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Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Congressional Budgeting
Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Congressional Budgeting
Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Congressional Budgeting Process 20240713
On the campaign trail. Not only for the president ial candidates but also the upcoming senate, house, and governor races. It is free. It is easily accessible. Its all there at cspan. Org. Members of the
Senate Budget
committee along with budget experts discuss ways to improve the congressional budgeting process. They spoke at an event hosted by the committee for a responsible federal budget. So, this sounds really loud to me. Does it sound okay to people . Yeah . Hello everybody. Im maya mcginnis. I run the committee for responsible budget. Im pleased you joined us for our forum. Many of you probably know this, but the committee for responsible federal budget is a
Bipartisan Organization
focused on fiscal responsibility. And if you look at the world right now where the debt is at near record levels, never been this high relative to the economy since world war ii and the deficit is the largest its ever been when the economy is this strong its a really important issue to focus on right now. Im smiling so i dont cry. I was thinking i look really happy. Its a troubling time for fiscal policy. Theres no question about that. Let me just tell you quickly about two projects that we are doing before i kick off our really great panels and speakers for this afternoon. The first project were doing right now is something we do every year on
Election Year
called u. S. Budget watch. And what we have started doing and we will continue to do is we look at all the promises that are put forth from the political candidates who are running for president and we both provide as many explainers as possible in our unbiased, nonpartisan way, kind of explaining what the policies are. And then we evaluate the details and put out the numbers in terms of how they would affect the
National Debt
. This, we believe, is critically important to try to push a discussion into the president ial campaign discussion that many candidates would prefer to ignore which is what are we going to do about this
Huge National
debt . What would the effect of these various policies be . And try to have a discussion that we all know is a real one also, budget constraints, how do these things fit into the overall budget picture. For anybody whos interested, we hope youll look at this. If you go to our website we have a very big analysis so far of the
Health Care Proposals
of the leading four candidates for the president ial candidates. We will soon be putting out more detalled policy scores of all of the proposals they have. And there are a lot of explainers on there. So, u. S. Budget watch for anybody who wants to see how the candidates are thinking about the
National Debt
. The second project i wanted to share with everybody here is something we launched about a month ago, and its called fix us. And fix us is a project thats run by my colleague mike murphy who we are looking at the question of how the country got so dysfunctional, so filled with distrust. How we got to this place and first we think we have to understand how we got here in order to figure out how to go forward. But many of you might be saying, i wake up and say also you are a budget group, why are you trying to fix the entire divide in the country and its a fair question. The answer is, after years and years of working on these fiscal issues and how much harder its become to address them, even while theres a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle for doing something. The real answer is, we have divisions running as deep they do in the nation is more difficult than ever to do all the things they need to fix the debt. What its going to take to fix the
National Debt
is a willingness to focus on the longer term issues instead of just the immediate political issues. Thinking about policy answers rather than political answers. Theres a real commitment to changing how our budget process works and bipartisan interest and leadership so i am optimistic and hopeful we can make some
Real Progress
in these topics. When i look at budget process and many people were share these concerns, you see a process where theres basically no accountability, there is the focus that misses long term and theres a tremendous amount of transparency and many dont understand budget speak and policy makers dont understand budget speak. But its written in another language to keep people feeling out of the entire process. The budget by crisis way too often these days will tell you the only way we get anything done and if you look at the fiscal outcome they are truly dreadful. The case that we need the budget process overall is not a difficult one to make and the notion that we run this
Company Without
a budget is something that should be shocking to everybody. The fact that when we cant get the work done our political leaders decide to shut the government down and its a punchline, its incredible that thats whats happening and i think the fact that we have a trillion dollar deficit at a time of
Economic Growth
there is no limiting factor of how you put a budget together and if you put it by the budget together what kind of fiscal goals you have and there is no requirement of something being included in that and thats incredibly troubling and all those things in the discussion that we have today which is considering how to move the process. So, again, i will acknowledge most people will have remarks that budget process only works with people who are doing the budget and it cannot force any lawmakers to do anything. It can really help them move along and build systems that allow if they care about the budget responsibly to do so. The good news here is that there are a lot of members who do care about this issue. Theres the select committee which came up with a lot of good ideas and had good interest in all four house senate, republican, democrats in a lot of ideas of come out of that. Theres leadership and you hear from them today in the process reforms and a whole lot of members of congress who say, i dont want to be a part of this non passing budget. My personal belief these days is that there shouldnt be a
Single Member
of congress who doesnt have an idea of where they think the budget should be in a reasonable amount of time and ten years from now and how they think we should get there. They are certainly not going to agree agree, thats not the problem at all but its any political leader in this country that will have a plan to what they think the budget should be. Looking at the one right now thats unsustainable with that growing faster and going to the fastest part of the budget no member of congress should say im okay with that by not doing anything im okay in that process. That is just my thought of getting to a place where every member feel its on them to have some thoughts for how we should be budgeting. Thats what you hear for me i will turn it over to two tremendous panels and will be hearing from three senators and theres different ideas of the real work working on this issue. I will invite the first panel to come on up. The moderator jennifer shut will take us through the wealth of experience on this panel so thank you all for joining us and thank you all for joining us. applause hello everyone im
Jennifer Shutt
at sea queue roll call and i spend a lot of my time talking with lawmakers and staff and not just about the process but about the annual spending bills and we are here today to talk a little bit about some of the efforts in the past few years to overhaul the annual budget and appropriations process as well as the personalities of the politicians that are paying those forward and the real life politics that impact the process every year. So, one thing id like to point out is that everyone on our tables should have cards that you can submit questions on so if you want to write down a question at any point during the
Panel Members
from the committee with responsibility of the federal budget will collect those from you. Joining me today is laura blessing at
Georgetown University
and phil joyce from the university of maryland, rory myers from
Baltimore County
and
Steve Redburn
from
George Washington
university. They are going to give
Opening Statements
and will start off with laura who will talk about what the budget and process is supposed to look like. Suppose already hello everyone, and the federal budget process is broken and there are few things that we can agree on that makes the list in hamilton of course. Beyond the process itself there are related problems and everyone thinks that this is merely a issue of hitting deadlines. We are in trillion dollar deficits where coordinates fall and resolutions to make it more difficult for federal agencies to do their jobs under certain conditions and the most account of this was the secretary mattis is 2017 long term see ours are negatively affective in readiness in their significant threats and hamstrung budget process makes it difficult to set
National Priorities
or problems with many kinds with all
Government Shutdown
s are costly and harmful. Ill kick us off by expanding with the budget is supposed to look like. I reviewed a review of the former procedure created by the 1974 budget act, wheels of complex multi stage process and the 1974 act contained a number of improvements and previously added process of appropriation bills and comprehensive process for
Discretionary Spending
along with new resources with congressional but
Budget Office
and committees. It imposed a timeline and created a new procedural tools, according to the 1974 law, they police a budget in february, congressional budget outlook report to the
Budget Committee
and they create a budget reggie lieu xin with low amounts of
Discretionary Spending
. Possibly reconciliation instructions that
Congress Passes
in april with the
House Appropriations
committees deciding how much of that discretionary total the 12
Appropriations Committee
s each get. The house gets to work on their bills in may, finishing in june followed by the senates work on the same individual bills, followed by conference committees and final congressional passage and president s signature by october 1st, the start of a new fiscal year. So, to simplify, youve got the president s proposal, the
Budget Committee
s budget resolution, house action, senate, action bills go to conference committee. They pass and get the president to sign them. This is the process in theory. When congress does not keep the schedule, they can use a continued resolution or see our to continue spending at current levels with occasional exceptions called anomalies to avoid a
Government Shutdown
and in practice we have seen a lot of scars as well as combining individual appropriations fills into must pass omnibus legislation. We have seen this complicated process progressively breakdown as congress is polarized and you procedural problems have been created. Earlier on, the hurdle was the senate as
Appropriations Bills
reach filibusters so, failing later in the process that i just described, but after the 20 tenure mark span there has not been a single appropriations bill individually passed into law. The start process starts failing earlier in the house and more recently, the
Budget Committee
s are failing to pass budget resolutions, so thats even earlier. All of this makes the entire process more leadership driven but also more volatile. Budget resolutions in the president s budget are increasingly seen as messaging documents and more worrisome procedural elements have been added in addition to the iraq span of 2010. Constitutional amendments can derail the process as members of
Congress Take
advantage of the reticence of openness to make their mark interpreter . A sequestration regime was created significantly complicated process and the most worrisome change is the perennial inclusion of the debt ceiling in all of this budget handling as well as coming to the razors edge of default in 2011 and too close for comfort in 2013. This is an important topic and im delighted to be here today with wonderful copanels to discuss it. And now we will walk everyone through the principles of process reform and the anti deficiency act. I was asked to talk about what a better budget process might look like and its actually a pretty low bar, isnt, it based on what laura has said. But i want to set a high bar by referring to something published in the journal policy sizes two decades ago and it was drawn upon by a convergence project. Those of you were at this summit two years ago would be familiar with that work. And it set out ten principles that i thought would be useful to how one could design a better budget process. I will not mention all ten because we dont have time but i do want to think, and what i mentioned most important ones particularly as they relate to the
White House Bill
the senators will be talking about later. To start with two principles that have been emphasized, one is that the budget should be constrained, that, is limiting the amount of money that need to be acquired by the government and second, that it be perceptive. That is, looking into the long term as well as the short term and right now of course macro by terry policies is arguably not meeting those criteria. Now, i dont particularly want to advocate for any path for a federal budget deficit or debt but i do think its worthwhile to think about the provision in the
White House Bill
that would have the congress by anybody set debt to gdp targets. That is one thing i hope they will discuss. We also probably should spend a little more time thinking about the long term risk of
Climate Change
, both medication and adaptation, in our long term budget outlooks. In my opinion, though the even more important principle is that the budget process we judgmental, and by that i mean seeking ways to obtain the most benefits for the least costs and to do that, we probably have to at the same time satisfied to other criteria. One is the budget being comprehensive, that is including all uses of the governments
Financial Resources
and second, honest, based on unbiased projections. And frankly i think much of the current budget process meets those latter two and that we have a reasonably comprehensive budget and if you look at the excellent work done by cbo and by many budget professionals in the executive branch and our committee staff, they work hard and they try to come up with good estimates and informal elected officials about those. And that is particularly important, i have to say, given that we have a president now who is not really wellknown for his honesty. The process, however is not designed to truly identify priorities to meet that judgmental criterion and in part, because the budget is not fully comprehensive in its treatment of tax expenditures. One thing that dnc
White House Bill
does is that it would increase the integration of tax expenditures into the
Spending Review
process. It also would create a very minimal but
First Step Towards
a portfolio budgeting process that the late poll poster has written about and this particular bill, which is a little bit weaker than what senator enzi proposed earlier, we provide information to the
Budget Committee
