgetary legislation, and limited the number of subcommittees each committee was allowed to have. In the 107th Congress, the trend toward jurisdictional consolidation continued in the opening day rules package with the establishment of a new Committee on Financial Services.

In the 107th Congress, the Rules Committee will continue to review proposals to streamline the committee system and increase effective oversight. The Committee may examine cross-cutting issues that involve numerous committees of jurisdiction and numerous federal agencies. For example, 14 different committees have jurisdiction over the more than forty federal agencies that deal with domestic terrorism in some capacity. This has resulted in a lack of a national policy on domestic terrorism and a lack of effective, coordinated oversight in this area. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an Advisory Board for RAND have published studies citing both the lack of a coordinated national plan to counter domestic terrorism and a lack of productive congressional oversight on the issue.

Hunger-related issues also cut across 10 different committee jurisdictions. While individual committees may address certain facets related to the issue, there is no entity that examines the entire issue of international and domestic hunger. Further, the Congressional Research Service has identified 13 House committees with some jurisdiction over drug control policies. Once again, while individual committees may examine a specific program, it is difficult for the House to conduct coordinated oversight on the issue of drug control as a whole.

Fragmented jurisdictions, differences in jurisdiction between House and Senate committees, the budget and appropriations process, and the oversight process are areas of concern for the Rules Committee when considering issues as broad as terrorism, hunger, and drug control. The House has at its disposal several different mechanisms to deal with these broad and important national issues from both a legislative and oversight standpoint. The Committee will be exploring various options available to the House in an effort to insure that these important national issues are addressed in the most effective way possible.

Unauthorized Appropriations According to a January 2001 Congressional Budget Office report entitled: "Unauthorized Appropriations and Expiring Authorizations," Congress appropriated over $112 billion to unauthorized federal programs in FY 2001. In an effort to bring greater attention to this problem, the opening day rules package for the 107th Congress (H.Res. 5) amended clause 3(f)(1) of Rule XIII to expand the reporting requirements for unauthorized appropriations to include a statement of the last year for which the expenditures were authorized, the level of expenditures authorized for that year, the actual level of expenditures for that year, and the level of appropriations in the bill for such expenditures.

The Rules Committee will also be examining, possibly in the context of comprehensive budget process reform, additional proposals to encourage committees to use early months of a congressional session to report authorizing legislation that must be in place before the thirteen regular appropriation bills are considered.

Dissenting Views

The majority lays out an ambitious oversight plan for the 107th Congress. We applaud that and are eager to get to work. It is their one-sided description of recent history with which we disagree.

The majority describes in glowing terms various rules changes adopted on the opening day of the 107th Congress. They forget the criticism they received for the partisan, shortsighted way in which they made changes in the jurisdictions of the committees of the House. There is disagreement in the Democratic caucus about the wisdom of making this jurisdictional change but there is absolutely no question that Democrats from both affected committees were not consulted and their views and the views of the public at large were not taken into account. The jurisdiction of the Committee on Commerce was diminished and the Committee on Financial Services was created solely to satisfy the peculiar needs of the Republican conference in assigning committee seats and chairmanships. As Representative Dingell noted on that day, “...you have made the changes in the jurisdiction of the Committee on Commerce. You did that to take care of one Member. One Member. Not the interests of the House, not the interests of the banking industry or the securities industry or indeed the interests of the investors of the United States.” In the weeks before the opening day of the 107th Congress, there were appeals from numerous Democrats, including a letter signed by all the ranking Democrats, asking that any significant changes in committee jurisdiction be made in the context of bipartisan discussions, much as the last significant jurisdictional changes, made in the 104th Congress, grew out of the bipartisan recommendations of the Hamilton/Dreier Task Force. Instead, the changes were made without any consultation with the minority and without regard for the needs of the House at large or the public it serves.

________________________		________________________
John Joseph Moakley			Martin Frost


________________________		________________________
Tony Hall				Louise Slaughter
             

PAGE TWO

The majority plan also glowingly describes last year’s effort to move to a biennial budget. That move was defeated by a vote of 201-217 and there is no mention of the reasons why more Members voted against the proposal than for it. The biennial budget is a proposal in search of a problem it can solve. Proponents suggest it will enable committees to do more effective oversight and to complete more authorization bills in a timely fashion. There is strong evidence that floor and committee time spent on budget decisions does not crowd out oversight or authorization legislation. Moreover, good oversight is difficult because the rewards for individual members are small and the time and hard work required is large A biennial cycle will not make the rewards greater or the necessary work any smaller. In fact, the opponents of biennial budgeting believe it will make effective oversight of the executive branch more difficult. Administration officials, department heads, program managers feel compelled to provide answers promptly to the panels who decide on their budgets each year. Give them a two-year leash and those same individuals may not feel the need to respond as quickly or as thoroughly. There were many other reasons why a majority of those voting voted against biennial budgeting; among those reasons was research from the University of Michigan demonstrating that states with biennial budget cycles spend more, per capita, than states on an annual cycle. As flawed as the annual process is, it does serve a useful purpose as a curb on spending because planning can be done in almost real time instead of guessing what will be needed over the course of the next two and one-half years and padding the budget to take care of unforseeable needs. There is a strong likelihood of an explosion in the number of supplementals required. For the sake of fiscal discipline, many members opposed the biennial budget.

________________________		________________________
John Joseph Moakley			Martin Frost


________________________	
Louise Slaughter