Conrad, Sessions vow to work together for two-year budgeting

Conrad made his strongest statements to date in favor of two-year budgets, saying he now believes the advantages “certainly” outweigh any disadvantages. He said Congress has to admit the annual budget process has failed. 

“You know I used to be in the camp of favoring an annual budget,” Conrad said. “But the hard reality is we aren’t doing annual budgets.”

The two committee leaders, who are often at odds, publicly said this year could finally provide the opportunity to fix the broken budget process which has only seen a federal budget agreed to twice in election years over the last 13 years. 

Conrad said two-year budgets would allow Congress in even, election years to focus on oversight functions.

A key hurdle to reform would be reaching a deal to limit the number and types of amendments that can be offered to the budget resolution. The current process, nicknamed “vote-o-rama” in the Senate, allows unlimited amendments and can yield to dozens of time-consuming budget amendments.

Conrad said “vote-o-rama” demeans the Senate and that the offering of nongermane amendments, such as on gun rights and Guantanamo Bay, bog down the process.

Sessions however said that the minority GOP is already frustrated with limitations on amendments and would not likely back strict limits on budget amendments.

There is “more resistance to tightening up the budget amendment process for that reason,” he said.

The deficit supercommittee, created by this summer’s debt deal, has the opportunity to put a budget plan before Congress for an up-or-down vote by the end of the year and supporters of biennial budgeting see that as a chance to make the change.