Transcripts For CSPAN3 Federal Budget Process Summit 20180226

Im going to encourage everybody to sit down, grab their seats. Keep eating. Okay. Welcome, everybody. Im maya mcginnis, i run the committee for a responsible federal budget and it is not every day that you see an overflow crowd for a whole event on budget process, so were really excited to have you here. We have a cspan audience, were Live Streaming this, so wonderful to have everybody joining us for what i think is going to be an excellent conference. Im really excited about the people weve gathered here and the ideas we are going to be discussing. So welcome. The committee for responsible federal budget for those of you who do not know is a nonpartisan organization, the board of directors are people who many of whom are here with us today who have run all the big budget institutions in washington, so the federal reserve, the treasury department, omb, cbo, the Budget Committees. So they are the whose who of the budgeting world. One of the things that we like to do is work with folks on the hill as well as around the country in budget experts, but to try to realistic understand what kind of budget improvements are going to be needed to improve the fiscal situation in the country and to try to have in a bipartisan way and a kind of understanding how hard it is to make hard choices but there are so many reasons that they are necessary way, keep moving the ball forward. That said, i will say it is a rough time for budget policy in this country. Nobody should be under the impression that the Fiscal Health of the country is good. It is not. Our debt relative to the economy is twice what its been on average. We are on track to borrow it used to be 10 trillion over the next ten years in light of new legislation its trillions and trillions more and i would argue that we are at a point and a discouraging point because the economy is strong right now, but a point where we are not making hard choices, we are not paying for things, we are not acknowledging budget tear tradeoffs and the result of it is that our deficit in all likelihood is going to hit a trillion dollars next year. Weve only had that happen once gfr when we were really in a very dangerous recession, but this is during a time of prosperity and that if things stay on track the way they are right now it could be up to 2 trillion ten years from now. So suffice to say that the fiscal outcomes are very worrying. Its not just the fiscal situation of course, it is how we budget in this country that is so problematic. And i just think all you have to think about is the fact that some of the more common words in budget process these days are Government Shutdown and default. That is not how a great nation or a great economy runs itself. That is not how the process is supposed to work. And so luckily we are going to be one of the things we do try to do because when the debt is this bad and the partisanship is this bad there is a lot of things to be discouraged about, but one of the things we try to do at the committee for responsible federal budget is always focus on different solutions. So what im really glad is that there has been so much work in the space of budget process that has been trying to come up with real answers to improve it. So i for years have been working with my colleague Stewart Butler and paul posener was working on us on how to come with a bunch of ideas. Stewart runs a round table on budget process. The first panel we will hear today is a remarkable groups called convergence which brings together stakeholders from all different areas. The kind of people who in this city would be tossing the food across the table at each other and fighting all out and they on many topics and the newest one was budget process bring together people and Work Together for months and months to build trust, come up with shared values and principles which i think is such an important part, a starting point of understanding that there is a lot more that we have in common, theres more that unites us than divides us, even in budget process and then come up with solutions. So today were going to be hearing from convergence about a long list of possible solutions to help address this budget process situation and there are more that we will be hearing from on the second panel where a lot of my colleagues will come up with ideas, share with the group as well. So it doesnt do enough to complain, it doesnt do enough to identify why the problems matter so much, but really coming up with solutions is critical. Let me just take a couple minutes to talk about budget process and where we are and one of the things that i always find most remarkable is that we run this country without a budget. Really regularly. No business, no business would ever be permitted to operate that way. And we truly are in a situation where its normal now that we dont have a budget in place. So that should be the starting point that everybody recognizes that the budget process of the United States is broken. There are so many things that are problematic about it, not just that we budget really jumping from one crisis to the next, but theres very little transparency in the budget. One of the things weve seen in other countries that when they improve their fiscal situation a lot of it comes from the entire citizenship kind of understanding what the goal is, what the policy goals are, what the if i say ral goals are, what youre trying to accomplish and rally behind that. We have so little transparency that people dont actually know which budget means what. The president puts out a budget and, wait, thats dead on arrival and the house is doing a budget and the senate is doing one but somehow nothing ever passes and were shutting the government done. Theres no transparency that people can understand whats going on with the budget let alone the complicated things likes budget baselines and how we do accounting. We need there be to much more transparency. We need there to be much more accountability that when we fail to pass budgets there is an actual understanding of where that responsibility lies and theres more incentives to actually succeed at a lot of the goals, both the deadlines, passing budgets, getting our funding done and also having better outcomes. There are so many gimmicks in how we budget it would make your head spin. We just published a paper outside available for anyone to pick up today or its at the committee for responsible medical budgets website excellent work, zach. We had a great team that uncovered covered all the different budget gimmicks and put it together. The problem is im very worried this will be used for ill. I do not want any Congressional Staff to bring it back to their member. This is not a how to manual. So were trusting you that these are the gimmicks that we dont want to see used in the budget process, not sneaky ideas that can get incorporated. But it is true, theres so many work ards, so many end runs in the budget process trying to avoid what were supposed to be accomplishing and that just shows the process has broken down at this point. And its true all the time whenever you put rules in place the next the the subsequent years are really smart people figuring out how to break them. But weve got to the point where theyre very broken. So too many gimmicks. Our budget does not focus on the long term at all. The long term is really where the problems are fiscally. It used to be the long term. Enough time has passed that its the medium term and getting closer every day as the baby boomers are retiring and we continue not to have a growth plan or fiscal plan in this country. We dont budget in a longterm thoughtful manner. This is true with policy something as well, whether it was obamacare or now its tax cuts. You put in place a big policy and within minutes the next plan is how to repeal it. So theres no continuity. Theres no real durability to the policies or the budget situation. That doesnt work. Were too slow moving but thats also not what you want. You want longterm objectives and ways to pursue them. Finally i would say the outcomes. The budget leads us to very poor outcomes and thats where we are on the fiscal front. So you want to figure out how you can change the rules and the processes to potentially nudge people to come out with better outcomes. That would be a better that would be desirable in all of this. So its completely luck that id love to call it that we were thoughtful and planned this well, but its completely luck that were doing our first annual budget process event. Yes, for those of you who come to our annual dinner, you know that im not good with things that are annual. We host an annual dinner that occurs approximately every seven years. This is a real annual budget process event which were going to start doing regularly. So this timing turned out to be great. The recommendations that have come out have turned out to be perfect because we know with the new commission thats Getting Started that came out of the budget bill that just passed, its probably one of the only things thats really going to be moving in congress this year. Its not going to be a big year for getting things done. But this may be one of those things that sneaks up on you. As people learn more about the budget process, as the members who are on it and stakeholders think about it, theyll realize how broken it is, there may be ideas that come forward and there may be something that gets moving. We think that this commission is an incredible opportunity. There are a bunch of different ways to think about the kinds of reforms they may look at. They may just be incremental. They may just be how do you and i shouldnt say just, because incremental reforms can be impressive. How do you put forth automatic continuing resolutions looking at how you bring the white house and congress into the policymaking decision. There may be steps there changed. There may be a lot of improvements that are made on how we do the accounting, how we do the budget concepts, how we make things more transparent and enforce things that are harder to get around. That would be an incredible step forward. Or finally we may look at a really big dramatic budget overhaul. Its something that our organization has looked at for years. Are there ways that we can take what we did in 1974 and replace it with a big, new big, new Budget System where you start possibly with agreeing on the outcomes, you get more people involved in the beginning, you put multiyear budgets in place that are more durable. There are a whole lot of ideas. So well see how much the system can bear. But in a time where its hard to be optimistic that anything really difficult is going to get done, i think the benefit of changing how we budget in this country is that those steps dont seem so hard when youre making them, but they can gradually kind of with a Ripple Effect lead to muchimproved outcomes. So i will conclude before our first panel comes up and just say the truth is budget process is absolutely no replacement for real decisionmaking. That this is a moment in this country that desperately needs real leadership on hard choices and kind of setting us on the path of how were going to figure out how our revenues and how our spending can both align into better ways so theyre not borrowing a trillion dollars or more every year but also so our resources are being spent in a thoughtful way thats achieving the national goals. Its not just the programs that weve put into place over the past decades that matter, we have huge, huge challenges that could be opportunities in this country that come from trade and open borders and globalization, that come from technology and Artificial Intelligence and all the things that are happening of the the pace of change that is affecting our economy faster than weve ever seen in the world. Those things can be great opportunities, but in order to make them work, were going to have to have a government that can partner with the private sector to turn those into opportunities so they arent disruptive to the economy and our Overall Economic system in a way thats too hard to handle. So just to bite off an even bigger piece than just reempforg the budget process system, the stuff we budget really affects how were going to perform as an economy for decades to come. So these rules will not replace policy makers and leaders making real choices and setting us on the right path, but they can be a nudge if people want to see those changes. We can tell you from working with members on the hill, there are a lot of people who do want to see improvements and want to see a system that allows those to flow through. Im now going to turn it over to the first panel. Well introduce everybody from convergence and the great world cup of this panel. The process, was it not only hard working on all the policy pieces, it also did something we need to be doing in the city much, much more, which is build trust between a whole lot of stakeholders who come with a whole lot of different opinions. And it wasnt hard to do. You can trust people. There are a lot of shared values so im really excited to be introducing them to come up on the stage and talk about both the process and the outcome of this Convergence Panel and thanks to everybody for joining us. [ applause ] well, thank you, maya, and welcome, everybody. Were delighted youre all here today. I am rob fursh, president of convergence. Its a National Organization that works on solutions of issues of national consequence. I do want to say that she hit the high points. What we have been successful in doing is gathering people of different perspectives on multiple issues in order to find Common Ground. People who have collective knowledge and influence that if they Reach Agreement can move the dial forward. So in addition to this remarkable project led by susan willie, and she will introduce the panelists, we also work in other areas, k12 education, health care, economic mobility and incarceration. We are really pleased to have hosted and hosted, organizing, and convened this process on this Critical National issue. I want to start by thanking the Madison Initiative of the Hewlett Foundation for their supportive advice. Daniel stid, and its been invaluable to moving this process forward. Also the Stewart Family foundation for helping us reach conclusion on this project. You will hear that this group, this remarkably Diverse Group, and ive been quoted as saying never before has such a Diverse Group agreed on anything, but they have come together on a series of proposals to help the federal budget process and vastly improve how to create budgets every year as maya has explained. What makes this group unique is not just its political diversity but also the fact these are not just the normal budget wonks, but people who represent real interests who are affected by the dysfunction in the budget process. While they dont agree much on the merits of what a budget ought to look like, they are all in agreement that the budget process needs to be fixed and thats where they have come together power fully to present ideas in a very timely way. The other thing i think that makes this report uniquely valuable is that we had to work really hard. It wasnt maya said it wasnt so easy to build trust. Actually, that did come along pretty well, but there were real differences and real concerns amongst various stakeholders about whether we would create budget process reforms that might tilt one way or another to those who were concerned about the levels of spending or those who dont feel were putting enough money into certain needs or some concerned about too much revenues, too little revenues, whatever their perspective. It was really hard to make sure we created a process that would stay fair to all points of view and i think weve done that very successfully. And has been mentioned already, we think this report provides a great starting point for the new joint select committee on the budget and appropriations concept that congress is setting up. I think its important to know that none of the people in our group think that we put out a report thats just going to be adopted and hold cloth by the congress. Its a starting point. But we think if the ideas presented here and the principles that underlie them are honored, then well have a good chance of having a budget process reform that can achieve widespread bipartisan support. So again, i think the group does view this as a starting point. Its not the final answer. I think the other thing that should be obvious is no