Under the leadership of U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the House Budget Committee released a working paper on Tuesday outlining needed reforms to the budget process.
The working paper is part of ongoing efforts by committee members to overhaul the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to restore congressional oversight of government spending.
The working paper, which followed a hearing held in June, pertains to automatic federal spending, which now accounts for two-thirds of the federal budget. The paper also addresses unauthorized programs, which accounted for $310 billion in fiscal year 2016 alone.
“The prevalence of automatic spending in the federal budget threatens to overwhelm fiscal policy and the economy,” the paper states. “More than two-thirds of federal spending (including interest payments) runs on effectively permanent authorizations, and Congress sets no limits on the totals. This form of spending, mostly for the government’s entitlement programs, is the sole cause of spending growth as a share of the economy, and the main contributor to the government’s mounting debt…. A central aim of a new budget process must be to gain control of the government’s automatic spending.”
The working paper details six key areas that must addressed – the dominance of automatic spending, spending and debt, trends in automatic spending programs, existing controls on automatic spending, proposed additional controls on automatic spending, and unauthorized spending.