Rifts harden over budget process reform

{mosads}Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and ranking member Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) urged the group not to “become distracted by proposals to reconfigure the appropriations process” including biennial appropriations or a line-item veto.

“In our view, many of these proposals would have unintended and counterproductive consequences…and may jeopardize support for whatever package of actual cuts that the Committee may recommend to Congress,” an Oct. 14 letter states.

All the House GOP appropriations cardinals joined Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) in a similar letter urging the supercommittee to include no budget process changes.

On Wednesday, Conrad told reporters that he is well aware that appropriators are loathe to give up their annual crack at federal spending. He noted that he has proposed a compromise option where Congress would take up a two-year budget in odd years, setting an overall spending level, but where appropriators could still enact two sets of spending bills to meet that budget.

Sessions meanwhile was struggling to get a vote on an amendment to an appropriations bill on the floor which would limit the ability of appropriators to claim reductions in spending by claiming credit for mandatory spending reductions outside a ten-year budget window.