Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series on “Imagining Effective Federal Budgeting.” Return to the landing page to see the rest of the series here.
House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington recently discussed plans to advance a budget resolution. That’s the blueprint meant to guide congressional action on spending, revenue, deficits, and debt for the year.
Deadlines: The budget timetable says the “Senate Budget Committee reports concurrent resolution on the budget” by April 1, and “Congress completes action on concurrent resolution on the budget” by April 15.
White House delays: That’s difficult to do, however, when a late and incomplete president’s budget request hinders committees in sending views and estimates to the Budget Committees.
Inconsistent: In recent years, Congress has often failed to consider a concurrent resolution on the budget by the April 15 due date – or at all. In principle, the budget resolution should set topline spending levels for all committees in pursuit of a governance framework for the coming fiscal year.
Reconciliation/messaging: In practice, the budget resolution is mostly a vehicle for fast-track budget reconciliation when one party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House. Congressional Republicans are planning to pursue another round in the coming months. Otherwise, the budget resolution is infrequent and largely a messaging document for the majority party.
Displaced by debt limit deals: Bipartisan deal limit deals have often replaced the budget resolution for setting appropriations caps. These include the Budget Control Act of 2011, the Bipartisan Budget Acts of 2013, 2015, 2018, and 2019, and the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.
Low value: Even so, many members see greater costs than benefits from budget resolutions. The critical shortcoming is that, in most years, they only set up the Appropriations Committees to manage its quarter of spending.
The Budget Resolution: A Framework for Congress-led Budgeting
The budget resolution can matter much more than it does. Here’s how:
- Lay a path for members to set the agendas for managing programs in their respective committees.
- Combine budget-resolution-compliant contributions into one budget bill for floor consideration involving many members.
Line item budgets: Getting the budget resolution right is a big part of the Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act. First, it tells committees to include line-item baseline estimates for direct spending programs, which the Budget Committees get from the CBO, along with their plans for the budget cycle in their views and estimates. This strengthens common knowledge about which committees are responsible for which activities.
No breakdown: Second, it avoids stalemate if Congress does not approve a concurrent resolution the budget by April 15: the Budget Chairs must then deem committee spending allocations (“302(a) allocations”) for the budget year from baseline estimates. This maintains the budget resolution as a governance framework by letting members reject one that would venture beyond political reality without blowing up the process.
Ripe opportunity: Third, as another post will explain, committees get to manage their programs within a holistic framework. That radically shifts the budget resolution from an academic or messaging exercise to setting up tangible opportunities to shape policy.
The Budget Resolution’s Role in an Effective Process
Contents: The budget resolution includes overall spending, revenue, deficit, and debt figures, typically for the current fiscal year, the budget year, and the following nine fiscal years. It breaks down spending into “functional categories” like health, veterans affairs, defense, energy, and so on for each year of the budget window, although those categories do not cleanly line up with committee jurisdictions. Reconciliation instructions are optional. The resolution also includes policy statements, budget enforcement tools, and allowances for the Budget chairs to adjust allocations for major policy changes that include multiple committees.
Committee guidance: The committee report converts functional categories in the budget resolution into per-committee spending allocations for the budget year under section 302(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. In a comprehensive budget process, the budget resolution could set revenue floors and require a tax expenditure budget for the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees.
Phasing in or delaying changes often makes sense. Yet extending 302(a) allocations through the entire budget window may be impractical. Instead, the resolution might give committees broad instructions, such as to increase or decrease spending, revenues, or deficits by certain amounts, like a bipartisan and less-rigid version of reconciliation.
Cross-committee coordination: Consider a fiscal year when, for example, the five-year highway bill is due for renewal. A deficit-neutral reserve fund in the budget resolution would let the Budget chairs adjust allocations for the House Transportation and Infrastructure and Ways and Means committees and their Senate counterparts. This would be useful if, say, the transportation committees intend to enact offsetting receipts and collections within their jurisdiction to replace financing sources overseen by House Ways and Means and Senate Finance. The reserve fund would allow the shift and avoid feast for one committee and famine for the other.
Enforceable guardrails: The standards in the budget resolution would bind all committees. When committees send their contributions to the Budget Committees to be bundled for the floor, the Budget Committees could reject non-compliant submissions. Instead, the Budget Committees would insert baseline line-items from the views and estimates, and the non-compliant committee would have to pursue its priorities as one or more floor amendments instead of getting them in the base budget bill.
Conclusion: The budget resolution can be the keystone of an effective Congress
The adjustments noted here can make the budget resolution a solid foundation for congressional budgeting. Such a blueprint would empower members and committees within reasonable guardrails. They would have to color within the lines, but inside that space, they would be free to discover just how far they can develop their legislative and persuasive talents.
Kurt Couchman is a Senior Fiscal Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.
