Chairman’s News Articles

Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, announced the first release of a new Senate scorekeeping report.  The report will provide regular budgetary updates to promote transparency in federal spending. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 requires Chairmen of House and Senate Budget Committees to provide members of Congress with regular updates on the effects that […]

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) has developed a series of draft budget process reforms. As we’ve explained before, the current budget process is broken. We commend Chairman Enzi’s effort to begin fixing the process, and we encourage policymakers in both parties to work with Chairman Enzi on adopting a better budget process. Chairman Enzi’s latest recommendations build on proposals […]

A national survey of likely voters found a majority of them oppose a taxpayer-funded bailout of ailing union pension plans approved earlier this year by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 53 percent of likely U.S. voters oppose a taxpayer bailout of underfunded union […]

READ the CBO Estimate HERE WASHINGTON—Dozens of seriously under-funded trade union pension plans will not repay millions of dollars in tax-funded government loans intended to help them regain financial integrity and pay promised benefits, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “CBO projects that about one-quarter of the affected pension plans would become insolvent in the […]

READ the CBO Estimate HERE A labor-backed pension rescue measure pushed by House and Senate Democrats would only delay the projected insolvency of some ailing union retirement plans, according to new Congressional Budget Office estimates released at Senate Budget Chairman Michael B. Enzi‘s request. The bill (HR 397) passed the House 264-169 in July with 29 Republicans joining a unified Democratic caucus. […]

The problems with budgeting in the United States are so well-established that one might say the dysfunction has become a feature, not a bug. Legislators do not budget according to any rules — at least not since the mid-1990s. The way the current process is supposed to work – budget, then authorize then appropriate – was established […]

A recent editorial (“Our View: Deficit would be zero if not for tax cuts,” Aug. 11) criticizing tax relief for American families and job creators makes a number of misleading assertions and glosses over uncomfortable facts that we as a nation must confront. Our country is on an unsustainable fiscal course, but this situation did […]

Eakinomics: Pursuing Budget Process ReformGuest authored by Gordon Gray, Director of Fiscal Policy at AAF When President Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 into law on August 2nd, Congress officially cleared the decks of much of its must-do legislating for the next 2 years. Given the dim prospects of serious policymaking during a presidential […]

The problems with the current budget process are legion. The timetables established in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 are rarely met, resulting in government shutdowns, omnibus budget bills, and, with the exception of a handful of years, annual deficit spending.  The abomination known as the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 is the latest illustration […]

Last week, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) released a series of discussion drafts with proposals to reform the federal budget process. The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. So far, this year has featured the longest government shutdown in history and a massive […]

The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Mike Enzi has expressed concern that several NASA programs have suffered severe delays and cost overruns. In open letter to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine dated July 30, the Senator from Wyoming expressed concern that cost overruns and delays of NASA programs “could jeopardize futures missions.” The senator cited […]

Updated 12:30 p.m. Eastern Aug. 4 with response from Bridenstine. WASHINGTON — The chairman of a key Senate committee said he’s “troubled” by cost and schedule growth on major NASA programs and is asking the agency for more information on their status. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Aug. 1 […]

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY), who is retiring after his term ends in 2020, this week unveiled a set of proposals to reform the congressional budget process — among them, remaking the committee he now leads into a Fiscal Control Committee that would include the heads of the appropriations and finance committees as […]

BUDGET CHAIR: SLS, WEBB TELESCOPE ‘RISK VITAL NASA MISSIONS.’ Sen. Mike Enzi, the Wyoming Republican who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, told NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine this week he is “troubled” by cost overruns and delays on several major NASA programs that “put at risk vital NASA missions and taxpayer dollars.” The two main culprits, of […]

The plan includes, among other things, increasing the debt ceiling every two years. On Tuesday, outgoing Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi released a list of proposals he says will overhaul the budget process. Enzi’s plan involves, among other things, making changes to the Senate Budget Committee itself. It would rename it the “Fiscal Control […]

Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) yesterday unveiled a sweeping proposal to overhaul the broken Congressional budget and spending process.

It has been 50 years since we put a man on the moon. But the federal government still can’t provide a comprehensive list of the programs that it runs. A bipartisan group of Senators is trying to change that. In a week full of newsy updates on debt limit and budget cap negotiations – this may actually be the […]

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of Senators led by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., is calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget to publish a full list of all federal programs publicly available on the web to make it easier to identify program waste and duplication. In a letter sent to OMB […]

Washington, D.C. – During a hearing Tuesday on securing the nation’s fiscal future, U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said he hoped the committee would produce bipartisan proposals to fix America’s broken budget and spending process. The Comptroller General for the Government Accountability Office Gene L. Dodaro testified, discussing what […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Mike Enzi wants the Small Business Administration to ensure the Historically Underutilized Business Zones program is fulfilling its mission and improving economic opportunities in distressed communities across the country. In a news release, Enzi said reports showed the HUBZone program funds are going to some of the nation’s wealthiest areas, instead […]

The Senate is coming around to an inevitable conclusion: Emergencies are increasingly common, and Congress should budget better for them. As multibillion-dollar disaster-relief legislation languishes in the upper chamber over aid to Puerto Rico, Senate budgeters and appropriators looking to tackle the deficit and the worst effects of climate change are embracing the idea of regular budgeting […]

The federal deficit in February set a record. It was $234 billion. Up until 2008, annual deficits — those covering twelve months – rarely reached the level of the deficit the federal government just ran for the month of February. The deficit for the first five months of this fiscal year is at $544 billion, […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate panel Thursday approved a GOP budget plan that would curb federal benefit programs by $551 billion over the next five years and reject President Donald Trump’s plan to use budget tricks to pad the Pentagon budget. The Budget Committee approved the nonbinding measure by a party-line vote. The budget plan […]

The Senate Budget Committee on Thursday voted to advance a 2020 budget plan that aims to eat into government spending over a five-year period and hold annual federal deficits under $1 trillion — a level they’re projected to surpass for most of the next decade. Chairman Mike Enzi said the plan is focused on “modest, […]

This week the Senate Budget Committee will consider a budget plan that will reduce deficits by half a trillion dollars over the next five years. The budget does not presume to solve all of our fiscal challenges. We’ve seen past plans with that aspiration, all of which have been ignored within weeks. This time we are calling for Congress to […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior Senate Republican Friday unveiled a five-year budget plan that would modestly curb budget deficits that would otherwise soon breach $1 trillion, while rejecting President Donald Trump’s gimmick of using war funding to sustain big increases for the Pentagon. Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said the nonbinding blueprint is a […]

The Senate Budget Committee will take up Chairman Mike Enzi’s 2020 budget proposal this week, as lawmakers hunt for new ways to turn around a bleak U.S. fiscal picture that just saw the government post its worst monthly deficit ever. February saw the government dip $234 billion deeper into the red, as government spending soared, powered […]