Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Serious budgetary challenges await the 109th Con­gress. Federal spending has leaped 23 percent in just three years, the budget process is in tatters, and voters are frustrated with the prospect of large long-term structural budget deficits. Most important, the first baby boomers will collect their first Social Security checks on January 1, 2008—just three years away. Unless spending is brought under control, Americans will face substantial tax increases and a slowing econ­omy that provides fewer jobs and lower incomes. To avoid that fate, this paper charts a responsible, pro-growth spending agenda for the 109th Congress.

Guiding Principles

Principle #1: Spending—Not the Budget Deficit—Is the Problem

The current budget deficit is not harming the econ­omy. According to some, government borrowing sharply drives up interest rates and reduces invest­ment, thus slowing the economy. However, a closer examination reveals little correlation between govern­ment debt and interest rates. The debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio (which is a better way to assess the economic impact of borrowing) currently stands at 40 percent. This is below the post–World War II aver­age of 44 percent (See Chart 2).[1] Government borrow­ing remains modest by historical standards.

However, while the current budget deficit by itself is not alarming, it is a symptom of a much larger problem: runaway spending. All federal spend­ing must be financed by taking resources from the productive sector of the economy, either by collecting more taxes or by borrowing more (which merely postpones the tax increases). Because they damage econ­omies, averting these tax increases should be the main economic focus of lawmakers. The only way to provide long-term tax relief is by reducing long-term spending.

Principle #2: The Budget Process Impedes Responsible Budgeting

Congress remains saddled with an outdated budget process that was created in 1974 to maximize federal spending. Meaningful spending caps are absent, budget resolutions are rarely enforced, and lawmakers can create major new entitlements without proposing any plan to pay for them. The complexity of the budget process guarantees that important decisions are often determined by those who know how to bend the budget rules in their favor.

A rational budget process should help lawmak­ers to set priorities by capping overall spending and to make trade-offs within that framework. It should help lawmakers balance short-term priorities with long-term budget realities. Finally, the budget pro­cess should be simple, understandable, and pro­tected from abuses and loopholes. In short, the budget process should reflect America’s budget pri­orities, rather than undermine them.

Principle #3: Entitlement Reform Is Urgent

As currently projected, Social Security and Medi­care will eventually bankrupt the federal budget. Within a few decades, these programs alone will require either tax increases totaling more than the current equivalent of $10,000 per household or the elimination of every other federal program.

Lawmakers must move quickly on reform. Social Security outlays are already growing 5 percent annually, and Medicare is expanding 9 percent annually. The first baby boomers will retire in 2008, after which costs will accelerate.

By 2018, Social Security will begin to run defi­cits. The Social Security trust fund, which was sup­posed to keep the system solvent, was never funded with any real assets. There is no pile of money to tap into in 2018. Beginning that year, the system will require ever-larger amounts of general revenue to pay the promised benefits.[2]

The longer lawmakers wait to fix these entitle­ment programs, the more difficult and expensive the solutions will be, for two reasons. First, pro­jected steep increases in federal Social Security spending will leave less payroll tax revenue avail­able for personal retirement accounts. Second, the sooner workers can establish personal retirement accounts, the longer their invest­ments will grow, which in a world of compound interest means much larger personal retirement accounts.

Nor can lawmakers continue to ignore skyrocketing Medicare costs. Medicare’s unfunded liability is sub­stantially higher than Social Secu­rity’s unfunded liability, and the new Medicare drug benefit has added an estimated $8 trillion in unfunded costs over the next 75 years.[3] Like Social Security, delaying Medicare reform will only make it more expensive.

What Congress Should Do

To rein in spending, Congress should implement five recommen­dations.

Recommendation #1: Reform
the Budget Process

Congress Should Enact a Federal Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights. Federal spending should be capped by a Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights (TABOR) law that restricts spending increases to the inflation rate plus the population growth rate. Such a limit is not too much to ask within a federal budget that—after a 23 percent expansion in three years—is overflowing with wasteful, outdated, duplicative, and unjusti­fied programs. A TABOR would save taxpayers $4 trillion during the next decade and could be enforced by requiring a two-thirds supermajority to pass the budget resolution or any spending bill that pushes federal spending above the TABOR allow­ance. Such a bar is low enough to clear during a national emergency or war, but high enough to pre­vent abuse. Budget surpluses could be automati­cally split between tax rebates and debt reduction.[4]

Colorado enacted the first TABOR law in 1992. Since then, the state government’s growth rate has been reduced to 3 percent, and taxpayers have received $3.3 billion in tax rebates. By 2002, the average Colorado household was paying $3,729 less in state taxes than if spending had continued growing at its pre-TABOR rate. Since TABOR, Col­orado’s economic growth rate has nearly doubled, job growth has nearly doubled, and per capita incomes have grown 85 percent faster than before the amendment. It is no wonder that after 12 years of experience Colorado residents support TABOR by an overwhelming 3 to 1 margin.

A federal TABOR would require lawmakers to set priorities, reduce wasteful spending, and reform entitlement programs. It would also protect the family budget from the federal budget.

