If you Google “Obama no budget” you will get many hits on these complaints. Similarly, there were many complaints about the deficit and US debt. Now that Republicans have solid majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency, I expected to see some serious conservative fiscal policy. Is it happening? Am I missing it? I heard that the US debt is crossing the 20 trillion mark this month, but I have not seen much hand wringing on the right about this milestone. Are they waiting for the tax overhaul to address this problem? Or maybe when they tackle infrastructure?
There were many complaints that Obama never passed a budget. Now with solid R leadership, have they?
Even if Congress does get a budget passed, don’t forget 45 has been threatening to not sign unless it covers that boondoggle vanity project for our southern border.
In 2009-2016, Obama never passed a budget. Now, Obama hasn’t passed a budget in 2017, either. So it’s all the Democrats’ fault. Will Obama never pass a budget?
I was under the impression that it was congress that was supposed to pass a budget, not the president. And as Dick Chaney famously said, “deficits don’t matter.” Except when Democrats are in power, of course.
Probably this, mostly. Of course when taxes for the wealthiest are drastically cut, that magically Increases Demand, so that the economy grows and the taxes levied on the poors result in revenues so gigantic that we’ll forget there ever was a word such as “deficit.”
Or so the theory goes.
When I read the OP, I started to compose a response along the lines that Republicans aren’t waiting for a tax overhaul to address the problem of the deficit, they’re just waiting for a Democratic president so they can start complaining about the deficit again.
I decided that was a little too flippant, even for me. But it got me thinking, are any Republicans still talking about reining in the deficit? Who? When? For the last eight years, to hear Republicans tell it, Obama’s budget deficits were leading the nation to the brink of fiscal ruin. Can anyone find a recent quote from a Republican who is still against deficit spending?
Well, maybe Rand Paul has said something. Anyone else?
As a factual matter, the issue here is that the term “budget” has several overlapping meanings.
Each year, Congress is supposed to pass two types of budgets. One is just a blueprint for major spending decisions, but it does not have the force of law. The two major purposes of this document are to guide the overall appropriations process, and sometimes to provide for the reconciliation process to allow the Senate to debate certain tax and spending bills without a filibuster.
The second type of budget is the appropriation bills that allow the government to remain open.
During Obama’s years, the budget provided by appropriation bills was passed every year, except generally not on time (including one shutdown).
I think there were two budget blueprints passed, but I’m just going from memory. However, there were also a couple major budget deals passed, generally dealing with the budget caps known as sequestration. These bills were fairly similar to the budget blueprints in most respects.
So far under Trump, one budget blueprint has been passed, and another should be passed in a couple weeks. (These allowed/will allow heath care and tax reform bills to be debated.) in addition, there needs to be another budget deal passed to deal with sequestration, but that hasn’t been worked out. This has delayed passing the appropriation bills for at least a few months.
So the answer to the OP is: it’s complicated.
Obama submitted a budget every year. (As noted, the president does not “pass” a budget.) 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Congress only passed a budget resolution in 2010 and 2015.
Congress’s budget resolution of 2017 was (mis?)used to set up Obamacare repeal. I can’t tell if it does anything else interesting. According to the text it has rapidly growing deficits and debt. S.Con.Res.3
Trump’s first 2018 budget was widely discussed and panned for its huge spending cuts. It has moderately growing deficits. Congress hasn’t passed a 2018 budget resolution yet.
Obama negotiated and signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 - which was a budget that cut many military related expenditures.
Conservatives lie and lie often.
That’s incorrect. That was an attempt to use the budget reconciliation process for already approved FY 2017 appropriations. That was passed and signed into law by Trump May 5th. That is really late but they did get it done. Congress had chosen to fund by continuing resolution at the start of the fiscal year (which runs 01OCT-30SEP) to allow whoever won the election to provide input into the rest of the FY. Trump’s administration wasn’t exactly timely or detailed when they did give that input. His input was also basically dead on arrival and ignored on both sides of the aisle. Then the GOP kicked into the budget reconciliation process.
In theory FY18 appropriations are supposed to be passed by the start of the new FY on 1OCT. Congress missing that deadline isn’t exactly a new thing though. It’s not uncommon for it to push into the first quarter of the FY.
OK, thanks for the correction.
I can probably be called a real-life Federal budget expert (at least in my little corner of the world) and I have zero idea what this means or what this is trying to convey.
Budget resolutions are not strictly needed to pass appropriation bills. They can make it easier to get them passed, but especially as far as FY2017 goes, a budget resolution is completely irrelevant due to the passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015.
If budget resolutions are not all that important to appropriations, then reconciliation is completely unrelated to appropriations. Reconcilation instructions virtually always have to do with tax or mandatory spending legislation – and mandatory spending is pretty much the complete opposite of appropriated funds.
