Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Reacts to House Budget Resolution

For Immediate Release

House Budget Committee Chairman Steve Womack (R-AR) introduced today a Chairman’s Mark of the Fiscal Year 2019 budget resolution to be considered and voted on by the full committee. The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

We are pleased the House Budget Committee Chairman has put forward a budget resolution – having a budget is a vital part of governing, and failing to even introduce one would have been a huge mistake.

We are also glad that the proposed budget sets a fiscal goal that would put the debt on a downward path relative to the economy and includes reconciliation instructions to reduce projected deficits by at least $302 billion over the next decade. Reconciliation is one of the most powerful tools in the budget process, and we are very supportive of including these savings in the budget.

These reconciliation instructions are modest enough that they should be achievable with policies that both parties support, though unfortunately they are not nearly enough to solve our unsustainable fiscal situation.

With trillion-dollar deficits about to return and debt on course to exceed the size of the economy in a decade or so, lawmakers must pursue trillions of dollars of deficit reduction to bring the debt under control.

While the budget resolution calls for $8.1 trillion of deficit reduction relative to CBO’s baseline, most of these savings come from rosy economic assumptions or unreconciled and often unrealistic spending cuts. The budget also fails to account for the costs of extending the recent tax cuts or replacing the Affordable Care Act, despite continued efforts to enact these policies.

While we certainly support the effort to achieve substantial deficit reduction, Congress’s credibility is compromised given that tax cuts and spending hikes over this past year are responsible for $450 billion of next year’s nearly trillion-dollar deficit, and will add at least $2.4 trillion to the debt over a decade.

Certainly, passing $302 billion of deficit reduction would represent a step in the right direction, but much more must be done. It is long past time to stop the games and propose real, meaningful solutions that set today’s priorities without leaving future generations with the bill.

Today’s proposed budget should be the beginning of this fiscal process, not the end.

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For more information contact Patrick Newton, press secretary, at newton@crfb.org.