The House of Representatives Should Reform Its Rules. The rules package enacted by Members of the House of Representatives should be designed to enforce budget restraint. Unfortunately, most rules are so easily waived that they have become irrelevant. For example, points of order against House rules violations can be overridden by a simple majority vote, which cre­ates no additional hurdle above the simple majority needed to pass regular legislation. (The Senate often requires a three-fifths vote.) Worse, the Rules Committee often waives these points of order before they even come to the floor. Rules that can be so easily over­ridden cease to be rules. Positive reforms in the House would:

• Require a stand-alone vote to waive each point of order;
• Raise the bar from a simple majority to a three-fifths supermajority to waive points of order; and
• Encourage political parties to require a majority vote within their own party caucuses before proposing to waive a point of order on the House floor.

Once points of order become enforceable enough to be relevant, lawmakers should update the list of violations to include:

• Riders on appropriations bills;
• Funding unauthorized programs;
• Conference reports containing new spending or earmarks that were not in the original House or Senate bill;
• Emergency spending that is not offset by cuts in other spending;
• “Emergency” spending that does not fit a more narrow definition, as determined by the Con­gressional Budget Office or Government Accountability Office; and
• Individual gimmicks such as advanced appro­priations and shifting pay dates.

Other rules reforms could include:

• Expanding the current three-fifths supermajor­ity requirement on tax increases to cover enti­tlement increases and emergency spending that is not offset by spending cuts;
• Requiring roll call votes for bills that will cost more than $50 million per year within five years;
• Imposing six-year term limits on appropriators, similar to the current House Budget Committee term limits;
• Having the majority party elect the appropria­tions committee and subcommittee chairmen during a private party caucus; and
• Providing the Budget Committee chairmen with the authority to stop budget-busting bills (similar to the cross-jurisdictional responsibilities that are already in place for other bills).

Recommendation #2: Reform Social Security and Medicare

Social Security reform cannot wait. (See Chart 3.) Costs are increasing and the first baby boomers are three years from retirement. Additionally, promptly reforming Social Security will be less expensive and lead to personal retirement accounts that are larger because they will have had more time to accumulate. Social Security reform should follow three steps:

First, the federal budget should be prepared for reform by Congress requiring that the President’s budget submission and the congressional budget resolution include data on the long-term unfunded obligations of federal entitlements. This would help clear confusion among lawmakers, reporters, and voters regarding Social Security’s obligations. When reform legislation is introduced, people could see that seemingly “expensive” reforms will actually save money in the long run. Congress could then work to prevent any future legislation increasing the government’s long-term unfunded obligations.

Second, lawmakers should enact legislation clas­sifying any payroll tax dollars that are placed into personal retirement accounts as budget neutral rather than as outlays. Directing money to personal accounts is a transfer of an asset from the Social Security trust fund to a personal account and should not be treated as an expenditure or outlay. Personal accounts will reduce long-term obliga­tions and long-term spending, and the govern­ment’s accounting should reflect that.

Finally, Congress should pass legislation creating Social Security personal accounts.[5]

While Social Security is expected to play a cen­tral role in the 109th Congress, lawmakers should also repeal the Medicare drug benefit, which was enacted without any plan to pay for its huge liabil­ities. Lawmakers should reform the whole pro­gram to curb costs and to increase choice and competition.[6]

Recommendation #3: Stem
Appropriations Growth

Discretionary spending has leaped 37 percent in the past three years. Even after excluding all secu­rity-related spending (e.g., defense, homeland security, and international aid), discretionary spending has surged 24 percent.[7] This guns-and-butter budget is not sustainable. Discretionary appropriations, like mandatory spending, must be pared back to control spending.

This is not as difficult as it may appear. Pro­grams that have received such large increases can afford to be modestly pared back. Even a 10 per­cent cut would still leave discretionary budgets 23 percent above 2001 levels. The lack of spending restraint in recent years has also allowed a substan­tial amount of waste to build up in these programs. Lawmakers can bring discretionary spending under control by:

• Freezing total discretionary appropriations. Congress has done this before. Discretionary spending was essentially frozen from 1994 through 1997, and it could be frozen again (excluding Iraq supplemental bills). Large recent increases create a cushion for many agencies to handle a freeze.
• Budgeting for Iraq and Afghanistan. Law­makers must fund all necessary costs to keep American troops safe and able to fulfill their missions. However, excluding these costs from budget resolutions merely denies that inevita­ble trade-offs must be made between programs. Although the exact costs cannot be predicted, lawmakers should include estimates of these costs within the budget resolution.
• Offsetting all emergency spending not related to Iraq and Afghanistan. Emer­gency spending has become a backdoor way to increase the size of government. Although real emergencies do occur, lawmakers are elected to set priorities and make trade-offs. If emergencies move some spending categories up the priority list, then other spending categories should drop down that list.
• Strengthening budget enforce­ment. As stated earlier in this paper, the current budget process undermines lawmakers seeking to restrain spending. There are no enforceable spending caps, and House rules that limit spending can be waived too easily. Strength­ening enforcement will keep law­makers disciplined and able to make difficult and responsible spending decisions.

