Republicans have attained their goal of control in the U. S. House of Representatives. The hard work of putting a policy agenda in place and setting a plan for governing with a bare minimum majority now has to be their priority. When you have at most four votes to work with, the policy options have to have broad-based appeal and be politically viable in districts that range from very conservative to moderately liberal. And you have to be conscious of, but not paralyzed by, the fact that real legislative success involves subsequent approval by the Senate.
The issue with broad appeal across the whole GOP Conference is a belief that out-of-control spending has to be tackled. There are many in the Conference who think that oversight hearings focused on Biden Administration faults and failures should be a priority because those hearings can be pursued without Senate action. While an oversight agenda has political and media appeal, it does not, in and of itself, achieve legislative success. Getting a grip on spending with a goal of balancing the Federal budget is a winning issue with the American people, has wide acceptance in public polling and is a big enough objective to hold the Conference together.
When Republicans took control of the House in 1994 after 40 years of Democratic power, we had a balanced budget goal. I was appointed Vice Chairman of the Budget Committee working alongside of Chairman John Kasich. We had a heavy lift. Like now, it was widely believed a balanced budget could not be attained then or ever. In the end, it took some massive discipline, a couple of unpopular government shutdowns and some hard-nosed negotiating with the Senate and the Clinton Administration to win policies that set the nation on a path to a budget in balance. Two years after those policies went into effect, President Clinton went before the country and announced the first balanced budget in a generation. So, it can be done.
What we know from the last session of Congress is that the spending spigot has become a flood. Yet there are underlying rules in the House that could turn the spigot down. The permanent Rules of the House as expressed in Jefferson’s Manual say you cannot spend money without a policy plan in place. What that means is that the Congress must pass and the President must sign a plan for each department and agency to spend the money they are allocated. The authorization committees in both the House and the Senate have the responsibility to get legislation passed and signed into law that sets the perimeters. Those authorizations can be for one year or multiple years. The appropriations committees of both houses then have the job each year to set specific amounts of money that can be spent within the perimeters of the authorization during that one upcoming year. When working, the process is a pretty effective way to assure that the Federal Government is acting responsibly.
Here’s the problem. The process is not working. Largely it is being ignored. Over the years, the appropriation process has overwhelmed the authorization process. Spending bills are brought to the House Floor for action and the rule for considering them contains a provision which overrides the need for an authorization to be in place. Some departments and agencies of the government have gone decades without being properly authorized. The only thing governing their actions is the money given them to spend. Small wonder some, if not all, of them are out of control.
The spending problem has been exacerbated by the reintroduction of earmarking. Appropriators told us that giving individual Members of Congress the ability to get special spending allocations for their districts or states would solve the problem of not being able to get the votes to pass the bills, another congressional aberration. The $1.7 trillion appropriation bill that was shoved through Congress at the end of the last session contained billions in earmarks, all unauthorized. And members of the Appropriations Committees set aside hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves.
So, the first part of a GOP unification plan for balancing the budget should be to require all appropriations be pursuant to a current authorization. Spending should have a plan in place before the money is allocated. The Rules Committee, which sets the rules for House debate, should be instructed to pursue one of two avenues for appropriations bills to be debated: either allow appropriations bills to come to the Floor without a rule thereby making the general rules of the House applicable, or not include any unauthorized spending waivers in the appropriation rules they pass.
The House Republican Leadership should assure that someone is present on the House Floor to object to any spending in an appropriation that has not been authorized. Only one Member is required to make a point of order against unauthorized spending and to get it removed from the bill.
The second part of the plan should be requiring the authorization committees to make certain that their authorization responsibilities are current. Making policy through authorization will be a time-consuming process, but it will have the advantage of involving all of the membership of the House in the spending outcomes. It will reinvigorate the authorization committees and make subcommittees significantly more powerful because they will be the ones tracking and acting on the required policies. If all of these steps seem impossible, consider that it is the way national defense spending works. Every year the National Defense Authorization Act is a must pass bill. It is usually considered in a bi-partisan manner. Since authorizations can be approved for multiple years, not all authorizing committees would have to do all the departments and agencies under their jurisdictions every year. But just having authorizations look forward three to five years would be a major step in regaining congressional control over spending. And with all Members having the opportunity to be closely involved in setting spending policy, they would have a greater stake in making it work. If everyone has a vested interest, the Congress might even find it possible to get bills passed.
The third part of the plan would be to require the Budget Committee to propose a budget that balances within five years. The Budget Committee would then assign to the authorizers the amount of the balanced budget allocation limit given to each committee. Any committee exceeding its allocation would have to get a waiver to bring their bills to the Floor.
If the House were to adopt this three step process to stop the flood of spending now threatening our national economy, Republicans would be seen as doing something real. It would not be at all popular with Washington insiders, but in reality is the return to regular order that many of those insiders say they want. But perhaps the biggest legislative outcome would be the restoration of the House to its rightful place within the Congress as the spending initiator. In recent years, the Senate has perverted the spending pattern by refusing to move authorization bills and putting control of both authorizing and appropriating into giant omnibus bills. Those bills are often held to the last minute of the session when they are then voted upon with no one able to really consider the thousands of pages of policy and pork. And the beauty of the three step process is that it requires no major changes in the standing rules of the Congress. If House Republicans are willing to firmly insist on authorization before appropriation, they can rescue the country from the spending madness that threatens to engulf us.