Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [154]
Technically, Congress may not appropriate money for a program that it has not first authorized. If authorizing legislation does not pass before a congressional session ends, the appropriations bills contain language stating that they also serve as authorizing legislation until such legislation is passed. (President George H. W. Bush once vetoed an intelligence authorization bill because Congress had included a requirement that the president give Congress forty-eight hours’ prior notice of covert actions. Congress subsequently passed a refashioned authorization bill omitting that language. The congressional staffer responsible for managing this piece of legislation was George J. Tenet, who was the staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and later would serve as DCI.)
Some tension usually can be felt between the authorizers and the appropriators. Authorization and appropriations bills sometimes vary widely. For example, authorizers may approve a program but find that it is not given significant funds—or any funds—by the appropriators. This is called hollow budget authority. Or appropriators may vote money for programs or activities that have not been authorized. These funds are called appropriated but not authorized (or “A not A”). In both cases, the appropriators are calling the tune and taking action that disregards the authorizers. (See box, “Congressional Humor: Authorizers Versus Appropriutors.”)
When funds are appropriated but not authorized, the agency receives the money but may not spend it until Congress passes a bill to authorize spending. Sometimes, however, an agency submits a reprogramming request to Congress, asking permission to spend the money, and Congress can informally approve it. If Congress does not pass a new authorization bill or approve a reprogramming request, the money reverts to the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year.
After the 9/11 Commission (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States) issued its report, some discussion emerged about combining intelligence authorization and appropriations into one committee in each chamber. Such a change would end some of the potential budget disconnects. It also would remove intelligence budgets from the defense appropriations process. However, Congress did not act on the proposal. In 2007. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made enactment of this recommendation one of her first priorities. The House created the Special Intelligence Oversight Panel as an improved link between the authorizers, the House Intelligence Committee, and the appropriators. The new panel has three members from the House Intelligence Committee and ten from House Appropriations, including the chairman and ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The chairman of the new panel is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. The panel’s main role is to help the appropriators deal with the intelligence budget, which it does primarily by preparing a report for the Defense Appropriations subcommittee in which the panel makes funding recommendations. Assuming that the appropriators agree, this then becomes part of the basis for the classified part of the defense appropriations bill dealing with intelligence. This is not exactly the system recommended by the 9/11 Commission (a joint intelligence authorization/ appropriations committee). Jurisdiction is the main source of power for any congressional committee and the new panel was therefore a compromise. It has struck some observers as being redundant, because there is already a provision that the House Intelligence committee include members of the Appropriations committee, which it has. This older structure did not give the authorizers the insight or clout they desired with Appropriations. The new panel may improve this.
The Senate, in its version of the 2004 intelligence legislation, included a provision making public the budget figure for intelligence. The Senate also expected to create an appropriations subcommittee specifically for intelligence. When the unclassified budget