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About a week ago, syndicated columnist and CNN personality Robert Novak wrote the latest in what has become a series of columns blaming House Appropriations Committee Chief of Staff Jim Dyer for the higher-than-Novak-wants spending the committee is approving.

Novak is absolutely and unequivocally wrong on this one.

First, a bit of disclosure: Although Dyer is not a good friend, he is someone I have come to greatly respect over the years. At my invitation, he spoke about this year's budget and appropriations debates at a Fleishman-Hillard policy breakfast several months ago. He was not paid in any way for that appearance. He also did not know about and was not interviewed for this column.

Dyer is not a spender; he is an appropriator. As committee staff director, his job is to be a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. In spite of what Novak might think, Dyer's role is much more traffic cop than crusader for or against anything.

"Spender" and "appropriator" may seem to be one and the same. After all, the House Appropriations Committee approves legislation that allows the federal government to spend money. But while assuming that the committee is interested only in getting more dollars out of the U.S. Treasury is an understandable mistake, it is still a mistake.

Dyer is an "appropriator" in the historical sense of the term. As the most senior staff person on the committee, Dyer views his job not as a battle to extract increasing amounts of taxpayer dollars but rather one simply to get the appropriations bills enacted. The Appropriations Committee has at least 13 bills that each year that must make it through an increasingly contentious and highly partisan legislative environment. It is Dyer's responsibility to help the committee navigate through this pitfall-laden political maze so that the work gets done.

And despite Novak's suggestions to the contrary, appropriators--both members and staff--have almost always considered themselves to be the ones who must hold the line on spending. Long before there were House and Senate Budget committees and a congressional budget process, the appropriations committees believed that fiscal discipline in Congress was up to them.

In fact, the appropriators were among the most suspicious when the Congressional Budget Act was enacted in 1974, and they were the ones who had to be most convinced that it was needed. They felt that they were already handling much of what the new budget committees would be doing.

Novak is correct when he warns that "Congress has been poised for a bipartisan spending binge"--that same warning has been made in this very column. But if the House Appropriations Committee approves more spending than the White House requests, which was Novak's complaint last week, it won't be because Jim Dyer or any other staffer forced the members of Congress who serve on the committee to do so. Not only is that not what Dyer sees as his responsibility, it almost certainly is beyond his power--however "imperious" he may be.

So why didn't Novak criticize the representatives on the Appropriations Committee (that is, the people who actually vote to approve legislation) when the supplemental went beyond what the administration requested? They are the ones, after all, who have the constitutional ability to make such decisions.

Perhaps it is because criticism like that could make it appear that the president's preferences were being denied by his own party, or that congressional Republicans could be classified as big spenders. It is far more convenient to absolve them of any responsibility and instead blame staff for the problem.

Of course, staff like Dyer serve at the pleasure of the chairman and the rest of the committee's majority--and Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., has kept him in his position for three and a half years. It is safe to assume, therefore, that Dyer is not doing anything that the members don't want done.

Wait, There's More...

There is likely to be an attempt in the Senate to extend the caps on appropriations and the pay-as-you-go rules for revenues and entitlements, both of which expire at the end of 2002, as part of the debt ceiling increase that will have to be enacted by the end of June. The idea is for representatives and senators to be able to say that they voted to raise the debt ceiling because the legislation will also increase budget discipline in the future.

No one should be fooled by this fiscal sleight of hand. The caps and PAYGO rules that Congress suddenly considers so vital were ignored or shunted aside the past few years whenever it was convenient for Congress and the White House to do so. Extending these provisions now will have no real impact on the spending and revenues policies put in place in the coming years. Any claims that they will be important or that extending them makes the debt ceiling increase more palatable should be ignored... or ridiculed.

Question Of The Week

Last Week's Question. It is not surprising that the vast majority of Budget Battles readers who answered last week's question knew that Alice Rivlin is the only person to have served as director of both the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office. For those who thought that David Stockman was the correct response, Stockman was an elected member of the House who served on the Budget Committee and went on to be Ronald Reagan's first OMB director. But he never headed up CBO.

The large number of correct responses meant that this week's winner had to be selected at random from all of the correct responses. The winner of the "I Won A 2002 Budget Battle" coffee/tea/hot chocolate mug, which has just won first prize for best design from the International Society of Hot Liquids Containers, is Senate Budget Committee Staff Director Bill Hoagland.

This Week's Question. Congress is still working on a 2002 supplemental appropriation that probably will not get enacted until close to the end of June. This is not likely to leave enough time for all of the spending included in the bill from happening before the fiscal year ends. The question: What happens to the additional outlays included in the fiscal 2002 supplemental that is not actually spent by the time fiscal 2003 begins? Send your response to scollender@nationaljournal.com by 5 p.m. PDT on Saturday, May 25, 2002. You must include your mailing address so the "I Won A 2002 Budget Battle" mug can be sent if you win. If there is more than one correct response, the winner will be selected at random from all of the correct responses.

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