reconciliation and the budget process

Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 20, No. 3,1992 (489-498)

Reconciliation and the Budget Process

Richard Doyle

John Gilmour, Reconcilable differences? Congress, the Budget Process, and theDeficit. Berkeley, CA: The University of Califomia Press, 1990.

Allen Schick, The Capacity to Budget. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press,1990.

Richard Fenno, The Emergence of a Senate Leader: Pete Domenici and theReagan Budget. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1991.

Doinis Ippolito, Uncertain Legacies: Federal Budget Policy from Rooseveltthrough Reagan. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1990.

Stanley Collender, The Guide to the Federal Budget, Fiscal 1992. Washington,DC: Urban Institute Press, 1991.

The best known reforms ofthe congressional budget process are the Gramm-Rudman-HoUings (GRH) bills, the fu^t passed in 1985, a second in 1987. But thedecade of the 1980s was bracketed by the passage of two massive reconciliation bills,budget legislation that relied upon the use of an earlier modification of the budgetprocess. First employed in 1980 to effect minor spending cuts at the beginning of thecongressional budget process, reconciliation gained notoriety the next year when it wascommandeered by the newly elected Reagan administration to implement its budgetpolicy mandate. The product of innovation and evolution rather than legislation,reconciliation was the first major reform of the contemporary budget process.

The Rise of Reconciliation

Reconciliation has beenapartofcongressional budgeting since theestablish-ment of a formal and comprehensive budget process in the Congressional Budget andImpoundment Control Act of 1974 (the Budget Act). It was converted in 1980 into alegislative method of foreing committees with jurisdiction over entitlement programsand revenues to cut spending or increase taxes as part of the congressional budgetprocess.

Tax rates and entitlement spending enjoy relative neglect within the budgetprocess. Unless congressional committees of jurisdiction act to change legislationgoveming these budget policies, the status quo prevails. Revenues and spending forentitlements grow with the economy and the population even if Congress never acts.Reconciliation is accordingly intended to enlist entitlement and tax policy in the effortto reduce the deficit.

Absent reconciliation, the focal point of congressional budgeting— whichhas become synonymous with deficit reduction—is on discretionary spending. Dis-cretionary or "controllable" programs (e.g., defense, energy, and education) are thesubjects of annual authorization and appropriations decisions. Support for discretion-ary spending must be generated and sustained all year, every year. The default position

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for these programs is zero funding.Grossly misnamed, reconciliation is perhaps the most captious of the

procedures that make up the congressional budget process. It became the proceduralbattering ram for the Reagan budget blitz in 1981 and has been a controversial part ofcongressional budgeting over the past 10 years. It played a key role in budgeting in1990 when, following a long and bitter season of summitry and conflict. Congress andthe Bush administration fmally agreed upon the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Actof 1990, billed as "the centerpiece of the largest deficit reduction package in history"(Statement on Signing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, 1990).

Reconciliation as Rationalization

In Reconcilable Differences? Congress, the Budget Process, andthe Deficit,John Gilmour argues that reconciliation "now constitutes the heart of the budgetprocess" (1990, p.76). His examination of reconciliation is about rationalization, inboth conventional senses of the term. It describes the evolution of the budget processfirom a system of disorder and conflicting member incentives, into an apparentlyrational scheme for ordering and enforcing the budget priorities of the majority inCongress. His account simultaneously minimizes the policy impact of reconciliationand the difficulties that attend its implementation.

Budget resolutions, which determine total spending and taxing for each fiscalyear, as well as the allocation of dollars to major programs, array pressures to spendagainst pressures to cut deficits. The attractiveness of this process lies in its inherentlogic: budget resolutions bring order, consistency, and coordination to what otherwisemustbeconsideredacomplexjumbleof events. Gilmour explains, "The process is bestunderstood as an effort to make the budget a matter of deliberate choice and design,rather than the fortuitous result of noncoordinated, independent committee actions"(pp.79-80).

Entitlement spending, the relatively uncontrollable portion of federal spend-ing, presented a formidable challenge as Congress experimented with its new budgetprocess in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Reconciliation," Gilmour notes, "wasinitiated to correct the greatest single fia w in the process, its exemption of entitlements"(p.86). The solution was to include within congressional budget resolutions instruc-tions to the committees with jurisdiction over revenues and entitlements—to controlthe "uncontrollable." These committees are mandated to make the necessary changesin statutory law to increase taxes or reduce entitlement spending by virtue of majoritysuppon for budget resolutions incorporating appropriate reconciliation instructions."Congressional majorities can adopt a comprehensive plan in a budget resolution anduse reconciliation to press their decisions on committees—thus making the commit-tees agents acting on instructions of the whole" (p.94).

