Senator Johnny Isakson Unveils Biennial Budget Idea for Congress on Bloggers' Conf. Call

Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson fielded questions yesterday in a bloggers’ conference call about a proposal that has the potential to substantially reshape the Appropriations process in Congress. Isakson’s idea is to move to two year biennial budget making as opposed to the annual process Congress currently uses. He’ll outline the process to the Heritage Foundation on Thursday.

Senator Isakson began the call yesterday by impressing on us the difficulty with which Congress currently passes annual budgets. Consider: there’ve been 18 omnibus bills over the past 29 years passed just in the nick of time (or in many cases late) with little or no debate. Given the amount of money Congress spends, it’s practically impossible to know what’s in the massive spending bill. There have also been 138 continuing resolutions over the past 29 years. 138 times Congress just couldn’t, for reasons political and practical, get the budget done in time.

Isakson’s solution is for the President to submit a budget every two years. Congress would then create a two year budget bill. The budget would be passed in odd years when Congress didn’t hold elections. That would allow them to get down to the business of governing as opposed to the business of getting electing. Further, Isakson hopes it would curb spending since members don’t have the pressures of appealing to needy constituents just as he or she is asking for those same constituents’ votes. As he said: “Wouldn’t you the day when politicians were spending when they weren’t running for office, and justifying expenditures when they were.

Senator Isakson believes an important outcome of such a process would be a return to the oversight role that Congress is expected to serve. Under the existing system, once budgets are approved there’s little Congress can do to modify them. By going to a biennial process, however, Congress would come into session the year after the budget has been approved with the specific goal of reviewing how those funds are being spent. A bad expenditure can be cancelled under such a process. Congress will be in a better position to shine a light on those expenditures and the hope is that members will be careful to avoid such repudiation by not making questionable expenditures in the process.

It’s an intriguing idea that seems to have a lot of merit. It will be interesting to see how the Heritage Foundation reacts. I asked a question about the Club for Growth, but Isakson said he hadn’t yet contacted them. I’ll be curious to see where they go with this. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: Here's Sentors Isakson and Jeff Sessions plugging the proposal at National Review:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmUzNGNkZTEwZTI1Nzg2ODkwYWFhOTg2Y2MxMjQ5ZWY=

Also, I'm advised that Rep. Whitfield has long been a proponent of this. This measure could get legs depending on Sen. McCain's reaction.