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Should the Congress prepare a budget every two years rather than every year, as it does now? This proposed reform, known as biennial budgeting, has received increased attention in recent years. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepared this paper in response to numerous inquiries about the subject.

The paper is divided into four chapters. The first provides background information on the annual character of the current process and a history of proposals to convert to multiyear budgeting. The second chapter describes three bills that reflect different approaches to biennial budgeting. The experiences of the states and of other countries with biennial budgeting are related in the third chapter. The concluding chapter analyzes the potential effects of converting from annual to biennial budgeting.

The paper was prepared by Roy T. Meyers of the Budget Process Unit under the supervision of James L. Blum and Marvin Phaup. The author thanks Joel Aberbach of the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Michigan for permitting advance publication of data from a forthcoming book on Congressional oversight, and Matthew Salomon of CBO for simulating uncertainties in the gross national product forecast. Useful suggestions were provided by Wayne Glass, Glen Goodnow, Robert Hartman, David Horowitz, Jack Mayer, Nell Payne, Jim Saturno, Robin Seiler, Gerry Siegel, Paul Van de Water, and Barbara Yondorf. Sherry Snyder edited the manuscript, and Nancy H. Brooks prepared the manuscript for publication.
 
 

Biennial budgeting is the practice of preparing and adopting budgets for two-year periods. Nine bills to convert to biennial budgeting have been introduced in the 100th Congress.

The central rationale for biennial budgeting is that it would improve the efficiency of the Congressional budget process. Frustration with the current process is high: it is time-consuming, target dates are often missed, and repetitive decisions are made. The solution to these problems, according to proponents of biennial budgeting, is to prepare one budget instead of two over a two-year period. Having fewer budgets could reduce the delay and repetition that plague the current budget process, and could free time for other activities.

Two biennial budgeting approaches have been proposed--the "stretch" and "split-sessions" models. The stretch model would have the Congress prepare a budget for the biennium (the two-year fiscal period) over the two years of a Congress. The split-sessions model would have the Congress prepare a biennial budget during one year and conduct nonbudgetary activities in the other. The bills that take this approach begin the biennium on October 1 of either the odd year (the first year of a Congress) or the even year (the second year of a Congress). The stretch model would begin the biennium on October 1 of the even year.

Few statements can be made with much certainty about the effects of a conversion to biennial budgeting, except that this would be a radical change from the current process. Despite the permanence of much government spending, the process of formulating, enacting, and executing budgets is characteristically annual.

One way that biennial budgeting would depart significantly from current practices would be its restriction of certain activities to specified periods. Under the split-sessions model, the Congress is expected to forgo revising the budget during the nonbudgetary year. The pressure to revise the budget would often be strong, however, and no rules of the Congress exist that would prevent it from doing so. With split sessions, moreover, the specialized roles of the budget, appropriations, and oversight committees might leave these committees with significant periods of inactivity.

The stretch model assumes that having a longer period for making budgetary decisions will make missing target dates less likely. The accuracy of this assumption is questionable. Delay is probably inherent to budgeting because of the important decisions that are made in this comprehensive process. In addition, differences over budgetary goals between the Congress and the President, and between the House and the Senate, have been important causes of missed target dates. Biennial budgeting is likely to make it even more difficult to reach compromises over major policy differences, because the stakes will be higher with a two-year budget than with a one-year budget.

Expanding the horizon of the budget by a year will undoubtedly increase errors in budget projections, but the extent of this increase is uncertain. Deficit projection errors caused by economic forecast errors would likely be slightly larger for a biennial than for an annual budget. Deficit projection errors from inaccuracies in technical assumptions, while impossible to predict reliably, could be smaller for a biennial than for an annual budget.

Given that the Congress copes with a substantial amount of uncertainty now, the increase attributable to biennial budgeting might be bearable. In addition, the Congress could compensate for increased uncertainty by changing some of its current goals and procedures. It could accept the unpredictability of the economy, refraining from attempts to "fine-tune" spending and taxing in order to hit specific deficit or economic growth targets. When funding individual programs, it could adopt procedures that would reduce the demand for supplemental appropriations and rescissions.

The experiences of other governments suggest, however, that added uncertainty may at times be quite costly. Most states are subject to effective limits on spending and borrowing, and complying with these limits has become more difficult with the growing uncertainty of revenue streams. This problem is one reason why the states have moved away from biennial budgeting--44 states used biennial budgeting in 1940, but only 19 do now. Many of the remaining biennial states have made major budget revisions in the off-years because of impending deficits. Biennial budgeting is infrequently used in other countries. No developed democracies currently practice biennial budgeting, and developing countries are encouraged to budget annually by multinational creditors.

Finally, biennial budgeting could limit cooperation between the executive and legislative branches by reducing their frequency of interaction. Cooperation might not decrease significantly were the Congress to use fully the time allocated for oversight activities. This would be consistent with the increasing use of oversight in recent years. Using oversight in place of appropriations might also improve the ability of the Congress to understand problems and monitor the Executive Branch.

This course would reduce the amount of influence that the Congress could exercise annually, however. The "must-pass" character of appropriations requires the Executive Branch to negotiate in good faith and to conform to previously enacted law. Therefore, forgoing annual appropriations would mean that the Congress would periodically do without its most coercive tool. In the absence of annual appropriation controls, the Congress might respond by writing legislation more restrictively for agencies that it did not trust. By eliminating agencies' flexibility, these "micromanagement" provisions could force them to act inefficiently. Yet, since it would often be difficult for the Congress to anticipate future conditions, agencies would probably be left with greater discretion than they currently enjoy.

In sum, this analysis suggests that biennial budgeting might not live up to expectations unless the Congress substantially changes its goals and behavior. It would have to accept increased uncertainty about budget outcomes, a reduced ability to be responsive to immediate concerns, and less influence from use of the appropriation process. If these changes were accepted, the Congress could reduce the number of repetitive votes on budget issues, and spend more time on policy planning and oversight. Biennial budgeting could also allow agencies and grantees to spend money more efficiently. But it would not eliminate the delays that come from negotiating important budget decisions.

If the Congress does not wish to change as radically as biennial budgeting would require, it could implement biennial budgeting selectively--for technically predictable and politically stable programs, for example. Although some flexibility might be lost by these actions, the Congress could compensate by subjecting currently mandatory programs to more frequent reviews.

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