In this manner congressional budgeting in the 1980s came to be dominatedby the budget priorities established by extra-committee entities—^parties, caucuses,and bipartisan coalitions—rather than the regular committee system. Entitlementspending and revenues were joined with discretionary spending in the formulation of

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budget policy. An inverse correlation resulted betweai the scope and significance ofbudget resolutions and the power of the budget committees to determine their contentsand insure their success. As the authority of those engaged in the budget resolutionexpanded, the power of the budget committees contracted.

The dramatic rise in the deficit (adduced in support of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) I and II) does not convince Gilmour that the budget process wasflawed. The paramount issue in budget reform, he notes, is coordination, not deficitreduction. Unprecedented peacetime deficits and radical legislation such as GRHdesigned to eliminate them completely in five years reflect the absence of "universalagreement on the goal of deficit reduction" (p.lSS). Gilmour might have quotedformerCBODirectorRudyPennerhere: "Theprocessisnottheproblem. Theproblemis the problem" (Wehr, 1986, p.3139). When that problem is solved—that is, whenstable majorities will support deficit reduction by including increased taxes andrestraint on entitlement programs in the budget resolution— reconciliation will be theprocedure of choice for translating this political consensus into budget policy. "All thatis needed now," Gilmour concludes, "is a Congress capable of using its budgetprocess" (p.244).

Reconcilable Differences elevates legislative means far above budgetaryends. It is all horse and no kingdom. Its technocratic perspective illuminates theostensible purpose of process reforms but minimizes the manner in which they havebeen put to use. The discontinuity between the rise of procedures conducive to cuttingpopular spending programs and increasing taxes, and the actual employment of thesenew tools, is more significant than he acknowledges.

Reconciliation and Revenues

The evidence Gilmour presents to support the notion that reconciliation hasbeen a critical aspect of congressional budgeting is not convincing. Althoughpublished in 1990, Reconcilable Differences displays only seven years of deficitreduction by reconciliation, ending in 1986. No distinction is made between deficitreduction accomplished by revenue increases and that resulting from entitlement cuts.

Gilmour is properly concemed to point out the difference between reducingthe deficit by restraining discretionary spending, where Congress has proven mostcapable in its search for savings, and reductions effected by cuts in entitlementprograms. But if, as in the Budget Act, tax increases are considered the political andprocedural equal of spending cuts, then revenue bills should be included in anassessment of reconciliation.

Although revenues are rather tenuously linked to the congressional budgetprocess, they have figured prominently in reconciliation bills in the 1980s. In fact, theonly reconciliation bill ever passed that did not include revenue increases was thelandmark Reagan legislation in 1981. Theothereightbillsraised$62.6billionin taxes,comprising 41% of the $152 billion in total deficit reduction achieved throughreconciliation (U.S. Senate, 1991).'

But just as there is more to reconciliation than entitlement cuts, there is more

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to tax policy than reconciliation. The larger problem of integrating taxes within thebudget is treated by Allen Schick in The Capacity to Budget (1990). Tax increases,Schick demonstrates, have not been effectively integrated into the budget process.Despite the attempt to institutionalize a link between taxing and spending in the BudgetAct, major revenue decisions have been made "independently of the budget process"(p.l34). With a political and legislative life of their own, taxes have resisted theconstraints of reconciliation.

Schick cites several reasons for this. There is first the idea that taxes shouldbe cut as a means of controlling govemment spending. With less to spend. Congressmay spend less. On this point Schick concludes that President Reagan valued lowertaxes over lower deficits. Stabilizing the total tax burden on the economy providesanother incentive to adjust taxes outside of the budget process. Congress historicallyadjusted tax brackets for this purpose, and in 1981 indexed them to provide taxpayerspermanent protection against inflation.

As Schick points out, taxing also serves as a form of spending, when specificexpenditures are written into the tax code. The large deficits of the 1980s, as isinevitable in a progressive tax system, increased competition for the redistributed taxbenefits. In both the 1970s and 1980s, tax code alterations worked to the benefit of thebetter off, and increased the tax base. But the general public, sensing increased politicsin tax decisions, became quite resistant to any tax increases as a means of deficitreduction.

