{"id":2266,"date":"2026-07-01T13:11:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2266"},"modified":"2026-07-01T13:11:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:11:37","slug":"is-it-finally-time-for-congress-to-fix-our-broken-budget-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2266","title":{"rendered":"Is it finally time for Congress to fix our broken budget process?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The federal government spent $7 trillion last year \u2014 roughly $222,000 per second.\u00a0\u00a0It borrowed nearly $2 trillion of that, adding to a national debt that now exceeds the size of the entire U.S. economy.\u00a0\u00a0And the interest bill alone, the tab just for past borrowing, consumed nearly $1 trillion last year.\u00a0\u00a0That is more than triple what CBO projected just four years earlier.<\/p>

Read more Mamdani sets his sights on Colorado<\/a><\/p>\n

This happened by design \u2014 the design of a federal budget process that systematically rewards spending and punishes restraint.<\/p>\n

The framework governing how Congress spends your money was designed in 1974, the era of ABBA, bell-bottoms, and rotary phones.\u00a0\u00a0It was Congress\u2019s answer to perceived executive overreach.\u00a0\u00a0In stripping the president of impoundment authority, the ability to refuse to spend money Congress appropriated, it removed one of the few practical brakes on runaway expenditure.<\/p>\n

Budget resolutions are routinely delayed or abandoned.\u00a0\u00a0Appropriations bills get crammed into massive, last-minute omnibus packages negotiated in the dark.\u00a0\u00a0Continuing resolutions, once a last resort, have become standard operating procedure.<\/p>\n

Federal spending last year was nearly 58 percent higher than in fiscal year 2019.\u00a0\u00a0That is a structural failure, one baked into the process itself.<\/p>\n

This is not a new problem.\u00a0\u00a0When I worked on Capitol Hill in the late 1990s, federal revenues were the highest share of GDP since World War II.\u00a0\u00a0Real GDP growth hit four percent or better five times in six years, and a dot-com boom filled federal coffers.\u00a0\u00a0A Republican Congress shaped by the Gingrich revolution deserves real credit for holding the line on spending.\u00a0\u00a0We had surpluses.\u00a0\u00a0But James Miller, President Reagan\u2019s OMB director, and I argued at the time that the budget process itself deserved little credit.\u00a0\u00a0It had not become disciplined; it had simply gotten lucky.\u00a0\u00a0When the luck ran out, the process had no structural brakes to slow what came next.<\/p>\n

To understand just how broken things are, recall what then\u2013House Budget chairman John Yarmouth was caught on tape saying in 2021: \u201cWe don\u2019t have to balance our checkbook.\u00a0\u00a0We are like the banker in Monopoly.\u00a0\u00a0We create the money.\u00a0\u00a0We hand out the money everyone else plays the game with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, this is not a fringe view. It is the operating philosophy that produced $9.1 trillion in cumulative deficits over the last five years.<\/p>\n

Against that backdrop, bipartisan legislation introduced by Representatives Steve Womack (R-Ark.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) deserves serious attention.<\/p>\n

would shift Congress to a biennial budget framework, establish a bipartisan fiscal commission tasked with reducing the annual deficit to 3 percent of GDP within ten years, require budget resolutions to include debt and deficit metrics, and mandate a televised Comptroller General hearing on the nation\u2019s long-term fiscal outlook.<\/p>\n

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, called it: \u201cProcess reform alone can\u2019t solve these problems, but it can make the hard choices just a little bit easier.\u201d<\/p>

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She is right.\u00a0\u00a0But the emphasis belongs on \u201calone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commissions recommend.\u00a0\u00a0Congress decides.\u00a0\u00a0And Congress has a long history of deciding to do nothing.<\/p>\n

The Super Committee of 2011 is instructive: serious people, serious proposals, serious failure.<\/p>\n

A commission is only as good as the enforcement mechanism behind it.\u00a0\u00a0This bill\u2019s commission needs real triggers, real consequences, and a mandate that cannot be shelved when the politics gets uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

The harder problem remains mandatory spending and interest costs \u2014 the fastest-growing parts of the budget, and the ones this bill largely delegates to the commission.\u00a0\u00a0Any reform that ultimately sidesteps mandatory spending is not a complete reform.<\/p>\n

What the bill does well is create architecture for honest deliberation.\u00a0\u00a0It treats fiscal resources as scarce rather than infinite.\u00a0\u00a0It forces some transparency on the true costs of what Congress decides.\u00a0\u00a0That is more than Washington has managed in fifty years.<\/p>\n

But process reform, however well designed, has limits.\u00a0\u00a0Rules that one Congress enacts, another can waive.\u00a0\u00a0Caps without constitutional backing are suggestions.\u00a0\u00a0The ultimate constraint on federal spending may require something more durable than statute, and Congress should be honest with the American people about that.<\/p>\n

CBO director Phillip Swagel warns that the country is caught in \u201ca slow spiral of rising debt and rising payments on the debt.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The word \u201cslow\u201d should not be mistaken for \u201cmanageable.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0And spirals do not stop on their own.<\/p>\n

The 1974 budget process had a long run.\u00a0\u00a0Fifty years is long enough.\u00a0\u00a0The Budgeting for a Better America Act is a credible first step.\u00a0\u00a0But a first step is valuable only if the next ones follow, with enforcement, with mandatory spending on the table, and with the candor to tell Americans that the money their government spends is not Monopoly money.<\/p>\n

The longer Washington pretends otherwise, the worse the spiral gets.<\/p>\n

James Carter is principal and policy director at Navigators Global.\u00a0\u00a0He served as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush and chief economist of the Senate Budget Committee and headed President Trump’s tax transition team in 2016\u201317.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Read more The economics behind Mamdani\u2019s rent freeze fantasy<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"<p><em>ImagePicryl.” class=”wp-image-339″ width=”640″ height=”531″ \/><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Image via Picryl.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The federal government spent $7 trillion last year \u2014 roughly $222,000 per second.\u00a0\u00a0It borrowed nearly $2 trillion of that, adding to a national debt that now exceeds the size of the entire U.S. economy.\u00a0\u00a0And the interest bill alone, the tab just for past borrowing, consumed nearly $1 trillion last year.\u00a0\u00a0That is more than triple what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[939,49],"tags":[940],"class_list":["post-2266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budget","category-economy","tag-related-topics-budget-national-debt"],"yoast_head":"\nIs it finally time for Congress to fix our broken budget process? - Interstate Logistics Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2266\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is it finally time for Congress to fix our broken budget process? 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