House Panel Urges Changes, Streamlining

A special House panel recommended extensive changes Monday in the way Congress conducts its business, including adoption of a two-year budget cycle, closer review of entitlement spending and other steps designed to cut costs and increase accountability.

The panel’s recommendations, approved 8 to 4, parallel separate recommendations made Nov. 4 by Senate members of the Joint Committee on Organization of Congress. The Senate plan also calls for a two-year budgeting process and proposes similar streamlining moves. Both sets of recommendations are expected to be taken up by Congress early next year.

While some Republicans on the House panel argued that the proposed changes do not go far enough, Chairman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) said that they would bring the most sweeping overhaul of House operations in half a century. “I am confident that in the weeks and months ahead we will make a strong package even stronger,” he said in a statement.

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The two-year budget cycle advocated by the reform panel would represent a fundamental change in the federal budget process. Under current procedures, Congress must review budget and spending targets for all federal agencies and programs every year. Sponsors of the proposed change said that it would give lawmakers more time to oversee government operations by freeing them of the need to process annual appropriations bills.

Another proposal endorsed by the House panel would require Congress to set spending targets for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which are exempt from the normal congressional appropriations process. The change would require a vote by the House if spending on these automatic benefit programs exceeded the target and the President offered a proposal to deal with the overspending.

The package of reforms calls for making Congress subject to the same laws that apply to the public at large and creating a new office to make sure those laws are enforced on Capitol Hill. Congress currently is exempt from such laws as the federal minimum wage and hour law, occupational safety and health regulations and equal employment statutes.

The panel called for a 12% reduction in House staff, new rules to limit the number of committee assignments for members and a reduction in the number of subcommittees. It proposed a new system for enforcing House ethics rules that would allow outsiders to play a key role in judging complaints against lawmakers.

The panel recommended highlighting special interest provisions in committee reports and publicizing lawmakers’ attendance and voting records in committee.

Responding to Republican complaints, the panel recommended that the House minority party be guaranteed the right to offer its own alternative to all legislation considered by the entire House.

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California Rep. David Dreier (R-LaVerne), a panel member who voted in favor of the report, said that the outcome of the yearlong deliberations was “somewhat disappointing.” Dreier said that the panel failed to deal with proposals to ban proxy voting in committees and to undertake a fundamental realignment of committee jurisdiction.

“We can do better than this and I hope we can on the floor of the House,” Dreier said in a statement. “This package is the lowest-common-denominator reform package. . . . It is not a bipartisan package. It is the Democrats’ package.”

Hamilton launched the congressional reform effort in July, 1991, by introducing a resolution to create the joint committee, which conducted hearings and received testimony from more than 200 persons on how to change Congress.

“We have completed the first stage of a multistage process,” he said. The recommendations will be sent to House committees for consideration and possible amendment before the package is voted upon by the House next year.