Even in election years (1980,1982, and 1984), Congress used reconciliationto raise taxes in response to growing deficits. But these increases, Schick notes, weresmaller than the tax cut engineered by the Reagan administration in 1981 (p.l46). And,in general, "legislation loosely linked to the budget subtracted much more revenue thanwas added by the laws formally integrated with budget policy" (p. 135). (Schick'sanalysis preceded the tax increase in the 1990 reconciliation bill.)

It is Schick's view that as an instmment for cutting the budget, reconciliationhas been blunted. Congressional leaders and committees have been unwilling to yieldpower of this kind to the president and the budget committees. Reconciliation remainsan inherently vulnerable process which "depends on the willingness of key congres-sional participants to make it work... The reconciliation story of the 1980s is that ithas been transformed from a process that compelled committees to do things againsttheir will into a vehicle for advancing their own legislative objectives" (pp.114-115).

Reconciliation and Institutional Responsibility

The demands of congressional budgeting in the 1980s have been many,severe and unrelenting. Congress is transparent, Schick reminds us, and it is easy tosee when the mles are broken and the procedures altered from year to year (p.l61).Richard Fenno, in The Emergence of a Senate Leader: Pete Domenici and the ReaganBudget (1991), provides another lens through which to view the problem of using thebudget process to raise taxes and cut entitlement spending.

When Reagan became President in 1981 and the Republicans took control of

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the Senate, Pete Domenici assumed thechairmanship ofthe Senate Budget Committee.The Chairman, Fenno argues, "is now expected to be the prime senatorial preserver,protector, and defender of the budgetprocess" (p.44). Domenici was committed to thisinstitutional maintenance goal, and at the same time he worried about deficits "longbefore worrying about deficits became fashionable" (p.47). Fenno's chronologicaldepiction of Domenici's chairmanship reveals, in very specific terms, what Gilmourmeans about the migration of power from the budget committees to extra-committeeentities as the budget process became more ambitious in scope and more controversialin execution.

As a loyal Reagan lieutenant in 1980, Domenici and his Republican col-leagues in the Senate and House, with key support from southern conservative HouseDemoCTats, used reconciliation to strengthen the budget process. Packaging cuts inentitlements into a single reconciliation bill, shifting it to the front end of the budgetcalendar, and marshalling strong support for the measure in both chambers, theadministration and congressional Republicans succeeded in passing what were thenthe deepest and most comprehensive budget cuts in the history of Congress. InDomenici's view, "the budget process, as a tool of restraint, absent reconciliation, ispretty damn weak. With reconciliation it... will have a lot more teeth in it" (Tate, 1981,p. 1463).

Following this budget spectacular in July, it became a nearly impossiblebattle for Domenici to use reconciliation to constrain the deficit. "Before August,"Fenno notes, "all was triumph; after August, all was struggle—from blitzkrieg to trenchwarfare" (p.58). Entitlements proved to be a critical and recurring area of conflict.Domenici lost one bid to restrain entitlement spending in late 1981, immediately afterthe blitzkrieg. Congress was still using a second budget resolution in 1981, andDomenici urged the President to support entitlement cuts and increased taxes in thatresolution. Reagan, in what became a frustrating and debilitating pattem for theRepublican Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, agreed with a majority in theHouse in opposing the reconciliation element in this resolution. Domenici lost on a 10-12 vote within his own committee.

In 1982, Domenici developed a resolution which assumed that social securitywould make some contribution to deficit reduction. The resolution he steered throughthe Committee included a one-year freeze on all cost-of-living allowances and federalraisesand$18billionintaxincreasesforFY 1983(p.98). Ifthiswasbadpolitics,Fennoobserves, Domenici considered it sound policy. His pleas in favor of reconciliation"were arguments that only a Budget Committee could love" (p.lO8).

Domenici's reconciliation package was distinctly unloved by a majority ofboth Democrats and Republicans in the House, and by Senate Democrats and moderateRepublicans. This opposition, in conjunction with indifferent backing from thePresident, was sufficient to eviscerate the Domenici plan. To assemble a resolution thatwould attract a majority on the floor, the Domenici plan for FY 1983 went fromprojecting a S6 billion surplus to a $65 billion deficit (p.l 10).

The triumph of politics over process was evident again in 1983, when the FY1984 budget resolution incorporating tax increases was twice reported out of commit-tee and twice defeated on the Senate floor. Chairman Domenici finally supported an

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alternative bipartisan plan in a dramatic attempt to sustain the process. This altemativeresolution included reconciliation instructions requiring the Senate Finance Commit-tee to raise fewer taxes. But the message that accompanied these instructions was,according to the Chainnan of that committee, "a dead cat" (p. 145).

