Congressman Tom McClintock House floor remarks in support of H.R. 1871 (Woodall) Baseline Reform Act
Baseline Budgeting
April 8, 2014
Mr. Speaker:
Our Constitution assigns the principle responsibility over the public purse to the House of Representatives. Under that Constitutional doctrine, a dollar can’t be spent by this government unless the House says it gets spent.
Yet today, spending increasingly seems to be out of our hands – driven automatically by a variety of provisions and practices that thwart the very design of the Constitution.
Roughly 2/3 of our spending is for legal entitlements, over which we have lost any direct control in the appropriations process. That’s the big problem. But there are other problems as well that this bill addresses.
One of them is the current process by which we calculate the baseline from which we start our annual budget.
Any family would begin its budget process by asking, for example, “What did we spend for groceries last year?” Once it has that baseline, then it would begin to adjust for changing circumstances. The price of milk is going up – should we cut back or look for substitutes? Or should we cut back on something else to afford that increase?
That’s the rational process known to every reasonably well-managed family.
This process gives budgeters – whether they are a Household or a House of Representatives -- the ability to adjust for changing priorities, needs and conditions.
Yet the federal budget process builds in a variety of spending increases above and beyond what we had previously agreed we could afford -- before our budget deliberations even begin.
That same family doesn’t begin its budget process by building in assumptions of how it might change its spending in the future. If it has taken vacations the last several years, it doesn’t automatically assume it will next year, at least until it has met its basic needs. That is, it doesn’t budget for decisions it has not yet made.
But we do, quite routinely.
We thus begin the budget process with a baseline that hides the many tough decisions that a budget requires. How do we cope with price increases? Should we continue to deviate from our spending plan next year just because we deviated last year?
The current budget process denies us the perspective that any family has when prices go up or conditions change. It often prevents us from asking the questions any family would ask under those circumstances. Instead, we sweep these issues under the rug – or more precisely, we sweep them into the baseline.
Does this bill make our job harder? Yes, because it requires us to figure out how to cope with changing conditions.
Right now, we start our budget on the assumption that we are hostages to our spending. This measure makes us the masters of that spending.
That is a harder job. But that’s our job.
# # #
Connect with Tom