matter what mousetrap we all create, congress may have the ability to void it, so its going to take some cooperation from congress in terms of changing its norms and how it operates in order for this to be successful, but we think this could become a beach head for bipartisan across the party lines in congress itself. On a personal note, i just realized last week that 40 years ago last month, i took my first job on capitol hill. It was as Senior Analyst of income security for the Senate Budget committee. I worked for chairman muskie and he worked about ranking minority member bellman. For me it was an amazing time where the process had just begun, but there was such earnestness on both sides to Work Together and there was such tremendous participation, bipartisan, on that committee. And i know a lot of people get impatient with those of us who are a little older about calling up the days of the past. But i think the fact that these people could Work Together on a budget process successfully then. And back then you had dole and luger, on the d side you had warren magnuson, joe biden, pat moynihan, they all worked together really well. What we want to do is create Budget Committees that function at the level they did many years ago. So i think underlying what were presenting today is the fact that people really can work across differences and we hope this will be a model for others. Let me close by thanking all the participants, susan will recognize you later, but we have a lot of the participants who are at our table here with us today. I want to thank in particular our panelists for their appearance today and i want to recognize especially susan willie, our leader, our project director, aided by others on our team, mike vesalek, pat field, our facilitator from the consensus building institute, kristen trong, and Stewart Butler, a member of our board who conceived this project. So now let me turn it over to susan willie to introduce our panel. Thank you. [ applause ] thanks, rob. Id also line to say thank you to gene boardwick and the Madison Initiative for supporting not just the efforts of convergence but for their long interest in investment in budget process reform and for helping to make an event like this come to pass. Thank you all for being here. I want to echo mayas words. When we started this project two years ago we didnt really know where we would end up. The budget process wasnt a particularly sexy topic and we werent exactly we sort of knew that it wasnt on the top of anybodys priority list, especially the people that we were focusing for this dialogue. Weve got a little bit more than an hour here to talk about to talk about the project. I want to give you just a little bit of background on the dialogue, then im going to turn the conversation over to my three colleagues here who are going to talk more at length about the work that we actually accomplished. Motatt owens, emily halubiwich d neil bradley. Then when theyre finished were happy to take your questions. So to give you a little background, the idea behind the convergence project was to bring together unexpected and often unheard voices in the budget process conversation. To see whether there was a place to find agreement on a new structure for the process that ideologically Diverse Group might be able to get behind. So two and a half years ago we started making phone calls not quite sure who would respond when they picked up the phone. We talked to many of the usual suspects. Former directors of cbo and omb, former staffers on the hill with budget experience, and a number of academics, some of whom youll hear in the next panel. But the group we really wanted to hear from were the lobbyists and Government Affairs officials who work on the front lines of the budget battles every day. Slowly we started collecting their stories. At 20 interviews, we thought we were doing pretty good, but then we were up to 40, then 60, and by the end we topped out at over 100 individuals that we talked about the budget process with. Our initial conversations usually started like this. Dont really know much about the budget process and i dont exactly know what we have to talk about but come on in, i have some time, lets see where we can end up. Usually those conversations about an hour, hour and 15 minutes later, ended with a comment that sounded like, wow, theres a lot more at stake here than i first thought. What we heard in those interviews was a lot of frustration with the uncertainty that regular failures of the process create. What we felt in the room in those interviews was energy and the desire to make the situation better. And that was enough for us to get started. So from those interviews we identified two dozen people to join the dialogue. The b 3 p group is made up of leaders and organizations with broad influence on the hill along with a handful of experts with deep experience in the budget process. Our meetings were designed not just to talk about the budget process and how to fix it, but to build a level of trust among a group of people that didnt know each other going in and certainly didnt think they had anything in common with everybody in the room. A stakeholder told us at one of our meetings that one of the things she looked forward to at each meeting was who she would sit next to because she was pretty sure the seating assignment wasnt random and she was absolutely right. How often do you hear the National Taxpayers union and the center for American Progress rolling up their sleeves and digging into a problem together, or the military Officers Association and first focus, a group that advocates for children. But there they were month after month, delving into the process, figuring out which way to turn, how far to go and where they could find agreement. In the earliest meetings, members of the group listed the problems with the process that wed heard in the interviews and they found they werent alone in their frustration. Those conversations built trust and served as the bedrock for what was to come. The group found solidarity in their shared frustrations with the uncertainty thats come to define the budget process. They may disagree on substance, but theyre passionate in their desire for our government to work well. Our first meeting was in early november, 2016, just before the election at a point where the Budget Committees in the house and senate were making pretty Good Progress on budget process reform. There were a lot of hearings be held. We were watching what was going on because when you join a convergence project, youre committed for maybe 18 months, two years. As we watched what the Budget Committees were doing, we were a little bit afraid that our lunch was going to be eaten because they were going to come to a conclusion before we came to a conclusion. So in response to that, what we did with the group was we set up a conversation to develop a set of principles for a better budget process. In order for them to be prepared that in case the Budget Committees actually started to do something that was moving forward, they were prepared to comment on it if it turned out that they didnt have time to generate their own ideas. So then a little later in the dialogue, so we built the principles, nine of them. Matt is going to talk about them. A little later in the dialogue, we held a daylong Design Workshop where we went back to the constitution to see what it said about the budget process. And what we learned is it doesnt say much at all. So this was a turning point for the group, where they began to really big deep and generate their own ideas about how to make the process work better. We looked at the role for the president and for congress. We looked at the Congressional Committee structure. We looked at how the budget process handles the long term, which was something the group felt really needed to be addressed, and we looked long and hard at the budget resolution, how its developed, what it accomplishes, and how setting, spending and revenue levels might be different. We looked at the perennial favorite of biannual budgeting and myriad other ideas that have been proposed over the years. Out of those conversations has come a package of proposals that the whole group feels is a solid and importantly achievable set of solutions that would make the process work better. Were quite encouraged that congress has established in the joint committee a formal mechanism for exploration of the budget process and this group stands ready to help congress in this task. So now i want to turn to the panel. Combined, these three individuals sitting here represent over 50 years of experience working with congress on a wide range of policy issues. Matt owens on issues around higher education, emily around health care and neil bradley with deep experience working with congressional leadership and now the Business Community on just about any issue you can name. They highlight the breadth of substantive interest among our Group Members as well as the depth of their hill experience. And they, like the rest of the group here, are deeply committed to building a better budget process. So just to give you a little bit of background, matt will walk you through the principles that we developed and reached consensus on and then as we develop the proposals, emily will walk you through the proposals and then neil will round out the conversation to give you a feel for the conversations we had about the political viability of our ideas as they coalesced. Now ill turn it over to the people you probably really want to hear about because theyre going to talk about the results of the dialogue, but i want to thank you for your attention and look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you, susan and rob and mike and the entire team at convergence. We really appreciate all your efforts and for this moment here today to talk about what we came up with over the last 18 months. Rob and susan have told you a little bit about the process that convergence went through to bring this group together. Im going to talk to you, as susan said, a little bit about the principles and elements of our discussion that underlie the proposals that emily will speak to. As susan said, it was clear to our group that we agreed on the diagnosis, the patient in this case is the budget process, and we all agreed its very, very ill. The question was could we agree on the prescription and the treatments. To Reach Agreement, we did develop these nine principles for budget process reform. If you think about this as what we believe the patient, the budget process, the principles are what they will experience and look like if a prescription and the treatments work. So with that, you see the principles on the screen to my side. As we went through our discussions, we determined that the ideal budget process should be comprehensive. What we meant by that, it should consider and oversee all of the governments financial resources, its spending, its revenues of all kinds and over the short and the long term. We also agreed that it should be unbiased. The process should not tilt toward a specific outcome or ideology. We spent significant time on this particular principle. In some ways this principle is paramount to everything that we put together here. If the rules tilt one way or the other, frankly theres little incentive to want to engage in the process. We also believe that the process should be strategic. It should develop and establish a plan that includes clear and achievable goals for fiscal policy and guides budgetary decisionmaking. It should be transparent. We heard maya speak about this. The steps of the process should be very clear and understandable to everyone, not just the policy makers, not just stakeholders, but the public. The process should also be informed. Informed by objective, independent, nonpartisan and, frankly, high quality information. Again, thats accessible to everyone, not just the policy makers. Thinking through these more, the word inclusive kept coming up time and time again, that the process should really allow for differing point of views, much like the convergence process frankly. It should include republican perspectives, democratic republicans, stakeholder perspectives and any other perspectives that is present in our society. These different views should be permitted to be presented and discussed and debated in an organized and structured way. Thats what we mean by being inclusive. I think maya also said durable. This was something that we talked about a bit as well and really thought the process should be durable across administrations, different congresses, the political environment, the economic climate and of course the times we live in. Said another way, this process should be durable and work regardless of whos in charge and the challenges the country faces. It really should survive all of those. Another one we spent a lot of time thinking about was predictable as a principle. The process should be completed according to meaningful and acho achievable deadlines. We discussed this one extensively. The untimeliness and the uncertainty of the current process has many negative consequences. Think about business and its interests at any given time. Its uncertainty that really drives a lot of problems. We see it also in higher education. Scientists depending on resources and grants from the federal government. Will their labs continue to be open, can they hire graduate students. Having things predictable at the end of the day is very important for folks who compete for federal research funds. And last but not least is probably the easiest one to articulate is the process should be simple. Thats a fundamental principle. I think of this as the overall guiding principle. The for example, if the process is complicated, there will be too many steps and its unlikely to be strategic or durable or predictable. Those are the principles. We came around those, as susan said, pretty well. It took some negotiating, but in some ways it was actually the easiest thing to do in some ways because i think there was a lot of Common Ground and common values that were in a pretty straightforward way. From that emerged some themes and weve also articulated in the report. Those are now on the screen before you. As we work in talking about these principles, we asked ourselves some questions. Such as are there effective incentives and consequences that can be devised in a new budget process. What parts of the process currently do work and how can they be strengthened . And is there a way to shock the system to break bad budgeting habits and change the current norms. And as the group tried to answer those questions, thats where these four themes emerged. First, elections drive outcomes. The failure of incentives like statutory deadlines and consequences like budget points of order to encourage timely action on the budget and appropriation led us to this theme. Currently the one true driver of congressional action is the potential outcome of the next election. We see this time and time again. As such, we saw the importance of synchronizing the elements of the budget cycle with the electoral and governing cycle to generate more timely action. Secondly, credible information provided at the right time really, really, really matters. There is a lot of good Information Available to congress and the public about the budget, but the information arrives at different times from different sources and it tends to be tends to complicate and confuse instead of inform and help decisionmake and we think theres ways to address that. Third, effective budget institutions are crucial. What are we talking about here . Theyre the ones that everybody in this room knows. The office of management and budget, general accountability office, and the Congressional Budget Office. Their work is extremely important to informing budget decisions and they should be supported. And lastly, a theme that kept emerging time and time again, are new norms needed to break bad habits. Lets face it, the budget process is in a deep rut. Because the process doesnt work, more often than not its negatively affecting Public Perceptions of federal policy makers. For that matter i believe its negatively affecting the View Congress has of itself and its ability to get work done. Our groups view is new expectations need to be established to help congress to act in a timely way and a way thats achievable in budget and appropriations and thats something they can do, help create their norms and we have some ideas to help with that. So those