Rep. Ryan tries new budget tactic

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled 10 different bills on Wednesday that would change a budget process that has frustrated both parties and appears destined to end in another omnibus package this year.

Each bill is sponsored by a different member of Ryan’s committee, and the chairman said he hoped he could move the legislation next year even with President Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of the Senate.

{mosads}Some of the measures have the backing of Democrats, including a proposal Ryan is co-sponsoring with Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the budget panel.

The proposal would give the president a kind of line-item veto by setting up a process in which the president could propose canceling funding for specific programs. Those requests would then receive an up-or-down vote in Congress. 

Ryan said this bill has the clearest shot at success. 

Anther bill, offered by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), would change the way the Congressional Budget Office scores legislation so that it could consider dynamic scoring that would calculate the macro-economic effects of, for example, cutting or raising taxes. This would tend to give more deficit-cutting credit to tax cuts.

In a press conference on the proposals, Ryan made clear his frustration with this year’s spending debate, which has led to several near-shutdowns of the government and a downgrading of the U.S. credit rating. 

Ryan noted he had spent the first four months of the year writing a budget, and that he had hoped he would then negotiate with Democrats and the White House to fix the nation’s fiscal problems.

“That didn’t happen,” he said. 

Ryan’s budget ended up being used as a weapon by Democrats, who said Republicans were trying to cut Medicare benefits. 

“So we spent the second half of this year looking at why Congress is so dysfunctional,” Ryan said. “What is wrong with the congressional budget process that has given us this complete impasse, this complete paralysis?” he asked.

Ryan said the idea is to try to build coalitions with Democrats to get some of the reforms enacted. Introducing 10 different measures, he said, could give reform a better chance at success. 

Ryan twice before has proposed a comprehensive process reform bill, only to see it die. 

“One of the reason we broke these into 10 bills … if you put out one big comprehensive bill, it can collapse under its own weight because it is too big and people have too many problems with too many provisions,” he said. 

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) signaled some openness to Ryan’s ideas. 

“Some of these proposals have merit, particularly biennial budgeting which Sen. [Jeff] Sessions [(R-Ala.)] and I strongly support and urged the Joint Select Committee to include it in its recommendations,” Conrad said in a statement from his spokesman. 

“However, many others will need far greater scrutiny. The Senate Budget Committee held several budget process reform hearings this fall, and we will hold more in the coming year.” 

Price said that he will be working in the coming months to find Democrats to support his bill and that the package is not being introduced simply as a political message.

He said members have not yet discussed their strategies for winning enactment of their bills. One possible vehicle could be a 2013 budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered in the Senate.

Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said that doing 10 bills instead of one will allow committee members to more effectively seek out bipartisan support.

Lankford is especially hopeful for his bill, which is aimed at preventing the kind of government shutdown crises that have erupted repeatedly this year. The bill would specify that if Congress fails to enact spending bills, the government would continue to function with 1 percent less funding across the board.

Other bills touch on a wide variety of issues. 

Rep. Scott Garrett’s (R-N.J.) bill puts Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the Postal Service, on the budget.

Rep. John Campbell’s (R-Calif.) bill limits the growth of mandatory spending to that of inflation, while Rep. Reed Ribble’s (R-Wis.) bill put the U.S. on a two-year budget cycle. 

Rep. Rob Woodall’s (R-Ga.) bill changes the baseline that Congress uses so that it no longer assumes an automatic increase due to inflation, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s (R-Utah) bill requires that all federal programs expire unless reauthorized by Congress.