Young authors federal budget legislation

A 10-bill package of legislation intended to reform the federal budget process, including three bills co-authored by Rep. Todd Young, R-9th District, was announced by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday.

The bills are part of a series of legislation being introduced in the aftermath of this summer’s debt ceiling crisis, which brought up questions for many about the process Congress uses to apportion the federal budget to government departments.

“Anyone who has watched the government spending debates over the last year knows there is a better way for Washington to fund our federal government,” Young said in a press release announcing the bills.

The three bills — H.R. 3575, H.R. 3578 and H.R. 3583 — will target passage of a budget, automatic budget increases for inflation and the possibility of government shutdown, respectively. Young worked on the bills as a member of the budget committee in the Republican-controlled House.

The Legally Binding Budget Act, H.R. 3575, would change the federal budget process to require joint resolutions and stricter approval by both houses of Congress and the president with the goal of creating more discussion and collaboration within government, according to the release.

“We just sort of go on auto pilot from the year before,” Young’s
Communication Director Trevor Foughty said. “With this, you can’t leave the appropriations process, and ... it engages the executive branch and gives them a stake in it.”

The Baseline Reform Act, H.R. 3578, would end the policy of automatically increasing department budgets based on inflation rates. Instead, increases would be based on the previous fiscal year’s department spending.

The Government Shutdown Prevention Act, H.R. 3583, is supposed to avoid a federal government shutdown in the event that the House and Senate cannot agree on a budget proposal. Appropriations would decrease over time until the problem is resolved.

However, Lee Hamilton, a former representative for the 9th District and the director of IU’s Center on Congress, said process bills such as these do not productively solve the budget problems facing the country.

“The problem is substantive,” Lee, a Democrat, said. “Members must make hard choices on tough questions.”

He said simply passing legislation to require Congress to act wastes time that could be used for action.

“It’s a very easy thing to say, but when you come down to it, very hard to enforce,” Lee said of the more than 150 process laws he said are working their way through the system. “You set up a supercommittee. That’s a process that in this case did not work.”

For his part, Foughty said he and Young hope this legislation will create the necessity for the tough decisions to be made in Congress.

“The country is headed toward fiscal meltdown,” Hamilton said. “Hard choices have to be made.”