about portfolios that would be groups of professional, mandatory tax expenditure programs which then could be used to formulate a budget resolution that would be more judgmental. There are some other principles that i could talk about and we wont have time, perhaps in the questions but i want to briefly mention the impoundment issue. Certainly one of the makers of the stimuli that congress and acted in the congressional budget control act was president actions challenge of the
Congress Congressional
law, the power of the person arguably we are going through a similar situation now with the controversy over reprogramming and transfers for the wall. We are seeing of course the
Ukrainian Security
assistance being the basis for the house impeachment of the president. There also were some arguably questionable decisions made by the omb council and others regarding who could work during the shutdown that might be a violation of the anti deficiency act so my hope is that given these kind of situations, it might provide more dissimilar members of congress, not just democrats but also republicans, to consider that the institutional power of congress is being challenged now by this president and over the long run, that would weaken the individual influence of each member of congress. And steve is going to talk to us now about some
Lessons Learned
from
International Examples
in terms of how to get to a functioning, on time budget appropriations process. For 20 years i worked at omb, so i was part of the problem but as you said, more recently ive been doing some
International Work
and i think its been giving me a new perspective on the way we budget and perhaps useful new insights. European countries, a number of whom i have visited in the last few months, since the financial crisis, have individually and collectively made major changes in their budget procedures. Individually, most have established independent
Budget Office
s or parliamentary
Senate Budget<\/a> committee along with budget experts discuss ways to improve the congressional budgeting process. They spoke at an event hosted by the committee for a responsible federal budget. So, this sounds really loud to me. Does it sound okay to people . Yeah . Hello everybody. Im maya mcginnis. I run the committee for responsible budget. Im pleased you joined us for our forum. Many of you probably know this, but the committee for responsible federal budget is a
Bipartisan Organization<\/a> focused on fiscal responsibility. And if you look at the world right now where the debt is at near record levels, never been this high relative to the economy since world war ii and the deficit is the largest its ever been when the economy is this strong its a really important issue to focus on right now. Im smiling so i dont cry. I was thinking i look really happy. Its a troubling time for fiscal policy. Theres no question about that. Let me just tell you quickly about two projects that we are doing before i kick off our really great panels and speakers for this afternoon. The first project were doing right now is something we do every year on
Election Year<\/a> called u. S. Budget watch. And what we have started doing and we will continue to do is we look at all the promises that are put forth from the political candidates who are running for president and we both provide as many explainers as possible in our unbiased, nonpartisan way, kind of explaining what the policies are. And then we evaluate the details and put out the numbers in terms of how they would affect the
National Debt<\/a>. This, we believe, is critically important to try to push a discussion into the president ial campaign discussion that many candidates would prefer to ignore which is what are we going to do about this
Huge National<\/a> debt . What would the effect of these various policies be . And try to have a discussion that we all know is a real one also, budget constraints, how do these things fit into the overall budget picture. For anybody whos interested, we hope youll look at this. If you go to our website we have a very big analysis so far of the
Health Care Proposals<\/a> of the leading four candidates for the president ial candidates. We will soon be putting out more detalled policy scores of all of the proposals they have. And there are a lot of explainers on there. So, u. S. Budget watch for anybody who wants to see how the candidates are thinking about the
National Debt<\/a>. The second project i wanted to share with everybody here is something we launched about a month ago, and its called fix us. And fix us is a project thats run by my colleague mike murphy who we are looking at the question of how the country got so dysfunctional, so filled with distrust. How we got to this place and first we think we have to understand how we got here in order to figure out how to go forward. But many of you might be saying, i wake up and say also you are a budget group, why are you trying to fix the entire divide in the country and its a fair question. The answer is, after years and years of working on these fiscal issues and how much harder its become to address them, even while theres a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle for doing something. The real answer is, we have divisions running as deep they do in the nation is more difficult than ever to do all the things they need to fix the debt. What its going to take to fix the
National Debt<\/a> is a willingness to focus on the longer term issues instead of just the immediate political issues. Thinking about policy answers rather than political answers. Theres a real commitment to changing how our budget process works and bipartisan interest and leadership so i am optimistic and hopeful we can make some
Real Progress<\/a> in these topics. When i look at budget process and many people were share these concerns, you see a process where theres basically no accountability, there is the focus that misses long term and theres a tremendous amount of transparency and many dont understand budget speak and policy makers dont understand budget speak. But its written in another language to keep people feeling out of the entire process. The budget by crisis way too often these days will tell you the only way we get anything done and if you look at the fiscal outcome they are truly dreadful. The case that we need the budget process overall is not a difficult one to make and the notion that we run this
Company Without<\/a> a budget is something that should be shocking to everybody. The fact that when we cant get the work done our political leaders decide to shut the government down and its a punchline, its incredible that thats whats happening and i think the fact that we have a trillion dollar deficit at a time of
Economic Growth<\/a> there is no limiting factor of how you put a budget together and if you put it by the budget together what kind of fiscal goals you have and there is no requirement of something being included in that and thats incredibly troubling and all those things in the discussion that we have today which is considering how to move the process. So, again, i will acknowledge most people will have remarks that budget process only works with people who are doing the budget and it cannot force any lawmakers to do anything. It can really help them move along and build systems that allow if they care about the budget responsibly to do so. The good news here is that there are a lot of members who do care about this issue. Theres the select committee which came up with a lot of good ideas and had good interest in all four house senate, republican, democrats in a lot of ideas of come out of that. Theres leadership and you hear from them today in the process reforms and a whole lot of members of congress who say, i dont want to be a part of this non passing budget. My personal belief these days is that there shouldnt be a
Single Member<\/a> of congress who doesnt have an idea of where they think the budget should be in a reasonable amount of time and ten years from now and how they think we should get there. They are certainly not going to agree agree, thats not the problem at all but its any political leader in this country that will have a plan to what they think the budget should be. Looking at the one right now thats unsustainable with that growing faster and going to the fastest part of the budget no member of congress should say im okay with that by not doing anything im okay in that process. That is just my thought of getting to a place where every member feel its on them to have some thoughts for how we should be budgeting. Thats what you hear for me i will turn it over to two tremendous panels and will be hearing from three senators and theres different ideas of the real work working on this issue. I will invite the first panel to come on up. The moderator jennifer shut will take us through the wealth of experience on this panel so thank you all for joining us and thank you all for joining us. applause hello everyone im
Jennifer Shutt<\/a> at sea queue roll call and i spend a lot of my time talking with lawmakers and staff and not just about the process but about the annual spending bills and we are here today to talk a little bit about some of the efforts in the past few years to overhaul the annual budget and appropriations process as well as the personalities of the politicians that are paying those forward and the real life politics that impact the process every year. So, one thing id like to point out is that everyone on our tables should have cards that you can submit questions on so if you want to write down a question at any point during the
Panel Members<\/a> from the committee with responsibility of the federal budget will collect those from you. Joining me today is laura blessing at
Georgetown University<\/a> and phil joyce from the university of maryland, rory myers from
Baltimore County<\/a> and
Steve Redburn<\/a> from
George Washington<\/a> university. They are going to give
Opening Statements<\/a> and will start off with laura who will talk about what the budget and process is supposed to look like. Suppose already hello everyone, and the federal budget process is broken and there are few things that we can agree on that makes the list in hamilton of course. Beyond the process itself there are related problems and everyone thinks that this is merely a issue of hitting deadlines. We are in trillion dollar deficits where coordinates fall and resolutions to make it more difficult for federal agencies to do their jobs under certain conditions and the most account of this was the secretary mattis is 2017 long term see ours are negatively affective in readiness in their significant threats and hamstrung budget process makes it difficult to set
National Priorities<\/a> or problems with many kinds with all
Government Shutdown<\/a>s are costly and harmful. Ill kick us off by expanding with the budget is supposed to look like. I reviewed a review of the former procedure created by the 1974 budget act, wheels of complex multi stage process and the 1974 act contained a number of improvements and previously added process of appropriation bills and comprehensive process for
Discretionary Spending<\/a> along with new resources with congressional but
Budget Office<\/a> and committees. It imposed a timeline and created a new procedural tools, according to the 1974 law, they police a budget in february, congressional budget outlook report to the
Budget Committee<\/a> and they create a budget reggie lieu xin with low amounts of
Discretionary Spending<\/a>. Possibly reconciliation instructions that
Congress Passes<\/a> in april with the
House Appropriations<\/a> committees deciding how much of that discretionary total the 12
Appropriations Committee<\/a>s each get. The house gets to work on their bills in may, finishing in june followed by the senates work on the same individual bills, followed by conference committees and final congressional passage and president s signature by october 1st, the start of a new fiscal year. So, to simplify, youve got the president s proposal, the
Budget Committee<\/a>s budget resolution, house action, senate, action bills go to conference committee. They pass and get the president to sign them. This is the process in theory. When congress does not keep the schedule, they can use a continued resolution or see our to continue spending at current levels with occasional exceptions called anomalies to avoid a
Government Shutdown<\/a> and in practice we have seen a lot of scars as well as combining individual appropriations fills into must pass omnibus legislation. We have seen this complicated process progressively breakdown as congress is polarized and you procedural problems have been created. Earlier on, the hurdle was the senate as
Appropriations Bills<\/a> reach filibusters so, failing later in the process that i just described, but after the 20 tenure mark span there has not been a single appropriations bill individually passed into law. The start process starts failing earlier in the house and more recently, the
Budget Committee<\/a>s are failing to pass budget resolutions, so thats even earlier. All of this makes the entire process more leadership driven but also more volatile. Budget resolutions in the president s budget are increasingly seen as messaging documents and more worrisome procedural elements have been added in addition to the iraq span of 2010. Constitutional amendments can derail the process as members of
Congress Take<\/a> advantage of the reticence of openness to make their mark interpreter . A sequestration regime was created significantly complicated process and the most worrisome change is the perennial inclusion of the debt ceiling in all of this budget handling as well as coming to the razors edge of default in 2011 and too close for comfort in 2013. This is an important topic and im delighted to be here today with wonderful copanels to discuss it. And now we will walk everyone through the principles of process reform and the anti deficiency act. I was asked to talk about what a better budget process might look like and its actually a pretty low bar, isnt, it based on what laura has said. But i want to set a high bar by referring to something published in the journal policy sizes two decades ago and it was drawn upon by a convergence project. Those of you were at this summit two years ago would be familiar with that work. And it set out ten principles that i thought would be useful to how one could design a better budget process. I will not mention all ten because we dont have time but i do want to think, and what i mentioned most important ones particularly as they relate to the
White House Bill<\/a> the senators will be talking about later. To start with two principles that have been emphasized, one is that the budget should be constrained, that, is limiting the amount of money that need to be acquired by the government and second, that it be perceptive. That is, looking into the long term as well as the short term and right now of course macro by terry policies is arguably not meeting those criteria. Now, i dont particularly want to advocate for any path for a federal budget deficit or debt but i do think its worthwhile to think about the provision in the
White House Bill<\/a> that would have the congress by anybody set debt to gdp targets. That is one thing i hope they will discuss. We also probably should spend a little more time thinking about the long term risk of