However, this procedural victory proved hollow. The Senate voted againstthe Chair's reconciliation bill. As Fenno concluded, in agreeing with the views of bothGilmour and Schick: "Only strong, stable, and persistent majorities can implementreconciliation instructions" (p. 146).

The Problem as the Problem

An altemative approach to evaluating reconciliation is to come in through thebroad back door of budget policy, that is, to measure results over time. That is theapproach in Dennis Ippolito's Uncertain Legacies: Federal Budget Policy fromRoosevelt to Reagan (1990). His views on reconciliation are derived from his analysisof the budget policies that reconciliation is intended to affect

Like Schick, Ippolito draws attention to the fact that the budget process hasbecome primarily political. Congress has created for itself a political and legislativeframeworic within which it treats all of the same macro budget policies that wereformerly the prerogative of the executive. Where Gilmour sees rationalization,Ippolito sees politics. Controversies over spending and taxing are now intense andprotracted. Budget conflicts catalyzed by deficits and divided govemment areinstitutionalized by the separation of powers.

Ippolito notes that entitlement spending has largely displaced discretionaryprograms within the federal budget: "During the early 1970s, social welfare expendi-tures displaced defense as the largest component of thebudgeL Since then, the portionofthe budget devoted to defense and to nondefense discretionary spending ('all other')has been steadily shrinking" (p. 10). Growth in discretionary spending has been keptbelow overall spending and growth in the economy. "Where budget control has failed,by contrast, has been in a relatively small number of very popular and very costly[entitlement] programs" (p.l4).

Ippohto attributes the failure to constrain entitlements, chiefly Social Secu-rity and Medicare, to a flawed budget process, a shortage of political courage, and thepolitical capture of budget policy. As budget reform, the Budget Act failed to accountfor the configuration of spending that developed in the 1970s. Budgetary incremen-talism, by which Congress had previously allocated spending and adjusted revenues,has been abandoned, as has general agreement on budget policy goals. These have beenreplaced by conflict, each year involving more and more members of Congress.

One result of this extensive involvement is significant fiuctuations in growthrates within the major categories of spending. Defense spending, essentially alldiscretionary, has experienced boom and bust cycles within a pattem of generaldecline. Nondefense discretionary spending has genially diminished as well.Entitlements have been largely immune to congressional spending control effortsGppolito p.2O).

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Ippolito draws special attention to the relative infiuence of Congress and theexecutive on defense spending. Defense budgets are apposite because what reconcili-ation fails to achieve in deficit reduction must be accomplished by cutting discretionaryaccounts. Despite instability in post-WWII defense spending, defense remains thelargest single component of discretionary spending. Whether defense budgets grewor declined, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) prescription required that half ofany required sequestCT cuts be taken in defense. Politics, Ippolito finds, is particularlyevident in budgeting for defense.

Vietnam and the Great Society had a scissoring effect on defense. The wargave rise to a permanent anti-defense constituency in Congress devoted to cutting orconstrainingdefense budgets. TheentitlementprogramsspawnedbytheGreat Societybegan to compress discretionary spending. During his first term. President Reaganincreased defense significantly, but the buildup could not be sustained. Despite hissuccess in forcing nondefense budget cuts through Congress employing reconciliationin 1981, Reagan was repeatedly forced by the congressional politics of the budgetprocess to confront soaring deficits and legislative reluctance to cut entitlements.

Ippolito prefers a return to the pre-Viemam approach, a system incorporating"a workable division of responsibilities" (p. 148). Under the current system of massiveparticipation there is too much budgeting and txx) little accountability. He is convincedthat presidents are uniquely suited to develop plans and budgets for defense, and thatCongress should play a reactive and marginal budget role in this policy arena.

Putting the Budget Process Off Budget

Budget policy was substantially impacted by the budget agreement in 1990,and the resolution of these issues proved all-consuming. But the budget process hasbeen significantly changed as well. The Budget Enforeement Act of 1990 (BEA)became law as an amendment to the reconciliation bill passed that same year. Congressand the Bush administration completed the FY 1992 budget within its complex andrestrictive parameters. Stanley CoUender's The Guide to the Federal Budget, Fiscal1992 provides a valuable analysis of the changes anticipated under the new rules(1991).

