Keep Government Open Without More Debt

Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 will end on September 30, 2024, and zero of the 12 appropriations bills to fund the government have been signed into law.

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

In a surprise to no one, lawmakers are on the verge of failing to pass appropriations before the start of the next fiscal year in two weeks. This will be the 28th year running that appropriations have not been completed on time – something has to change.

Our budget process continues to deteriorate. It has been 21 years since we had an actual budget in place on time, and it’s the eighth year since we had a real budget at all. Even when there is a budget, there is no fiscal metric to which it must adhere – part of the reason our debt is so out of control. And this will be the sixth year in a row that Congress not only failed to enact all appropriations, but they also failed to enact a single appropriations bill before October 1.

It seems the only time we ever actually get something posing as an actual budget is when lawmakers want to use it to pass partisan reconciliation bills that in recent years almost always end up making the debt worse.

The budget process is utterly and completely broken, and it has been for a long time. We’ve only succeeded in following the process four times since the Budget Act passed 50 years ago. Over that time, the debt has ballooned – reaching nearly the size of the entire economy this year and on course to surpass its record in just three years. It’s hardly surprising that when we fail to budget, we fail to manage our fiscal situation responsibly.

As lawmakers consider a CR this month, they should not use that opportunity to add more to our unsustainable debt. Our country can’t afford to pile on to the already massive debt buildup.

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