Part 2: All Committees Develop and Share their Visions

This post is part of a series on better budgeting. Return to the landing page to see the rest of the series here.

Congressional committees should be preparing to release their legislative hopes for the year right now, at least in broad strokes. This is the first congressional step in the annual budget process after Congress gets the president’s budget request and the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline update.

In an effective congressional budget process, the Budget Committees would now be getting information about committees’ plans to manage spending and revenue policies. By consulting with committees, leaders, other members, and other stakeholders, the Budget Committees can optimize for the whole through the concurrent resolution on the budget.

The budget resolution should be a binding framework to guide legislation for the rest of the year.

What are committee “views and estimates?”

Views & estimates outline committees’ budget-related plans. They are letters from the chair of each committee that has spending or revenue authority. They go to the Budget Committee, usually in February or March, to help the Budget Committee draft a budget resolution that sets guardrails and facilitates legislative actions.

Section 301(d) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 [2 U.S.C. 632(d)] explains:

Within 6 weeks after the President submits a budget under section 1105(a) of title 31, or at such time as may be requested by the Committee on the Budget, each committee of the House of Representatives having legislative jurisdiction shall submit to the Committee on the Budget of the House and each committee of the Senate having legislative jurisdiction shall submit to the Committee on the Budget of the Senate its views and estimates (as determined by the committee making such submission) with respect to all matters set forth in subsections (a) and (b) which relate to matters within the jurisdiction or functions of such committee.

Subsections (a) and (b) describe the topics of the budget resolution: spending, revenue, surpluses or deficits, debt, and so on.

Committees should develop their policy agendas between budget cycles. The president’s budget request and the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline update help committees refine their priorities (“views”) and describe their budget effects (“estimates”). Late reports from the White House – now 31 days overdue – or from CBO hinder timely completion of committee views and estimates, in part by delaying testimony to committees.

Are committees regular with views and estimates?

It depends. In calendar year 2025 for fiscal year 2026, only three House committees produced views and estimates, all in September: House Administration, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Ways and Means. Of course, enacting the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, reconciliation legislation to prevent major tax increases, was the priority for the first half of 2025, and that was under a budget resolution for FY2025.

No House or Senate committee has yet published views and estimates for FY2027, four and a half weeks after the president’s budget request was due to Congress. But why would they devote staff and member time to a document that doesn’t help them advance their priorities?

How would a more effective budget process affect views and estimates?

V&Es that informed real opportunities for legislative action would increase their value. Committees would devote more time and substance to them.

More clarity for each committee’s jurisdiction would strengthen V&Es by creating common knowledge about their responsibilities. This could be as simple as a line-item table for direct spending programs of the committee, as Rep. Blake Moore’s Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act proposes.

This is easy to do. CBO’s baseline update includes unpublished tables of every discretionary and direct spending program with responsible committees noted. The Budget Committees already use them to calculate per-committee spending caps (“302(a) allocations”), and they could give each committee a line-item budget to include in its V&Es.

Creating value for committees is how V&Es can matter.

Ultimately, for committees to invest in them, V&Es must contribute to a process that lets committees more easily manage their programs. Ideally, members could offer ideas in committees and on the floor, subject to colleagues’ approval and bounded by sensible guardrails.

Kurt Couchman is a Senior Fiscal Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.