The BEA has shifted the goal of congressional budgeting from deficitreduction to spending control in an attempt to insure that net revenues will bemaintained. The task of deficit reduction, which fueled attempts to limit entitlementspending and to raise taxes through reconciliation, will be simplified, if not temporarilydisplaced, by a generous expansion of the deficit targets set by GRH.

Discretionary spending is to be controlled by a series of caps on defense,nondefense and intemational spending. All deficitreduction achieved by discretionaryspending for the first three years of the agreement comes from the defense budgetUnder the caps, discretionary spending will not keep pace with inflation. As a result,spending in this category will continue to drop as a share of GNP, from about 9.6% inFY 1991 to 7.5% in FY 1996 (U.S. Congress, p.54).

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Revenues and entitlement spending are govemed by a pay-as-you-go(PAYGO) system. This assumes that all existing entitlement and tax legislation willcontinue indefinitely, growing with theeconomy and the population. Spending controlin this portion of budget policy consists of protdbiting new legislation (e.g., extendedunemployment benefits) which would increase the deficit by subtracting revenues oradding new entitlement benefits.

If this prophylactic approach to spending control fails, the BEA's new andmore differentiated sequestCTS take effecL In a notable departure from GRH I and II,a"mini-sequester" will target entitlements that violate the deficit neutrality rule. Whilemostof the GRH entitlementexemptions are retained. Medicare will be subject to moresevere cuts should a PAYGO sequestra- be necessary.

More importantly, the BE A changes the nature of the deficit problem thatCongress faces each year, regardless of the size ofthe deficit target. Congress typicallyconfronted fixed deficit targets and deficit estimates that grew during the same periodthat the budget was being assembled. The problem of an increasing gap between thedeficit target and the deficit estimate occurs if either the economy or the Congressfalters. BEA alleviates this problem by allowing for periodic adjustments to the newdeficit targets. These technical and economic adjustments allow increases in theprojection of the deficit if they are the result of actions ostensibly beyond the controlof govemment. "This means that even if the real projected deficit rises because of aworsening economic picture, that fact will be iiTelevant as far as the budget process isconcemed" (Collender p.22).

S ubstituting spending control and revenue maintenance for deficit reductionby formula, the BEA postpones the total elimination of the deficit. If the newdisciplinary procedures hold and the economy performs well, the deficit will bereduced, or at leastcontroUed. Buta significantly reduced deficit, Collender notes, willbe "mostly an accident" (p. 19).

The disciplinary provisions of the BEA are premonitory for entitlementprograms and revenues and punishing for discretionary spending, particularly defense.The logic of these provisions is, of course, consistent with the budget priorities of the1980s. Under Reagan and Bush the BEA would continue to reduce discretionaryspending, hold the line on taxes, and allow entitlement expenditures to expand.

The combined effect of the BEA and the 1990 reconciliation bill to which itwas appended is to inhibit efforts to use reconciliation to reduce the deficit. The firstargument against cutting or limiting entitlements for FY 1992 is that it cannot be doneso soon after the FY 1991 cuts, regardless ofthe superficial nature of those reductions.Even the modestproposals in the President's FY 1992 budget to cut certain entitlementpayments to citizens with annual incomes at or above $125,000 went nowhere inCongress.

The deficit neutrality requirement of the BEA, applicable to entitlements andrevenues but not discretionary spending, operates to the same effect While newentitlement and revenue programs must be paid for, existing programs remain on thesafe side of the BEA's asymmetrical spending reduction scheme. Insofar as spendingrestraint contributes to deficit reduction, the BEA incorporates a double standard bycapping discretionary spending below inflation while permitting unlimited growth in

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capping discretionary spending below inflation while permitting unlimited growth inentitlement programs already on the congressional books. When energy can bemustered in Congress to revisit the deficit, it is directed at manipulating the discretion-ary spending caps rather than at achieving another round of reconciliation.

In recent testimony before the House Budget Committee's Task Force onBudget Process, Reconciliation, and Enforcement, Allen Schick lamented this appar-ent bias in the BEA and its impact on the prospects for reconciliation: "It's ironic thatin the name of deficit control the single most potent tool available to Congress has beenmothballed at the very time that the deficit is soaring to record levels. Congress shouldsee reconciliation as a relentless process of combatting the relentless spiral in mandatedexpenditures" (1991, p.6). The politics of budget refonn has produced the reverse ofwhatbudgetpolicy intended—thatis, active member participation and sound delibera-tion. Gilmour traces the devolution of power to shape budget resolutions as they tookon increased significance by incorporating entitlements and taxes. The BudgetCommittees were forced to share or compete for power with an expanding and shiftingset of interests in Congress and the executive. In this environment, deficit reductionhas competed with other budget policy priorities. As budget policy became moreintractable, it became more participatory and subject to SCTutiny.

