House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., is taking advantage of members' disgust with the annual end-of-session appropriations scramble to sign up 245 cosponsors on a sense of the House resolution calling for the enactment of a biennial budget process bill next year.
The resolution, filed last week, sports an impressive list of cosponsors, both across the ideological spectrum and among top Republican leaders, appropriators and budget writers.
A spokesman said Dreier's goal in introducing the resolution was simply to gauge the level of support in the House for biennial budgeting, without proposing specific legislation that members who favor a two-year budget cycle might oppose.
Although House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, and senior Budget Committee member Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, the co- author of a comprehensive bipartisan budget process reform bill, are notably absent, Dreier does count among his 200 Republican cosponsors Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Chief Deputy Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, and 24 of the 34 Appropriations Committee Republicans, including Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., and several subcommittee chairmen.
Other cosponsors include 19 of the 24 Republicans on the Budget Committee, among them Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Reps. Charles Bass and John Sununu, both R-N.H.; Wally Herger, R-Calif.; Bob Franks, R-N.J.; Christopher Shays, R-Conn.; and Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.
Dreier's resolution has just 45 Democratic cosponsors, primarily New Democrats and conservative Blue Dog Democrats, although liberal Reps. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., and Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, have also signed on.
The Democratic effort to gain supporters is being led by Rules member Tony Hall, D-Ohio, and Reps. Gary Condit and Calvin Dooley, both D-Calif., Karen McCarthy, D-Mo., and Bill Luther, D-Minn. The resolution cites among its arguments the fact that "the annual appropriations and budget process increasingly dominates the congressional agenda and Congress regularly fails to meet [its statutory] deadlines" and that biennial budgeting would "reduce the number of budget- related votes during each Congress, enhance congressional oversight of government operations, encourage longer time horizons in policy planning and greater stability in fiscal policy."
NEXT STORY: People: Turning heads at EPA