The House Budget Committee released a working paper on possible ways to reform the federal budget process. The paper follows a hearing the Committee held earlier this summer that examined alternative approaches that Congress could adopt to ensure a more efficient and effective budgeting process (see Memo, 7/11). Congress has passed a budget resolution only seven times in the last 15 fiscal years.
The paper focuses on four particular methods of budgeting: performance-based budgeting, portfolio budgeting, capital budgeting, and zero-based budgeting.
In the paper’s opening, the Committee points to what it perceives as flaws in the current budget process: "The Federal budget today is viewed principally on a cash basis that measures priorities mainly by how much Congress spends on them in the present. It does not contain a systematic means of applying measures of program and agency performance to budgetary decisions. It does not comprehensively evaluate the full range of policies employed to achieve national goals. It does not distinguish between spending for immediate consumption and spending with longer-term benefits. Its process begins by assuming the legitimacy of the previous year’s spending levels rather than forcing Congress to justify programs in each budget cycle.”
Read the working paper at: http://bit.ly/2bCv3AF