The Importance of Considering Others

Because they survived the court ruling, GRH's process reforms—a mixture of proposals from an old House Rules Committee task force, chaired by Anthony Beilenson (D-Calif.) and proposals pushed by Senate Budget—turned out to be the most important parts of the act. Some provisions were less controversial; thus, credit programs were subjected to much greater annual control. GRH also codified the budget process developments of the 198Os: no Second Resolution, a binding First Resolution, and reconciliation on the First (now the only) Resolution. More significant was a series of new points of order that would make the budget resolution more binding, in terms of both detail and difficulty of breaking the bonds.

The resolution itself had to conform to the MDA. Amendments in the Senate that could increase the deficit were subject to a point of order. At the conference report stage, a point of order in the House on these grounds could be waived only by three-fifths of members present and voting. Until completion of a budget resolution, any legislation on spending revenues, debt, or credit would be out of order—save for appropriations after May 15 in the House.

GRH also changed the 302(b) process that had far-reaching implications for the balance of power among committees in Congress and for the budget process itself. It created a point of order against legislation by any committee that had not yet made its 302(b) allocation. Then, GRH made the 302(b)s binding by creating a point of order against bills, mainly appropriations, that exceeded the allocation made in a committee's 302(b) report. This meant that the Appropriations Committee could not exceed their allocation on early bills by claiming that it would make up the difference on later ones. The 1974 act had provided a point of order only against bills that would cause total spending limits to be exceeded; that is, there were controls only on the very last bills, namely, no real control. Unless the sponsor of such an increase came up with a cut elsewhere or a new tax, under GRH that legislator had to get a three-fifths majority to overcome a point of order. For years budget committees had lusted after a way to object to earlier bills so as to make the process meaningful. Now this "offset" provision was it.

The point of order for the 302(b)s would, however, work very differently in each chamber. That was another compromise, reflecting the much stronger position of the House Appropriations Committee. GRH codified the Fazio rule, under which House Appropriations had to meet its 302(b) targets only for discretionary spending. Supplemental appropriations for mandatory spending, such as payments to the states for medicaid, therefore would not be subject to a point of order and would not require compensating cuts elsewhere. From Appropriations' standpoint, that only made sense: If the budget resolution misjudged the economy and therefore underestimated "mandatory" expenses, why should other programs pay? Republicans objected that the appropriations' argument was, in the words of one House aide, "well and good, but if entitlements force you to hit the wall on appropriations then you will have to take action, whether a reconciliation, or a presto-chango on interest rates, or whatever." This thinking prevailed in the Senate. Even more important, the Senate allowed a 302(b) point of order for outlays. Both appropriations committees resisted controls on outlays, but, while the House committee succeeded, a budget leader in the Senate remarked "we just ran over" the Appropriations Committee.

The new rules, if followed, meant that the Senate Budget Committee, because it calculated the outlay savings for each budget authority cut, could use that power to push Appropriations to make cuts SBC would score as adequate. Unless SBC was willing to fudge on the outlays, it also meant that the classic compromise on budget resolutions, in which outlay estimates were kept low but budget authority estimates were raised, would no longer work. If they actually enforced the outlay figures, they would not be able to use all the budget authority supposedly allowed. Having had a very bad experience on outlay enforcement already in 1985, as Domenici and Chiles challenged bills on the Senate floor, Appropriations leaders resisted stoutly. The budget resolution could cheat them by underestimating both mandatory spending (through optimistic economic projections) and outlays; then Appropriations would have to pay up in the coin of budget authority for discretionary programs.

The Fazio rule, and sticking to BA, meant the House Appropriations Committee could not be cheated. Rather, the new rules might even strengthen Appropriations vis-à-vis the rest of the House. A veteran staffer explained:

The irony is that the new process changes will make the full committee 302s the debate on defense vs. domestic…. Our committee-generated 302(b)s are now the rule, and can't be changed on the floor. The intent was to stick it to the Appropriations Committee, but over the long haul it would make Appropriations stronger.

Our guys will use the 302(b) ceilings, load each up to about $85 from the brim, so that any amendment will be subject to a point of order. To add something they will have to cut something, and it will be very hard to have any amendments. We'll control the details.

Was control over details such a prize if the totals were so tight that any choices would only anger large parts of the House? If the final bill had to pass Senate controls on outlays, what good would it do for the House to ignore those same restrictions? Nobody knew.

We have saved the most important provision for last: the points of order in the Senate could be waived only by a three-fifths majority. Because these waivers would have to be bipartisan, they thus were unlikely. All these rules, therefore, probably would hold.

And if they did hold? The rules were meant to force both appropriations to fit a resolution and a resolution to fit deficit-reduction targets. But what if nobody wanted to live with the consequences? Well, then the cuts would occur. But the meat-ax approach in GRH implies that the cuts would be made very inefficiently, significantly more damaging than economical. No doubt. Therefore, a proponent replies, members

will be motivated to settle on a deficit-reduction package more variegated and hence more sensible than across-the-board cuts. Unfortunately, being sensible calls for the freedom to choose among the entire panoply of government programs. But because the act eliminates more than half (mostly entitlements and debt interest) from across-the-board cuts, only some 46 percent is available for sequestration. Why should the members who got the rest excluded turn around and cut them?

Rather than force a comprehensive settlement, GRH would force everybody to stall. No negotiation would make sense until the players could compare it to the actual extent of sequestration as determined by the size of the deficit estimated in mid-August. Worse yet, early agreement on any particular program or appropriations bill would not protect it from sequestration; the size of the across-the-board cut depends on not one account but everybody's accounts. Thus, the incentives all worked toward delay. Furthermore, the very same severity of GRH that was supposed to spur negotiation would raise doubts about its workability. If the consequences were all that catastrophic, then some way would be found around it. At some crossover point the cry of catastrophe becomes its own dirge; hence, there is even more reason to stall.

Late one night in December 1985, two loyal Senate aides were drafting final terms of the bill. They had been working nonstop since September. One of them recalled:

At 4 a.m. I looked at X and said, "This isn't going to work." X is very literal; he said, "I'll fix it." I said, "No, the whole freaking thing isn't going to work." I was like Saul on the road to Damascus. I realized suddenly it was going to congeal the whole legislative process. Domenici's notion was that Gramm-Rudman would compel a quick resolution and reconciliation. That it was the only hope to keep the budget process intact…. We got all the enforcement that I ever wanted. But I realized at that moment that we will never move a single appropriations bill.

Any action on appropriations meant confronting all those Senate points of order. Congress had constructed a doomsday machine, all right. But instead of forcing action due to the threat of horrible policy consequences, it made inaction the best strategy. The victim would be not the deficit but Congress itself.