Utah Rep. Blake Moore has a vision to help reduce the national deficit. It would only require changing how Congress authorizes federal spending and forcing lawmakers to meet deadlines.
Moore introduced legislation earlier this week that would reform the federal budgeting process by requiring lawmakers to not only approve discretionary spending in its annual appropriations bills but also require them to sign off on mandatory spending — the source of the country’s budgetary bloat, Moore says.
The Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act would add those responsibilities to Congress’ annual spending process, which would ensure every federal program doesn’t receive increased spending on “autopilot levels.”
“It would fundamentally change the way we budget in Washington,” Moore told the Deseret News in an interview. “It is, in my opinion, the only thing that can, over time, help us reduce our debt-to-GDP ratio in five years … and eventually start to remove it from upward to downward.”
Under current law, Congress only approves what is known as discretionary spending, which is the part of the federal budget that goes through the appropriations process and must be approved every year by lawmakers. That spending is subject to cuts or increases every year, and it makes up about a quarter of the total budget.
Should Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare be approved every year by Congress?
Meanwhile, mandatory spending does not require annual approval from Congress as those spending levels automatically increase every year without review — a problem Moore said has led to out-of-control spending. Those programs include welfare programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and more.
“If you can make incremental changes to these programs, you could still have them exist and have them have a strong future and make them fiscally sound,” Moore said. “We have, over time, proven that if we vote on something every year, we can constrain the spending and strengthen the programs. But Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare programs, and some veterans programs grow so fast because they don’t have any type of constraint on them to just do an annual vote.”
The bill would instruct certain committees to oversee those mandatory spending programs and prepare legislation for approval similar to the appropriations process. Approval could be required every year, or those deadlines can be staggered to every two or three years.
If deadlines aren’t met, lawmakers would face a similar decision as they do now: either let funding lapse or pass temporary extensions.
In doing so, Moore argued, those programs can be strengthened by both parties who support them without drastic cuts to address inflation or rising costs. That lack of annual approval is what led to the spending cuts in President Donald Trump’s massive spending package that Democrats opposed last summer.
“It’s about having tough votes to do. And here’s the secret of this place: People love not having to vote on Social Security and Medicare, because those could be politically charged issues,” Moore said. “Well, grow up, do your job.”
“We should be voting on all of the money that is part of our expenditure,” he added. “It’s a simple concept. Most states go through this process. We should go through the process.”