WASHINGTON —
The Concord Coalition said today that the
Conrad-Feingold-Domenici bipartisan budget enforcement amendment provides a
strong and needed dose of fiscal discipline. It sets new discretionary spending
caps for two years at tough but achievable levels, extends the pay-as-you-go (paygo)
requirement for entitlement expansions and tax cuts, and renews important points
of order that enforce discipline.
WASHINGTON —
The Concord Coalition said today that the
Conrad-Feingold-Domenici bipartisan budget enforcement amendment provides a
strong and needed dose of fiscal discipline. It sets new discretionary spending
caps for two years at tough but achievable levels, extends the pay-as-you-go (paygo)
requirement for entitlement expansions and tax cuts, and renews important points
of order that enforce discipline.
The rapidly deteriorating budget outlook
highlights the importance of this amendment. With sudden speed, budget deficits
are back and for the first time in several years there is no clear agreed upon
fiscal goal. As a result, open-ended budgeting is back. Rather than setting
priorities and making hard choices, Congress and the President are falling back
on an old habit – cut taxes, increase spending, eat up the Social Security
surplus, and run up the debt. It’s a dangerous path to follow when looming just
beyond the artificial 10-year budget window are the huge unfunded retirement and
health care costs of the coming senior boom.
Restoring a sense of fiscal discipline — and
eventually returning to non-Social Security surpluses — is a very difficult
challenge. It is virtually impossible without the type of enforcement mechanisms
established in this amendment.
With the discretionary spending caps, paygo, and
vital enforcement points of order scheduled to expire, the choice for
policymakers is whether to extend the current mechanisms — and thus maintain a
measure of fiscal discipline — or to simply let the entire budget enforcement
framework expire and be left with renewed deficits and no mechanism for
enforcing fiscal discipline.
In Concord’s view the choice is clear. Allowing
caps, paygo, and 60-vote points of order to expire is an open invitation to
fiscal chaos. The Concord Coalition strongly commends and supports this
bipartisan effort to restore fiscal discipline to the budget process.
