National Perspective : GOVERNMENT : A Budget’s Winding Road

The Process: The fiscal 1996 budget resolution that is being debated on the House and Senate floors is only one of the first steps in the long, complicated process by which Congress annually sets tax and spending policy. Here is the process, boiled down to its most basic steps.

FEBRUARY

President submits his budget to Congress.

MAY

House Budget Committee formulates budget resolution.

Senate Budge Committee draws up budget resolution.

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Congress is currently working on a resolution, which it adopts without presidential signature. It is merely advisory, setting spending and revenue targets for the coming fiscal year. And it directs other congressional committees with jurisdiction over tax and spending policy to draft legislation that complies with the resolution.

JUNE-JULY

TAXES:

House Ways and Means Committee passes tax bill.

Senate Finance Committee passes tax bill.

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Full House amends and passes tax bill.

Full Senate amends and passes tax bill.

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Conference committee settles differences in the two bills.

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Full House adopts compromise plan.

Full Senate adopts compromise plan.

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ENTITLEMENTS

House Appropriations Committee sees that spending measures comply with resolution.

Senate Appropriations Committee sees that spending measures comply with resolution.

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(See taxes for these steps.)

Entitlements involves legislation to reduce programs, such as food stamps, that depend on how many people enroll. Committees control spending by rewriting eligibility laws.

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SPENDING

House authorizing committees work to comply with resolution.

Senate authorizing committees work to comply with resolution.

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(See taxes for these steps.)

Spending contains 13 annual appropriations bills, programs such as education, that can be controlled year by year by determining how much money they get.

Next Step

The other committees may balk, but usually they do not. All recent budget-cutting exercises, including the massive packages that Congress enacted with President Clinton in 1993 and President George Bush in 1990, have been accomplished this way.

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SEPTEMBER

Taxes and entitlement legislation is sometimes bundled into a gigantic “reconciliation” bill so-called because it reconciles entitlement and tax law with the budget resolution’s guidelines.

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President signs or vetoes the bills.

Sources: Times Washington Bureau