The last time the budget process as outlined by the 1974 Budget Act was done by design
and on time, that is, regular order, was 1995.
Normal today are continuing resolutions or major omnibus packages and constant threats
of a government shutdown.
That's not what the framers intended.
It's not what we should be doing, so we're going to have to enact some changes to that
process in order for it to work for the American people.
So in 1974, it was determined by the Congress that it needed a more defined process, a process
that, that could somewhat guarantee that the funding of the government could actually take
place.
And that's the blueprint that we've been operating on now for over 40 years, that 1974 Budget
Act.
So budgets are visionary documents.
They're, in many cases today, messaging documents for the party in power.
Appropriations are what actually fund the inner workings of government that we deal
with on an annual basis.
But the budget resolution is designed to take the, the total budget picture, both mandatory
and discretionary spending, and calculate based on certain baselines and economic outlooks,
what spending is gonna look like not only in a given year, but in a ten-year budget
window.
Appropriations are the dollars out of the federal budget that go to fund what we call
the discretionary programs of government, which is the government that is closest to
the people.
It's how we fund national security.
It's how we fund the National Institute of Health.
It's how we fund national parks.
If you can't agree to spending levels in a given appropriations year, uh, then often
times you will revert to the CR, the continuing resolution, which is merely a snapshot of
the funding from the previous approved budget and appropriations legislation.
The problem with continuing resolutions, you are basically funding the government and those
programs based on priorities from previous years, and not the current, urgent needs of
the country.
Omnibus spending packages happen as a result of Congress' inability to move 12 different
appropriations bills through both chambers of Congress.
Part of the problem is the calendar.
Part of the problem is the fact that because of the uniqueness of the Senate rules, it
is very difficult, at least in contemporary memory, to be able to move 12 individual appropriations
bills across the floor of the Senate, uh, so that they can ready to go to conference
with the House.
Probably the most noteworthy problem about the way the process works today is that too
many times the decisions about how much we're going to spend on these programs, discretionary
programs, is kicked up to leadership.
That the Congress can't decide, and so because we're running out of time, we ask the majority
and minority leaders of both the House and the Senate to meet, maybe engage the White
House, and see if a handful of people sitting at a table can come up with those numbers
with which the Congress can go ahead and write their appropriations bills.
That's not the way this process was designed.
Saving this country from itself is gonna require political will and political courage, because
there are gonna be some tough choices ahead for us to right this ship in terms of the
fiscal glide path that we're on today.