Bipartisan Fiscal Forum Leaders Introduce Budgeting for a Better America Act

Representatives Steve Womack (R-AR), Ed Case (D-HI), Bill Huizenga (R-MI), and Scott Peters (D-CA) introduced the Budgeting for a Better America Act, bipartisan legislation to strengthen the congressional budget process, improve fiscal transparency, and establish a commission to recommend policies to improve the nation’s fiscal outlook, including achieving a 3 percent deficit-to-GDP ratio within ten years.  

Much of the bill consists of recommendations developed by the 2018 Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, along with additional reforms to help Congress budget more responsibly. The bill would move Congress toward biennial budget resolutions while preserving annual appropriations and reconciliation, add key debt, deficit, tax expenditure, and tax gap information to the budget process, establish a Fiscal State of the Nation hearing, require longer-term analysis of unfunded obligations, provide earlier budget data to Congress, give new Members a fiscal outlook briefing from the Congressional Budget Office, and update the membership of the House Budget Committee.

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: 

Our budget process is badly broken, and the results are clear: missed deadlines, repeated brinkmanship, limited long-term planning, near-record levels of debt, and exploding interest payments. Process reform alone can’t solve these problems, but it can make the hard choices just a little bit easier.

The Budgeting for a Better America Act includes many commonsense reforms we have long supported, including a stronger focus on the long-term fiscal outlook, greater transparency in the budget resolution, biennial budgeting, a Fiscal State of the Nation hearing, and a bipartisan fiscal commission tasked with reducing deficits to 3% of GDP. These changes would give lawmakers better information, a more orderly process, and a structured venue for bipartisan negotiations to address the debt.

Representatives Womack (R-AR), Case (D-HI), Huizenga (R-MI), and Peters (D-CA), along with other supporters, deserve real credit for putting forward a serious bipartisan bill to help Congress budget more responsibly. It is especially encouraging to see leaders in the Bipartisan Fiscal Forum continue advancing constructive, bipartisan ideas to improve the budget process and confront our fiscal challenges.  

Getting back to a responsible budget will not be easy, and tough choices still lie ahead, but improving the budget process and creating a credible commission are important steps in the right direction. 

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For more information, please contact Matt Klucher, Assistant Director for Media Relations, at klucher@crfb.org.