CRFB Reacts to House FY 2025 Budget Resolution

The House Budget Committee is marking up its Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget resolution today.

The budget resolution proposes to bring the federal budget into balance by reducing baseline deficits by $14.1 trillion over ten years. This deficit reduction would come from a combination of spending cuts – some of which are specific and others that are unspecified – and rosy economic assumptions. The budget also calls for a bipartisan commission to address the unsustainable growth of the national debt.

This is the second year in a row that the House Budget Committee has considered a budget resolution. The Senate Budget Committee has not proposed and considered a budget resolution since FY 2020.

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

Congratulations to Chairman Arrington for putting forward a budget resolution – the single most important responsibility of the Budget Committees – and doing so ahead of schedule. This shouldn’t really be an accomplishment in and of itself – it should be a no-brainer, but given how many times budget resolution deadlines have been missed, and the Committees have actually skipped the process entirely, it is an important accomplishment and sign of leadership. Budgeting is key to governing, and this budget aims to address our fiscal threats.

This budget includes many important objectives such as improving our fiscal trajectory, specific reforms to lower and equalize Medicare payments, acknowledgment that continuation of expiring tax cuts should be designed to be deficit neutral, calls to improve the budget process and reduce gimmicks, and a bipartisan fiscal commission.

At the same time, and as with last year’s proposed budget, this budget is unrealistic in its assumptions and outcomes.

The goal of reaching a balanced budget in ten years is completely unrealistic and counterproductive by perpetuating the myth that that is plausible. To get there, this budget combines genuine savings, which we applaud, along with large unspecified cuts – including to appropriations and improper payments – which will almost certainly not materialize.  Aggressive assumptions about economic growth account for more than one-fifth of its savings.  And while it is good that the budget calls for deficit-neutral tax policy rather than tax cuts, it lacks specifics on how expensive tax cut extensions will be offset.

Like last year, unfortunately this budget focuses on achieving a goal that is not credible and thus is filled with unrealistic assumptions and asterisks. Nonetheless, we are pleased Chairman Arrington has put forward a budget – especially one focused on debt reduction and that includes a fiscal commission.

With the anticipated release of the President’s budget on Monday, budget season is in full swing. It’s time for the Senate Budget Committee to propose its own budget resolution as the law requires.

The common excuse that there shouldn’t be budgets during an election year would only leave us with budgets half the time. That’s actually better than we’re doing now, but not nearly good enough.

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