are the themes and the principles our group developed and that undergird the proposals that youre going to hear from emily about. Great. Thank you, matt. Thanks to susan and convergence for letting me to be here to speak on behalf of the group. I hope i make you proud. Before we get into the proposal its, i want to share a little story. On the way here i heard from a friend and respected colleague whos been working in budget for a very, very, very long time and he said, i love you, but these recommendations are worthless. Im like, well, thanks, that makes me feel good before i go up before 300 people and live on cspan. So before we begin, i think we as a group had the benefit of i think at least two or three sessions of just sort of venting about everything that were frustrated with, and we got that out of our system. At some point we realized, okay, we have to do something. So what can we do. And so before we get into the proposals, i want everyone, i know you all are kind of like me, suffering from ptsd in the budget process, just kind of keep an open mind and keep in mind the themes and the principles on which were working. I know as i came to this project, i was skeptical initially. You know, as i look at it, i really feel like in many ways we have a people problem, not a process problem. The process can work if people want it to, but coming from the field and working with people who work in Public Health, behavioral change is hard. And so really this is about what kind of what can we do around the margins of the process to adapt to the way that people behave rather than maybe trying to change their behavior. And can that get us to a better place. And i think thats where we came out with our proposals. So with that preamble, using the constitution as our foundation and the principles and themes, weve developed five proposals for improving the process, improving, not perfecting, improving. And these are consensus proposals. So thats really important. Again, if you look at the list of the stakeholders involved, this is where we could all come to agreement and think that we can make a difference. And i think we all have other ideas in addition to these, but this is really where the consensus was and we think a great starting point. We discussed a lot of things. You may have thought, wow, you met for a year and only have five . We really talked about a lot and i think well have the opportunity during q a if you want to talk about things we didnt recommend, we can share more there. In particular, around incentives, carrots like ear marks or sticks like withholding pay for lawmakers, we talked about all that. You notice they did not make the list. But taken together, and this i think was really important, we believe these principles are practical and they are achievable. And again that they will make the process better. And that was really our goal. So first we have recommended what we call a budget action plan. This is really to synchronize the budget cycle with the electoral cycle so that congress and the president together negotiate the budget action plan at the beginning of each new congress. It is passed into law, so signed by the president , unlike budget resolutions now. And it would make key fiscal decisions such as setting Discretionary Spending limits and addressing the debt ceiling for a twoyear period. And before you get to skeptical, in many ways, this is kind of what were doing now. When you look at the bipartisan budget acts of 2013, 2015, now 2018, our goal is to move that to the beginning of the process rather than the end, which is or the middle, i guess, where we are now. The idea being at the outset everyone is all on the same page and we are moving forward. The numbers are the numbers, were not relitigating these numbers, and this will allow them the appropriations process to flow forward. As we looked at the process in diagnosing whats wrong, the budget resolution discussion, whether or not we do one, do we not do one, are we changing what we just passed, that is a huge bottleneck for the rest of the appropriations process Going Forward. So were trying to eliminate that. The next, which actually was the most exciting proposal for me is this idea of passing of producing every four years a fiscal state of the nation. The Congressional Budget Office with presumably some help from communications professionals, would be really producing this timed at a point in the election cycle, president ial election cycle where we can elevate the discourse and discussion about the budget and our nations finances in plain language, in one source, with one set of numbers that everyone can understand. I was just talking with a colleague earlier, for example, the president s budget came out earlier this week. Some of the congressional justifications from agencies are out. Hhs still isnt. Even when they are out, theyre not all in one place. And i do this for a living. And so its really, really hard as john q. Public or jane q. Public to get a handle on what are we spending and what is the benefit to me as a citizen. Maya really alluded to this in her remarks. As a nonprofit organization, i do an annual report, businesses do reports for their shareholders. Theres no comparable document designed for the american taxpayer, which really are the shareholders for our nations functions. And so the idea here is the fiscal state of the nation will help bridge the disconnect for citizens so they can better understand what theyre getting for their money. To reinforce the importance of longterm effects on budget decisions, we recommend that the Government Accountability Office Review the performance of federal programs that involve those longterm commitments, which we would define as ten years or more. These could include retirement security, health care, taxes and revenue. This would happen every four years, it would be timed sort of in advance of the fiscal state of the nation so that that information could then be included in that publication as well. And really where we came to on this, matt and i spend most of our time working in the appropriations process on the discretionary side of the ledger. And we go through an annualish review of our programs every year. And there is no similar automatic look at the mandatory spending on the revenue side unless those programs happen to have expirations. Some of them do, but many of them and the biggest ones do not. And so the idea here was to with some type of regularity prompt lawmakers to have a conversation about the other sides of our ledger that often are pretty politically charged and often are openly discussed. Fourth, i know there have been proposals to just get rid of the Budget Committee altogether. We talked about that. We actually went in the opposite direction. Wed like to strengthen the Budget Committee. We do think there is a role there. And what we would propose is including the chairs and the rankings of the relevant committees, namely appropriations, ways and means and finance, armed services, other relevant committees, and have them sit on the Budget Committee. And the reason we did this is we again looked at where the bottlenecks occur. It appeared to us that there is a disconnect in the current format where those that are drafting the plan and crafting the plan are not then responsible for implementing the plan. And so the idea here would be you have the Appropriations Committee, the ways and means and finance committees engaged early on in crafting that plan and then Going Forward and carrying it out. So youre creating buyin at the beginning of the process. And finally, as matt noted, credible, reliable information is paramount to any and all of these efforts. The budgets and appropriations process overall. We would like to see investment in and support of those institutions, Congressional Budget Office, the joint committee on taxation, the Government Accountability office. Recognizing also that in many ways weve just expanded their scope of work, so we want to make sure they have the resources needed to carry out our charge. And so those are our five proposals. Neil is going to tell us whether or not he thinks they can work. Well, emily, thank you. They can work, thats the good news. Ill jump straight to the conclusion and the answer to emilys question. And the reason im convinced that they can work is because the process that we went through and the recommendations that we ended up with recognize that reform has to take place in the political process. We cant write the best theoretical Budget System in the world and expect that republicans and democrats in washington will simply look at it and go, gosh, thats the textbook answer. Im sorry we didnt think about that over the last 40 years. Well immediately enact that into law. Thats not the way its going to work. And so as we developed these proposals, we tried to work through and anticipate the political challenges. Id like to describe some of those for you and why i think the recommendations that our group has come up with rise to those political challenges. The first matt talked a little bit about, which is that everyone immediately comes in with a bit of a bias with what they want to see budget reform produce. So if you think about the group that we assembled, we had folks who were really concerned about longterm debt and deficits. They want a process that solves that problem. We have some folks who are very concerned that were not raising the revenue to support the Government Programs that they care about. They wanted a process that ensured that it raised those revenu revenues. Conversely, we had other folks who didnt believe the revenue was a problem at all and so any process designed to raise more revenue was a nonstarter from the beginning. You can go on and on thinking about your individual priorities and the priorities of people you know you either work with or occasionally work against and youll come to quickly realize that having a process that picks an outcome simply isnt politically feasible. A second part of that challenge, a corollary, is that Everyone Wants to relitigate the last battle. And we spent a lot of time in our process with everyone not because they were trying to pick an outcome for Good Government, good budgetary reasons, were on my side of the aisle, the more conservative republican side, looking to relitigate the Affordable Care act so that Something Like that could never happen again. And as tax reform began to happen, some folks who were opposed to that looking at budget process through the lens of can i make sure that that tax reform bill currently working its way through congress and then ultimately becoming law never happens again. And if we come to the table attempting to relitigate past defeats or ensure future victories, youre not going to achieve the neutrality objective that we laid out in the past. So heres something very important about what our proposals do. They dont dictate any single outcome. Heres one of the things that may shock you to hear us say about from a fiscal standpoint what our recommendations could produce. They could produce the exact same fiscal problems that maya opened our discussion with today. Thats okay, because the process that weve created is designed to hold elected officials accountable for those results. And at the end of the day, thats what a process should do. It should clarify decisionmaking, it shouldnt tilt the field one way or the other, but it should provide clarity about what made what decisions and the consequences of those decisions. Emily talked a lot about stuff that we spent time working on that never made the report. Carrots and sticks. None of us were elected officials and so it was very easy for us as stakeholders to suggest that the elected officials who should implement these reforms should impose on themselves all kind of punishments if they fail to beat budgetary deadlines, if they dont get appropriations done by the start of the fiscal year, if they dont address the longterm debt and deficit, if they dont solve the Social Security crisis. We came up with all kinds of things that we could impose on them. Lets be honest, republican or democrat, elected officials arent willingly go to impose on themselves some draconian measure for an outcome that they cant control in the future. Its pretty unrealistic. And also, by the way, it kind of runs contrary to the entire way our system works. Matt mentioned that we went back and started at the constitution. The ultimate accountability is the constitution. The only accountability in the context of the budget context is at the ballot box. So what we can hope best to do is create a process that holds elected officials accountable at the ballot box. So the longterm Fiscal Health report thats designed to coincide with each president ial election is both a look back at what the current president and prior president s have done, but also an opportunity for the candidates for presidency to talk about what theyre going to do and to lay that out and to be held accountable by all of us when we make our decisions in november. The twoyear budget cycle with a look back provision at the end of that twoyear congress is designed to do the exact same thing for our members of congress. What did they say they wanted to achieve, how much did they want to spend, did they come in under budget, over budget, they said they wanted to reform entitlements perhaps when they laid out their twoyear plan. Did they actually do it or did they sell us all a bill of goods that was a grand promise for something that they said was going to happen this they had no way of ever intending to achieve. Were designed this process is designed to flush that out. One of the great criticisms, and emily referenced this as she started talking about her comment from her friend, was that theres an expectation that budget process reform should be incredibly complex. When you think about all the problems, fiscal problems that we have, when you think about all the budget gimmicks that are currently employed, that we ought to have a system that plugs, you know, every hole in the dam, that prevents anyone from ever creating a new hole, that guarantees that when we set a deadline, a deadline is going to be met and does all these other things that we say we want to achieve. When you design a system like that, you end up with something that maybe looks a lot like todays system, which is incredibly complex, and completely unworkable. Because as much as creating budget reform is a political process, budgeting is also a political process. And the process has to allow for the Political Parties and our elected officials at any moment in time to work through their differences. And if the process doesnt allow them to do that, then youre going to end up with what we have today, which is a system that isnt compatible to the problems that we have, that doesnt allow the political actors, the senate, the house, the minority, the majority, the president , to work through those issues and so everything grinds to a halt. If we make something much less complex and we say were not going to be reliant on the process excuse me, on the technical aspects of the process to achieve this, instead were going to set the table, give everyone an invitation to the table and lay out some fairly rudimentary things for them to do so that they continue to take step one in budgeting, then stake step two, then take step three and then take step four, then you have a much greater likelihood theyll actually follow that process. What we have set up with this budget cycle and our budget plan is just that, asking members of congress and the president to start by saying what are the decisions that you have to make this year for this congress. Well, you have to make decisions about how much youre going to spend on defense and nondefense Discretionary Spending. You have to make a decision if we have a statutory debt limit what youre going to do with that limit of the and then you get to make some decisions about what you meant to do. We want to do a major tax reform bill or we want to tackle entitlements or we want to create a new entitlement of the this is the point in the process where you get to make those decisions and then i have the freedom as elected officials then to follow it through. We think that kind of process without burdening you down with points of order and trip wires and compelled results and penalties and carrots is one thats most likely to empower lawmakers to do what theyre supposed to do, which is make the budgetary laws. And if we do that, then we can hold