Report: Budget, Appropriations Reform Hits Roadblock

Eight months of work by a congressional panel aiming to reform the budget and appropriations process hit a political roadblock Tuesday, The Hill reported.

The Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations has until Friday to send its legislation to the Senate floor.

But the panel's co-chair, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., raised concerns Tuesday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., could not guarantee that political amendments will not be offered alongside the panel's bill, The Hill reported.

She said without an agreement, "our work is at serious risk of partisan sabotage in the Senate."

"For that reason, many of us are not prepared to vote to report the bill out of committee," she said, The Hill reported.

The committee agreed to reconvene Thursday in hopes it might yet pass its limited recommendations ahead of the legal deadline, The Hill reported.

"It would be very unfortunate given the work that this committee has done, to get to this stage of the game with the finish line right in front of us and not be able to run right through the tape," committee co-chair Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told The Hill.

The bipartisan, bicameral committee, formed as part of the budget caps agreement in February, has until Friday to report its legislation, which Congress is legally required to vote on.

A spokesman for McConnell said Tuesday the agreement Lowey wants is not possible.

"The law allows for amendments," spokesman Don Stewart told The Hill. "Neither Sen. [Charles] Schumer [D-N.Y.] nor Sen. McConnell have the ability to guarantee that none of the other 98 members will offer amendments."

But committee Republicans insisted there is no "secret plan" to hijack the legislation.

"There's a 60-vote requirement" for amendments, said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., another member of the special committee. "The rules of the Senate are the same today as the day we started."

The agreed-upon proposal would make some adjustments to a budget process widely seen as broken, The Hill reported; the committee agreed to consolidate the annual budget resolution into a biennial event.

The proposal also would require new annual reports on the nation's fiscal state, hearings with the Government Accountability Office, the inclusion of new tax expenditures in the budget resolution and a reorganization of the Senate budget committee's membership, The Hill reported.

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