Senior managers would have more time to focus on actually managing their agencies if the budget and appropriations processes ran on a two-year cycle instead of an annual one, Office of Management and Budget Director Franklin Raines told a congressional committee yesterday.
Saying that he is trying to put the "M" back in "OMB," Raines told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that a biennial budget and appropriations process would free up federal officials to concentrate on management reforms like the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) and the Chief Financial Officers Act.
Raines also said agencies would be able to devote time currently consumed with drafting budgets to improving accounting--tracking how dollars are actually spent rather than predicting what appropriations should be. Raines said the most competent people in agencies end up consumed by the budget process.
"If our best people are doing this process, who do we have spending the $1.7 trillion [in the federal budget]?" Raines asked rhetorically. "More attention is given to future projections than to what's going on in the present."
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is sponsoring a bill that would convert the annual budget and appropriations process to a biennial cycle.
The bill would set the following time table:
First Year: Budget and Appropriations
- The president would submit a two-year budget at the beginning of a congressional session. The president would submit a "mid-biennium review" at the beginning of the second year of the session.
- Congress would adopt a two-year budget resolution and a reconciliation bill, if necessary.
- Congress would enact a two-year appropriations bill. If the bill did not appropriate money for the second year of the two-year cycle, money would be appropriated automatically at the first year's level.
- The biennial budget resolution, reconciliation legislation and the 13 appropriation bills would need to be completed before Congress considered authorization and revenue legislation, making budget and appropriations the number one priority during the first session of Congress.
Second Year: Authorization Legislation and Enhanced Oversight
- The second year of a session would be devoted to the next biennial authorization and oversight of federal programs.
- The General Accounting Office would give priority to agency audits and program evaluations.
- The Government Performance and Results Act would be modified to incorporate performance planning and reporting into the two-year budget cycle.
Two similar biennial budget bills have been reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee in recent years, but neither was taken up by the full Senate. Since 1977, nearly 50 proposals have been introduced in Congress pushing some form of multi-year budgeting. Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said yesterday that this year the proposal may be more likely to pass because its supporters include the chairmen of the appropriations, finance and budget committees, as well as the majority and minority leaders of the Senate.
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, praised Raines for his commitment to governmentwide management reform as "a breath of fresh air this institution hasn't had for a long, long time."
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