them accountable for doing so and we think well have a much Better Process than what we have now. For those reasons, we think this is achieve al and doable. It doesnt tilt the field. It doesnt ask too much of our elected officials, it simply creates the process for them to do what they all say they want to do and what we should expect of them as a minimum to do. And for those reasons, were pretty proud of this product that weve created. Thank you. Thank you all. No, were not done. Are you leaving . Dont go yet. Im not leaving. Were moving on to q as and i have a few to get started and then i guess well open it up to the crowd. So i want to give you all a chance just to talk about your personal experience with this. My first question is why did you sign on to this project . And i will admit when i called each of you, i was thrilled that you answered the phone. I was thrilled that we had [ inaudible ] im happy to start. So i thought about it in two ways. Thanks for asking the question, susan. One was on a personal level, i had been working in washington for a little over 20 years. Just my own personal frustration of watching how this starts and stops and fails and so forth and just wanting to see the process work. But secondly i work for Research Universities across this country. Theyre in the mibusiness of solving problems. They bring together people with different backgrounds and skill sets and knowledge and try to find ways to solve problems so it was really a natural for me to get involved in all of this, to find out is there a way we can do that. Bring some knowledge and skills and suggestions and ideas and a good process that figures out can we contribute something. Maybe its a good starting point for these discussions because the time is now. Yeah, i would say the same. For our folks in the Public Health and the Health Research community, they dont have a parachute. You know, they have to budget and do the work. And so we hear consistently about the anxiety and angst and disruption that the broken budget process plays in trying to protect their lives and their health and security. So from that angle and not to sound too pollyanna, something has got to give at some point. Its hard, but this kind of cant go on. And theres got to be a way to do this better. I think for myself personally, i was thinking about it this morning, i think this is maybe my 14th budget and appropriations cycle. Im just tired. I want it to be different. And so to be able to be a part of this group with people who i work with and then people who i dont work with and the whole model of convergence was really exciting to me. To get past the sort of skepticism and cynicism is what atrktd tracted me to the projec i think it was to see if we could come up with something that was durable. I walked in with my wish list as the way i thought the budget process ought to operate and i hoped that everyone would just agree with me and wed be done. But thats not going to happen. You know, too much of our politics right now are one party or the other thinking, hey, as soon as we get the power, were going to write it the way we think it should be written and thats going to solve our problems. One, you cant get that through the current system. But two, it wont be durable. Three, youre wasting a lot of time going through that process. So it was a very interesting dynamic to get around a table and say could we write something that looks a little bit like my priorities and matts and emilys and everyone elses in our groups and might actually be durable. If thats proof of concept for our elected officials, all the better. So now a bit of silence while i look at questions here. Matt gets the tough ones. I would add while susan is reviewing the notes that it was real interesting, so in neils previous iterations, id come see neil and talk about things that Research Universities care about and different policy choices and budget issues, and i was so heartened when i did sit at the table and found out that neil was there because we found out we actually we always were able to have a good discussion. The same was true with foelks, like ive known emily for years, and many people that sat around the table. When people approach something earnestly, you can get a lot done in this town. A lot of people are cynical about whats happening in washington. Were all well aware of that. The reality is there are a lot more optimists than cynics in this town, who are working hard to bring solutions. So the convergence process on this issue was really, really helpful and i think you can see the fruits of that. So this first question is kind of related to that. It is how do you build a Collaborative Team so fighting is not the outcome . I admit, we sort of built the team. So i guess ill answer the question. So the convergence model is about bringing people together of ideologically diverse opinions, politically diverse opinions, often about a social problem. The budget process was a little bit different for convergence than when it started. There was a lot of questions about what were talking about a process and how are we going to pull this together. And so what we try to do is give people space and time to build relationships. And in that space and time, we create safety so that people can say things i mean we had a rule. Like what you say in the room doesnt leave the room. And another rule was that you approach people with curiosity. That you try to understand their perspective and the reasons that they hold their opinions and then you ask questions based on that curiosity in a respectful way. We were thrilled with the first meeting that everybody really seemed to get along quite well off the bat, and i think that was because they were so busy complaining about the process that theres so many other words to use to describe that. But that was an immediate bond that was built between people that i think they didnt expect when they walked in the room. An it was from it was from that base that we were able to tackle some of the more difficult decisions. And then it really was a matter of time, that we just kept bringing them together. We were fortunate, convergence projects tend to bring people from around the country so they dont meet quite as often. Everybody on this project was within about a two and a half mile radius so we could meet monthly. And that really helped to build relationships as well. We invited people to breakfast, we had dinners. So there was a social component to it as well that kept the fighting down. I dont think anybody raised their voices, no one stomped out of the room. And in the end, the work that was done was really hard. The commitment of this group really blew us away that they kept coming back. It was a hard, hard legislative year, and were talking about lobbyists who were on the hill day after day. It never failed that we would hold a meeting and something would happen. The repeal and replace bill would drop, there would be a vote on a budget resolution. On our last our very last meeting was the day that the last budget deal was signed. And so often people were sort of jumping up and running out in order to take care of something. And you guys can if you want to expand, but it really was i mean it was a real commitment of the group to find agreement and to find Common Ground and carry it forward. I think its a little bit of sometimes Misery Loves Company. You sit around and complain together. You realize you have a lot in common. From there we had a base to move forward. And again, i think everybody approached this with a little skepticism, but knowing that these are big stakes. When the federal budget process doesnt work, this is probably the single most important element that the american taxpayer sees. When it doesnt work, you know, that shades their view of whether the government is working and our policies are doing their job. So i think we all sort of understood the stakes coupled with the fact that Misery Loves Company sometimes. I found it remarkable too, in a town you know, in a room full of lobbyists where we pretty much all just talk for a living, there was a lot of listening, and probably more listening than talking. For me stuck out. I think second, what was remarkable to me, and this is kudos to you, susan, and the team, it was really important to have very strong facilitators. I dont know if this new special committee can like detail some of the convergence folks over, because i really do think that made all the difference, just in terms of planning the exercises, planning the guest speakers, keeping us on track, focusing our thoughts. For me that was critical. Im not sure we would have gotten where we were if it werent for your facilitation. Oh, well thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. I have a comment about writing style, handwriting, but anyway we wont go there. So the question is why wouldnt putting the longterm fiscal situation in the election cycle just lead each president ial candidate to make pledges that go the wrong way . In other words, i wont touch Social Security or medicare, ill never raise taxes, but there was no recent discussion around it. Because theyre not doing that today, right . Theyre not pledging not to touch Social Security or pledging not to raise taxes. No, i say that half isnt jesn. Part of the reason is we are not going to solve our fiscal problems without elected officials solving them. So theres no one that is going to come in, were not going to empower someone and say you, go out and try to solve all our fiscal problems. We find of tried that, right . We had a Super Committee. Yes, we did. Of elected officials who were supposed to solve our problems. They didnt solve our problems. If you go all way back to the 1980s, we said, well, you know, if we dont hit certain budget targets, which we know were not going to hit, that comptroller general, guy, hes the guy who since hes not actually elected can come in and cut across the board to make it all work. The Supreme Court said, no, you cant do that. So, you know, the idea that somehow well solve the problems external from the political process i think misses the fact that its elected officials who are going to have to make these decisions. So, yeah, are sometimes we going to get candidates who promise the moon and promise that we can fix all our problems with no pain . Sure. And if the media and their opponents dont hold them accountable, i suspect that in a couple years, the chickens will come home to roost for those individuals and, you know, the voters will hold them accountable. Otherwise the alternative is to say, well, were never going to fix this because we can never trust elected officials to do the right thing. Elected officials are all we have to make laws. Heres one right up our alley. Did you consider eliminating the authorizing Appropriations Committee structure and making everyone appropriators . We did. Indeed. We obviously did not recommend that. I dont know if we thought about getting rid of authorizers. What we thought about was sort of i think this has been authorizers, but this is talked about merging the appropriations, and the authorizing committees so they are all together which is conceptually i can get to make sense and then a aligning the committees with the department, right. So then, the Committee Structure mirrors the way that the executive branch is set up. And for me working in health, most of the Public Health services, these are not reauthorized and we dont have a great track record in the authorizations either, so the idea of bringing appropriations which are hard, and little authorizations ta are hard and bringing them into one shop to us did not seem like it would solve a problem, and only make it worse. To add to that, the part of the other equation is that as we get deeper and deeper into the level of discussion, why are we here . Reorganizing congress or the federal budget process and have those discussions . So it became the latter. That is like a bridge too far for us to cross, and it does speak to the one proposal that did emerge and strengthening the budgeting committees to make sure that the authorizers from the committees with big jurisdiction and oversee significant spending or look at revenue, and whether to cut or to raise those, and so have a member of the Appropriations Committee on there, and put the chair and the ranking member, and figure out the raictios in relation to the composition of congress, and if the ranking chair cant do it, dission nate somebody who is going to bring that perspective of the committee to the budget discussion, and we think that is an effective way to give a little bit more heft to the Budget Committee and deal with the authorization discussions that we know are going to be ongoing with the different sectors and bills and are reauthorize the transportation act or the Education Bill or whatever and have it reflected on the the budget, because those folks are going be paying attention and weigh in on it. And i would say that there is no fight like a jurisdiction fight like the one on capitol hill. It is the one thing that has traditionally united the democrats and the democrats by den of the service on the particular committee, and they are work hard to get on that committee and work hard to stay on that committee, and the idea that, hey, we will propose that we are totally going to reshuffle that probably would have meant that a lot of the recommendations are not achievable. Agreed. And so this question says responsibility justice, fairness, accountability should be more important or concrete principles than the principles that we came up . Read them again, are responsibility, fairness, accountability and justice. Well, we have nine of them, and neal said something important. He talked about accountability and you can see that it is not one of the nine. It is just because the princi e principles read all of it and neal, as you said it well, it is the system. This is what if you have the principles coupled with proposals like ours in the starting point, and in fact, they will breed in accountability. And one of the thing ths that w talked about the incentives or the consequences or the penalties, and you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make it drink, but you could make it really thirsty. But you could take the horse into the hot barn and you could have some really cool water, and maybe that is really going to want to get the horse the drink. We can do all of those things, but the reality is that congress has the to decide on it if he wants to, and if he had a better system, and fair process and does not tilt one way or another, and the policymakers have a better shot of actually putting forth outcomes that reflect all of the input that they are hearing and making the tough decisions. That is right. The Congress Gives the president the ability to the make laws, and it does not guarantee really good laws. The process allows really good laws to be written and really bad laws to be written and that is part of the genius of the system that the founders tried to say, well sh, we wont ever allow you to not ever make a bad law, because the constitution would be ten times longer and hell of a lot harder foreanyone to work through, and similar to the budget process, because it needs to the allow them to facilitate good decision, but also with that, they have to be open to the fact that sometimes the political process may have to decide to the make a bad decision, and the political process may say that a majority of the congress in any one moment wants to shutdown the government. If that is what the, our elected Officials Say they want to do and as asinine as that may be, you cant write a process that denies them that ability. Because if you write a process that the denies them ability, it is not really a process, it is a predetermined outcome, and if you are writing a predetermined outcome, we are back to what they struggled with at the beginning, and process that determines the winner or the lo loser from to getgo, and so sometimes we have to be comfortable with the idea that the process does not solve all of our problems, and it facilitates the elected officials doing their jobs, and even if when they do their job, they may not like the job they are doing. And i think that the spirit of those are sort of embedded, and the principles, and while the words are not here, and i think that actually we talked about some of the words at one point in the conversations, and early on, we all, and i struggled a little bit in slipping into the policy discussion