By: Ed Bryant
In mid-June, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced that he was introducing budget reform legislation centered on the adoption of a two-year budget cycle as a way to regain control over federal spending in Washington. Frist is right that Congress needs to spend more time evaluating the effectiveness of existing programs and less time spending taxpayer dollars in the dark, but as valuable as procedural controls on Congress are, the only thing truly needed to balance the federal budget is the political will to do so.
Washington’s appalling lack of fiscal responsibility was one of the reasons why I ran for Congress in 1994. As part of the revolutionary Republican ‘Class of 1994,’ we succeeded in balancing the federal budget for the first time in a generation by cutting federal spending, reforming welfare, and providing tax relief for Tennessee’s families and employers.
But now we’ve lost our way.
The horrible events of September 11 not only saddled our military with new obligations, but it was a blow to our economy as well. Consequently, we let spending overtake revenues, but it’s time we balance the budget again.
By last year’s October 1 deadline, Congress had passed only two of the 12 appropriations bills which fund our government. That’s when I decided to make budget reform a central part of my plan for Securing Tennessee’s Future as an effective means to controlling federal spending and restoring reason to how our taxpayer dollars are spent.
The value of a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to pass only balanced budgets and the line item veto are obvious, and my support for them has never wavered. But it’s also time to switch to a two year budget, an idea I supported when I was serving in Congress.
The first effect of adopting a two-year budget cycle, as Senator Frist and I advocate, is to immediately cut the opportunities for pork barrel spending in half. Each year we taxpayers hear horror stories of what nonsensical, low-priority pet projects get attached to spending bills in the last minute rush to pass them. Until we elect enough real conservatives to the Senate to defeat such projects as the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ in Alaska, we can take away half the vehicles for these earmarks overnight by walking away from annual appropriations bills.
Second, Congress – and private citizens and watchdog organizations – would have much more time to conduct oversight into how and how effectively our taxpayer dollars are spent. Do government programs work? Where is there fraud? Where is there abuse? What can we do better, and who isn’t doing their job?
For example, the problem with illegal immigration doesn’t start on the border, it starts in Washington. Congress should look first at why laws already on the books are not being enforced by the decision-makers at the Border Patrol and the INS and its successor agencies. Many of the excellent, common-sense ideas on what we should do about illegal immigration that I hear from Tennesseans every day are already on the books!
If Congress spent less time arguing among itself the ‘best’ way to spend ‘its’ money, it would have more time to look at the real problems and find real solutions to problems like illegal immigration, high gas prices, and the rising cost of health care.
But as much as budget reform can and will enhance the efficiency how our taxes are spent, we cannot substitute procedure for political will.
As a fiscal conservative in Congress in 1995, the need to balance the budget was important enough to shut down the federal government until President Clinton accepted that this was what Americans had elected us to do. At that historic moment, we proved that Congress can act responsibly when enough of its members possess the political will to control federal spending and work together. I’ve demonstrated that courage to stan