A Guide to the Gimmicks

etermined not to look as though they are breaking the budget caps set by the 1997 balanced budget deal, congressional leaders have winked and nodded their way through the appropriations process in the past two years, relying on a variety of budgetary tricks. The goal has been clear: to increase spending and make the annual appropriations bills politically acceptable, while still looking as if the budget caps are in place. Devotion to the budget caps means that Congress must rely on "gimmicks, sleight-of-hand tricks, whatever they have to do to get through the night," says Stanley Collender, managing director of the federal budget consulting group at Fleishman-Hillard.

One lawmaker is even more blunt. "There are no rules around here," says Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. "There's nothing left of the congressional budget process." Here's a guide to some of the most often-used gimmicks:

• Emergency Spending
  Budget laws are supposed to allow Congress to pay for one-time, unexpected emergencies outside the discretionary spending caps called for in the 1997 balanced budget deal. The problem is, there is no enforcement mechanism to make sure that the emergencies really are emergencies. Last year, Congress added some $20 billion in spending above the caps and defined all of the spending as emergency. Earlier this year, the House agreed to pay for the entire 2000 census as an emergency, leading one Democrat to joke that the Founding Fathers-who mandated the census in the constitution-must have caught Republican leaders by surprise. One House Republican aide was clear in the motivation behind that decision: If the census were not declared an emergency, House appropriators would have had to find some $4 billion in cuts elsewhere to pay for the census.
• Directed Scoring
  Back in 1995, Republicans tried to insist that the Clinton administration submit a budget that would be certified as balanced by the Congressional Budget Office. The administration argued that a balanced budget certified by the Office of Management and Budget should have been good enough. Now, OMB appears good enough for Republicans-sometimes. Using "directed scoring," budgeteers are able to choose which office scores certain programs. This allows Congress to choose either CBO or OMB estimates-whichever office says the program costs the least. House Democrats charged earlier this year that Republicans used at least $14 billion of OMB scoring in determining the costs of programs. "They're using two sets of books, but they're not telling us which set of books they're using on what occasion," Obey charges, adding that, "One day it's the OMB. One day it's the CBO. One day it's the Wizard of Oz."
• Low-Funding Programs
  A favorite of Presidents, Congress also is not immune from using this gimmick. For a few years, Republicans budgets attempted to slash spending for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance program, but funding always was restored because a wide variety of northeast and midwest legislators were worried about how cold it might get during the winter. For years, administrations proposed cuts to the Impact Aid program, which helps compensate school districts for property tax funds lost because of federal land. The cuts never were approved because Rep. William Natcher, D-Ky., chaired the House Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee and Natcher's district included Fort Knox, a large piece of federal land.
• Advanced Funding
  Advanced funding was popular in last year's omnibus spending bill, in which Congress simply used fiscal 2001 money to pay for fiscal 2000 programs. Since discretionary spending caps expire in 2002, Congress could simply advance-fund programs until the caps are no longer in effect. "This becomes the world's largest Ponzi scheme," Collender says.