Climate Change<\/a>, both medication and adaptation, in our long term budget outlooks. In my opinion, though the even more important principle is that the budget process we judgmental, and by that i mean seeking ways to obtain the most benefits for the least costs and to do that, we probably have to at the same time satisfied to other criteria. One is the budget being comprehensive, that is including all uses of the governments
Financial Resources<\/a> and second, honest, based on unbiased projections. And frankly i think much of the current budget process meets those latter two and that we have a reasonably comprehensive budget and if you look at the excellent work done by cbo and by many budget professionals in the executive branch and our committee staff, they work hard and they try to come up with good estimates and informal elected officials about those. And that is particularly important, i have to say, given that we have a president now who is not really wellknown for his honesty. The process, however is not designed to truly identify priorities to meet that judgmental criterion and in part, because the budget is not fully comprehensive in its treatment of tax expenditures. One thing that dnc
White House Bill<\/a> does is that it would increase the integration of tax expenditures into the
Spending Review<\/a> process. It also would create a very minimal but
First Step Towards<\/a> a portfolio budgeting process that the late poll poster has written about and this particular bill, which is a little bit weaker than what senator enzi proposed earlier, we provide information to the
Budget Committee<\/a> about portfolios that would be groups of professional, mandatory tax expenditure programs which then could be used to formulate a budget resolution that would be more judgmental. There are some other principles that i could talk about and we wont have time, perhaps in the questions but i want to briefly mention the impoundment issue. Certainly one of the makers of the stimuli that congress and acted in the congressional budget control act was president actions challenge of the
Congress Congressional<\/a> law, the power of the person arguably we are going through a similar situation now with the controversy over reprogramming and transfers for the wall. We are seeing of course the
Ukrainian Security<\/a> assistance being the basis for the house impeachment of the president. There also were some arguably questionable decisions made by the omb council and others regarding who could work during the shutdown that might be a violation of the anti deficiency act so my hope is that given these kind of situations, it might provide more dissimilar members of congress, not just democrats but also republicans, to consider that the institutional power of congress is being challenged now by this president and over the long run, that would weaken the individual influence of each member of congress. And steve is going to talk to us now about some
Lessons Learned<\/a> from
International Examples<\/a> in terms of how to get to a functioning, on time budget appropriations process. For 20 years i worked at omb, so i was part of the problem but as you said, more recently ive been doing some
International Work<\/a> and i think its been giving me a new perspective on the way we budget and perhaps useful new insights. European countries, a number of whom i have visited in the last few months, since the financial crisis, have individually and collectively made major changes in their budget procedures. Individually, most have established independent
Budget Office<\/a>s or parliamentary
Budget Office<\/a>s, in many cases modeled consciously after our
Congressional Budget Office<\/a>. Most have adopted a multi year medium term framework for in the budget, they are by lengthening their budget horizons, thinking not just about next year with three to five years out at least. Many have conducted periodic indepth
Spending Review<\/a>s to find budget savings and to identify
Public Sector<\/a> reforms and these
Spending Review<\/a>s, they have used a growing volume of evidence related to the performance of
Government Programs<\/a> and alternatives to current programs. And i would say that while these reforms are extensive and much more ambitious than some of the things we tried in recent years, calling collectively, members of the eurozone have committed to an austere fiscal regime of tight limits on deficits and debt and in 2012, this was strengthened to impose sanctions on countries, member countries that were not moving towards a structural budget balance,
National Deficits<\/a> have been killed to under 3 of gdp. One and drawing on this experience and other
International Work<\/a> that ive been doing, i want to highlight a couple of ways in which the u. S. Is disadvantaged dealing with its budget challenges compared to other countries. First, unlike the
European Community<\/a> member countries, we cannot count on an external monitor to impose fiscal discipline, nor can we expect debt markets to signal that they are worried. Last year, when italy threatened to break with the european regime, that spark sharply. Portugal was unable to refunded stat in private markets and instead, the easy, the
European Central<\/a> bank and the imf stepped in to negotiate a reform package and fiscal staring. The u. S. Has no such de essex mckenna to save us from ourselves. We are on our own. Above us, only sky. Second, in the u. S. , the legislative branch takes an outsized role in the budget process. First, the president develops a comprehensive budget proposal. Then in february,
Congress Tells<\/a> a decide every tensed to or pretends to, and developed its own budget taking eight or nine months or 12 to review and revise. Nearly all other countries, is the executive order govern parliamentary majority takes full responsibility for budgets and their outcomes and therefore we could be held accountable by voters for budget outcomes. The typical time that legitimate branch in most countries has to review the budget is a few weeks at most. So, we are quite different there. Because our budgets are negotiating compromises between the executive and the congress, there is no one clearly accountable for the compromise and the easiest compromises to reach are those that increase spending or reduced taxes. Given such fundamental problems, im more and more inclined to believe in the budget process reforms cannot be limited to marginal adjustments or treating symptoms like a
Government Shutdown<\/a>s. I think the agenda has to be more ambitious, keeping in mind the good principles of
Budgeting Authority<\/a> later to include items that will ultimately include redistributing among committees of congress, revisiting the had a budget calling steps to the definition of the boundary of the budget weve mostly lived with since 1967 and introducing indepth cross cutting reviews, portfolio budgeting, to help budgeters tackle bigger strategic choices about how to invest our resources to meet the biggest policy challenges and keep the commitment weve already made so, thats where i come in. And phil will walk us through state lessons and lessons from past
Reform Efforts<\/a>. Thank you very much. So, in thinking about the states and thinking about what we know from past federal
Reform Efforts<\/a>, i really want to focus primarily on what i think are the two biggest problems in federal budgeting right now. The first is the lack of sustainability which maya talked about and the second is the lack of timeliness and i think most people in this room would agree that both of those are big problems or some people outside this room do not seem to think instabilities of a problem but i think they are wrong so, first about the states, it was interesting hearing steve talk about what some of the circumstances are internationally. I think a lot of this apply to the states as well. We certainly can acknowledge that state budgeting is much less dysfunctioning that, dysfunctional than federal budgeting and we can say that without any fear of contradiction but i dont think there are any procedural magic bullets from the states. First, state budgets, despite what you hear, are not balanced. States for a lot of money and they borrow it for capital purposes but even in cases where the budgets that are balanced, which is the operating budget, are in fact balanced, its not for example, the constitution that make them do that as much as the discipline of the
Financial Markets<\/a> and that is really the same issue that city was raising relative to international governance. The other thing is a timeliness is partly driven by the
Financial Markets<\/a> but its partly driven by the fact that many states are dominated by a single party which does make decisionmaking easier but also the fact that there are a lot of legislatures that are less powerful than the congress is, that, is relatively governors and i think where you have less powerful legislatures it is easier to make decisions. I partisanship does exist, as occurred in illinois a few years ago. The states are capable of being everybody dysfunctional as the federal government. The second thing i want to talk about is what lessons passed budget reform can teach us and i think the most important thing to say is that the budget process has never been very good at making politicians do things that they dont want to do. Here, i would quote from cbo in 1993 as no reason to change this conclusion, quote, the procedures are most better and enforcing agreements done at forcing such agreement to be reached. At the point at which cbo ad made that conclusion, it was looking at comparisons between the holings process and budget enforcement act. The budget control act is another example of where the budget process did not actually force anybody to
Reach Agreement<\/a>s. The budget enforcement act was successful because there was first an agreement on the path to be taken and enforcement procedures put in place in order to enforce that agreement. That doesnt mean there arent budget reforms that can work besides enforcing agreements, i think those have enhanced transparency and the tradeoffs that they were talking about between
Different Things<\/a> in the budget. Those that affect the tradeoffs of activities in the reform act or does it affect the quality of information which is really the main positive effect from having cbo. All of those can have very positive effects. With that recent
Reform Efforts<\/a> we know about the choice comedian budget reform and they have a lot of good ideas. There are some ideas that were not so good. But in the end, they were not able to agree on much and that was partly because of the specific rule that was created around but they need needed and the limits they needed to reach to get something out of the committee. In the end, the only thing they need to coalesce around was the budget. This didnt surprise me because ive seen that movie before. In 1993, i was semidetailed four cbo to the joint
Committee Organization<\/a> of congress and liberated for the year in the only budget reform was drumroll, im budgeting. I think it is the case that the work that was done by the joys committee at set the stage for some of the ideas will be hearing from today from the senators. In the end, the biggest problem with the budget of course is unsustainable, but the biggest problem with the process is its lack of timeliness. I describe why i dont think the process will make the budget reach more sustainable outcomes, but untimely this i have one reminder that i want to leave you with which is that in 1974 budget act moved the fiscal year from july 1st to october 1st because, the budget process could not ever seem to me that july 1st deadline. I will say, since only three of the 44 years since the act took effect the bills have become law prior to the deadline maybe that wasnt the problem. Moving the fiscal year is not our solution. I think we should be a little humble about the budget process reform and what it can do and what he cant do which is not the same as we should not focus on those issues where budget process can only make a difference, thank you. It seems like every year, every congress theres a series of bills that come out from lawmakers, some proposing rather smaller changes to the process and some with a sweeping overhaul to it. For whatever reason, these various proposals dont seem to gain traction they need to get four votes and to move through the legislative process. What do you guys see as the incentives for keeping the current process, versus trying to change in small ways or to completely overhaul it . So so, i think the first i think the first thing is we have to recognize that those people who gain power and control from the status quo are going to be resistant to changing the status quo. For example, the process seems to work pretty well and the appropriators had been not supportive of budget reform. The thing i was a little bit surprised about in the last two or three years was the congress seemed reluctant to stand up for itself and what i mean by that is that a few years ago there was this whole coalition in the senate that was the article one coalition that i think was anticipating a
Hillary Clinton<\/a> presidency and was thinking that we really need to have congress stick up for itself. I think weve seen a lot of cases where the congress is willing to defer to the executive branch and i think thats problematic. I dont know why, i guess i understand politically why in the interest of one party but its short sided in terms of the congress preserving its own derogatory which is a little bit more important than whatever happens to be going on this year. As a political scientist, i would of course emphasize the great distance between parties thats often been known as asymmetrical polarization between the democrats will move to the left and remarkably, trying the results in the
Democratic Party<\/a> and just the last couple of weeks might show that the polarization might become symmetrical and the
Democratic Party<\/a> will move to the left. As phil said, the internal politics of the senator is very difficult to convince any member of congress to change any of the organizational relationships and its in the word process but thats particularly the case when we have this kind of polarization. What also has happened in the last three decades or so is a general weakening of the norms of what it means to be a legislator. In the past, there was much more emphasis on listening to others, compromise in the like and unfortunately, a lot of that has not gone very weak and the thing we need to think about as a country, what incentives to give to congress to spend a little bit more time acting like legislators are being efficient and effective and selected states. So in my state its a supermajority
Democratic Party<\/a> stays, there is clearly an emphasis on the democratic priorities. The democrat
Democratic Party<\/a> allows republican senators and members of the house intelligence to have a say on bills. Id like to see