Budget reform reflects the opposite, rubber stamping of ideas that membersof Congress had too little time to consider. While the 1974 Budget Act came aftermonths of study and then hearings, GRH I and II were hastily passed (White &Wildavsky, p. 460). The BEA in 1991 also was eclipsed by the politics of spendingand taxing, reaching the floor of both houses of Congress at the eleventh hour. It wasnegotiated by a subset of the congressional and OMB representatives to the budgetsummit, attached to another "must-pass" bill (reconciliation), and debated under themost constrained circumstances.

In the House, a separate vote was never taken, nor were copies of it availableto House members who were not a party to its negotiation. One House memberobjected to voting on a measure of this consequence at 5:50 A.M. with so littieinformation: "It is in a large, oversized corrugated box. I have been given theopportunity to walk around it, gaze upon it from several angles, certainly not to readits well over 1,500 pages" (Cox, p. H13076).

The Senate had two chances to debate the BEA, and took a (voice) vote onit. With no time remaining for debate on the reconciliation bill, the leader initiallyrequested unanimous consent to allow an additional hour for discussion of the BEAamendment, with 30 minutes for amendments. Although the debate could not beconfined within these limits, the entire debate was concluded within three hours. Timeto consider this complex and comprehensive measure was of the essence because, asin the House, so few members were familiar with its contents.

As a result, consideration of the bill was minimal in the Senate as well,especially in comparison to what those who advocated reforms had intended. Budgetreform has become spasmodic, driven by concem over deficits, and the object ofdiminishing congressional scrutiny.

Before casting his vote in favor of it. Senator Johnston observed that the BE Apromised "budget peace" and "budget certainty" (p. S15835). The lesson of reconcili-

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ation and budget reform taught by the last decade suggests that he will almost certainlybe proven wrong.

Richard Doyle, Ph. D., is Associate Professor of Public Budgeting at theNaval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Califomia. He is a former Senior Analyst forDefense for the U. S. Senate Committee on the Budget.

Notes

'Dollar values are calculated in first year savings only.'For other explanations of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 and preliminary judgements

as to its implications for budget policy and process, see the following: H.R. Conference Rep. No. 101-964, 101st Congress, 2d session, pp. 1,151-1,218 (1990) (Sutement of Managers Provisions on theBudget Enforcement Act); U.S. Congress, Congressional Research Service (1990), "Budget EnforcementAct of 1990: Legislative history;" U.S. Congress, Congressional Research Service, (1990), "BudgetEnforcement Act of 1990: Brief summary;" U.S. Senate, Committee on the Budget (1991), BudgetProcess Law Annotated, Senate print 102-22, U.S. Govemment printing office; U.S. Craigress,Congressional Budget Office (1991), The Economic andBudget Outlook: AnUpdate, U.S. GovemmentPrinting Office; U.S. Senate, Committee on the Budget (1991), FY 1992 Concurrent Resolution on theBudget, Senate Report 102-40; and Doyle, R. and McCaffery, J., (1991) "The Budget Enforcement Actof 1990: The Path to No Fault Budgeting," Public Budgeting and Finance, 11, pp. 25-40.

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Cox, C. (1990, October 16). Congressional Record, H13076.Fenno, R. (1991). The emergence of a Senate leader: Pete Domenici and the Reagan budget.

Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Gilmour, J. (1990). Reconcilable differences? Congress, the budgetprocess, anddeficit. Berkeley, CA:

University of Califomia Press.Ippolito, D. (1990). Uncertain Legacies: Federal budget policy from Roosevelt through Reagan.

Chariottesvilie, VA: University Press of Virginia.Johnston, J. B. (1990, October 18). Congressional Record, S.15835-15836.Schick, A. (1990). The capacity to budget. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.Schick, A. (1991, October 10). Testimony before the Task Force on Budget Process, Reconciliation, and

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of Presidential Documents, p. 176466.Tate, D. (1981). Reconciliation's long-term consequences in question as Reagan signs massive bill.

Congressional Quarterly, 39, 1463-66.U.S. Congress, Congressional Budget Office. (1991). The economic and budget outlook: An update.

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