The omnibus appropriation bill for 2017 was passed in early May and it had no protection from filibuster, just as no other appropriation bill has been protected from filibuster by reconciliation instructions. Had reconciliation instructions existed before the omnibus funding bill, literally nothing would have turned out differently, because the only reason for Republicans wanting reconciliation instructions for 2017 was to try to push through healthcare.
So, with apologies for being blunt, I don’t think you corrected or clarified anything; because I don’t think what you wrote makes any sense.
I’m pretty confused by what you are saying here. It sounds like you’re saying the resolution was passed and signed into law, which did not happen.
I was focusing on the narrow question of whether there had been a budget resolution (since that’s what I think the OP was asking).
As DinoR noted, I incorrectly equated the concurrent resolution to a budget resolution (Wiki explanation) due to some superficial reading. I stand corrected.
I was aware of all that. The OP asked if there is “serious conservative fiscal policy” in Congress today. Budget requests and resolutions are where you would see “serious conservative” policy and politics positions. Not quite irrelevant (talking about politics).
E.g., for FY2015 (calendar year 2014) on quick reading I count at least four proposed budgets ranging from serious conservative to serious liberal (none of which passed).
Trump has proposed a very… Trumpian FY2018 budget (I’m not gonna take a position on how conservative it is). I don’t recall reading about Congressional budget proposals for FY2018, conservative or otherwise. That Wiki page does not mention any.
P.S. “Obama never passed a budget?” Unclear what that means. Seems just plain false.
Bah, just a quick Google found a FY2018 House budget here. I’ll leave it to others to comment on if it is seriously or sufficiently conservative.
Huh? A budget resolution is one type of concurrent resolution. Concurrent resolutions are simply one type of legislation (i.e., public bills, private bills, joint resolutions, Senate resolutions, House resolutions, and concurrent resolutions). The difference between a concurrent resolution and a joint resolution is simply that a joint resolution is presented to the President for signature or veto, and a concurrent resolution is not.
Those are not the only places you’d see fiscal policy in action (ha-ha). The appropriations process, which is now for the most part divorced from the budget resolution process, but still closely tied to the President’s budget request, is another area of fiscal policy. The House has passed the annual appropriation bills, the main feature of which are substantial (but not draconian) cuts to domestic programs like NASA, foreign aid, food stamps, transportation, and so on; and even larger increases to defense than what Trump proposed.
Don’t expect major fiscal reforms in a budget resolution anymore. The FY2017 budget resolution had only one purpose: to provide reconciliation instructions for Congress to pass a health care reform bill that contained (IIRC) $1 billion in savings over the next several years. That is a ridiculously low figure – it’s a total joke when Federal spending overall is more than $3 trillion a year.
You can expect the FY2018 budget resolution, when passed by the House and Senate in the next few weeks, to have a similar joke of a fiscal policy. The only point of that legislation is to provide reconciliation instructions to allow a tax cut bill to be considered, as opposed to setting out an actual comprehensive fiscal policy (which the President’s budget is required to do).
As I explained earlier, it depends what you count as a budget. People get wound around the axle because the term “budget” could refer to the budget resolutions that have become less common over the last 20 years; or “budget” could refer to the annual appropriation bills that keep Government operating.
I expect the Budget passages will go much smoother under Trump than under Obama simply because there is less incentive for Republicans to hamstring their own government, and the Democrats by their nature want a functioning government more than they want to obstruct the Republicans.
Ironically enough, things seem to be on the verge of getting worse, but perhaps it is too soon to tell.
Congress was basically ready to cut a deal on funding the government for a year around the time of the election last year. But with Trump’s surprise win, Trump sent a signal that he wanted to put his thumbprint on those bills. As a result, final negotiations on those bills was delayed by 6-7 months… but it doesn’t seem as though Trump was successful in inserting any of his policies in any of them. It just seems like the operating budgets of Government was held in limbo for half a year for no actual reason.
It is very possible that the same thing could happen again this year: Trump wants his wall, but no Democrat will vote for it, meaning Trump can’t get 60 votes in the Senate for the funding bills he wants, resulting in a stalemate that could last several more months at least.
Your government at work.
The budget is actually the easiest thing to pass, since it’s just a bunch of numbers, and even Republicans can compromise on numbers. “You give me a billion here, I give you a billion there.” Now the wall, there’s really no acceptable reason not to provide at least some funding for a border wall, since Democrats are on record as supporting a border wall. If they were lying to the public, saying they supported it but actually not by never funding it, that might be something Trump might want to use against them. Not to mention Democrats taking a stand on immigration as their single most important issue can be used as a wedge issue in so many ways.