Procedure for Enacting Budget Plan

The procedure that Congress must follow to enact the new bipartisan budget agreement into law is a complex and uncertain one. Here is how it is supposed to work:

- The two houses must agree on a fiscal 1991 congressional budget resolution, which formally adopts the basic outlines of the bipartisan accord and orders the tax-writing and appropriations committees to enact enabling legislation.

This first vote sets specific dollar targets for basic spending categories--such as defense and Social Security--and for the total tax revenues that the government needs to reach its deficit goals. It instructs the congressional committees to pass appropriations bills and tax measures to implement them. (This initial balloting took place Thursday night in the House and is expected to take place in the Senate today.)

Without such an agreement by midnight tonight, the White House has threatened to bring the federal government to a halt by refusing to sign legislation allowing agencies to spend money.

The House and Senate appropriations committees then separately revise their own spending targets to conform with the budget agreement, and report out 13 separate appropriations bills that reflect the bipartisan accord. The tax-writing panels do the same for the revenue side of the budget. Under the plan, the panels are scheduled to send their bills, with or without a recommendation, to the House and Senate floors by Oct. 12. The two houses then vote on the legislation.

Finally, by Oct. 19, the two houses vote on the recommendations of House-Senate conference committees, both on the so-called “reconciliation” report that contains all tax and benefit changes and on the 13 separate appropriations bills needed to finance government operations. President Bush then must sign the bills into law.

- The two houses must renew a stopgap spending measure called a continuing resolution that essentially enables the government to continue spending--at last year’s levels--until the budget process is completed. Last Sunday, after the budget accord was announced, the lawmakers approved a one-week CR, as it often is called, but that expires today and Congress must vote a new one covering the two weeks until Oct. 19. Besides promising to veto the continuing resolution if Congress does not approve the budget resolution today, Bush also has vowed to allow more than $100 billion in spending cuts mandated by the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law to go into effect if lawmakers fail to act by Oct. 19.

- The new budget accord contains some special procedures--chief among them a requirement that a majority of lawmakers in each party support the new pact in each house before the agreement becomes effective. The plan also sets new targets for the Gramm-Rudman law and establishes separate spending caps for defense, foreign aid and domestic programs. It also requires that the government operate on a pay-as-you-go basis--meaning that lawmakers who want to increase spending for any item must win approval of offsetting reductions somewhere else.