#Budget Process

Many politicians who want to simultaneously receive credit for promoting fiscal responsibility while avoiding the tough decisions required often look for easy solutions. The two most common of these are pledges to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” and to “grow…

Congress has a curious way of doing financial business: It agrees to spend money and then periodically threatens not to pay the resulting bills. It is a bizarre and potentially dangerous political ritual, unique among national governments around the world,…

The federal government’s financial problems are so large that all parts of the budget -- from entitlements to defense spending to tax breaks -- should be considered “on the table” for fiscal reform discussions. Comprehensive, lasting reform will require substantial…

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin warned lawmakers recently that the deadline to raise or suspend the federal debt limit may be sooner than previously thought. The change is due to lower-than-expected tax receipts in April, which is typically the best month of the…

WASHINGTON -- The Concord Coalition expressed disappointment today in President Trump’s first budget proposal, saying it relies on improbable assertions of higher economic growth and unrealistic assumptions about future spending cuts to achieve its goal of balancing the budget in…

Amid all the debate in Washington on health care, taxes and other things, the congressional budget process for the coming year is already behind schedule and seems to have almost been forgotten. Congress has yet to even consider a Fiscal…

WASHINGTON -- The Concord Coalition expressed disappointment today that President Trump’s initial set of budget proposals does not include any deficit reduction or an overall deficit-reduction target for the coming years and focuses only on the third of the budget…

Many Americans are no doubt struggling to understand some of the latest news from Washington about the federal budget. That’s because elected officials in Washington are approaching their work on the Fiscal 2018 budget with some long-unfinished business: They have…