A rare event occurred in Washington on Thursday, June 5: Congress approved a budget resolution during an election year, a feat not seen since 2000. This fact and a human needs-oriented approach to spending signal that Congress is addressing national priorities while attempting to more responsibly manage the country's finances. However, Congress's eliding of pay-as-you-go rules and unrealistic assumptions about war spending and Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) relief have marred an otherwise responsible budget resolution.

Congress continues to wrestle with a number of high-profile budget and financial bills that will have broad impact on citizens throughout the United States and around the world, including legislation on war funding, economic stimulus, housing, and the last budget of the Bush presidency. Despite significant congressional rhetoric and media coverage of these efforts, Congress has made little real progress on reaching compromise or instituting policies.

In a recently released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined ten years of supplemental spending (FY 1997-FY 2006) and found not only a five-fold increase in the amount of expenditures funded through the supplemental process, but also that procedures that enable legislative deliberation are bypassed when Congress funds government operations through supplemental spending. Supplemental spending has become an alternative funding process, parallel to the normal annual appropriations process. This allows certain expenditures to elide close congressional and public scrutiny and allows Congress to escape debate over federal funding priorities.

The House and Senate Budget Committees will soon turn to the congressional budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2009. The draft versions of the budget resolution, to be offered by House Budget chief Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) and Senate Budget head Kent Conrad (D-ND), are likely to be considerably different from President Bush's unrealistic budget proposal submitted to Congress in February.