versus a process discussion. So i think of equity, justice, fairness as outcomes of a budget versus what underpins the process of the budget. So there was a whole day where where we kind of were deflating the policy and process and we had to break it down and think about, okay, what does it mean for our process, and i think that is where the unbiased idea and inclusive idea come from, of facilitating the desired outcomes of justice, and fairness, et cetera. Can you talk about the potential parallels of the process that we just went there and the capability of supporting the process. So i mean, i think for the con gre congressional process, and this is about the joint committee is that one, it is, u i would encourage the process ought to involve all of the members of the committee from the beginning. You know, the traditional way of we will get the republicans together, and the democrats together and we will launch competing proposals and that is going to work for a lot of policymaking. From the processmaking standpoint, that is going to be a mistake, and we did not have, and we had subgroups on the issues, and we did not have subgroups by the ideology or the political bent, right . So, avoiding that from to getgo in this process, and i think that it would be, behoove the joint committee, and two is dont try to take on more than you can possibly accomplish, right . That, in some respects failure for the joint committee would be particularly devastating for all of the prospects of budget reform and fixing all that we have to do. And incremental steps even if they bring them back to the colleagues and the colleagues say, gosh, couldnt you have done better . It is better than where we are today and particularly if it is bipartisan and agreement, and so, dont, dont assume that you have to shoot for the moon, and dont divide yourselves on the political lines in the beginning, and that is two things that we did well, a and that would behoof them. I could not agree more. In the joint select committee and even if somebody said made some incremental step, and that is the outcome of that, and they are implementable, and that is going to be open to further steps down the road, and there are going to be some other things for themselves to not have a committee to do this and the point is to not bite off more thank you need to, and we saw that as some of the folks were appointed on the house side that were appointed to past Budget Committees, and look at the budget, and those were actually about the substance and not the process, and the article said that those fail and whether it implied, well, how does it look for that one . This is different. This is about process. If the members can come together from the getgo, both sides to help figure out what is a good process, i think that they have a greater success, and opportunity for success, and the practical thing is to not bring your smartphone. Seriously, we didnt, and it really did help, because people were listening. And so sometimes the small things that allow you to listen, and so maybe that is a small tip. I have no more questions so i want to thank you all for joining this panel and group. I have a few more thank yous to get out before we move to the next panel. And rob has mentioned a couple of names and i mentioned, too, the Stewart Family Foundation Provided support for this project, and the Convergence Team without which we wouldnt be here. Mike thesle and kristin strong kept us going, and also aku mafad got the project up and running. So the rest of the participants here in the room. Hi, hi. Okay. [ applause ] i want to thank you all for your hard work and commitment, and feel free to chat the people up. They care and they want the process to work, and they are ready to help. Thank you all very much. Thank you thank you thank you so much and one more thing that makes convergence works is that they bribed with us lots and lots of cake. And before we get to the next panel, many of you are in the Budget Committee and many of you still tuned into cspan from the Budget Community as a well, so i want to take a moment to recognize our colleague who is as you all know passed away recently ed lorenzen. There is no smarter, more selfless committed person to the budget process than ed lorenzen and anybody who worked with him knows that to be the case. And it has been a huge loss for so many of us, because not only did he work at our organization, he had a hand in every single thing in the budget. So it has been incredible to hear from all of the people who worked with him who he has selflessly shared the brilliance with and the work he has done with other people, and given them all of the credit. It is the kind of of the lovely editorial at the washington psts to talk about ed, but it is the opposite of washington right now, and this is somebody who worked so hard, so tirelessly without a personal agenda at all to try to approve the budget process and to share that process with everybody who has worked in the town on this issue has benefited from eds work. So i want to show you the video and we put together a small video to is a tribute to ed. Washington post has paid tribute to a young man who was d died in a house fire. Ed lorenzen was hailed as a devoted servant to country. He had served as Senior Adviser responsible for tr federal budget for the last 7 1 2 years. Prior to that, he worked in a National Commission of responsibility and reform and helped to draftt the pay as you go act of 2010. Lorenzen was killed while trying to rescue his 4yearold son from a fire at their colonial road home friday night. The types of Medicare Health reform that paul ryan was talk about is the small opening of maybe they would go there and i would try to keep the optimism, because the cubs won the world series and so i will stay optimist about everything, because of that. And so we want to crackdown on the fraud and discover that we have 98 of the Social Security insolvency back, and report some type of commission to have a recommendation, and i believe that the title reform is going to be a sign that maybe President Trump would let them take the lead on it and goal a long wit. Are there is no great level of debt or any single right fiscal goal other than a original major fiscal goal should be ing a gage enough to improve the fiscal condition, and be realistic and not so unrealistic as to be an unrealistic fiscal goal as to be effective fiscal goal. But setting a fiscal goal is just an important first step, but it is not sufficient. It is of little value if we are not working towards achieving the goal, and establishing a fiscal goal without compliance is going to allow congress to the take on the deficit without actually doing anything. Before we start, i want to express this subcommittees deepest sympathy for the family and phrenes of ed lorenzen who was a Senior Adviser at the policy of budget. Ed passed away in a house fire. He was a well respected member of the Budget Committee and a champion of the paygo rule, and his twitter handle was captain paygo. And literally the day of his death, ed was talking with my staff in are preparation for the hearing, and so it is with deepest of sadness we asked you to join for a moment of silence. Sed the type of ed is the type of person that you want as a staffer. Whip smart and hard worker and while we didnt always agree on how the fix it, his passion for Social Security and our unsustainable debt was unmatched. His death the loss for the American People and he will be missed. My prayers are with his children, family and friends during this difficult time. Mr. President , i cannot imagine the grief that ed and michaels family and loved ones face. I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to them in this difficult time. May we all hold our families a little closer today. So, the outpouring of support that we have heard from so many people about ed has been like nothing i could have ever imagined including a letter from a former president down to contributions for a fund for his children from someone who had never met him, but learned from his work on twitter and social media, and hundreds and hundreds of people in between. So we miss his brilliance and kindness, and we miss his love for his children, and i know that almost hered a the pleasure of working with him, and soy know that you are sharing in that loss, and we will now [ applause ] there will be a Memorial Service that we will send out information for those of you who knew him and want to come and pay tribute to him in the capitol coming soon, and when we let everybody know. With that, i would like to turn it over to the second panel where we will hear more from a great group of budget experts and so if you will all come up and take the stage, please. Good afternoon. Thank you, everybody for being here, and the committee for responsible federal budget for hosting this event, and thank you, maya, for the wonderful and moving tribute to ed who all of us in this room knew as a great guy, good teacher, and great dad. And certainly, a great lover of all things in our world that we are talking about today. Thank you for that. My name is peter cohen, and im the quarterly fiscal budget and policy editor, a and we will be talk about the convergence principles and how the go beyond the principles and the three principles in the field, and we will start with Stewart Butler who is to my immediate left and steve redbird who is from the office of management and budget and he served also on the committee of National Academy and sciences and worked also with the peterson and pugh commission on budget and reform. Steve has written about something that the Convergence Group was able to get into, and print their agreed upon principles and talk about the portfolio budgeting and steve has worked a long time on this issue, and he is going to talking about how congress can actually execute on some of the principles, and maybe even expand on them to make them more effective. And Stewart Butler was a longtime, long time drek r or the of the center for policy innovationt at the heritage innovashgs and the brookings institution, and he has seen all sides that there are to see on this issue, and so the member of the Editorial Board of affairs, and has a unique perspective on the convergence principles, and speaking of that, there is a renewed focus of how to look at some the issues in the long term with the longterm view that has not been done before and breaking the issues out into areas that are really today only seen in the context of the longterm cbo outlook for instance and breaking them out into the different portfolios, and the Security Health care and so forth and try to get a little bit more of the laser focus can, and finally, francis lee who is the governor of the professor of politics in maryland, and astute observer of the political scene into the polarization that we have seen, and in the 20 years that we last had a functioning of the appropriations process that you have heard of rekrecen today, and the last book insecure majorities and the perpetual campaign and so today, i want to turn it over to the panelists to keying awe of the release this morning of the convergence principles. Thank you sh, pete. Id like to begin with the general comments about the work that the Convergence Group has done and then offer some friendly amendment s s to the particulars in the proposal as way of provoking discussion, and let me start by saying that it is inspiring to see a Diverse Group like this to converge on a ale solid and suspicious plan that they put together. And with a list of ideas, they have presented us with a integrated process that aligns with the political incentives facing the elected leaders. They have described a possible system of action that could be repetedly executed in a timely and reliable way. So it is a plan that holds together, and it is going to be helpful for that reason to the joint select committee as it begins its work. The Convergence Groups work was already important, but consider the context. In the wake of the decisions made in recent weeks that set the budget on the even more so unsustainable course, it has become urgent. We are all now passengers on the big ship, the federal budget headed for the fiscal rocks. It takes a long time, and a lot of challenges to turn a ship. So as we try to turn ship, we dont need the minimal process to keep the government open to are return to imagined regular order. Circumstances call for the process to help the leaders to make tough and painful and course changes. The process that lets them look farther ahead. To the act strategically and to pay for the commitments already made and pay for investments to sustain future growth. Otherwise, they, and we will have no choice but to start throwing overboard precious cargo that represents s s some the biggest shared dreams of a society. Those are some of the circumstances that we are facing. The leaders whether soon e or later find it is in their interest to tide themselves to the mast of fiscal responsibility, they will will need a budget process that helps them to make the necessary choices and helps them to survive politically. So that is enough metaphors and those are my general reactions. Here are a few friendly suggestions or amendments to the proposals a put forward from the Convergence Group. In the enacted budget plan, i would suggest that we abandon the distinction between the discretionary mandated program, and the mandated programs as established in the 1990 budget act and instead say that all programs should have are regular review. Tax expenditures and the provision that the code is spending on the same basis as other spending. Given where we are, everything needs to be on the table, and rather than splitting the programs based on the basis of how spending a authorities provided whether it is discretionary or mandatory, lets instead setting separate annual caps and targets for the investment spending, and investment spending which is defined by both cbo and omb as including not only capital infrastructure, and also the research and development and Human Capital investment through the education and training. If we for the set out that category of tax expenditures, it would allow and enable a expenditure for the spending and the tax expenditures that promise long Term Economic and social return, and overspending for the current consumption. So that is one minor change that i would suggest. When the budget plan is enacted i suggest a third year of allocation and the proposal is for a twoyear plan, and the benefit of having a third year in the statue main the law is tt it is in the next biennial round if there is wrangling or delay in enacting a new budget plan, then appropriators in other committees could begin the work, and continue the work, because they would have established targets or caps for the work. So that year moving forward on the plan, and Congress Continues to spend on the next plan. And so it also aligns with the process more closely to what has become a Standard International practice of setting intermediary plans for budget planning. Portfolio budgeting, and thank you for mentioning it. It is good to see that the group recognizes an idea that is for myself and the great paul puzner, and another great expert and colleague that we have lost in the last year who i worked very closely with, and im glad to see that this idea is attracting growing interests, and we intended to designing it in making room for the process to consider can it bigger and Strategic Alternatives to achieve a bigger set of policy goals as we have all experienced that the budget process is largely shortsided and focused mainly on the next year. It is stovepiped by agency and programs necessarily and for the most part, and it divides the tax expenditures and the process of spending policies. We have proposed that also that major policy objectives at least a selective set of the twoyear cycle would allow consideration of bigger changes and strategy and they would both accelerate process toward major policy priorities and also use resources much more productively in portfolio budgeting and savings, and this group has their own take on it. And i would suggest that in enlisting the portfolio of tax and spending, that it is considered together give anne twoyear cycle that they keep the list open end and goal focused. And if congress and the president wanted to undertake a major review of the opioid and drug addiction crisis or the threat of the pandemic or Something Big like retirement or policies, they