§10. Budget Resolutions

Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2002

H. Con. Res. 83 (107th Congress)
(Adopted by Congress – Final)

H. Rept. 107-60, Conference Report on H. Con. Res. 83 (107th Congress)

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Legislative History

The budget resolution debate largely revolved around the election proposals of President George W. Bush, who took office after a protracted election controversy, which had the effect of delaying the transition into the new administration. Though no formal dates were effected, a new President taking office always has difficulties with the first budget, if for no other reason than preparing the necessary material for the document required under 2 U.S.C. 1105, the section of law under which a President must annually submit a budget to Congress.

The budget debate revolved around the continuing surplus and the proposed tax reductions that President Bush had recommended and was outlined in his fiscal year 2002 budget. The House Budget Committee marked up and reported a concurrent resolution on the budget, H. Con. Res. 83 (107th Congress), and forwarded it to the Senate. Instead of marking up its own budget resolution, the Senate Budget Committee skipped that step and took up the House-passed resolution and inserted a budget based on the President’s policies (called the “Bush-Domenici Budget” by the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Pete Domenici.

This budget resolution included reconciliation instructions to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee to reduce revenue by $1.25 trillion over ten years. This resulted in the enactment of the Economic Growth and Taxpayer Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (Pub. L. 107-16). The bill reduced tax rates, though its policies were set to expire toward the end of the ten-year period since it was subject to the Byrd Rule, under which a reconciliation bill may not increase the deficit in years beyond the budget window. Tax reductions have this effect, unless they are “sunset”. Making these tax cuts partially permanent was done through the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (Pub. L. 112-240) , just over a decade later.

Legislative Activity

House

Date	Actions Overview
03/23/2001	The House Committee on The Budget reported an original measure, H. Rept. 107-26, by Mr. Nussle.
03/26/2001	Introduced in House
03/28/2001	Passed/agreed to in House: On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 222 – 205 (Roll no. 70).
04/02/2001	Senate Committee on the Budget discharged. pursuant to Public Law 93-344.
04/06/2001	Passed/agreed to in Senate: Resolution agreed to in Senate with an amendment by Yea-Nay Vote. 65 – 35. Record Vote Number: 86.
04/25/2001	Conference committee actions: Conference held.
05/03/2001	Conference report filed: Conference report H. Rept. 107-55 filed.(text of conference report: CR H1864-1911)
05/08/2001	Conference report filed: Conference report H. Rept. 107-60 filed.(text of conference report: CR H1957-2004)
05/09/2001	Conference report agreed to in House: On agreeing to the conference report Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 221 – 207 (Roll no. 104).(consideration: CR H2049)
05/10/2001	Conference report agreed to in Senate: Senate agreed to conference report by Yea-Nay Vote. 53 – 47. Record Vote Number: 98.

Senate

Major Documents

House

• H. Rept. 107-55, Conference Report on H. Con. Res. 83 (107th Congress) This was mistakenly filed with omitted pages and had to be refiled as H. Rept. 105-60.
• House – Committee Report H. Rept. 107-26, for H. Con. Res. 83 (107th Congress)
• House – H. Con. Res. 83 (107th Congress), as Reported by the House Budget Committee
• House – Rule on Conference Report, H.Res.136 (107th Congress)
• House – Rule on House Budget H. Res. 100 (107th Congress)
• House – Rules Report on Conference, H. Rept. 107-61 (107th Congress)
• House – Rules Report on Rule H. Rept. 107-30 on H. Res. 100 (107th Congress)

Senate

Previous: FY2001 – H. Con. Res. 290 (106th Congress)

Next: FY2003 – None (107th Congress)

 [BCD § 010.27]

Statement by Senator Domenici from the Congressional Record

[S3261]

Senator Domenici: I will say tonight that it is very important to most Republicans–I think I speak for almost every Republican Senator; I am not overstating  the case, almost every Republican Senator–that this President, George W. Bush, deserves to have his budget and his tax plan considered by the Senate. That is what the arguments have been about thus far. Should he have a chance? What I am saying tonight is, yes, he should and, yes, I am grateful now that, after a lot of back and forth, the other side of the aisle has agreed that we can call up the budget that we heretofore talked about, the Bush-Domenici budget.

Everyone should know that budget has a couple of things different than the one I proposed maybe a week ago. Those things are that the reconciliation instruction on the taxes is not in the budget resolution. The reason for that is simple and does not require much finger pointing or much time.

Essentially, it was determined, parliamentary-wise, that would not work, putting the reconciliation instruction on a budget resolution at this time. We intend to offer it at a later time in an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate, and I am certain that while some might want to delay that–I haven’t heard that from my friend, Senator Kent Conrad–we will have that vote. We are hopeful by then we will have 51 votes for that, and we will be back where we were originally. It will be in our budget resolution as it goes on its way to the House for conference.

Having said that, in the few minutes I have, I will say that the President of the United States and a very brand new staff, who did not have very much time, put together a rather good budget, which the Senator from New Mexico has looked at–at least the profile of it, the plan for it. I have looked at that, and I have modeled the budget after that.

Let me tick off what our new President wanted us to do that we are going to try to do in the next few days: One, save Social Security; two, save Medicare; three, provide, in the opinion of the President, adequate defense until and unless he gets his top-down review; and to provide new and increased spending for education. And he did that, and we proposed that within the discretionary funding in this budget resolution.

In addition, the President of the United States proposed that we should have a major tax bill. Frankly, in due course, the tax-writing committee will work their will. This is not a Senator putting something off; it is just stating the facts and the law. In a budget resolution, you just use dollar numbers. So you tell the Finance Committee where they have latitude to cut taxes. They will determine how, what kind, and we will be saying in this budget resolution you have permission to do up to $1.6 trillion over a decade.

Before we are finished–since some of my friends have gone on television and talked about how big this $1.6 trillion is–I want to use a whole series of numbers as to what that looks like over 10 years to eventually convince people that it is not a very big number–whether you consider the total gross domestic product, total tax take–whatever you want to look at–it is a pretty modest number. The President would like us to consider that. We want to give him the right to consider that in this budget resolution.

My last comments have to do with what else is in this budget of a high priority and a big substance; that is, we reduce the national debt by $2 trillion over the decade. We think that is the right amount. We think that is a fair amount. We also think, considering the size of the surpluses, that probably is what we ought to do. We prescribe that in this budget resolution.