Congressional March Madness: Make the 2020 Federal Budget a Little Less Crappy
Trump Budget Proposal Sets the Stage for Next Government Shutdown...
The administration released its 2020 budget proposal on Monday, and the usual drama ensued.
Forget the hair-on-fire takes on proposed reductions in domestic spending; all the numbers in the budget are simply placeholders for a much larger battle over how to fund the government when money runs out later this year.
Historically, presidential budgets aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on when it comes to specifics. They are, however, a moral statement reflecting the values of the entity submitting it.
There are three messages baked into the proposal:
Trump hasn't given up on building his long-promised border wall
He wants to continue to increase military spending, and
Spending on just about everything else should be cut.
More importantly, the stand being taken by the administration heading into negotiations will call for ending the linkage between domestic and military spending that’s been the basis for past compromises.
From Politico:
Trump is calling for a 5 percent cut to current caps for non-military spending, coupled with a boost to $750 billion for national defense programs. But congressional Democrats continue to demand funding for non-defense programs grow beyond those caps at the same rate as military funding.
Overall, Trump wants to slash nearly $30 billion in this year's budget from fiscal 2019 spending limits for non-defense programs.
A senior administration official told reporters on a call before the budget proposal was released that the White House is "signaling in this budget that the paradigm" of matching defense and non-defense increases is "no longer — and hasn’t been for some time — affordable for the country."
An additional $8.6 billion for border wall construction is reportedly a non-negotiable demand for the administration, according to the Washington Post:
Asked whether Trump’s request signals that a new budget fight is coming, Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economic adviser, said, “I suppose there will be. I would just say that the whole issue of the wall, of border security, is of paramount importance. We have a crisis down there. I think the president has made that case very effectively.”
The 2020 budget incorporates unlikely predictions about the economy. The Federal Reserve predicts an economic growth rate of 2.3%; the Trump administration says 3.2%.
Presidential candidate/Senator Bernie Sanders wasn’t mincing words in describing the proposal as “breathtaking in its degree of cruelty and filled with broken promises.”
"At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, Trump’s budget pays for his huge tax break to the top one percent by cutting $1.5 trillion from Medicaid, $845 billion from Medicare and $25 billion from Social Security. Make no mistake about it: Trump’s budget is a massive transfer of wealth from working class families to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America.
"At a time when the U.S. already spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined, Trump is proposing an $861 billion increase in base defense spending over a 10 year period. And he proposes to pay for it by cutting over $1 trillion from education, affordable housing, nutrition assistance and the needs of working families over a 10-year period. Trump’s proposed increase in base Pentagon spending could make public colleges and universities tuition-free over the next decade.
How the Budget Process Really Works & How You Can Help
Media accounts and critiques about how a budget gets made tend to gloss over the nuts and bolts of what goes on and how it can be influenced.
Indivisible’s policy wonk Chad Bolt (a former Senate staffer) described the likely course ahead in a series of tweets (which are slightly edited--emphasis mine) below for the 2020 budget, pointing out opportunities for ordinary citizens to influence the process:
Reminder as the president’s budget gets picked over today, that it’s *Congress* that decides govt funding thru a nearly year-long process that few ppl actually know about/understand. (And yes, the FY20 process is underway.)
You know how there is always a huge showdown in December over funding the government? The legislation Congress fights over at that point didn't come out of nowhere. It is a package of appropriations bills that start getting written the previous spring (so, now).
Normally, the House and Senate pass a resolution ("the budget resolution") that sets spending levels for the year, then members of the Appropriations Committees use those levels to write their bills. (There are 12 subcommittees that each write a bill for their parts of govt.)
That probably *won't* happen this year. To complicate things, spending levels are actually already set by a law Congress passed back in 2011. But: Dems and most Repubs think these levels are too low, so when they write their approps bills, they're going to exceed them. 4/
This is a whole quagmire in and of itself, that underscores how bad the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 was. (Read more about spending caps and the need for a "caps deal" here)
So instead of relying on a budget resolution or the BCA-established spending levels, appropriators are just going to come up with their own! (By the way, these are called "302(b)s," and this is where we are in the process right now.)
Also happening right now: appropriators are taking "appropriations requests" from their constituents -- that's you. So this, RIGHT NOW, is the point in the appropriations cycle where you have the most input on the fight that plays out in December*
How do you do this? Most members of the House Committee on Appropriations have a section on their website with instructions for telling them what your spending priorities are.
[Eds. Note: San Diego’s congressional delegation does not include anybody on this committee. So specific requests for early consideration are best sent to subcommittee members overseeing an area you’re concerned about. The Appropriations Committee has 12 subcommittees each having jurisdiction over a specific part of the federal government. An alphabetical list of agencies with their respective subcommittee of jurisdiction is available here. A list of subcommittees with the agencies under their jurisdiction is here.]
House subcommittees have mostly set an April 1 deadline for receiving appropriation requests from MoCs. [MoC = Member of Congress] The Hill is jam packed everyday with groups coming in to make requests, and sign on letters are flying across staff email chains. (This period is called "March madness.")
April: subcommittees will write their respective spending bills. Staff sifts thru all the requests they received from MoCs to see which programs have most support. This is why it's really important that MoCs include your priorities among their requests. Those go in the bill.
May: House leadership says May will be spent on committee mark ups. Mark up is first time the process goes from behind the scenes to out in the open, because it's first time each draft approps bill becomes public. This is the time to #lightupthephones if you don't like them.
June: House leadership says they'll put approps bills on the floor. (Sounds too ambitious to this former staffer, but we'll see.) If they do go to the floor, a few less controversial bills will get packaged together in a "mini-bus." Another time to call if you don't like them!
Right before or right after floor consideration is typically where the process breaks down. Come the end of the fiscal year, 9/30/19, it's likely Congress will have passed only a few or none of the approps bills, and a CR [Continuing Resolution] will be required to keep govt open.
*I made a big prediction in tweet 7, that a CR will be required in Sept that takes us until Dec. I'd say we're too far out to indulge such wild speculation, except this is how it's gone each of last 6 yrs. (Another prediction: CR will go to 12/13/19, 2 Fris before Christmas.)
That means much of the period between committee mark up and the Dec fight will all be behind the scenes. A good opportunity to remind your MoCs what your priorities are. Leadership makes all the decisions in the end, but you want your MoC planting seeds early and often.
So remember that POTUS's budget out today has very little *policy* meaning (but it is obviously a clear pic of his warped priorities). Your MoC, esp if on Approps, is already at work writing the bills Congress will fight over in Dec. Now's the time to tell them what you think.
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