Something Like<\/a> that in the u. S. Caucus. To your point, i think major reforms tend to have historical ways of crisis and one wonders and that sort of thing and thats not to say that my reforms may be helpful and efforts that can bolster congressional capacity would deem very used full and lets pace and appropriation staffers more money to do our job and make more of them. Certainly more ideas there. There are a number of different ways congress has managed to make this process harder for themselves over time. Procedural reforms such as taking away earmarks which you will want to get into in more detail later. It has been reforms of choice that is fixing those type of problems will do a lot to improve the process. I think we need to think of reforms in terms of what are incentives from behavior. A lot of times when people talk about the budget they say oh, lets make sure no one can go home for christmas and then they will behave. Im not sure that the solution is to build a better headlock. Im not sure that this is our goal as a congressional informant. I want to have better care instead. During the joint committee on budget appropriations process reform when they were working through their hearings and their markups, one of the things we heard from
House Appropriations<\/a> chairwoman nita lowey is that she had a question of how much was the process versus how much is increasing polarization, the constant need for house members and four senators to fundraise and to campaign, its a constant schedule and theres of course always a dynamic of the executive branch. How much of this do you think is leading to overhauling the process from a minor level over a major level . How much of it is increasing polarization in the political system in general . If i could just add 100 mid to that . Its not just pour polarization but the split between the two parties this country in control since everything is so much potential to be a potential tipping 0. 1 way or the other, and makes it harder to compromise and its holding us back. He just is severance which to summarize the great book about the possibility that the house would then flip and members would spend much more time for dollars and will have left time to spend on dealing with the policy problems that affect our nation. I think you are right to imply that the structural change in the political system is necessary in some level to make it more likely that congress can be more effective institution. Youre placing your points take on this is well taken but i like your setup of the question which is, is it a people problem or a process problem . The answer to that is both. Thats not satisfying i know, im not in the business of making people happy. Its fine. But, this is a process thats very complicated and with many different points. But, is the solution to not have a thoroughly considered process where lots of committees have expert input into what their bills should look like . Im not sure thats the best solution. You can have more incentives to come together and fewer disincentives to come together as of the reforms but youre filtering a set of people who fundamentally have major differences of opinion is something that cant be ignored. This is what this all says to me is by virtue of being here, you are all officially budget geeks and everybody up here is a budget geek. Budget geeks often think that problems can be solved by changing something having to do with the budget. You just have to admit, a lot of whats going on here is we have a larger political problem. We have a political problem of which the budget process is a symptom but the budget process is not the cause of our political problem. In terms of looking at the white house enzi legislation, what are some points of that that stick out to you as either good or could have a positive impact on the process or potentially negative elements of the legislation . Which is portfolio budgeting and fixing the lip if i can expand a little bit on that idea, the diagnosis that paul and i came to is that there is a stove pipe, too focused on next year and too incremental and fragmented and what we need to do is make room in the process for considering how we use resources strategically for some of our biggest cross cutting problems and challenges including things that we didnt anticipate six months ago like coronavirus for example and inevitably there will be a stream of those coming up. He we need a systematic review of our
Current Resource<\/a> with major alternatives that could breakthrough gain and productivity of what were doing now. We will solve that problem and to accelerate efforts theres no room in that process so the portfolio budget idea which is part of the white house enzi bill turns it over to cbo and i think, just with some adjustments could help. I want to point the executive branch which does a lot of the work already, there are strategic reviews that are part of the government performance and results
Organization Act<\/a> and other routines that support that. The bones, from the structure at least of a potential portfolio review process is an executive branch, the strength in the ability to indepth and comprehensive is much greater than in congress if you scatter. To comment on that briefly i had my graduate students compare the results act web pages for the
Obama Administration<\/a> and the
Trump Administration<\/a>. I think they in general concluded that the quality of those in the
Trump Administration<\/a> has declined and theyre in france was support at the political level was relatively low compared to where it was with the
Obama Administration<\/a>. You have to think about people at the executive branch and they need to be part of the solution as well in the extent to which this
Current Administration<\/a> doesnt pay as much attention to process as the previous one. The contribution of modernization act process can make to helping determine which programs are effective in which are not. That is an issue we face right now. Just just one amendment that i think the fact that the enzy whitehouse bill specifically talks about concluding tax expenditures in analysis of comparison of different ways of accomplishing objectives is very important because increasingly we do a lot of spending through the tax code and i dont think it gets as much scrutiny. The other thing i would point to is the idea that you can use reconciliation when dedicated for production and weve done a lot of increasing the deficit for reconciliation in recent years and thats contrary of the way it was used in the 1990s our panel has about five minutes left and went by really fast. I want to get into the conversations that have been going on for years about here marks or directed spending our
Community Project<\/a> funding, whatever you want to branded as. It really sounds like if democrats maintain control of the house following november elections in 100 they will bring back earmarks in which they are calling
Committee Project<\/a> funding. How do you think that this will impact the process . The other thing i would like to get your take on is whether or not the senate, particularly if it retains the majority and this
Senate Majority<\/a> leader
Mitch Mcconnell<\/a> is the majority leader, what are the dynamics in having one chamber with earmarks and one chamber without . All addressed first part of that question. I think bringing earmarks back to the process, while not without political difficulty, you would have to have a lot of, reforms probably transparency reform similar to what they had in 2007 that would require a lot of both expertise and trust within everyone to bring those back in a reformed way but i think that bringing back the remarks is the lowest hanging political fruit that can do the most good in the political process so that is a strongly as i can say it. It brings people together to be able to vote for something on legislation it gives people closer tied their districts whereas instead of seeing that grabbed the executive branch, it makes the
Appropriations Committee<\/a> more tract of place to be, the idea that you would have people turned down seats on appropriations is pretty bananas, technical term. I know, i think this is an important reform that people should be talking about. I am somewhat more skeptical. I would much prefer to set the high bar and move congress towards portfolio budgeting. I would quote senator shelby who once said that congress isnt an institution about
Little Things<\/a> and not big things and i think that is a problem and i dont really believe that your marks are going to change the process that much. And if we are going to do them, though, i think we should make them contingent and my proposal is that earmarks to be put into bills but theyre only in force if congress presents the president with all 12
Appropriations Bills<\/a> by october 1st one. Just another comment on, i spoke to click on one of the appropriation subcommittees want to told me that when earmarks were sort of at their height, the staff on the appropriations subcommittee spent 80 of their time on earmarks and i dont think thats what we want the
Appropriations Committee<\/a>s to be doing. I think wed like for them to be looking to see whether programs are actually working as opposed to spending all of our time sort of dueling out your marks. That is just one cautionary note. Because one. And i think just one last quick question that can possibly be a yes or no. One thing i hear from lawmakers, particularly proponents of your marks a lot is that it is one very large way that congress can message to the executive branch that it wants to regain some of its power for the purse, the
Congressional Authority<\/a> that it has. So do you think that actually is a valid argument to make one having these conversations about whether or not to earmark or not earmark . Yes. If you look at the most recent reprogramming, the president took money that were out on to the top line of the department of defense, including in districts that are held by leaders of republican committees and apparently they are not too bothered by that yet, which i find somewhat surprising. What theyve done by adding on to the defense top line is an effective earmark. If theyre not going to take them on on this, i think it shows that partisan polarization and tribal behavior is still a viewed as pretty important. Okay. That is it for our panel interpreter . I would like to invite my colleague paul cross back and his panel to the stage. Thank you so much. Hello, my name is paul crow, zach i am with sikh euro call and we are very lucky to have three budget experts with us today. Bills oust are, bill hoagland at the end, and tom in the middle, they are not only people who understand the budget but have spent many, many years involved in the politics and the policy of the budget process and the daily work that goes into putting together budget legislation and the skirmishes and the strategy and so on so just very be brief biographical introduction, your bill is a lecturer at the university of pennsylvania. He was former deputy chief of staff for
Senate Majority<\/a> leader harry reed. He worked deputy staff director,
Senate Finance<\/a> committee, worked at the
White House National<\/a> economic council. Lawyer, economists, expert on budget law and senate procedure. Bill dent, bipartisan policy center. Former budget appropriations director for
Senate Majority<\/a> leader bill forest. Spent many years as staff director of the
Senate Budget<\/a> committee working for senator pete diminish she. Was first one of the first employees at the
Congressional Budget Office<\/a> under the first director alice rivlin. Tom cotton, currently a professor at
George Washington<\/a> university. He spent 20 years as the staff director and chief counsel of the house
Budget Committee<\/a>, working for johns pratt and chris van hollen. He served as legislative director for the
American Federation<\/a> of
Government Employees<\/a> and recently returned from a trip to gambia where he advised the
National Assembly<\/a> on budget issues. So, id like to ask our three panelists to start out with a brief opening statement, about five minutes each and we will go first with bill doused are and then bill hoagland and then tom cotton. Im just saying, we are going to try to be the most fun. Folks before us had the academic credentials, the folks after several power lines, but i know these guys and we are the most fun and like phil joyce, we have all seen this movie and we will tell you how its going to end. Bill and tom and i have been doing these panels together for about 30 years now, maybe longer. We belong to the same
Witness Protection Program<\/a> at brookings and as former budget staffers wed like, we are like that old joke among the prisoners where bill says something and i say argument over five and then tom says, he didnt say it right. Our disagreements used to see so darn significant but now i find that i agree with these guys about 90 of the time, and the other 10 are just not worth fighting over. That may be more a commentary on how washington has changed around us, become more polarized and we just stayed where we were. These guys are that good. For one thing, we all agree that the government needs to pay more attention to the deficit and debt. For the statute of limitations has run so i can admit that i worked with bill on we back then both thought that reducing the deficit and debt was important and i think we both still do. I believe that the deficit and the debt matter for the reason that herb stein said when he said, it is something that cannot go on forever. It will stop. And i also believe in the corollary of, it matters how it stops. We all know it is with arithmetic certainty that we cannot keep increasing the ratio of our debt to our income forever. At some point it is too big for the people who lend us money to take, but remember it matters how it stops. We can plan to stabilize the debt or the bond market can do it to us and in the bond market does it, its much more likely to end in financial crisis and recession. If we have a choice, and we do, thats not how we should have our debt stop. So, i commend senators and see in the white house and the committee for responsible federal budget for so keep focusing attention on the need to limit the growth of dead. The enzi
White House Bill<\/a> has a lot of good things in it, like the automatic increase in the debt limit to match the positives at the budget resolution. Having one less manufactured crisis would be a good thing and ending the senseless series of gotcha votes at the end of a budget resolution would also be a good thing. We have enough disincentives to doing a budget as it is. Now, i guarantee the minority a specified number of amendments, but now im crippling. But were here to tell you how the movie ends and the 10 of this bill on which there is not agreement is the new special reconciliation process. Dont get me wrong, i dont disagree with reconciliation. Reconciliation is democracy. It is like a child that can, said democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard. I believe that future senate are going to use reconciliation a lot more than they do now but in the words of rebecca kaiser, reconciliation has been weaponized. And is now distinctly a tool of the majority party, the furthest thing from bipartisan and so to sum it is a poison pill, and so we dont know if enzi at white house is going to pass, we should agree on the 90 if we cannot leave the 10 for another day. Take out the special reconciliation and the bill stands a much better chance at passing. And while we are at a, lets hold on to that thought that we need to limit deficits and debt and maybe turn some attention to
