Congress Should Vote on the Budget

For Immediate Release

The House Budget Committee passed a budget resolution last week, but lawmakers have not indicated when or if it will come to a vote. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget urges lawmakers to allow a floor vote on this or an alternative budget resolution as soon as possible.

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

If Congress heads home for the fourth of July without a budget – three months after the deadline – they will have abdicated one of their most basic of responsibilities.

In this week’s Long-Term Budget Outlook, the Congressional Budget Office found the debt is on course to nearly double today's level over the next thirty years. Meanwhile, Congress couldn’t even pass a tiny rescission bill cutting 0.002 percent of spending over the next decade. This nation has a dependence on debt that can’t be sustained and is a great threat to our children, and our leaders are doing nothing.    

The House should take a vote on the budget resolution passed out of Committee or else an amended budget. The Senate should come forth with its budget as soon as possible.

A budget doesn’t need to solve all our problems overnight, but at a time of surging, unsustainable and record red ink, there is absolutely no excuse to take a pass on passing a budget at all. A budget is the opportunity for our leaders to lay down their priorities – and if they can’t make the numbers add up, it is a sign they need to reassess those priorities and deal with the trade-offs that real budgeting requires.

Instead of budgeting, Congress spent the past year gorging on debt with unpaid-for tax cuts and spending increases – without regard to generations of Americans who will be saddled by its historic weight with a lower quality of life. The 115th Congress risks going down in the history books as an utter fiscal failure. The least Congress could do is vote on a plan that attempts to make the situation a little bit better.

A nation with no budget is a nation with no future. 

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