Update: Fiscal Speed Bumps

Congress sped through this year's second and third "Fiscal Speed Bumps" in March, ignoring the return of the statutory debt limit (though the hard deadline for the debt limit is not until this fall, due to the Treasury Department's "extraordinary measures") and hurrying through a fiscally irresponsible, though permanent, solution to the expiration of the Medicare "doc fix." We've updated our Speed Bumps graphic, below, showing lawmakers barreling full speed to the end of May when the Highway Trust Fund will run out of money.

This week, the House and Senate will announce their conferenced budget resolution, which outlines their blueprint for Fiscal Year 2016. The passage of the concurrent budget resolution signals the start of the appropriations process, which must be completed before an October 1 deadline. That deadline also coincides with the expiration of the Ryan-Murray budget deal and the return of sequestration discretionary spending levels. As we wrote last week, the House jumped the gun and has already started work on several appropriations bills in advance of the final resolution.

Instead of waiting until the last minute, lawmakers would be wise to address these deadlines well in advance. In this way, Fiscal Speed Bumps are very similar to our mounting federal debt, which will only become more difficult to solve the further we kick the can down the road.

Read the complete Fiscal Speed Bumps paper here.