could launch a review in the enacted legislative plan. And so finally, it is important to emphasize that no process or reforms could be sustained unless they are aligned with the political leaders. And the Convergence Groups work show shows how the big process changes could serve the interests of the political leaders by helping them to reach the kind of big bipartisan agreements that we need to avoid hitting the fiscal rocks. The reform process should be neutral to policy reforms or choices, and given where we are, we cant be neutral with regard to the fiscal sustainability. We have to keep in mind with where we are headed and the size of the challenge that we face, and i hope that is a good segue to what stewart is going to talk about. Thank you very much, everybody. I was also a member of the Convergence Group and took part of all of the conversation, and i can echo what people said about the tone and the constructive nature of it. It is also important as to what has been emphasized of what we tried the do with the convergence process was not to reach for the moon, i think, but one person mentioned, but to say, what can kind of build the foundation or the platform to focus the minds of the public, and the members of congress to take subsequent steps down the road. And to start doing in that process is to begin to go down certain paths that we knew that we couldnt necessarily solve right now, but we wanted to build that momentum for the future, and one of those was the whole area of looking for the Long Term Plan of some plan for the nation, but that is going to leave the country and a much better fiscal shape and assure that the commitments made over the long haul, commitment s s t the elderly or the children with those security system, and so forth, and that would be sustainable over the long term, and how can they move in that direction, and if you are looking at some of the elements like the fiscal state of the nation report and also the various reports on the portfolios of programs mentioned whether it was periodic reviews, these were all in part designed to focus attention on the importance of the major programs and the long term, and in the belief that if you do that and build that kind of platform and support, then in future years it might be possible to go further, and achieve those much longer objectives. And so, one of these was this longterm budget plan. Now, we obviously dont do it today in any real way. We pass the laws and set up the Social Security system and all, and we keep projection, and keep the fingers crossed that it is going to be working out, and occasionally, put some caps on areas of programs and both discretionarily and there is no plan, per se put forward. In other countries, they at least do it a little ways as steve and others well know, and almost all of the Major Industrial countries have some form of at least medium term plan, called the medium term expenditure frameworks in most countries that seek over five or more years to say, lets have a plan for these areas and try to figure out how the stick with it and so on. We dont do this in any real way. And when it is time for us to not only catch up, but to go much further, and there could be many ways that we could do that and there are differences of opinion of how to construct a proposal, and myra mackgeanus put together a plan to figure out how to do this and you have a copy of nit in the packages that you can look at it later, but, essentially this idea that we put forward to achieve a longer term budget process, and longer term budget in the country would Mean Congress enacting a longterm budget for major commitments for the long haul and particularly the major entitlement programs including tax expenditures and tax programs like the mortgage for example. And some default for it so that if congress didnt do anything else, we would stay on track to achieve the objectives, and congress would be able to make change, but we would stay on trac track, and we suggested to do this two basic elements, and changing in the budget procedure. Again, you can see the details in the package. First, that congress would debate and enact a 25year budget for major entitlement programs like social r securise and medicare like i have said. And with the Revenue Sources specified to achieve that. That can be payroll taxes, a share of the general revenue tax, and it could be measures of that kind, but a plan laid out for the long term for at least 25 year, and every four years that plan would be revisited. If congress could get the votes and decided to make a changes it could do so, but it would require a statute to change that plan. So not a straitjacket, but a true plan. And it would therefore be the default over time. And secondly, that there would be a procedure to keep to that plan and bear in mind that it could be reviewed and changed. The way we suggested is that the Congressional Budget Office would develop a kind of the tenyear moving average in the major portfolios that would be cover covered in the entitlement a area, and if the actual spending of that 10year moving average started to go either above or e below, and in either expenditure or revenues, and different from the actual plan itself if it got too far out of kilter, and there would be automatic procedures to bring it back into place, and we proposed sort of a two element, one is the Commission Model element like the Commission Closing that would put forward steps to put this into place, and put it back on track, and that if congress didnt do anything, then those changes would actually be made. Or a Super Committee made up bicameral or bipartisan that if it were enacted into the law, it would supersede what the commission could do. So the way we thought of it is to have a commission to sort of push us to stay the on track for the budget that is enacted by congress, but also allow congress to provide an alternative way of doing that. You can look a lot more of the details in the proposals that i mentioned, and the idea of this is to build on what Convergence Group developed in terms of the information, focus on where we are, evaluating where we are in the major prom grams and say that we will go to the next step and actually build it into the longterm plan, and so for the americans, we heard it from the people who are part of the convergence process itself and how difficult it is to plan and to be sure and to up hold the commitments that we made. And if you are looking at this, and the bottom line of the approach, and which ever way one does it, and whether i may suggest it or others is for the long term budget to be a default to be something that we will stick to and be required to stick to it unless we make a explicit decision, change to go in a different direction. And certainly, the bottom line is the proposal that we put forward is completely neutral as to the Big Government should be, and how small it should be and not the same as putting caps on program, and it is a flaw and a ceiling if you like, but a k corridor and an approach to doing this, and let the congress and the people decide what those commitments should be. And let es have a plan to carr them out. And then finally, that it would be very visible, and very visible and devoted plan and that is something that we dont do today, and it is a major weakness in the budget process and one of the reasons is that as we said in the beginning of those massive deficits of the future with no idea about what to do other than to say that we wont touch anything. We need to have a very different process in that way. I would say in conclusion that we have to address these kinds of next stages in the budget process in this country that if we are going to build or rebuild the public support and trust in government. And absolutely had to reconstitute if we are going to avoid the constitutions and the polarization that we are experiencing to today. Thank you. It is great for me, and i really appreciate the chance to be here today at the start of a new reform drive for budget appropriations. My role here today is to talk about how the process reforms can succeed, and Institutional Reforms is of course two select committees established by congress in 2011 and 1993 were not policy changes in accordance with mandates. But at key moments in history, congress has succeeded how it has performed the power of the purse. I will look back at some of the budget appropriation, and u offer some generalizations about how the reforms were brought about. First, without exception, all of the previous major durable reforms of the budget and the appropriations process were adopted on the strength of a broad bipartisan consensus. I circulated a list of six major reforms in the onepage document that is part of the packet. All of these process reforms commanded substantial support from the Minority Party at the time of their adoption. The single most important and sweeping reform, the budget of 1974 was enacted with unanimous support, and pass ed the senate on the final vote by a vote of 750 and passed the house by 4016. It was the product of the compromise in which nobody got what they wanted from the reform, and in the end, virtually all members of the congress believed that the new process was better than what existed before than when congress had a piecemeal fashion, and had no capacity to take stock of the budget as a whole. One of the most significant challen challenges to budgeting is that the present congress cannot bind a future congress. For Institutional Reforms to stick, they have to be widely accepted as legitimate so that future members will actively want to the preserve the new arrangements. Reforms that are perceived to stack the deck in favor of one partys policy preferences cannot be expected to survive a change of Majority Party control of congress. Reforms also rely on the political will to make them work. The budget process established by the 1974 act was extraordinarily complex, and in fact, more complex than it is today, but congress was committed to making it work. And Congress Went on to do so, despite the difficulties for 20 years up until 1998. Every year, congress succeeded if passing a budget resolution for the first 20 years of the budget process. The current reform effort seems to be off to the right start in stri striving for tr broad consensus, and in developing its reform recommendations the convergence process brought across ideological spectrums for building the broad consensus that is made for workable reforms in the past. The newly formed joint select committee of the budget and the appropriations reform contains an equal number of the republicans and democrats and the recommendations must be supported by a majority of both parties. So this is an auspicious start for the process. Second, reviewing the past successful reforms and another clear pattern that emerges is that members of congress can come together around reforms even though they may not agree on what the reforms will do in policy terms. Successful Reform Efforts typically bring together members with different goals and priori priorities. In 1980, for example, Congress First successfully enacted a budget reconciliation bill. It did so using an innovative procedural maneuver not originally envisioned in the budget act. It moved reconciliation up to the start of the budget process. The maneuver was grounded in the socalled elastic clause of the budget act. But this highly consequential procedural innovation was not controversial at the time. It was not controversial, because both liberals and conservatives simultaneously thought that it would help them to achieve their goal, and conservatives such as dell latta supported it, because it was the only way thaw saw such a liberal decision to be justice and equity rather than with the special interest, and meanwhile, other people are resigned to it. Most remarkably, the first part of it was streamlined in the processes, and very much at odds in the procedure, and so in the end, the principal of reconciliation who established to the agree to do it, despite disagreeing what the results would be. The same pattern is present in other institutional rer forms and members come together for specific reforms for varied reasons, and divergent reasons and reasons at a odds with one another. As the reformers develop ed proposals for 2018 i would encourage them to keep in mind the potential for the common carriers. Successful reform coalitions in congress can and often do bring together strange bedfellows who are capable of forming alliances even when they cannot agree on the ultimate goals of those reforms. Third, i encourage the reform et cetera to the pay close attention to the reformers of the institutional turf, and congress is and complex institution in which many have developed a personal stake in the ways of doing business. Reformers never get the opportunity to work on a blank slate, and they have to contend with the existing Power Centers as they put forward the proposals. Past Reform Efforts have succeeded, because they figured out ways to at least partially ak kom m accommodate the members invested in the status quo, and this means that if the reforms are l layering atop existing congressional procedures and practices rather than displace them. When the budget act of 1974 was pa passed, it did not sweep away the preexisting preauthorization process, but instead, superimposed on top. Recommending the proposals of the Convergence Group, i am struck by the extent to which they went to build on the existing institutions such as the Budget Committee, the Congressional Budget Office. Finally, i just want to conclude by reminding the reformers that the effect of the reforms will will evolve over time. Congress is continually changing. It is not possible to predict how new processes will work decades into future. In some cases the reformers are c consistent with the reformers hopes, and the Congressional Office is designed to be nonpart san. And it took successful early leadership of the cbo to show how nonpart sanship could wo could Work Together. And it is also rife with unanticipated consequences, and certainly, the designers of the original budget act never imagine d that budget reconciliation would become a means by which a Majority Party would act among narrow part san lines. Etch as the reconciliation began to be used, it was decades to be enacting a part san program on a narrow part san vote. And reagans 1991 budget which was implemented reconciliation received 80 votes in the senate. And in the final event, approved in the house by unanimous conse consent. We only start to see this budget reconciliation emerge as a part san vehicle in 1990s, and most of the reconciliation bills that passed in 1980s did so in excess of 60 senators voting in favor and those who voted below 60 were highly bipartisan such as the kemperroth cuts in 1992 and the 1992 budget agreement and my final History Lesson is to recognize that whatever emergence from the reform effort will not be the last word. Just as in the past, the constitutions of institutional are reform will reverberate down through the future in unexpected ways and regardless, we can be sure that future congresses will continue the need wise and skilled are reformers who were able to bring about these difficult changes. Great. Thank you to all of you for those excellent presentations. I want to start with some question, and start with this new select committee, because there is a lot of buzz in the air, and excitement, and a sense that really, something could happen this time, and i think of the big turn out today is evidence of that, and so what are the expectations of the new select committee, because in the initial reporting on this, there is a heavy level of skepticism to get anything done, and two of the big reasons were that he never reached the 60vote tle threshold and there is no requirement of the congress to vote on the recommendation of the select committee, and is this panel built to fail and what is going on here . I will take a stab at this, and not an expert on the congress and certainly not as much as francis, but the expectations will lifted somewhat by listening to you ta talk about the history of previous Reform Efforts, because it is relaxing to know that we dont know how much this is going to turn out, and people should enter the reform effort with the understanding that they dont know the ultimate shape of those reforms, and they will evolve over time as they are implemented and that we cant predict the consequence, and in a way, that is intellectually