Congress On Track to Miss Budget Deadline for 20th Year in a Row

The statutory deadline for Congress to complete action on a concurrent budget resolution for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 is April 15. The budget process calls for Congress to complete a budget resolution to outline its spending and revenue priorities for the federal budget annually. However, neither chamber has even proposed a budget nor is expected to do so by the deadline, let alone pass a concurrent budget resolution.

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

This year marks two decades that Congress has been unable to meet its basic duty of passing a budget by the April 15 deadline. Unfortunately, this is not very surprising anymore – especially given that the President’s own budget request was over a month late. But budgeting is a fundamental part of governing, and the fact that Congress has not taken this role seriously shows just how broken our budget process has become. Given that debt will soon be larger than the size of the entire economy and is on track to surpass its record in just five years, we ought to know how lawmakers think the government’s finances are faring.

If Congress misses the April 15 deadline, when will they let us know their budgetary plans? We are already over halfway through the current fiscal year, and there’s been little progress on negotiating funding for 2024. Even more alarming, we are nearly three months into the use of so-called extraordinary measures after hitting the debt ceiling in January. We need a plan to prevent default and put our nation’s finances on more sound footing. The President’s budget proposes $3 trillion in savings; lawmakers in both chambers should come together to find compromise of savings of at least that much.

Passing a budget is one of lawmakers’ most basic tasks, and it is absurd that it’s been eight years since we passed one that wasn’t just a vehicle for budget reconciliation bills. It is long past time for lawmakers to do their jobs and put out their budgets.

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For more information, please contact Matt Klucher, Communications Manager, at klucher@crfb.org.