Recommendation #4: Rein in Authorizations

Several programs, including some covered by bills held over from the 108th Congress, are sched­uled for reauthorization in 2005—including high­ways and mass transit, higher education, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, child care, Head Start, job training, energy, the Coast Guard, and the Millennium Challenge Account. Lawmakers reauthorizing these bills should:

1. Tightly cap authorizations. Discretionary pro­grams often receive loose spending caps in their reauthorization bills, leaving actual spending lev­els to the appropriators. Yet tighter caps on dis­cretionary authorizations would likely have prevented much of the discretionary spending spree of the past few years. Furthermore, the No Child Left Behind Act displayed how the “high-authorization, low-appropriation” strategy can create a misperception that programs receiving large spending increases are still “underfunded.” Placing a tight cap on all programs is a better strategy. This would include ending the practice of authorizing “such sums as necessary”—which basically means no cap at all.
2. Re-examine the justification for each pro­gram. President Ronald Reagan once pointed out that “a government bureau is the closest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” A large portion of the current federal bureau­cracy was created during the 1900s, 1930s, and 1960s in attempts to solve the unique problems of those eras. However, instead of replacing the outdated programs of the past, each period of government activism has added a layer of new programs on top of the old programs. Instead of just assuming that the old programs still fill some important need, lawmakers should ask themselves: If this program did not exist, would I vote to create it? They should also use the checklist in the box on the next page.
3. Scrutinize committee bills. Lawmakers should also keep in mind that authorizing committees are often populated by members with dispro­portionate interests in expanding that commit­tee’s programs. Consequently, the full House and Senate must scrutinize spending legislation emerging from authorizing committees and ensure that each bill’s spending projections are in line with Congress’s overall spending frame­work for the next several years.
4. Require roll call votes. Finally, lawmakers should require a full roll call vote on any legis­lation that would authorize $50 million or more in any one of the next five years. Voice votes remove constituents’ ability to hold their lawmakers accountable for their decisions.

Recommendation #5: Eliminate
Wasteful Spending

There is no shortage of waste in the federal bud­get. It has been 20 years since the Grace Commis­sion audited the federal government. In that time, wasteful spending has continued to grow without any serious oversight from lawmakers. Out of the thousands of federal programs, only one program of significance has been eliminated since President George W. Bush took office.[8] Wasteful and unnec­essary programs generally fall into at least one of six categories:

1. Outdated, irrelevant, or failing to produce results;
2. Inefficiently implemented;
3. Best left to the private sector;
4. Best left to state and local governments;
5. Duplicates other federal programs; and
6. Targeted to those who do not need the assis­tance (e.g., corporate welfare).

A recent Heritage Foundation analysis identified nearly 500 programs meeting at least one of these criteria.[9] Many programs meet several of them. Before moving onto the more difficult spending decisions, lawmakers should first reduce wasteful spending by:

1. Establishing a “base closure commission” on wasteful programs. To make it easier for Members of Congress to eliminate programs, Congress should appoint a commission, simi­lar to the Pentagon’s successful base closure commissions of the late 1980s. This commis­sion would create a list of all wasteful, out­dated, duplicative, and unnecessary programs that should be eliminated. Lawmakers would then be required to vote up or down (without amendment) on whether or not to eliminate all of the programs on the list. This would prevent lawmakers from protecting their pet special interests, and the large savings should justify each lawmaker’s vote to give up one or two special-interest subsidies. Senator Sam Brown­back (R–KS) and Representative Todd Tiahrt (R–KS) have already co-written such legisla­tion, and Representative Kevin Brady (R–TX) has introduced a similar bill.[10]
2. Requiring committees to eliminate entitle­ment waste. The fiscal year 2004 budget reso­lution required each committee to identify wasteful spending totaling 1 percent of their entitlement program spending.[11] Lawmakers who allow these reports to collect dust are, in effect, condemning Americans to unnecessarily high taxes for inefficient services. The FY 2006 budget resolution should contain reconciliation instructions requiring each committee to reduce its 10-year mandatory budgets by 1 per­cent. If lawmakers lack the will to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse—at a mere penny on the dollar—there is little hope that they will undertake the larger reforms necessary to get the budget under control.
3. Freezing non-security programs that cannot pass an audit. Programs that cannot pass a simple audit should not be rewarded with spending increases. Requiring a clean audit to receive a spending increase will motivate agen­cies to get their finances in order. In addition, these audits may yield enough savings to more than offset whatever spending increase they were denied in the process. It is a win-win for taxpayers, federal agencies, and the recipients of federal services.

Conclusion

Economic growth rates, incomes, jobs, and low taxes are all jeopardized by runaway federal spend­ing. Lawmakers must set priorities and begin mak­ing trade-offs in order to bring spending under control. Fixing the budget process, reforming Social Security, holding the line on spending, and reducing government waste should be high priori­ties for any lawmaker who wants to protect the family budget from the federal budget.

Brian M. Riedl is Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Insti­tute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.