Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wisc.) introduced biennial budgeting bill H.R. 1869 in 2013 because he saw major problems in the appropriations ratification system intended to keep the U.S. government and its agencies funded and functional from year to year.
“Congress’ budget process is broken and out-of-date,” Ribble told The Ripon Society during a recent interview. “Year after year Congress fails to pass a budget and all of its spending bills on time—if at all! We owe the American people better job performance than this. Congress needs to get its work done. And these two reforms would go a long way toward getting our fiscal house in order and getting Congress to function better.”
Since 2001, Congress has only met its ratification deadlines with 8.3 percent of the 12 spending bills it is required to enact annually. More troublesome, the House has failed to ratify any budget at all in six of the last eight election years.
Ribble believes the two-year—as opposed to one-year—budget bills discourage government waste, enable more effective oversight of appropriations, provide funding stability for government programs and give government agencies more time to focus on their stated objectives.
Delays and failures in the budgeting process have real consequences, including short-term appropriations bills, government shutdowns and ineffective oversight of government spending.
Ribble’s home state of Wisconsin is one of 20 U.S. states that have switched from the yearly grind to a biennial appropriations process, and that state has decades of experience with the biennial system. Ribble likes what the process has done for his state and believes the nation will benefit from a similar system.
Co-sponsors of H.R. 1869, known formally as The Biennial Budgeting and Enhanced Oversight Act of 2014, include Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) and Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.). The bill was approved by the House Budgeting Committee on Feb. 11 in a 22-10 bipartisan decision.
The next step for the bill should be a vote on the House floor. A bipartisan group of U.S. Representatives, as well as politically diverse lobby organizations, are hoping that vote is a positive one.