The Honorable Jeff Sessions
The Honorable Olympia Snowe
United States States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senators Sessions and Snowe:

On behalf of The Concord Coalition, I am writing to congratulate you for your leadership in sponsoring “The Honest Budget Act,” which proposes a number of fiscally responsible reforms to the budget process.

In recent years, the breakdown of the budget process has unfortunately become an annual fall ritual.  The Concord Coalition has long been concerned that the orderly budget process envisioned in the Budget Act has been replaced by a chaotic process that frequently involves skipping a budget resolution and relying on a series of gimmicks, continuing resolutions and last-minute omnibus spending bills to fund agencies through the fiscal year.

Unfortunately, this trend has coincided with trillion-dollar deficits and unsustainable demographic trends that make a responsible and orderly budget process all the more important.  Both political parties deserve a share of the blame for the breakdown of the budget process, and a bipartisan solution is long overdue.

We believe that Congress should return to an orderly and transparent budget process that more closely resembles the process required by the Budget Act.  In areas where the process required by law has failed or has proven to be unworkable, responsible reforms should be considered.  

Your legislation advances this discussion by proposing sensible reforms that would eliminate a number of frequently used gimmicks.  Some of the fiscally responsible reforms you have proposed would strengthen the budget point of order preventing consideration of appropriations bills before a budget resolution has been adopted, make it more difficult to use emergency spending as a loophole, limit changes to mandatory programs that are included in appropriations bills, prevent timing shifts from being used as a budget gimmick, and require more honest budgeting for transportation spending.   

These reforms should be seriously considered by Congress.  It is true that to effectively address our nation’s fiscal challenges, budget process proposals  must also be accompanied by detailed proposals that make the difficult choices among competing revenue and spending priorities.  However, improving the integrity of the budget process would help to facilitate these choices and restore public trust.

Thank you for the leadership you have shown in introducing this legislation.  We look forward to working with you on budget process reform and other fiscal issues in the weeks ahead.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Bixby

Executive Director

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