Building Momentum<\/a> for addressing the problem of deficit and debt, because i agree, in the moral words of rudy pena that the problem is not the process, the problem is the problem and when we start to address the problem, thats how we get to the end of the debt and deficit movie. You want me to go next . I wasnt going to say anything until i was told that bill was going to make some comments and i thought, well, id better make some comments. More importantly, paul, i was worry when anyone is introduced an expert. It always reminds me of bob dole the finding expert as a drip under pressure and more importantly, this is a budget process reform and i imagine the audience out there is, thinking arent you guys the ones who screwed it all up anyway . But being the old guy up here, i want to talk very high level for just a second year, and a little bit of this, roy talked upon earlier and that is i want to compare the similarities and differences between budget process reform in the past and today and that 74 act had come out, as roy indicated, of a constitutional crisis. There was a powerful executive. President nixon, some of you might remember, there was a book, out the imperial presidency. He impounded monies that had been authorized, appropriated by congress on the argument that the congress had no real process and had no process for establishing abroad, credible fiscal policy on in this country and so congress was embarrassed and unfortunately he was right and beginning in the spring of 1973 there was a bipartisan bill, and i quote, to perform the congressional procedures with respect to the enactment of fiscal measures and that bill was authorized, and authored by a
Democratic Senators<\/a> urban, metcalf, same, none allen princeton and republican senators percy so, there was a bipartisan start with this whole process. Eventually of course that led to the congressional budget region in chemical troll act of 1974 which was really emphasis from my perspective and it was one of the last pieces of legislation signed by now a disgrace formally powerful executive as he left this town to and void impeachment in the
United States<\/a> senate so the pendulum swung after the 1974 act toward the legislative branch and setting pickle follows fiscal policy today where we are back to more efforts to control by the executive. In that timeframe, for the last 40 years or so, the current congressional budget, process and i will admit to, it has moved from being what i thought at one time, and by the, way there was only one time that i was staff director, that we did not do a budget resolution. Budget resolution conference agreement but it moved over and effectively had been moving forward. It is now become clear, and ill be the first one to admit, very ineffective in doing what it was set new and today now, theres some dangerous here, i approach, this we have another strong willed executive who similarly has exercise his presidency to at times thwart the legislative branches constitutional powers of the purse, again, impounding appropriated monies and transferring appropriately monies for purposes not authorized by the congress but of course, there are big differences between 70, four 73 today, not police say we had the 14 billion dollar deficit back then on a death that was about 45 of gdp, compare that to where we are today, of course, and probably more important was the 74 act and the amendments that followed, which we fought, a lot of them, at least up through the 20th century, those processed chains were advised because we thought deficits and debt mattered. Now, well i still believe that is true, i hate to say, recent polling by the economist yougov finds thats not the case with the
American Public<\/a> today, and creates it very low. It does not help to have a president of the
United States<\/a> recently say the help there is about the budget and ironically some of the leading democratic president ial candidates today, including, by the, way do you know that the leader today is also the
Ranking Member<\/a> of the
Senate Budget<\/a> committee . A couple, all, this just tells me the deficit and thats an issue going forward, and i do not want to disparage the enzi white house bipartisan bill. Its a bipartisan bill. Thats good that they have bipartisanship in there but i want to argue that as my indicated at the outset, there is no process reform, however finally tuned they can overcome the polarization and division in the political system today that is so clearly palpable even relative to the watergate vietnam era and that is why the project you have under way to address this, i think is critical not only to the budget but to democracy. But two very tough act to follow. These guys, we have known each other for closed 30 years and people refer to budget walks as part of a family and i think it would be a dysfunctional family, if there were. One being a but being a budget walk or marching yourself in budget speak and the process reminds me of the old line about, if you have six months to live, you should immerse yourself in budget walk and budget process reform legislation. Why should you do that . Because it will seem longer. While i also think that, and let me just at the outset say that i share the concerns expressed about polarization in the country and in the congress. I think it is frightening, frankly. I think we are both moving toward a tribal country with one side and the other having under contempt and disrespect and seeing the other side not just his adversaries but his enemies, i think that is terribly corrosive to the country and it is reflective of the congress and terribly damaging, and i really salute the committee for engaging that and addressing it. I also want to say i believe that the debt is an existential threat to the country and as the father of two young boys, i worry a lot about the legacy that my generation is leaving for them and for that reason, i have enormous respect for my, what my and the committee are doing along with senators enzi and white house. I think we need to focus on the debt and deficit like a laser beam. However, with the caveat that there are other deficits we should not ignore in should address as well. Deficits like infrastructure, health care in education and certainly
Climate Change<\/a>. What i would like to do is just to give you a few thoughts about the enzi
White House Bill<\/a>, but the plus and minus is. First of all i think that the process for prohibiting the use of reconciliation for debt and deficits is a plus. I wish that the bill would actually be broader and propose the kong red rule of not using reconciliation to add to the debt. I like to see that not just for the second budget resolution, reconciliation, but in general for budget resolutions period, certainly for reconciliation. I think that reinstating the, role providing a spinoff budget resolution to raise the ceiling, is a great idea. It avoids bring smith ship which risks default, which would be obviously catastrophic for our country and ive come around as a reluctant supporter of budgeting but only if the
Appropriations Bills<\/a> themselves are still annual. The truth of the matter is that congress has proven unable to pass annual budget resolutions. Bills histories enviable. The last year i was staff director, excuse me, one of these high was staff director and we could not even produce a budget resolution. That was in 2010. I do think that this increases the chances that there will be a budget resolution in place. I like adding the tax expenditures to portfolio budget reviews. It has to be part of the ledger and
Something Congress<\/a> has to be reviewing, and i strongly support the van hollen amendment was adopted making it hard for the president to use precision authority near the end of the fiscal year like both bills have said, i think it is very sad and very, very scary that the congress has been relinquishing its power and authority to the presidency for various reasons. I think we can legislature and an extraordinarily more powerful president in many ways is very damaging for the country and finally, i support the optional budget process, the partisan budget resolution creating a spinoff resolution to decide the president that would codify
Discretionary Spending<\/a> counts, making less likely shut down threats whitaker at the end of the fiscal year. I have other concerns about that which i will talk about in a second. Here are my concerns. First of all, i am very troubled by the, bill title for which creates the second reconciliation bill in the second year. I think it is potentially very, very damaging. It would impose, highly increase the chances of imposing cuts on
Vulnerable People<\/a> who benefit from other medicare, medicaid, ship, affordable care, act subsidies for the poor, and the reason is that they represent two thirds of mandatory spending, if you ask william omen, why did you rob banks and hes answered, that is where the money is and admittedly that is where it is. And to be fair, revenue is also an option, tax increases, but im afraid since 1990, one party has not voted for any tax increases and is opposed to them as part of their orthodoxy so tax increases are highly unlikely to me would. I also have concerns about when the cuts for reconciliation would be triggered. What if we fall into a recession, where spending cuts and tax increase would be imposed at the worst possible time. What is the budget resolution as frequently happens, uses overly optimistic assumptions about debt from the last year, using magic asterisk budget cuts
Congress Never<\/a> intends to pass . What if the fed unexpectedly raises
Interest Rates<\/a> above levels assumed in the budget resolution, and just to give you a flavor of what title for will have triggered as a result of the 2018 budget resolution, it would have triggered three trillion, three trillion dollars in spending, and cuts in one form or another. Im not clear why didnt calculations dont count offsetting
Financial Assets<\/a> and in terms of the second year budget resolution, it imposes, it requires that each committee actually reported as part of the directive something that is deficit neutral or cuts the deficit. It seems to me that really disadvantages those committees like the
Education Committee<\/a> which have you offsets and accurately benefits committees like ways and means of
Senate Finance<\/a> where the money really is in terms of the savings so, by bottom line is we think there are positive parts of this bill, and after some significant change, i really do hope it can pass, because i think as bill hogan just said, the fact that it is bipartisan is really i think, an achievement, and i hope it continues with those changes. One last thing. I want to make a personal note if youll forgive me, but theres not a week that goes by that i dont want to call our former colleagues at lawrence and on the phone and ask him a question about budget process. And worked on the hill for many, years with the committee for many years and i think this program and the efforts today were doing is an important weight on his legacy will. Thank you very much. So, the three of you have talked about this as the
White House Bill<\/a> so, last year the
Senate Budget<\/a>
Committee Approved<\/a> this budget process reform bill sponsored by mike enzi, the
Senate Budget<\/a> chairman and
Sheldon Whitehouse<\/a>, democrat on the committee and in short, this bill would establish a twoyear budget process, two year budget resolution. It would keep the annual
Appropriations Bills<\/a>. It would make various other changes, including some that you mentioned. If both the house and senate adopted a bunch of resolutions, then the debt limit would be automatically raised if the president signed the bill. And you also talked about this controversial special reconciliation process in the bill. Id like to ask you about that shortly but first what id like to ask you about is, we have had a number of committees and commissions which have tried to reach bipartisan agreement on budget process reform and none of them have really succeeded until the
Senate Budget<\/a>
Committee Last<\/a> year actually approved a bipartisan bill. Now, actually most of the democrats on the
Senate Budget<\/a> committee voted against it in committee from, but nevertheless you had some democrats supporting it at all the republicans supporting it so you all been involved in bipartisan budget legislation as well as partisan budget legislation and you go back to the days when bipartisan agreements were not all that unusual so my question is, how significant is it that mike enzi and
Sheldon Whitehouse<\/a> were able to
Reach Agreement<\/a> on this legislation . Start with, you build oust or. It is very significant. One of the few a lot of those budget deals that we cut ended up being forced, as laura mentioned in the previous panel, because of crises that forced us to have to cut those budget deals and im seeing that many more of the deals that get cut now are only possible to be cut by the leadership of both parties because they are tribally aligned parties and its harder for people to cut deals in the middle in the rank and file and get them through the
Congress Without<\/a> bringing along the leaders to make them so, so i think its significant step but its a necessary but not sufficient start. But he ultimately need to make sure that both leaderships are going to be involved that this is going to pass. Tom . But i think i agree with what bill duster, says i always agree with what he says. Even when i disagree, i agree with him. As an alum of the super committee, the budget process reform, for those of you who remember that and the simpson deficit reduction panel, all of which failed, i think this is a good start. I think, as i, said i think there are some positive aspects. Its going to be a heck of a challenge getting anything through the senate and particularly the house where there is much less appetite for this type of thing to be generous, but it has to be bipartisan, it has to be broadly supported. But ultimately, i do think we have to bear in mind that its almost impossible for process to drive policy because congress has the most, we will find the most creative and innovative ways to get around any types of requirements, as it is shown repeatedly over and over. Nonetheless, i think there certainly is a value to putting a process in place, then a force comes to worst you can at least accused the congress of invading its own rules, so i dont want to sound too cynical. I do think it is a positive deal. I think it is significant because. I think it is significant, paul. I wish there were 13 republicans and former democrats that sponsored, as i wish there were more democrats that cosponsored this. I think it does build, part of success of this builds on the fact that we had the committee on budget, he was a member of that and senator and she was not so i think that says. Something bottle, and i wish senator enzi was not retiring at the end of this year because i do think that makes a big difference as to his sponsorship for this going in because, lets be honest, this is not going to make it out of the house of representatives this year so its still got a ways to go. Okay, thank, you so, he ends the white house legislation has this special reconciliation provision in the way this works is, the budget resolution in the first year would set that as a share of gdp, or the economy targets and if those targets were not on track to be met, then in the second year, you could have a special reconciliation process. Which as you said could be used for deficit reduction only. , now build oust are and tom, you both are opposed to that. Bill hopeful, and im not sure. Bill, what is your thought on . It well, i am for. It im for it. Let me tell you why. Lets go back to the 1974 a bill. You remember, there was not one but it resolution, were. Two admittedly youre supposed to do to in that short time period in the first. To effectively that second budget resolution was to bring it into compliance with the first budget resolution if it was out of compliance. All they have done here for my perspective, is set up the same mechanism that their original act assumed. Given more time, that if you have not lived up to what you said in your first resolution, you will come up and clean it up in the first second resolution. I dont have a problem with it. What has changed is within 74 and a 96 resolution was used as deficit reduction. After 96, it has been weaponized into the do whatever the majority wants to do in fiscal policy bell. Bill and i have had this debate for a long time. I want to point out one small fact. Im very sensitive about. This i agree that you should use reconciliation for deficit reduction. But, dont forget that in the spring of 2001, the projection was surplus as far as the eye can see. The reconciliatory and bell simply said return some of that surplus to the
