The Concord Coalition today is heartily welcoming the announcement by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) and Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-PA) that they are launching a bipartisan budget process reform effort.
“The budget process is broken and the best way to fix it is through bipartisan dialogue. It is very encouraging that Chairman Arrington and Ranking Member Boyle recognize the problem and are willing to take the lead in finding solutions that will produce more informed, thoughtful and far-sighted decisions,”said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of The Concord Coalition.
“Budget process reform is not a substitute for a serious plan to address the significant fiscal challenges facing the nation. However, common-sense reforms to the budget process can turn lawmakers’ attention to the kinds of long-term planning and strategic discussion that may yield true fiscal reform. Lurching from crisis to crisis, as has become common, is not budgeting. It is chaos. The budget process should be an important financial planning tool. It should facilitate delineation between “needs” and “wants”—to reflect on what our national priorities should be and how to fund them, and then reveal that information to the voting public. It should also look beyond the upcoming fiscal year and reveal trends in spending and revenues in the outyears that help lawmakers identify emerging problems in time to craft timely policy solutions. With our national debt topping $32 trillion and counting, there is no better time than now to have this discussion. The Concord Coalition stands ready to help in any way we can,” Bixby said.