liberating and i hope that people come in with that attitude and there is a sense of urgency, and i cant predict how many people will see this as an opportunity to see this as big of the budget process so that we have a budget process that is not just working, but worthy of the country that we live in. It is up to that they did not come along everyday, and they will rise to the occasion. Well, it is easy to be cynical when you are thinking of the circumstances about which this was created and it was not something that was Building Momentum at a high profile way for a long period. But it was part of the deal. And with that said, as francis said, sometimes we see the opportunities, and sometimes we dont see opportunities that are right in front of us, and this may be the opportunity that is in the make, and we should certainly be open minded about treating it in that way. I do think that it is more likely that a Side Committee will produce proposals if they are to be successful, proposals that are more like the modest first step proposal s ths that developed within the convergence process and rather than anything dramatic, and it may be the right way to approach it, and lets say it is trying to avoid it, and trying to build up too much expectation about the drama associated with it, and the focus of getting some of the steps that are needed in place, that could have brought bipartisan sup r port, and i think that it is a opportunity there, and the opportunities come and they go, and it is important in the debusiness as we have all learned to to keep an eye out for opportunities. To use them and to take the greatest advantage of them, and to recognize they dont always have with this. I have to say that when i first learned about the creation of this new committee, i was pretty skeptical of the prosp t prospects for success, but we have encouraged some thinking of the short teterm thinking of congress, and that when there s is a Party Control change in one institution or another, and that makes it very hard to try to agree to longterm fiscal arrangements when you think that a change of power could be potentially around the corner, and why cut a deal now, when you could be in better circumstances in a short time frame, but on the other hand, perhaps this moment is a good one, and in the sense that it is either party going to be in the minority, and so, maybe under such circumstances, it is easy to agree to a set of rules that would be acceptable regardless of the partys level of institutional power. I might just add to the that quickly now that we may be in in an era of atmosphere that we might call it a prisoners dilemma situation, and where so many people are going to be seeing this definitely, and come together in the convergence process that this is not working well for any of us. And either politically or subst substantively. And therefore, there may be, just as in the agreement of letses Work Together here, and even though we have different views of what the outcomes of the budget should be, but we are all losing under the current situation, so lets at least take some modest steps in the right direction. So that is an element in the equation that may be welcoming to fruition right now. Well, some of you, and others have written about this quite a bishgts and been involved in the proposals and trying to figure out how to fikts what many of you view as broken budget process, but what separates this particular document from all of the others that have, you know, surfaced over the years and ended up collecting dust on a shelf somewhere, a i ask it from the perspective of it seems that you can have all of the process changes that all of you and everybody has been working on this for some time can come up with some rational and logical ideas, but you run into two major problems and number one is the need to engage in the tough fiscal decisions making, and two, how do you overcome the jurisdictional battles in congress, and speaking in particular about the new augmented Budget Committee in the budget action plan which seems like something that would be met with a lot of concern by the established committee thiefdoms on capitol hill, and so how do you make it work in tough decisions and get over the jurisdictional spats . I will take a shot. Well, on the jurisdictional battles, we have seen congress get past those difficulties in the past. They have done that. It looks like to me that the contemporary congress is somewhat better positioned to get past internal turf battles than previous congresses, because congress is so much more centralized. And so the committees are less powerful now than they were and less able to block change that is objectionable to particular committee chairs. So, if the will is there, i think that, you know, the institutional optical, and the internal opticals are less than in previous time periods. There is always the paradox with regard to the Institutional Reforms which is that the fact that the institutional reform can be achieved is that it is a a product of a coalition, and then also prepared to carry out those new processes, but in the absence of that willingness to continue to make the processes work, they dont continue to work, but they only work as long as the will is there. They dont go on the automatic. And so it is not to say that reforms are unimportant, because they are, and that is how complex institution functions, but it, the willingness of the members to do a reform is the precondition for them to be able to r carry one out. And stewart introduced game theory with the talk about the and you can do that here to talk about whether the members of the different committees who are fighting for jurisdiction will see the outcome as essentially the essentially zero sum gains or the gain of one committee or commit tease and the the Budget Committee versus the appropriators which is the attitude of people in 1974 and thereafter. Or they see that because the process is so broken, everyone has lost power and as a result, an opportunity to put together a new working process where the appropriators are doing work diligent diligently, and there is no agreement on the top line for the result of the work. You see the opportunity to have a prior agreement on an envelope of which they were doing the work, and so it is going to give them a chance to regain some of the authority they have lost. And so, i dont see that the Budget Committee organizing a Better Process necessarily means a process of the committees. That is one way to think about it. Yeah, i can build on that quickly, and as you heard in the last panel, one of the things that the group decided not the do was a radical shakeup in the budget structure for precisely the reasons that you mentioned and by neal in particular. And with that said, you can see that one of the steps is to look at one of the Budget Committees itself, which is currently not seen in either chamber, and it is a top the level are, and top level committee, and say, that we will strengthen the committee by bringing in leaders from other committees so that the Budget Committee becomes a vehicle, an effective vehicle for the other powerful committees here before, and so that is how i think of recognizing exactly what you said in terms of the resistance to change, but looking at what we saw as a procedure change of power before, and reinforced the committee that there is a strong emphasis on the Committee Report of information and this is not a good afterthought or Good Government idea, but it is an idea that if we have a cacophony of information right now and so much so that there are so many things going on right now so that nobody can focus, and part of the idea in this report is to say that, lets focus on so much information in a way that moves the public to give signals to the political process as to what needs to be done, and thele alert the political process itself, and it can be a powerful way of focusing the mind and giving the members to not give up the parochial interest, but be pressured and focused down a pathway that is focus can focused as you referenced. And so, to look at what happened 20 years ago, we have had nostalgic deals in the 1990s and as francis said, it is used with the tool of reconciliation, and in a lot of ways it is becoming the only way to get things done by using the reconciliation, and this convergence principles were with not to get rid of the reconciliation process to be sure, but because things thingst worked, so to speak in the last 20 years, youve written a lot about this, francis, the main rb reason is the increasing divide between the electorate. Become so polarized and extends to the representatives on capitol hill. Would forming a Better Process around budgeting do anything to solve those fundamental divisions that prevent the type of longterm visionary fiscal thinking that everybody in this room probably agrees is needed . Well, these are challenges that we confront. I mean, the divide is i mean, its real. The parties represent their constituencies out in the broad public and disagree about what they would like to achieve, but its a political system that requires broad consensus to act. Its not a parliamentary system. And so to strengthen majority rule in the congress runs into the obstacle that most of the time, we have divided government. 75 of the time since 1980. So that wont work. It just it just produces head butting and a lot of symbolic budgeting knowing the budget, the only purpose of the budget is simply to lay down a marnger but it will not actually govern policy. More realism, one of the things i like about the convergence proposals is to move away from a process where the congressional budget is a product of congress only and to try to get the president involved early in striking a deal. That strikes me with more aligned with how our system works in reality than the budget process which was a product that came out of a, you know, its called the budget impoundment control act. The goal was to try to design a process that wouldnt need any president ial buyin. Thats not realistic. And so to move toward something that requires more president ial involvement, i think i think thats constructive. Let me ask one more question then were going to take some questions from the audience, but my last question is, earmarks, do we need earmarks to come back . We had former congressman tom davis, longtime representative from our area, said these are the glue that hold the budget bills together. We could really get a lot done, solve some of these big budget problems if we could just bring back earmarks. Do any of you agree with that . I certainly hear it. Im participating in a conference at the end of this week an improving congressional capacity and there was a there were about 50 interviews conducted in the preparation for that. For that krnconference. The number of times in which earmarks came up is something that would help congress Work Together more effectively. Very striking. They certainly believe members, staff, believe that earmarks are helpful in cutting deals especially true in the house. I dont think its the story of understanding how we got to budget agreements, however. I think it smooths the path for other lower profile legislation more often than is key to understanding a fiscal deal. I agree with that. Earmarks have a very long history and not just in this country, the 18th century English Parliament ran on a combination of patronage and earmarks basically and was very stable. As francis dasaid, we think nowf earmarks as a lubricant, a way of getting people to get to agreement by essentially bribing them. What i think were trying to move toward, at least we in the congressional process, everybody in this room has been talking about this, is to look at other ways of getting those kinds of agreeme agreements, other procedures to do that so you dont need to use this quite reprehensible method of doing so. Thats why ideas of developing information, developing longerterm plans, fiscal state of the nation, orderly review process, the timing. Changing the decision architectures as game theorists would say so it becomes easier and more natural where the inertia is to move toward agreement and longerterm planning. And to do that without having to use kind of the earmark method, which, gecagain, is a very crud method of kind of getting to that same position. Were trying to do a much more systemic set of changes that make it more likely that members that disagree fundamentally, members who think they may be the ones in the majority in two years time still find it by a combination of enlightened selfinterest, do kind of do the right thing. Like to remind people if you have questions to fill out the question cards on your table and hold them up. I got a couple already here. First question, more of a proposal from the audience, from lou whos a retired federal employee. Why dont we balance the annual budget, and if the budget doesnt balance, how about we just have all automatic benefits cut 2 until the budget is bounced . Any thoughts on the proposal like this . Focus the yes. First point is where we are now, again, coming back to the metaphor i started with, were in a position if we tried to balance the budget any time soon, wed have to turn the ship so quickly that a lot of things would go overboard. Not practical to think of thoat as a shortterm objective. Not even a desirable longterm objective. Might be good to have rough balance between revenues and spending on the horizon. Thats the idea of sustainability. But we also need to retain the flexibility to run deficits when we need to stimulate the economy, and to run surpluses when we can, when the economy is strong. So its its as usually formula formulated, its too constraining and its probably in the short run not practical. I can probably think of five, six other reasons why i wouldnt say it should be the focus. Its certainly been proposed and had a lot of support over the years in different places. Including the Heritage Foundation where i worked at. But i think we learned the hard way about what some of the implications of that are, even if you can get it put into place in terms of the disorderly nature of government that flows from it. And thats why i think moving toward thinking about a longerterm budget in the sense of saying were not just talking about a simple rule to ratchet back on spending in every instance, but a procedure that would allow an orderly way of saying are we going down the road that we intended to go, and if not, can there be gradual adjustments over time to get us back on track . Which could be appealing to both sides of the aisle. And there should be a big debate from both sides of the aisle about how to do that, which is certainly what we tried to accomplish in our proposal. So i think all these ideas that try to put forward a simple approach necessarily then force other discussions and other parts of the conversation which, again, we had exactly that in the process. As you start discussing these and negotiating these, have the opportunity with trust to say, how can we start to build the procedures than can adapt from some of these basic proposals to one that is actually something which both sides can trust, both guys say the rules are not perfect, but were not discriminated against, its not lopsided. And we are all getting to where we all ultimately want to be. Anybody else wanted to tackle that proposal . But got another one. This is a more a philosophical question. This the assumption of some of the presenters today has seemed to be been in the process is appropriately designed, the voters will hold the lawmakers accountable. And the question is, who is this collective mind of the voter will the voters actually recommend that lawmakers try to reduce the deficits and debt, or is it more something we go in the opposite direction . What is the collective mindset of the voter toward fiscal responsibility . Well, the voters want fiscal responsibility, but accountability is very difficult in our political system. Its one of divided powers. Where does accountability lie . Its somewhat clear in the case of unified control. We rarely have that. Even under unified control, the budget theres a legacy. Legacy of many decisions that have, you know, occurred in the leadup to the present moment. The current incumbents are not responsible for the whole budget deficit. Where do you lodge accountability in a system that looks like this . It strikes me as sort of we have institutional incentives are somewhat misaligned in that budgeting requires hard choices