American Public<\/a> in the form of a tax cut. Most importantly, bill you know this, want does not say, it says make changes in authorizations, appropriations, it doesnt say, increase doesnt say decrease, so i will argue, i dont like the 2017 reconciliation bill, that did add to the deficit. At the time we did it, in the spring of 2000, one we werent using it to create a deficit. We were using it to reduce surplus. I would like to add, as soon as this country starts to run surpluses, i will agree with bill. I dont think that will happen in our lifetime. As i said before, i think there are a lot of problems with the way the trigger is designed. As i mentioned, there are a lot of outside things that can change the circumstances, even though the budget resolution was done in good faith, and was being complied with. As i said, before you could hit a recession, you could hit the fed, higher interest rate, you could have magic asterisks. There are a lot of things that can throw it out. And, as i said before, i think particularly if its a recession, it would hit at the worst possible time, when you want to do counter recession erie proposals. Bill doused are and tom, i am wondering if you could talk about the difference between the current reconciliation that we have now, and you would be able to do that kind of reconciliation in the first year of the budget resolution under the white house plan. Then the special reconciliation that can be done in the second year. You are both opposed to the special reconciliation. I am wondering why, because it seems to me that it is not that different from the first year reconciliation. The danger is it that used with a first year reconciliation, you can worsen the deficit, set up a requirement in the second reconciliation, fix what you did in the first one, so you can get the political credit for doing the first one, that have to pay for it, and only in the second one. Be much more likely to have to cut programs that are, where the money is. To answer your question narrowly, the differences are, won the regular reconciliation has been used to reduce the deficit a lot recently. The second one will be constrained under whats called con red rules, saying you can only use it to reduce the deficit. The time consideration i believe is, is at the same, or lower, i forget. Also the amendments that are allowable in the second reconciliation are limited. You cant offer an amendment, its not in order to offer amendments that would reduce
Debt Reduction<\/a> that you are instructed to achieve, or has been reported out in this second reconciliation bill. It makes it difficult to address if you want to do half as much deficit reduction, or fewer cuts in medicare then you were instructed to do. I may be getting confused between the bipartisan bill and the second reconciliation. Bail i thought that the second reconciliation required a 60 vote. Maybe, i have to go back, i thought the same. The second reconciliation bill required a 60 vote hurdle in the. Senate maybe that is just on the bipartisan. That is exactly. Right its the bipartisan one. That requires a super majority to pass. The virtue of it is that it would have spinoffs for the spending caps for two years. In the bipartisan budget that is exactly right. I am not crazy about the idea, i know we have been doing it since ryan murray, i am not enthusiast exactly supporting your budget cuts. I wonder what you dont know what your numbers are gonna be the second. Here you submissions will change likely between the two years. Yes, you can do a supplemental, but that is not easy to pull off. So for the reasons i said before, i have no concerns about title for. So there is this distinction between the special reconciliation in a budget resolution, and then the bipartisan budget resolution, that is in the white house proposal. Now this bipartisan budget resolution, this would be an option, and this would be a budget resolution that would require bipartisan support, both in committee and senate floor. There would be some additional options with this resolution, including setting enforceable
Discretionary Spending<\/a> caps, which we have grown to know about in the last ten years or so, starting bell with you oakland. Any thoughts on the bipartisan budget resolution . My main, i may need to twist your question a little bit fall. Once we get through the current 2021 appropriations of the caps, the caps come off, this will sound bad for my republican friends out here. The problem with the fight the budget is not the discretionary portion of the. Budget i have a feeling that some of those things that we want to talk about, you want to invest in, are in the discretionary portion of the, budget science, technology, all but the future. I am not sure that i like this idea. I am kind of looking forward, to be honest, with you if i survive that long, to see the elimination of the caps on
Discretionary Spending<\/a>, and go back to the oldfashioned way of actually appropriating money and argo what the level of caps or appropriation should be. So the one thing that i really do like about this bill is something that i always felt was necessary is if you pass a conference agreement on a budget resolution and in that budget resolution you have voted on the debt limit, then just send it on down to the. President lets avoid this debt filament finally. I agree with much of what he said. I just want to whole heartedly endorsed what he said about the fact that
Discretionary Spending<\/a> is the easiest thing to cut, the most damaging, especially non discretionary, where we have a terrible shortage of things we really need to. Do all right. Thank you very very much. So im going to invite senator lankford to come up and join me on the stage for our next panel. It you want to stand and stretch . No . Okay, now your own lightest again. And scottish and many years many of you come to our annual dinner and we go through this whole question of who are we going to have as our dinner speaker and its always a big thing to figure out who is going to be, and my colleague markle wanted every year wants to have someone who has since retired but was the economist comedian, okay . And i always say, that sounds like a terrible idea, mark, and so we dont have them, but you missed the last panel, they were funny, so thank, you guys, for both being very knowledgeable about the budget process and being up for laughs, and maybe we will hire you all as our budget comedians for the next annual dinner. All right, thank you so much. Im now joined by senator lankford who is one of the leading, im going to see more broadly than the budget, because ive known you for a while weve had discussions on lots policy issues, when you are a policy wonk and you really take seriously thing but had across various public policies, and what the objectives are and i enjoyed those discussions tremendously. Im so glad to see that senator lankford has been focused quite a bit on improving the budget process and overall budget policy and i think you bring a real rational, sensible thoughtful voice to the debate and we are really lucky, lets jump it. Thats probably one of the few rooms in washington where that is a compliment. Thats right. And we are on cspan and it will be on at 3 am and you will pea keep the people who watch the budget process at 3 am riveted. So, my nice, low melodious voice will let you ride off to sleep, which is the reason they have cspan on in the first place. You will be a regular on late 19, v thats good. I will toss a couple of questions to you which are really gonna give you a chance to talk about what youve been thinking, about what youve been working on, since before the joint select committee, but before that im coming up with some of the ideas to address the problem with budget process but i guess ill start with what do you think the biggest problems in the budget process are right now . Its clearly a long list of them but what do you think are the ones really standing in the way of doing things that are the most important you . They are multitude, the issue becomes big in a hurry, one of the biggest problems we face on, it obviously, the senate we have for shut down, for debt ceilings dont work, they are not effective for us to do a deal with the budget process. The way we actually do budgeting right now, that three fourths of the budget is not actually deal with at all and so there is this assumption that americans deal with all of the budget, and three fourths but we actually dont ever touch. Thats a very significant issue, the fact that we really dont see a lot of it, the 12
Appropriations Bills<\/a> and now are 12
Appropriations Bills<\/a> that go through committee and may go through comedian process on the floor in the house, may or may not, in the senate they do not go through the committee process, they may go through the process on the senate floor and actually come out of the process that was written in 1974 does not exist and has not existed for years so, the broken process from the budget act of 1974 does not even exist in some strange hybrid at this point, and everyone pretends that it exists but it really does not and so theres a whole multitude of issues there and so everything, including the wheels, have come off. So everything that could be wrong with the budget process is wrong with the budget process. Yes, we are only still using the word budget process and that is the only thing that is consistent. It is an interesting point when you say that about mandatory spending, because ive had so many jawdropping moments, conversations with lawmakers where they basically have not been aware that they are in charge of the other portion of the budget, the mandatory, spending because there really is not part of the process and also the siege programs that are given driven by aging in health care and for all intents and purposes are an automatic pilot, there is really very little sense of the need for oversight there so, tell us about your legislation on the prevent
Government Shutdown<\/a> act which i think we are very supportive of and i think has a good chance of moving forward. So, this comes in the fears of actually being able to work on this and try to figure out what would actually work and i dont find that anyone in theory alone likes
Government Shutdown<\/a>s but weve done 21 times over the last 40 years, both parties have done it. Its been this continual theme, if were going to get the, and we will have a fight and it will be one of two things. We are either going to have a
Government Shutdown<\/a> to show we have leverage, which i have yet to see how that give us leverage or the second part of it is that if you dont vote for acts, then we are going to have a shutdown, so you need to vote for x, when everyone knows there is major problems with ex, both of those options are bad options so, ive, pour several years have been trying to figure out how do we actually get to an agreement where we dont have
Government Shutdown<\/a>s and theres been a lot of, these theres been several years ive worked on, to get to the end of the fiscal, year you do a cra, and to see our starts to diminish, to apply pressure, that does have one to say, okay weve got to get the budget done because every agency is going to scream at us and say, youve got to be able to deal with this. My democratic colleagues say, you crazy republicans, you will do that forever and you will never pass another budget because that is the way you can get a reduction in spending every year. Some colleagues put in a proposal to say if we get it to the end of the fiscal year, and just have this kick in, that increases inflation every year and just keeps going until we get it done and republicans of course, and democratic colleagues i propose, that you can see, democrats want to spend more, money there is no way were going to agree to that because it would automatically increase all the time and we will never get this done, ignoring the fact the continuing resolutions themselves are bad in the process, i create tremendous uncertainty in the agencies. , i senator from new hampshire, she and i sat down a little over a year ago now and said, lets begin with just as basic principle. We dont want to have shutdowns. We want to do appropriation bills. What would be good leverage for us to be able to do that . Well, what we came out with in a whole bunch of conversations to try to figure out how to be able to do this was a pretty simple, straightforward process. You get to the end of the fiscal year, whenever that, is im kind of a calendar year, guys some people still like the school, year but it does not matter, you get to the end of the fiscal, year if anyone of the 12 appropriation bills is not all 12 are not done, you do an automatic continuing resolution that kicks in that that point, at last years level, exactly but members of congress and our staff cannot travel and we are in session seven days a week and you cannot move to something other than appropriations related during that time period. It puts us in a box to say federal workers are held harmless, the
American People<\/a> are held harmless. Were going to stay in washington, d. C. And keep the debate going on budget where until we get the appropriation bills done now, ive had folks say that is really not a
