Policies and actions to enforce fiscal discipline proposed in the House Rules package for the 118th Congress include:
- Eliminating new long-term spending: Imposes a point of order against any measure which increases mandatory spending by more than $2.5 billion for any 10-year window within a 40-year period after the original 10-year budget window.
- Halting the proliferation of new mandatory spending: Establishes the Cut-As-You-Go (CUTGO) rule that demands Congress address its spending problem with spending cuts, not tax increases – requiring lawmakers to find mandatory spending offsets for any mandatory spending elsewhere.
Establishes a point of order against budget reconciliation instructions that increase net direct spending. Democrats used the reconciliation process in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 117th Congress to try to increase spending by a combined more than $7 trillion.
- Scoring Legislation Beyond 10 years: Requires Congress to confront the nation’s long-term spending crisis by having the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provide a 25-year and 75-year analysis of current unfunded liabilities and ensure policies Congress considers improve that outlook and reduce long term liabilities for the taxpayer while protecting important programs.
- Shining a light on inflationary spending: Requires CBO for the first time ever in its cost estimates to include an inflationary analysis for any major spending legislation (defined as having a budgetary impact of 0.25 percent of GDP)
- No budgetary carveouts for COVID-19 and climate change spending: Eliminates specific budgetary exemptions for spending that Democrats created during their one-party rule.
- Turning off automatic debt limit increases: Eliminates an automatic deeming of a debt limit increase by the House when it adopts a budget resolution – ensuring House lawmakers cannot avoid a debate and direct vote on a debt limit increase.
- Turning on more realistic scoring of Congressional spending: Requires that CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation perform a macroeconomic analysis or “dynamic scoring” of major legislation (defined as having a budgetary impact of 0.25 percent of GDP) – providing Congress additional information about the broader economic impact of federal spending and tax code changes.
- Defending against future tax increases: Reinstates a requirement that no federal income tax increases can be passed by the House of Representatives without at least a three-fifths, supermajority agreeing to it through a recorded vote.
- Defunding the Washington bureaucracy: Allows for provisions in appropriations legislation or amendments to such bills to reduce the number or salaries of federal employees or reduce the compensation of any individual paid by the Treasury.
- Reducing unauthorized spending: Requires the Chairs of House Committees to account for, review, and reduce the backlog of government programs within their jurisdiction whose authorizations have expired yet they continue to receive taxpayer funding – including a new budgetary point of order against increasing in unauthorized spending on appropriations bills.
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