Our country faces serious fiscal challenges. President-elect Trump will confront a debt of $20 trillion within the first few months of his presidency. In comparison, the debt stood at “only” $5.7 trillion when President George W. Bush was inaugurated and $10.6 trillion when President Barack Obama was first sworn in.
{mosads}Beyond this national debt, the federal government shoulders another $18 trillion in debt exposure from loans, loan guarantees, and subsidized insurance provided by about 150 federal programs. According to data compiled by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, no president since Truman has inherited such a dire fiscal situation.
There is widespread, bipartisan agreement that we’re in a fiscal mess and widespread, bipartisan frustration with the budget process.
Both the House and Senate Budget Committees are actively considering reforms — incremental as well as fundamental — to the ways in which the federal government budgets and allocates resources to various agencies and programs.
Calls for returning to a process that gives more members of Congress a say in budget and appropriations outcomes are commonplace. However, a less crisis-driven, last-minute, ad hoc approach to budgeting is unlikely until the existing dysfunctional process has been changed.
Moreover, the budget process is a derivative of the culture of Congress. The process is broken, in part, because the crisis-driven nature benefits important stakeholders.
This abusive practice empowers those are involved in the process all along (such as members of the Appropriations Committee) at the expense of the rank-and-file members who have been asked to bless or reject a bill that they have barely reviewed.
Another cultural problem is the politically-driven aversion to making hard choice.
While serving as majority leader, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) continually blocked attempts by former Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) to bring a budget to the full chamber. Reid wished to protect members from having to take tough votes on the budget. Yet the Congressional Budget Act established the current budget process in 1974 precisely to force lawmakers to confront the tough fiscal challenges.
Confronting budgetary problems will not be easy. Additional economic growth will cause spending on countercyclical programs (such as welfare) to decrease and revenues to increase.
Therefore, pro-growth tax or regulatory reform can help keep our fiscal woes from worsening in the short-run. However, policies that increase economic growth will not reduce debt as a percent of the economy in a meaningful way over the long-run.
The sources and underlying causes of the growth in debt as a percent of the economy are fairly contained within the budget. Of the nearly 1,800 spending accounts that fund all government activities, only 2 percent are expected to increase debt as a percent of the economy over the next 10 years.
But while the problem is contained, it is large.
Spending from those 2 percent of accounts will total 60 percent of gross federal spending over the next 10 years, with spending on public health care programs contributing the largest component to fiscal unsustainability. This fact is particularly concerning given that the growth in spending on public health care programs is unlikely to slow to a sustainable rate without structural reforms.
Over the years, Congress has convened groups of policymakers to address the growing debt. In the last five years alone, members of Congress and the president have been engaged with the Fiscal Commission (i.e., Simpson-Bowles), the Joint Economic Committee on Deficit Reduction (i.e., the Super Committee), and the Cantor-Biden group.
These commissions have, for the most part, been unsuccessful in producing a strong political consensus around a comprehensive set of reform proposals to can reduce spending, increase revenues, and reduce annual budget deficits.
Before turning to another budget commission with too wide of a scope to reach consensus, Congress should first survey the many levels of discontent with the budget and appropriations process and its problems.
A new commission made up of stakeholders associated with the federal budget process, both within and outside of government, could be helpful in providing guidance for Congressional consideration.
Specifically, the commission could help identify the reasons why lawmakers find the budget process so frustrating. It could help members of Congress “triage” the issues by fiscal importance and level of discontent, and recommend suggestions for how Congress and the administration may be able to move forward with reform.
Still, I doubt that new rules will solve all of the concerns that members of Congress, the administration, and the public have with the budget process. Restoring a culture of conflict and, importantly, conflict resolution (or reconciliation, for my budget friends) can help.
This commission can be a good place to have conversations to begin identifying and resolving these issues, as well as establishing coalitions for addressing issues through an incremental approach.
Paul Winfree is director of The Heritage Foundation’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and a former director of income security for the Senate Budget Committee.
The views of Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.