Senator: I’m fed up with the federal budget and you should be too | Commentary

Many Americans, including myself, are disappointed in the federal government’s budget process and frustrated with short-term funding fixes, known as a Continuing Resolution.

There is a solution to stop this madness and laws that would prevent potential shutdowns. We don’t need to form more committees, and we don’t need new legislation to solve our nation’s current debt crisis.

The White House and Congress just need to follow the existing laws and execute our constitutional duties.

The Budget Act of 1974 provides that guidance and specifically mandates a budget to be submitted by the president by the first Monday of February.

Unfortunately, this year, President Joe Biden sent his over a month late, with no legal consequences.

Like many presidents before him, the White House budget deadline has hardly been followed, and this seems to be the rule and not the exception.

And it’s not just the White House that has ignored this law. Congress has not fully followed the intent of the Budget Act since 1997.

The Budget Act sets a target date of April 15 for the Senate and the House to adopt a budget resolution — a target that has only been met by Congress four times since 1985, most recently in 2004.

Repeatedly, our government has not been following the rules and has had no accountability or consequence for the wasted taxpayer dollars. A budget resolution is now seldom even considered and instead is skirted around in Washington, D.C., with some legal maneuvering. By skipping this important step, we enable this broken budgeting and empower the D.C. insiders.

After the budget resolution is passed, over the next two months, the 12 sub-committees on the Appropriations Committees in both the Senate and the House dive into the spending requests and separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Appropriations Committee has budgeting authority and puts together 12 spending bills, setting levels for funding of government agencies and programs. Next, the bills go through an amendment process at the full committee level.

In a perfect world, the House would then lead by placing the 12 appropriations bills, like 12 buckets of funding, on the floor one at a time for a vigorous amendment process in the light of day.

It is here where America would see the poison pills and wasted spending on live TV. The public would also get to watch the votes taken and expose those who choose to bow to special interest groups, earmarks, and bridges to nowhere.

As these are approved one by one on the House side, they can then move over to the Senate.

Again, one at a time, the Senate would consider each bill and once more face a full debate with a vigorous amendment process with an up or down vote on each amendment, with the goal being that the pork spending will be exposed and discarded. This is where the tough votes occur, the tough decisions, with sunlight as a disinfectant.

The final proposals should be cleared by June 30, giving us three months to spare before a new fiscal year starts on October 1.

This road map would provide certainty and better, more efficient execution of the national budget and taxpayer dollars.

This should be the expectation for Congress. Leadership, especially the White House, must be held accountable and demand the process be followed and the deadlines be met.

In short, we need to execute a relatively simple budgeting timeline, plan, and deliver. Just as our nation’s small businesses, churches, schools, and beyond do when they manage their books and review their spending levels to ensure they are in the black.

It’s also important to remind everyone that only one-third of the federal budget is impacted by this budgeting process, while two-thirds of the budget is mandatory spending that stays at set levels regardless of whether Washington D.C. does its job or whether our government is shut down. Social Security, Medicare, and Veteran Benefits are rightfully protected, and those spending levels continue even during a government shutdown.

As a final thought, by not following the Budget Act of 1974 — and ignoring its importance as Washington has done for decades - the full power of the purse, a right vested in the whole of Congress by the Constitution, is placed into the hands of half a dozen lawmakers.

It also enables special interest groups and lobbyists to secretly cram all sorts of ill-advised, wasteful spending on the backs of hard-working Americans.

Make no mistake about it: going back to this regular order will be painful, but for the sake of future generations, it’s worth the fight.