Congress Misses Budget Deadline Again

The statutory deadline for Congress to pass a concurrent budget resolution is April 15. The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Congress is back in session this week and we once again find ourselves past the April 15 deadline for lawmakers to pass a budget resolution. Neither the House nor Senate Budget Committee has even scheduled a markup for the Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Resolution. This failure demonstrates a lack of leadership, a lack of political will, and a broken budget process.

The budget process has broken down over time and has significantly worsened in recent years. But a broken process is no excuse, lawmakers should do their job and pass a budget on time every year. The budget should provide a realistic fiscal plan for our country. However, in the last 10 years, Congress has only passed a concurrent budget resolution five times. None of those were on time. Four of those five budgets were passed specifically for the purpose of passing policy preferences through reconciliation, not providing a fiscal plan for our country.

Lawmakers’ refusal to budget was always unacceptable. Now that debt is nearly the size of the economy and projected to reach a record high within ten years, it is astonishing that policymakers refuse to do their jobs and produce a real budget on time.

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For more information, please contact Kim McIntyre, Director of Media Relations, at mcintyre@crfb.org