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1 1 (February 2018)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiaasp0001 and id is 1 raw text is: The Congressional Budget Process: A Brief Primer By James C. Capretta February 2018 The executive and legislative branches of the federal government have separate budget processes, reflecting their coequal status in our constitutional structure. The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 established the institutions and procedures that guide budgetary decisions in Congress. The budget process has been amended in several important ways since 1974, including with the introduction of caps for appropriated spending and a pay-as-you-go rule for taxes and entitlements, both of which are enforced with automatic cuts in spending if they are violated. The current process was written for a time when appropriations spending was dominant; it does not work as well with so much of the federal budget devoted to spending that occurs automatically on entitlement programs. Further, the current process does not facilitate executive-legislative agreement on budgetary aggregates, which is an important reason for instability and uncertainty in federal finances. The current congressional budget process is not working in important ways. Among the many signs of dysfunction is Congress' regular inability to pass funding measures to keep the government open and operating. The lapse in funding that occurred from January 20 to January 22, 2018, was the 19th time since 1976 that political leaders have failed to provide an appropriation to keep the full government, or part of it, open and operating for some period of time (Matthews 2018). Further, the federal government's fiscal position has eroded substantially in recent years and will get much worse in the years ahead as population aging and rising health costs push up spending obligations. The impending and further steep deterioration in the government's fiscal outlook, which is now immi- nent, has been long anticipated, and yet politicians from both parties continue to rather easily avoid addressing it. A brief examination of how the current congress- ional budget process came to look as it does today can serve as a useful starting point for considering what might be done to change current procedures to encourage better budgetary decision-making by political leaders. What follows is a brief overview of the current congressional budget process, focusing on the origins of the two primary laws establishing budgetary procedures for the executive and legis- lative branches, the role of the congressional budget resolution, the relationship of authorization legis- lation to appropriations, the appropriations process, continuing resolutions and government shutdowns, budget reconciliation legislation, the Byrd rule in the Senate, the timeline established in the law for the budget process, the introduction of discretionary

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