In the past few years, by contrast, regular order has been replaced by regular chaos. The president and the congressional leaders would be involved throughout the process, every now and then calling a budget summit, but most of the real work would go on behind the scenes. Then the appropriations committees would do more or less the same thing, making sure to spread around enough pork-barrel goodies to get their friends paid off and the budget passed. The budget-committee chairmen would do some horse trading to build a consensus within each chamber, the House and Senate would then pass those budgets without too much ado, and the two chambers would work out their differences in a conference committee.
In fact, it was conducted under what was called regular order.
Once upon a time, the budget process was reasonably regular. In a healthy return to machine politics, they handed budget negotiations over to political hacks cutting deals behind closed doors. So, to avoid a repeat, they decided to try something old. Surveying the wreckage, grown-ups in both parties realized that the politics of public confrontation is a lot better at closing the government than running it. The government shutdown last fall wasted billions of dollars, upset innumerable plans, and besmirched both political parties.