Pressure Point<\/a> and i have said, you dont know congress because we, if we are here to weekends in a row, every day, and people are not of going back to see their district at home or going to see their family or going on a coastal are headed to a fundraiser or whatever it may be, this place will freak out and people will start shaking leadership to say what do we need to do to get the negotiations done so were not in their three weekends in a row . If we are doing seven days a week and no one is, traveling not instate, there is no, travel not here and there is no travel, office of management budget has no travel, we are here until this gets resolved, is tremendous pressure. That is a very simple way to, do it and for me it is very similar to what my mom did to my brother and i. That one to two of us would get into a fight, she would send the two of us to our rooms, and say you guys can come out once you have work this out. You are staying in there until you work. It out anybody have that same long . Okay. So she is an amazing. Long it is a great concept. It is the same concept at the governmental. Level quite frankly its the same thing that happens in every state in america. In state government, if they dont finish, their work, they have to extend their session, and keep going until they get it done. We just dont in the federal government. We do a are for three months and say we will see you after the election. That is bad for the agencies, thats bad for budgeting, its bad for our process. Everyone sees that it is bad. Now the goal is not to have long see ours. The goal is to have short stars in the process. Thats why we say put the cr in place. It stays in place every week, until its resolved. And have short cr. If you dont have the
Government Shutdown<\/a> and you cant have one under the structure. It automatically kicks in. All of those folks that two federal hiring are not happy to look at potential hires to say, he would like you to join the federal family but set some money aside unless there is a four. A low that is terrible in all of our agencies. We have to be able to resolve. That one more quick comment on this and will go back to. And as had some folks had said to me lets do a no budget no pay. If you get to that spot, that we will just cut off pay for members of congress, or sequester their pay, ive heard all of the different terms of it. Okay well that sounds fine. Except, there are many members of congress that i promise, their paycheck from congress is a rounding error compared to their investment portfolio. They are not worried about their congressional paycheck. Some, are many or not. That is not an equal motivator. And equal motivator is the time. All of us see time as precious. If you remove time from 535 people, and say you get your time back when the first responsibility that you have is done, there will be lots of motivation unto leadership and committee heads, and others to say lets finish the negotiations be able to get this done. And i will add that organizationally the committees responsible for the federal budget thinks that this is a very thoughtfully developmental, youve gone through all of the details, and makes sense, there are a lot of other details in terms of how the mechanics. Work so, what feedback are you getting, how are you in the process, what are you thinking of the movement . Its been very. Strong very bipartisan in the. Process we have done this no was arc style. To buy. To the way we have signed on this one democrat, one republican. Many of a lot of support from republicans and democrats in the. Has returned to solve. This were trying to get to a point where we dont talk about
Government Shutdown<\/a>s in the, future we talk about what used to happen in the past. Our goal is to run this through, will have an appropriations hearing on. This at that time will go through the. Committees we already had a hearing about this which has the federal workforce, thats when i came with it, has to go through the
Appropriations Committee<\/a> to go through the process. All of those things are that lined up to work through. Im going to give you an idea that came from the first, panel myers, he had an idea people have different feelings about earmarks. Im not a huge fan. Myself there was a discussion about, it roy had this idea which i thought was very. Clever i think it was yours roy. Was it . Before i give credit to somebody, which was that earmarks would only be permitted for years when all the
Appropriations Bills<\/a> were done on time. That avoided the need for a
Government Shutdown<\/a>. I thought that was interesting, because part of thinking about all of this is wendy use carrots, wendy use sticks. The other point is that our cochairman, he selected for the committee, he talked about the importance of saying the budget is the first step in the budget process. You should be able to go forward and do anything else until it was done. I think he threw his weight behind the idea of also not allowing any bills that really have an effect on the budget to move forward before the budget is done. The problem you are solving is really an important one, and it is salvo. And it is one piece of a bigger puzzle. It solves that slice, there is a lot. The goat that is kind of the attitude we have towards reforms which is go incremental. That seems to have the best chance of. Working i think we would love to hear a little bit about your experience in the joint
Selection Committee<\/a>, which i know generated a lot of good ideas, and how you felt about that, and where you see the ideas come. It was. Helpful there a lot of good ideas that bounced off. A lot of dialog backandforth. Some of those same members from the house that i worked with in the joint select committee, were also working with now on this solution about governments up a shutdowns, how to resolve. That a lot of good bipartisan. Discussion as is typical, it either all dies, or continues if its not resolve than in. There and its continuing in this subculture, to have some real delegate, im glad we went through it. Im looking forward to take those elements in finding where we had agreements and getting that. Applied and getting the houses to go through the process of modernization. One of the things theyre doing this month is dealing with modernization. The elements that came through the joint
Selection Committee<\/a> to see if theres still joint support on. That it seems like youve been getting a lot of buy in for the work. There seems we can build off of that. Hopefully so in our last month, i will ask you a question, because it is
Election Year<\/a>, we the committee for responsible federal budget are trying to get fiscal policy into the nationalization. It is on the verge of taking. Off it has not quite yet. I think weve had 675 questions in the debate so far,
Something Like<\/a> that, not one of them has been about the
National Debt<\/a>. I guess a question is how in a period of very hyper partisan, very divided government, on an issue that is as hard as fixing the overall fiscal challenges that we face, do you have any insight about how we move politically on an issue that we all know policy wise needs to be addressed. Politically, its such a thorn to tackle. You have to get republicans and democrats not just beating each other over the head on issues of fiscal debt and deficit and say its all your fault to tell your fault. You have to sit down and say what are we going to do to be able to resolve. This not to steal the thunder of what is coming after me my concealer and
Sheldon Whitehouse<\/a> to come and sit together and say there are major problems in budget process, budget reform needs to occur. We both see major issues in debt deficit is the kind of model that we need to see around the country. There is not fingerpointing in saying its all because of the 2017 tax cuts, that is the whole reason we had deficits. And theyre not saying its because of your overspending. We are where we are. We have to figure out where we are going from here as a country. I would love to be able to see more engagement in the political stage, nationally. As you remember, through the 2016 elections, it was the very last president ial debate before a question came up at all on debt and deficit. So, dont give up. Dont lose heart. Theres still maybe more to come. Are you listening moderators . Any to come. Up it is a
National Issue<\/a> that needs to be. Addressed thank you so much for joining. As more importantly, thank you for your work on the topic. You have so i am now going to bring senator and see up on the stage. Wonderful. So throughout this entire process today have been hearing about the enzy whitehouse budget process. The legislation that has been developed. We are thrilled that senator and sea and senator white house are joining us to both give remarks about the legislation. We are rearranging the entire house here. And to watch how theyve worked in a bipartisan manner as the two leading thinkers in the chairman of the
Budget Committee<\/a>, and really come up with the ideas, and really listen to each other. Work on all of these tough issues has been encouraging in a moment where there is not as much as we all wish in the fiscal picture. I want to say first we are sorry that you retired. You can still change. Your mind we need leaders to stay around. Thank you for the work they have done on. This we are looking forward to you sharing your thoughts on how it has been, how i can help move this issue. Fareed thank you for joining. Us all of these people have done a lot in this. Organization there is more to do. I guess we are not really started yet our. Week good afternoon, thank you for inviting me here. I thank you for your advocacy in the support in reforming our broken budget process. That is what it is. It is broken. We have a way to fix it. One of our problems is that there is no crisis out there. I got, george w. Bush institute, a series of papers called tackling the
National Debt<\/a>. One of the ones that really struck me was with
Climate Change<\/a> there are changes all the time that people can see. Its got a crisis. With budget, lets see the counties, get the employment is up, oh we dont have a crisis. When i first came to the
Senate Career<\/a> was having a. Crisis i follow that crisis. Then the
International Monetary<\/a> fund help take care of that once they got their attention. Of course, greece had a little problem, a lot more recently than that. I went to greece and visited with them. Portugal had a problem. Both of those got bailed out by the european union. It if the
United States<\/a> has a problem, whos going to be illicit . Nobody. There is not anybody capable of pulling out a 23 billion dollar debt. Incidentally, we added two trillion more to it with the last omnibus vote. Omnibus is are terrible. Thats why we need the lankford bill, so that we dont have the possibility of a
Government Shutdown<\/a> if we dont just give everybody everything they need. There is compromise in washington now. The compromise is, well give you everything you asked for if, you will give us everything we asked for. That last omnibus, in one vote, with no debate cost americans two in one tent trillion dollars. We will go back to the debate about our earmarks. You can get an earmark provided you voted for the budget but thats not exactly the way to do it either. Today, im going to focus on one bright spot on our fiscal front, and that is the bipartisan budget process reforms that were approved by the
Senate Budget<\/a>
Committee Late<\/a> last year. Those reforms are the product of years of effort to improve our budget process that began probably before i was chairman, but from my standpoint, this, i became the chairman. Since the
Budget Committee<\/a> has held more than a dozen hearings on the budget process, reform weve met with budgeting experts including outstanding state officials, and weve listened to insights shared by our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, weve achieved some incremental successes on the ways including change
Committee Rules<\/a> to provide for more deliberative considerations on budget resolutions but it is the bipartisan, package this bipartisan package, which the first bipartisan budget process reform legislation approved by the committee in a bipartisan way, in nearly 30 years. Its landmark, and im excited about that. Our, bill the bipartisan budget process for reflects a lot of feedback and ideas we receive through outreach, comments, and i appreciate all who contributed and im very fortunate to have senator white house partner with me on this legislation. He worked on it starting eight years ago with me doing the budget hearings and coming up with a package. Now, this is a prime time to make budget reform change. Why . Because we dont know who the next president is going to be. We dont know who the majorities are going to be in either house, so we are faced with the same situation that worked for years ago, not knowing that, whats the advantage of that . It makes people reasonable. They can picture both sides of that. Maybe id better make sure that it is fair to everyone. Senator white house was a part of that and then not only that, he was on the select committee that was both the house and the senate, and i got the good package i could not force it to the floor, and we started as for the base from there, our country will not solve all of the fiscal challenges. It, does, however represent a good faith bipartisan effort to reform the process in a way that encourages long term planning and realistic and responsible budget assumptions and an end to the brings many ships surrounding our countries statutory debt limit. This bill will also make evident what needs to be done next. This is the only time
Something Like<\/a> this can come up because its before a president ial election, as i explained. Id like to take a few minutes to explain whats in the bill and perhaps just as important, what is not in the bill. This is washington, so there are misconceptions out there but they are exactly that, misconceptions, but sometimes that can be the toughest thing to overcome. First, our bill tries to ensure that we have better information on which to base budgets. Imagine this for a moment. It would require more active engagement from the tax writing and spending committees to ensure that every corner of the federal ledger is scrutinize and the budgets are realistic. As has been mentioned in the two previous presentation, 70 of our budget is automatic. Nobody votes on. It just gets paid. Who are arguing over the other 20 so, one of the other ways of handling it would be to conduct portfolio reviews 47 . A spending and tax expenditures to improve the efficiency and effectiveness. This means grouping project, regardless of which
Cabinet Department<\/a> is in charge of it, let me use housing for an example. In the housing area we have 160 programs. Administered by 20 different agencies across. Nobody is in charge. Nobody is setting goals. I can see the reason for five different programs administered by one cabinet official so right now, we are paying multiple administrators to argue over jurisdiction rather than the results were supposed to be getting. Lets put the money on the solution instead of on the bureaucracy. How much money is actually making it out there . Here is something you may not know. There is no list of federal programs. Senator white house and i have requested it from the government accounting office. They requested it from the committee on budget and oversight and i think we are going to get one. We need one. But portfolio reviews by the different committees, regardless of whether its in their portfolio were not, i think will lead to reducing of the numbers. Imagine if we went from 160 housing programs to five. Of course, 155 lobbying against that are going to be the administrators who would lose their job and i say, well weve got a good economy. Maybe its a good time to get a different job. Well, thats not a good argument because those people will fight tooth and nail to keep the program but that would save a lot of money about self and second, the bill would be your in the budget process and under a bill,
