Our Budget Process
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, this is a long-term issue. This is not something new. I am amazed at the number of times I run into people in Oklahoma who say: Why can't we seem to get the budget done now? What has happened?
I have said: Let's back up for just a second. Since 1974 we have done a budget and done it correctly four times total. The Congressional Budget Act was created right after Watergate, in 1974, to try to create this more transparent process. What they created was a process so incredibly difficult to work with that it has worked four times since 1974. We have only had 2 years since 1974 when we haven't had a single CR. That is a continuing resolution. This body just passed another continuing resolution, meaning the appropriations process won't be done on time again this year. That was settled today.
The issues we face with budgeting are not new. It has been 20 years since we had no CR at all. This constant issue of putting the big budget issues off and trying to figure out how we are going to navigate through the Senate procedures and get the budget done has to stop. At some point we have to have a determination to say that we can't just keep saying: Next year this will improve; next year this will improve.
We are not going to get a better product until we get a better process. We have a very bad process right now, and we need to admit it is a bad process.
What I am proud of is that there are multiple Members of this body-- from the leadership of the Budget Committee through the freshmen who are brandnew Senators--who are all focused on the same thing. Let's solve how we do budgeting and actually get to a better product by improving the process. What do we have? We have almost $20 trillion in debt, and everyone argues about what we are going to do on a few things to try to do management, but no one is really talking about how we actually get us back to balance and paying off the debt.
It is a common conversation I have with people in Oklahoma.
This is a conversation where people say: Can we ever get this resolved? Is it too late?
On the whole, Americans believe nothing will get better in Washington, DC, dealing with the budget, and their question is this: When and how does it get better? I wish I could give them a lot of hope on that.
What I typically tell people is this: Let's just do a ``for instance.'' Right now, let's take the balanced budget piece that we had and that we put out earlier this year. It actually took 10 years and chipped away at the deficit. In 10 years we chipped away at it and got back to a balance where we had no deficit that year. It was balanced.
Then let's say the next year we actually had a $50 billion surplus. It would be a pretty good surplus. So we chip away and in 10 years get to balance. The next year we have a $50 billion surplus.
Do you know how long it would take us to pay off our debt if we had a $50 billion surplus? If we had a $50 billion surplus every year for 460 years in a row, we would pay off our debt--460 years in a row of $50 billion surpluses and we can get on top of this. Everyone says that is unreasonable. I would say it is certainly unreasonable if we don't change the way we do our process. It just continues to get worse.
There are some basic things we can do. We can do budgeting every 2 years. People may say: Well, how does that solve anything? Well, that is predictability and planning. It creates greater oversight.
Right now we do this every single year. In the speed of what has to be done, how it has to be done, there is very little oversight on our spending. We could actually put all the areas we have in spending--all accountable, every year.
Right now there is about 25 percent to 30 percent of our budget with the appropriations process that we actually focus on every year. The rest of it is on autopilot, and it is never touched.
Until we get everything in front of everybody every year to be able to look at it for oversight, we are not going to solve the big issues.
We have to deal with what are called budget gimmicks.
I have been at war with a budget gimmick called CHIMPS. It is my favorite of the gimmicks. There are a lot of them out there. It stands for ``changes in mandatory programs,'' or CHIMPS. The changes in mandatory programs is a budget gimmick out there that says we were planning to spend this much--when we really weren't, but on paper it said we were--and then instead we said: No, we are not going to spend that much this year so we will spend it on something else.
But guess what. The next year they come back to the exact same dollars again and say: No, we are planning this year to do it, but we are really not, and so we will to spend it on something else.
It just adds debt every year. We will have billions of dollars of CHIMPS built into our budget and claim that the deficit is even lower than it is. It is not. It is just this budget gimmick, and in real dollars it makes it even bigger. We have to deal with those budget gimmicks in there and be able to take that away so that when the appropriations process is done you get real numbers. The hardest thing to get in DC is the real number. So you have to deal with all these gimmicks out there to remove those. You get a longer time period to be able to plan and create some certainty, but one of the key things we have to have is an actual deadline. This town doesn't function on anything other than deadlines and pressure points. When it is time that it actually has to be resolved, we get it resolved. But if we don't have to resolve it right now, this town just says: Tomorrow. We will get it done next week. We will get it done next session.
The focus is how do we actually create those pressure points? How about a simple idea that says that if we don't get the budget done on time--the appropriations bills done on time--then it goes to an automatic CR so we don't have a government shutdown, because government shutdowns just waste money on the whole? It automatically kicks in to last year's budget amount. But here is what changes. All of the Members of Congress, our budget, our staff for how we function, our operating expenses, all of our committees, and the Executive Office of the White House--that is the three groups. From both the House and the Senate and the White House, all of our budgets drop immediately. Let's say 4 percent, 5 percent, 6 percent the first day and then it does that for 30 days. Then, if you still don't have the appropriations process, it cuts again another big percentage. It puts the pressure where the pressure needs to be. It is not the fault of the agencies or the American people that the job wasn't done. It lies squarely in the House, the Senate, the White House, and our negotiations for not getting it done on time.
It is a simple mechanism to say: If the task has not been done, put the pressure where the pressure needs to be--the cuts in the House, the Senate, and on the White House. Push all of us to the table and get it resolved.
The goal is to do appropriations in a transparent process so the American people can see how their money is being spent and to be able to do it wisely and to be able to create a process where you can actually solve the problem.
Currently, we don't have a process that solves the problem. This magically doesn't balance the budget. It still takes hard decisions, but it at least creates a format where we could solve the problem.
Right now, we don't even have that.
In step one, like an AA group, let's at least admit there is a problem. There is a problem.
In step two, let's get to work on fixing it and actually resolve the process. Then let's actually get to work balancing this and paying off our debt.
I appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk about this issue.
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