Deficit-Reducing Reconciliation Is Just What We Need

Earlier today, a group of 28 Members of Congress signed a letter to incoming Congressional leadership recommending a two-step reconciliation process in the 119th Congress, with the first reconciliation bill focusing on border and immigration-related provisions and the second focusing on extensions for the expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Importantly, for both reconciliation bills, the signing Members point to the need to more than offset the costs and achieve deficit reduction in the process.

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

We could not agree more that reconciliation should be deficit reducing. It should not only include measures that offset any new policies, it should include additional offsets to reduce borrowing. Furthermore, a reconciliation bill should be scored as deficit reducing by the official scorekeepers, before factoring in any gains from economic growth, which ideally will be reserved for deficit reduction.

We are encouraged by these Members standing up for the principle of fiscal responsibility. The next few years present a tremendous opportunity to right our fiscal ship, including the potential savings recommended by the DOGE effort. As we’ve said before and pointed out recently with our Budget Offsets Bank, there are trillions of potential savings throughout the government, and we ought to take advantage of a good economy to put these savings in place.

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For more information, please contact Matt Klucher, Assistant Director for Media Relations, at klucher@crfb.org.