07.13.16

Enzi: Time to Unstick Washington’s Budget Gridlock

WASHINGTON D.C. – Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, today highlighted bipartisan, common sense solutions to fix America’s broken budget process that Enzi said will place the country on a better, more sustainable fiscal path.

“America’s budget process is broken, and it is preventing Congress from tackling the pressing fiscal challenges facing our country,” said Chairman Enzi.  “The current budget process is designed only to spend and fails hardworking taxpayers. What America really needs is a budget process built to save. The last time Congress reformed the budget process was in 1974. Times have changed and the 40-year old process has only grown more dysfunctional and antiquated. It is time to unstick the budget gridlock that has gripped Washington in recent years, and begin to put our nation on not just another path, but a better path.”

Enzi highlighted the following proposals as bipartisan, common sense solutions to fix the budget process:

  • Bipartisan Improvements to Budget Procedures - Make congressional budgets easier to pass and harder to ignore. Encourage regular order in the normal funding process. Improve congressional oversight of previously enacted taxes and spending.
  • Modernize Government’s Outdated Accounting Concepts - Update and improve the rules that determine the accuracy and quality of the budget information Congress receives.
  • Address America’s Long-Term Debt Crisis - Create long-term, enforceable fiscal targets with guideposts along the way that ensure revenues and spending are moving in the right direction. Create a BRAC-style commission to recommend to Congress policy options that will achieve those targets.
  • Add Predictability to Appropriations - Move to a biennial spending cycle to provide federal agencies, businesses, and the American people with certainty and predictability.

The full list of bipartisan solutions can be viewed at Budget.Senate.Gov/BetterBudget

 

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