By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

No, adopting a two-year budget cycle wasn’t going to restore fiscal sanity in Washington, much less make a dent in the $21.85 trillion national debt (your equal share as of 9:24 a.m. Tuesday: $66,389.76).

But as Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told me, when you can’t score a touchdown, at least try to gain five yards.

That comment came four days after a committee he co-chaired failed to advance the two-year budgeting idea.

Why two years? Because Congress can’t get the job done every year. As Womack told me, Congress is so bitterly divided and spends so little time in Washington (about 120 days a year) that it can’t complete the budget soon enough. And that’s if it completes it at all. 

The budget sets the top line number that the Appropriations Committees use to divvy up funds to federal agencies. When the budget is late, the appropriators don’t have time to do their jobs.

The federal government then lurches from one unnecessary crisis to another. Often, agencies are funded through continuing resolutions (just keep doing what we’re doing because we can’t agree on anything else) or huge omnibus spending packages lumping many agencies into one bill. The alternatives to those bad choices are government shutdowns and fiscal cliffs.

All of this make it hard for government agencies to plan, hard for the business community to react, and hard for the rest of the world to understand why this great country is so messed up.

This is no way to run a government, or anything else. That’s why little old Arkansas runs its state budget on a two-year cycle, and gets it done on time.

To try to fix this broken process, congressional leaders created the 16-member Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform. It was composed of four Democrats and four Republicans from both the House and Senate.

Womack, who represents Northwest Arkansas’ 3rd District, was appointed co-chair. He currently chairs the House Budget Committee, though he’ll lose that post when Democrats take over the House in January.

The two-year cycle was the most important reform the Joint Select Committee debated. Congress would create a top line number every two years and then would still appropriate the money annually to better keep watch over federal agencies. Appropriations Committee members would have more time to do their jobs. Once one year ended, they could start on the next without waiting for another budget.

Womack thought the committee was reaching a consensus. But last Thursday, it all fell apart. He needed the votes of five Republicans and five Democrats. The Republicans supported it, 5-3, but only two Democrats voted yes. Four voted “present,” including his co-chair, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-New York.

Womack said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, didn’t support the package. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, wasn’t really behind it, either. The only leader championing it was Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. He’s the only one of the four who isn’t returning to Congress next year.

In what he called an “act of defiance,” Womack filed his own two-year budget bill along with Rep. John Yarmouth, D-Kentucky, one of the two Democrats who voted yes. But Womack said it won’t pass – not at this point in the calendar and not in this environment, where everything is about which party wins.

Again, having a two-year budget wouldn’t solve anything by itself. But it’s better to make decisions deliberately, when you have options, than in a crisis – especially one you create yourself.

As Womack said, “We started with a broken and flawed process, and we still have a broken and flawed process, so next year when we run into this continuing resolution stuff, which is probably going to happen, just remember this moment. We could have done something about it, and we didn’t.”

Five yards is better than nothing, and then you can try again on the next down.

Unfortunately, Congress instead took a knee and ran out the clock, while losing.