Repairing Washington’s Broken Budget Process A Comprehensive Approach to Strengthen Spending Controls, Enhance Accountability, and Increase Transparency in the Federal Budget Process
The federal budget process is broken; Washington stumbles from budget crisis to budget crisis, with little to no oversight of how government spends hardworking taxpayers’ money.
The incentives currently favor those who seek to increase government spending, and the result is a crushing burden of debt that is hurting economic growth today and threatening economic prosperity tomorrow.
The legislative action items detailed in this report would help lawmakers confront this crisis by:
Creating new tools to cut wasteful spending while strengthening caps on borrowing and spending;
Enhancing oversight while curbing practices that assume automatic spending increases; and
Increasing transparency by forcing government to account more fully for all taxpayer liabilities.
Gives the budget the force of law by converting it from a concurrent to a joint resolution, which requires the President’s signature. Upon a presidential veto, the joint resolution automatically reverts to a concurrent resolution.
Establishes binding limitations on federal spending and deficits – all enforced by a sequester of no more than 4 percent of programs – within each category if the program is growing faster than inflation.
3. The Expedited Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act
Provides for the expedited consideration by Congress of specific requests by the President to reduce discretionary spending in appropriations legislation.
4. The Biennial Budgeting and Enhanced Oversight Act
Establishes a biennial budgeting cycle where Congress adopts a budget resolution in the first session of Congress (i.e., odd-numbered years) and considers authorization legislation in the second session, providing greater opportunities for review of government spending.
Reforms the budget “baseline” to remove automatic inflation increases in discretionary accounts, and to require a comparison to the previous year’s spending levels.
If Congress fails to enact appropriations bills by the beginning of the fiscal year (Oct. 1), provides automatic authority to fund programs at a slightly reduced rate from the previous year’s level.
Requires periodic sunset reviews and reauthorization of all federal programs to ensure the programs perform an appropriate role, and are operating effectively.
Requires all transfers from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund to be offset or counted as new spending.
Removes all direct spending provisions from Pell Grants and moves all funding to the discretionary spending category.
Requires any new rule or regulation promulgated by the administration that includes new spending to be explicitly funded by Congress before such regulations take effect.
Provides a mechanism through which Members can devote savings from spending bills to deficit reduction.
8. The Balancing our Obligations for the Long Term Act
Caps total spending over the long term to reduce the burden of government to no more than 20 percent of the economy by gradually reducing spending.
Requires Congress to review long-term budget trends every five years and provides a fast-track legislative process to put federal spending on a sustainable path.
Authorizes reconciliation of long-term savings (beyond the current limit of the budget resolution’s typical 10-year window, up to 75 years) in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Requires CBO long-term estimates beyond the 10-year window. - Requires the President’s budget to extend beyond the 10-year window.
Strengthens the statutory requirement directing the President to submit legislation to save Medicare if the general fund subsidy to the program exceeds 45 percent of the program’s costs.
Requires GAO and OMB to report annually on the federal government’s unfunded obligations.
