On April 15, the budget committees were supposed to pass a concurrent resolution, or a blueprint that gives Congress topline spending and revenue numbers. This is the crucial step after the president releases his budget priorities in February and before the appropriations committees actually divvy up the specific numbers by the deadline ending on Sept. 30.
But, like they constantly have in the past, the committees simply ignored their job and went on their merry way.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has flirted with the idea of getting rid of the committee altogether in order to reform the broken process, which hasn’t produced all stand-alone appropriations bills on time since the mid-1990s. While it is true that the process is incredibly broken, steps must be taken to make it more difficult for Congress to continue spending additional taxpayer money, not easier.
Among talks of reforming the budget process, spending plans have emerged, giving lawmakers the ability to actually spend money responsibly as they go into a tough 2018 midterm cycle. In the House, the Republican Study Committee, the conservative caucus with more than 150 members, has released their budget which reforms mandatory spending including welfare, repeals Obamacare, and makes tax cuts permanent. On the north side of the Capitol, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has introduced his own version of a balanced budget, which uses the penny plan to cut spending over five years before it balances. Both of these plans are fiscally responsible and politically achievable.
The RSC budget, titled, “A Framework for Unified Conservatism,” is released every year. It is often a resource for members of Congress, the president, his staff, and experts who look for ideas on how to appropriately spend money and allocate resources. Last year, their budget failed to pass by a vote of 132 to 294, but served as an alternative with ideas that both conservatives and progressives could endorse.
This year’s RSC budget continues the fiscal proposals made in the past, putting the budget on a path to balance in eight years. It reverses the cap increase that was included in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which was passed in February. The budget makes provisions in the tax reform law permanent which would otherwise expire at the end of a ten-year window. The individual tax cuts and full and immediate expensing (which allows businesses to write off all investments made that year in full), would become permanent law (unless Congress changes it in the future, rather than automatically expiring). It moves Overseas Contingency Operations funding into the base defense budget, where it would be subject to spending caps. OCO is used as emergency war funds in case additional resources are needed quickly, but is often used as a slush fund because of its lack of oversight. By putting OCO in the base budget, it makes it easier for Congress to reliably determine appropriate Pentagon funding levels. Rep. Sam Johnson’s, R-Texas, Social Security Reform Act, which makes Social Security sustainable by updating cost-of-living adjustments and raising the eligibility age to 70, is also included in the legislation.
The RSC budget also fully repeals and replaces Obamacare with provisions from the American Health Care Reform Act, reforms Medicaid, allows insurance to be sold across state lines, and includes medical liability reform. Since the Tea Party wave in 2010, conservatives have campaigned on repealing Obamacare, and this budget does so in a responsible way. It also prioritizes providing more choices and lowering costs to Medicare, and fixing the disability insurance program within Social Security. While that summary barely scratches the surface of the entire bill, in total it reduces spending by more than $12.4 trillion — if it can pass.
Paul’s plan to balance the budget takes a simple approach by cutting one penny from every federal dollar spent for five years. After those five years, the budget is balanced and it resumes growing at one percent afterward. Relative to current spending and assuming the repeal of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, the plan cuts more than $13 trillion, yet increases total spending by about 15 percent. Though critics will cry that it funds the federal government at draconian levels, it merely slows down the exponential growth of spending. The legislation also expands the eligible uses of Health Savings Accounts and makes budget process reforms like raising the waiver threshold for points of order, which would make it more difficult to dismiss objections to spending levels throughout the budget process.
Both Paul and the RSC have done yeoman’s work in introducing budget reforms that would actually slow the growth of federal spending. After Congress passed a massive budget deal that thwarts all the gains from the Budget Control Act of 2011, Congress should focus on passing a budget that works for the public. Either budget is a huge step in the right direction, but unfortunately Congress isn’t likely to actually do their job.
They’ll keep talking about balancing the budget while ignoring the great ideas right in front of their face.
Jake Grant (@thejakegrant) is a Young Voices Advocate and outreach director for the Coalition to Reduce Spending. The views expressed here are his own.
