Issue Position: Budget-Pay as you Go

Issue Position

Statutory PAYGO was first put in place with bipartisan support by the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, and was renewed on a bipartisan basis in 1997. The statute expired in 2002 and was not reauthorized by the Republican majority in Congress.

On February 12, 2010, President Obama signed House Joint Resolution 45 into law, as P.L. 111-139.

Title I of this law is referred to as the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, which establishes a new budget enforcement mechanism generally requiring that direct spending and revenue legislation enacted into law not increase the deficit.

As a budget enforcement tool, the new statutory PAYGO process is aimed at preventing, or at least discouraging, net deficit increases arising from the enactment of direct spending and revenue legislation.

When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Budget Enforcement Resolution on July 1, 2010, Statutory PAYGO and the House Rules on PAYGO were harmonized. PAYGO was in place in the 1990's when Congress achieved not only a balanced budget, but produced surpluses, and it is critical to have PAYGO in place for us to do the same again today.

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