Congress Approved<\/a> budget resolution in the first year the biennial and it wouldnt find the previous two years of
Discretionary Spending<\/a> a, total some of the practice weve been doing anyway for a few years. Now, third, the bill would make significant reforms to the continent budget resolution,
Discretionary Spending<\/a> totals will be including the resolution texas where individual members could amend them, mandatory spending totals will be broken up by budget function. If you break a theres mandatory programs and show the revenues to go with them, it will be very obvious to see that we have a problem. In, fact if we were to take all the federal programs that were mandatory and only allow them to be mandatory if they had a
Revenue Source<\/a> big enough to find them into the future, how many programs would be left . About four, theyre one of the very specific we have the money come in and go out that year and you cover the function, or if there is no revenue it does not cover the function. All the rest that would be off the mandatory list except
Social Security<\/a>. Were not, allowed to touch
Social Security<\/a>, under budget reform but
Social Security<\/a> is no longer paying its way either. Were putting a lot more money than we are taking in and as we run out of money thats going to be a problem. So, heres something really new. The budget resolution would also be required to include a target ratio of debt to gross domestic product, or gdp, which is generally viewed as the best measure of our countrys ability to repay its debt. The hope is that by focusing on a debt to gdp, we could put our country on a glide slope to a more sustainable fiscal future. Under the reform bill, that would be reducing revenue, reducing spending and raising revenue, or both. The glide slope has to cover all of that and we would vote on it and if we vote on it, we should have to stick to it. Of course, the bill would provide a mechanism to conform our country statutory debt limit to the levels in the resolution. This would help incorporated them into our fiscal planning and provide a powerful incentive to ensure the targets set the resolution or attainable. Neither side relishes voted to increase the debt limit as it is easy father for political opponents yet there is near universal agreement that the default would be unacceptable. Our bill tackles this issue in a way that maintains the debt limit as a tool to ensure fiscal responsibility while removing that brinkmanship surrounding the potential default. A fifth, our bill would provide a means to initiate reconciliation the second year of guy any, if congress is not living up to its agreed fiscal plan. No, theres been a lot of conclusion confusion about this process so it may have a moment to explain it because as i mentioned under our bill. Each new congress has its own levels for spending revenue and debt in its budget agreement and would not be bound by targets established by predecessors. If, in the second year by any of the
Congressional Budget Office<\/a> finds the congress is not on track to meet its debt to gdp slope, that congress could embark on a special reconciliation process. This is akin to what can be done under current law if we pass a budget resolution in the second your congress but because were giving appropriators two years in
Discretionary Spending<\/a> up front, we created a new process in the second year if congress misses it the school. Goalscorers very to the misconception there that has been circulated, there is nothing automatic about this process. We also applied the borough which means it could not be used to change
Social Security<\/a> and we added the cohen round rule that changes how to produce positive dollars. The intent of our
Second Special<\/a> reconciliation process is to force a conversation with our growing debt and deficit, not to dictate what the outcome of the conversations would be. Finally our bill will prioritize but to transparency, give the senate to budget enforcement tools and remove one of the disincentives to bringing a budget to the floor by fixing the process known as voter rama. That is where we have unlimited amendments that could go on forever that are usually just to make political points. On the topic of transparency, one of the things ive done as
Budget Committee<\/a> chairman is filing scorekeeper ports in the congressional records so that the private contract and hear intellect there after budget agreements. Recently, i went one step further by posting these reports on the
Budget Committee<\/a>s website to make it easier for people who dont have access to the legislation, require these posts to be public going forward. In general our legislation does not attempt to provide house procedures, that is endeavors the house who can set their own rules. I work for look forward to working with the counterparts to fill in those procedures now and in developing our legislation, i specifically set out to establish a process that would allow us to be thoughtful and deliberative in our fiscal decisionmaking while avoiding the automatic spending cuts of the last decade known as sequestration. That does not happen under. This sequestration got a bad name because when they, didnt agencies do what you might expect them to do, which is to cut the best first so everybody notice is it so it is restored. If
Government Cut<\/a> the worst first, we might not notice and senator lankford gave a speech just before me and that is the only solution that ive seen that really will put enough pain in the senators and the congress and the staff to be able to avoid that end of the year crunch, which is so beneficial for the washington compromise, but both sides getting what they want. Our bill does not tell the steals toward one
Party Ideology<\/a> your policy. It aims to create a neutral process to help that congress and make reason budget decisions. Each congress will decide what fiscal policies may be necessary, whether that means spending, more getting more revenue or doing a combination of the two. We cannot be content to bury our heads in the sand as our trillion dollar debt goes unchecked and as i mentioned, we added another 20 quickly into that a month or two ago, and so i want to thank you for having me, i want to thank your organization for all of your work. Probably come up with some way that this becomes a crisis before it is a crisis and we have a chance to solve it. Thank you. Thank you so, much senator. I do think this was a really important bill and i would like to invite senator white house to come up and talk about it. Senator whitest democratic senator from rhode island. He has been a true leader on the
Budget Committee<\/a>, diving deep into a lot of the issues and really pushing a lot of ideas, willing to work on a bipartisan way, and has been a partner with senator enzi on this and we hope the momentum keeps going, so please come and talk to us about your bill. Thank you. Thank you. Maya. Thank you all for taking an interest in something as dry as congressional budget reform. It is dry until disaster strikes and then suddenly it is the only thing everybody talks about. Theres a saying i have heard out of friends in business which is, debt does not matter until it does, and then its the only thing that matters so, it would be nice to get this solved until our national, that before our
National Debt<\/a> becomes the only thing that matters. It is been a real pleasure working with mike enzi and his talented staff. That is macdonald, one of his knee we negotiators, one of the
Guardian Angels<\/a> of this process,
Holding Hearings<\/a> on the subject over an over again in the
Budget Committee<\/a>, actually helping lobby to get me out of the select committee, the by carroll committee, to keep the process going so, this has some very good, positive history in it and it is a trite washington is a that the process is broken, which sometimes means nobody is trying hard enough, or sometimes means that some special interest posits boot heel on the neck of congress, but in this case, the process is actually broken. The budget process looks almost entirely at only appropriate spending. It does not pass the test of mathematics. To get to balance. You obviously have to look at appropriated spending but you also have to look at
Health Care Spending<\/a>, that, is outside of appropriations. You also have to look at tax spending. All of those yummy favors have gone out the back door of the tax code and some two more then all of our
Health Care Spending<\/a> and of course you have to look at revenues. When you put those together, you suddenly get a complete mathematical picture of where we are so if were going to solve the problem, youve got to look at all of these elements in the number one thing we did was we bring all of these elements in and that not only helps with getting the thing mathematically governed, it also actually helps provide some political balance on it, otherwise it would be a very to be craft. There is a reason this is really never worked in the history of the
Budget Committee<\/a> and thats because when we only look at appropriations, we get into a very familiar fight so, put it all together and i think theres a chance for the craft to have much more resilience. The two phrases that have come to most frequently out of our effort have been to gdp and wide slope because that is really what is at the heart of all of this. Once you get the mathematics right, you are going out to figure it who your target is and in our hearings, we identified that the target here is debt to gdp. There is not an absolute number. There is a relative number. Debt to gdp. I dont think we had a witness who disagreed with that and all of the hearing the select committee had, or in all the hearings the
Budget Committee<\/a> had so that was an easy one, debt to gdp should be the target and we could have witnesses who will come and testify what that ratio should be. What is sustainable . What is bestcase . What should americas debt to gdp ratio be, and then, because you dont want to do any immediate, brutal shock to the system, the economy does not respond well to immediate, brutal shocked, you want to take some time to get from where we are now two that debt to gdp ratio decided on, so there is your wide slow. It could be five. Years it could be ten. Years it could be 28 years. That is to be deciding but at least you have the mathematical elements of a budget all in place. You have a proper target that everybody agrees on, that to gdp, and now youre trying to responsibly figure how long it takes to get there and then of course the last pieces along the, way you have guardrails, some buzzers that start to buzz. If you can get off track, so people can start paying attention to this. In a nutshell, that is what this bill builds. It started in the select committee as a purely voluntary alternative to the
Senate Budget<\/a> process and it passed unanimously in that bipartisan by carroll select committee. The key to it was that you did not get to go down that road unless you produced bipartisanship. You had to produce a majority of a majority and a majority of the minority in the
Budget Committee<\/a>. You had to put 15 minority members voting for it on the floor to get to use that voluntary thing. You could not use it as a partisan grammar. You really had to sit down and be bipartisan to make it work and chairman enzi like to tough that he and his team took it and developed it into the replacement, not an addition, not bipartisan bypass, as we called it, but actually the replacement and i think that its going to do much, much better when we can get it passed, then the existing process, because it truly, truly is broken. To last things that i will say. One is, as an added bonus, it tends to disarm the debt limit. I describe the debt limit as a bare trap in the bedroom. At best, you can walk around it and you never trigger it. At best, and it is harmless because you successfully avoided it. At worst, some day, stupidly, or for some political reason, or however, you step in it. You cant get the votes and there you are and suddenly, whack, the testimony about what happens in that circumstance was really grim, both in the select committee and in the
Budget Committee<\/a> so to disarm that
Nuclear Device<\/a> so it cant be used for political purposes, we do that through the socalled get part rule and if you want to follow up with me about what the gap hard rule is, thats fine, but i think most of you probably know it and it makes this a much longer more tedious speech if i have to go through all the details. The last thing is that keeps reconciliation and there are two political, i think, important political concessions that we had to make here. One is, lets leave
Social Security<\/a> alone. So,
Social Security<\/a> is not a part of it. Spending, health care, and revenues. To me, thats enough. Im proud of what weve done and have no intention to go any further. The second is we keep reconciliation. Reconciliation is kind of the relief bell for the senate so that the majority can get
Something Big<\/a> that really wants to do done on a partisan vote. Basically what the
Budget Committee<\/a> has become is a vehicle for the creation of reconciliation. We use it to push through the last piece of obamacare, republicans using the push to the tax cuts when all the democrats hated those, its a support system for event to give you occasional relief from the filibuster. That is what the
Budget Committee<\/a> has become, so, back to when i began, you want to know that the process is broken . Yes. In this case, it is not just a truism, the process actually was broken. It did not do math right. It did not set the parameters to get to the goal that she wanted and they were using the time and effort and expertise of the senators in the
Budget Committee<\/a> to provide the support system for the relief bell foul before the filibuster and i think we have a really opportunity here, i think the bipartisan vote in favor of it in the
Budget Committee<\/a> is a strong signal that if an opportunity presents itself through this legislation to have the
Budget Committee<\/a> actually take on these responsibilities in this kind of bipartisan way, i think my colleagues will step up to it. They will be whiners, there will be, complainers there will be people fussing about one thing or another, and probably a certain amount of grandstanding against one idea or another but i think that there is enough goodwill enough desire to get this solves that we can put together substantial bipartisan majorities to begin to address this problem before debt becomes the only thing you care about. Thank you. Thanks, and so, yes, i hope you will join me in thanking chairman indian senator white house, the great perilous we had a day in a big thanks to all of you for turning out. Thank you","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia802803.us.archive.org\/1\/items\/CSPAN3_20200227_224600_Discussion_on_Congressional_Budgeting_Process\/CSPAN3_20200227_224600_Discussion_on_Congressional_Budgeting_Process.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20200227_224600_Discussion_on_Congressional_Budgeting_Process_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}