Maya MacGuineas: The Biggest Budget Deadline No One Has Heard Of
Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. She recently wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, an excerpt of which is below.
Lawmakers have a hugely consequential fiscal decision in the next couple of days: what to do about the plan to eliminate the $1.7 trillion PAYGO bill that just got snuck into the continuing resolution. Never heard of it? You are not alone.
Theoretically, we should be hitting a huge sequester early next year that results from excessive government borrowing. Letting it hit would lead to such large cuts they actually cannot be implemented as designed, so something has to change.
But choosing simply to bypass the sequester as Congress is contemplating would be reckless given our overstretched fiscal condition. Odds are about 97% Congress chooses option two, as it routinely does.
Nonetheless, with the country facing trillion-dollar interest payments annually, skittish Treasury markets, and fiscal warnings from everyone from the International Monetary Fund to CEOs of some of the largest companies in the world, now would be a good time to change that habit. The incoming administration is laying out some big plans for debt reduction; this would be the perfect place for at least a modest start.
Read the entire piece here.
Published works by members or staff of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget do not necessarily reflect the views of all members or staff of the Committee.