and we set up a process that only works when youve got the same Party Controlling the house and the senate. And youre asking that party to take on its shoulders the burden of raising taxes and cutting spending and doing the painful things that voters will not appreciate and its one at odds with our system in that the president has to be involved. This is not Something Congress can do by itself and so so to recognize that we deal with this shared responsibility and shared accountabili accountability, and theres no simple blunt instrument that the voters can use to enforce fiscal discipline as much as they would like to see it. At least in the abstract. Anybody else . Were in a situation where the decisions are required will inflict pain, probably pain on many many vote err errs simulta. Our system is not good at allocating pain. Better at allocating rewards. So theres a real risk that there will be a lot of losers politically unless we develop a process that allows for consensus and shared responsibility. Again, not accountability so much as responsibility beingpon shared among Different Actors in our system who have to Work Together ultimately to get Something Big done. Speaking of the next opportunity to hold members of congress accountaccountable, we the midterm elections coming up. Heres a question from bill, known to many of you in the room. Francis, would it make more sense if their recommendations were due before the midterms, you know, for them to actually produce something here. The fact the recommendations are due at the end of the month seems to indicate that what do you make of the date implication there of the select committee . Thats a good point. I was trying to look on the bright side here at the outset of trying to see some possibility for this for this committee to succeed. I think that in the past when this has happened, you can come up 1,000 reasons why it shouldnt have, why congress should have stuck with the status quo. Thats this congress is biased at any given time. But what enables congress to act is a shared belief, a broad belief, that something has to change. And that we need reform to Work Together more effectively. That that and members become convinced of that across a party line. When this occurs. Sometimes its to more effectively counter an executive branch that Congress Sees as too powerful. Sometimes its aimed at increasing Congress Public esteem. But there are times when members of congress across the aisle feel a shared urgency to do something and that overcomes inertia, that its very easy to see how this effort would fail, as previous efforts have failed. Incentives seem to point in that direction, but that we look back at congressional history and we see thats not always the story. Okay. Well, being told thats all the time we have for our panel today. So i want to thank our distinguished guests and everybody with the questions. [ applause ] thank you, guys. Okay. We are quickly being joined by our two final panelists who are on their way up. Thank you, chris. Hello. Hello. Nice to see you. Thank you for coming. Nice to see you. The mike are on loud. I know. These are loud. Oh, thank you. Actually, youre the majority, you should be here. Ive been around for too long. Put you to my right, thats probably good. Probably right. Well, wonderful. Thank you, everybody, for continuing to stick with us. I promise there will be no tears on this panel. This has been a long day filled with lots of ideas. Since you all are going to be thinking through these ideas in the coming years, i am proud to say theres been a lot of good work and good budget process reform, things that have been shared throughout the afternoon well make sure you all know about. Im really thrilled to have this panel to be joined by senator perdue and senator withouthouhi to talk about this at obviously a perfect moment. This is about to be a year of focusing on budget process reform. These are two senators who have been working hard on this issue long before it became cool. Its now cool. Did you know that . No. I nichbthink you made it coo. Put in work to thinking about different kinds of reforms and ideas. Im going to throw open a couple questions to them and have them talk about from their experience in trying to legislate, its very different from those of us on the outside to come up with all sorts of white papers and great ideas and things to hopefully just turn the process around so you can get great fiscal outcomes and make hard choices, but once you spend some time in the center of the house, i think theyre probably well aware, big challenges we dont have to go through. Were here in this moment, going to be a big hopefully product effort to look at budgets, appropriations pane process reform and how that will go, what changes we could make proc reform and how that will go, what changes we could make. There are shawl imall inkmencre changes. Lets start at the beginning. Given your work in the Budget Committees and the senate, what problems should we actually be trying to solve with all this . Well, ive been on the Budget Committee the whole time ive been in the senate. You have. Ten years now and i have come to the conclusion that the process is completely useless and defective. So not the small incremental changes. Were going to need more. No, you really got to fix the underlying problems with the Budget Committee, itself. And giving it a role and to me, that means three things. One, stlst g rk, theres got to penalty for blowing through the budget. Right now the penalty is you have to amass 60 votes for whatever measure youre going to take to blow through the budget. Well, the senates been operating under a 60vote rule now for years. So demanding 60 votes in an institution that demands 60 votes is no penalty whatsoever. So theres a problem. Problem two is that the budget process only looks at certain appropriations. Accounts. It doesnt look at the billions and billions and billions of dollars, the backdoor of the tax code in tax expenditures despite i think the unanimous recommendations of bipartisan witnesses that we have to look at that side. That hits the budget just as much as an appropriate expenditure and you have to look at the health care piece. When you look at the 3 trillion that seems to have fallen out of federal health care expenditures, not knowing why that happened is a really big oversight. We really need to come into focus on that. And the third is that you have there has to be some value, some reward for a bipartisan process. Otherwise, what the Budget Committee has become now is a mechanism for the Majority Party to get around the 60vote rule with one thing by doing a reconciliation measure and, poof, off it goes. Then it goes back into back to sleep and doesnt wake up again until it needs at another reconciliation measure so i think if we can solve those three problems, you have a committee that means something, actually addressing the full scope of the budget problem and theres a reward of some kind for bipartisanship as opposed to everybody going to their into their foxholes. First of all, i congratulate you guys for sitting through what is now almost, what, three hours of this. Theres even an overflow room. Well thats got to be washington. Let me start i really want to i thiank maya and her grop for really causing this to be spearheaded. Ever since i got in the senate three years ago, maya and i have been talking about this. Ive been asking for this select committee. Well see if it can make a difference. Let me start at step one. I dont know if you talked about today, if im redundant, i apologize. I dont get a chance to talk to people who understand this. Im going to go for it here. Youll forgive me, i hope. This budget process is absolutely broken. I met some people who actually voted for that bill in 74 and theyre calling for its revision today. The shocking thing is you have to appropriate today in the senate, by the i wa, way. By the way, the senate is where most of the problem is. Im not a fan of reconciliation. Neither is senator whitehouse. I think we agree on a lot of things in here, but if you look at this over the last we have to appropriate 12 bills to fund the government. We only averaged 2 1 2. 2 1 2 over 44 years. Not only that, but congress in its infinite wisdom actually shut the government down 20 times in those 44 years. This is a system that does not allow for active debate. I fought hard to get on the Budget Committee coming from the Business World thinking this is where the action is. Its a joke. I would blow the Budget Committee up unless we changed some of these rules. Seriously. It does nothing and so what it does is it there are three steps in our process, by the way, there are three democrats and about a dozen republicans whove been working on this off and on over the last couple years. Senator whitehouse has been a leader in this and he and i are not necessarily known as politically aligned and yet on this issue, we see this very similarly. And that is that, you know, you have a threestep process. One is the budget process starts with a Budget Committee putting a budget out. It is not a budget that anybody has supporting except for the Majority Party. It is not a law. Its a resolution. So the Majority Party can cram down the throat of the minority its version of the financial future of the country. Anyone you go to an authorization process. Guys, we got 315 billion of expenditures today. Theyre not authorized. The state department, i was on foreign relations, the state department until two years ago had not been authorized in 15 years. So its a joke. The Minority Party says you didnt ask our opinion in the budget process so we wont help you in the authorization process, nothing ever gets to 60 votes. Then they go to appropriations, all the Appropriations Bills pass in committee. Cant get them to the floor. Im not talking about democrats. Go back a few years, republicans did the same thing. Theres enough blame for this 20 trillion of debt up there for both parties. This is insane. That its taken 44 years to get to this point. Other attempts have been made. The ryan murray attempt in 2011 actually failed and ended up with sequester. To me the bottom line is one thing and one thing only. There are a number of systems that the can work in funding the federal government. Its the number one requirement, responsibility of the congress. Yet the 21 budget act actually created the o mormb, in my mind look at the three paragraphs of the constitution to describe what the presidency is supposed to do, i dont see this in there at all. As matter of fact, whats happened because of the total gridlock in the senate, primarily in Senate Congress in of funding the government, the Congressional Branch really stepped in and drives the process now. So the release valve is the problem. It doesnt matter which system you use. In my mind, you have to have consequences that are real and that preclude the release valve that we have today and that release valve as we go to an omnibus, over 180 crs in the last 44 years we end up in an omnibus, six people get in a room and decide how to spend a trillion dollars. Its not acceptable anymore. I was thinking of this listening to the two of you, give us an insider sense of what its like to be on the Budget Committee. The way i picture a budget, if i didnt deliver to my board a budget ahead of time, i wouldnt have a job. We havent we did a budget in 15, it lasted 4 months and it was waived so we could do a reconciliation. And then oh, yeah. We used reconciliation twice, maybe three times since then. So who are we kidding here . The budget process is not producing a product. Thats almost the question im asking, so are you kidding yourselves, do you guys go to meetings and pretend youre making budgets that were going to stick to or do you not have meeting, what is it like to be on the Budget Committee . I gave this got five minutes, we had a witness and i knew what the answers were going to be. We got those in our questions independently. I made a comment. I got threw, 15 minutes later senator whitehouse gave his comment and i could have given his speech. He could have given his speech. I look at this on the outside, start in january, supposed to have a budget by april 15th. Thats already three months into the new year. Were trying to fumble through to get an omnibus done, were halfway through this for the hearings you sit in one of the smaller and more remote Conference Rooms in the capitol complex and look out at a very small audience of chairs that maybe is half filled mostly with interns. And because Everybody Knows that nothing we do matters. So why show up. Theres never anything at stake. When we do the voting on the budget, whats going to happen, they lined up the vote votes, g to jam it through, period, end of story. They usual will i dont care about the budget. Its a sidebar to getting the reconciliation which is the real goal. People do point scoring back and forth and asking for the sort of, you know, budgetneutral reserve accounts to do this, that and the other. If we never passed another budgetneutral reserve account for anything, it would be a sign that things have gotten a lot more sensible. I actually came in, i thought, oh, cool, were doing a budg budgetneutral reserve account. Over the years, i came to realize thats a complete time waster. Then we have the voteorama. You get to the floor, thats where it turns into a real clown show. Which we seem to do very well. The one thing we did that was good at the end of the last voteorama clown show, the final amendment was a perdue whitehouse amendment that more or less said in slightly improved legislative language, this really sucks and need to change it. Not only did it pass by voice vote but with cheers and acclimation. Theres a strong bipartisan feeling on the floor at this is just a completely negative unhelpful divisive, useless process. Let me give you just a little hope here. There are several of us and senator whitehouse i felt hopeful after that. I know. You got to what do they say in aa, first you got to admit admit your problem. Yeah, there are some people who dont want to fix this. Appropriators. Well, by the way, i dont think that i have to be very careful with it. I get accused of this sometimes. The problem here is not appropriators, the problem is not with appropriators. Theyre trying to do their job. The problem is the structure, itself, can never work. Theres not enough calendar weeks just physically to do 16 authorizing committees and 12 appropriating committees and a 3 1 2 month budget process. Youve got eight or ten weeks left to do breaks and everything else. Theres not enough time in the year to do that and start the new year of the congress three months behind, anyway. We look at countries, companies and states. And what we found is the United States federal government is the only one that funds its government this way with a threestep process. It just isnt necessary. And it wont work. And there are a lot of different ways that you can go at this, but what we found is it doesnt matter what you do, youve got to have consequences and due dates and the two due dates that are critical is the budgets got to be completed by an early point in time in the year just like every company does, and then you go through the time for the allocation process, which they call appropriation process in congress, and that needs to be done before the last day of the fiscal year. So you have time to start implementing. There are many people who are, typically in the military, who buy these billion dollars of capital goods every year, they cant tell people until the first day of the new year even if you get it done on time what the plan is and now were five months into the new year, we still havent told these guys what the plan is for this fiscal year. Back to the appropriators, though, they are the big winners in all of this. Appropriators and leadership because in the absence of any process, and the absence of any checks and balances and the absence of any oversight and the absence of any transparency, what happens is you come butting up against your next moment when the government runs out of funds and youre going to have a shutdown then the folks who have been in the appropriations subcommittees have put together their packages and if they can make them work, they end up going basically straight through into the smokefilled room not snoemokefilled room any longer, the room. It gets jetted straight in. Six people from leadership and the appropriations chairs go in and they hash out the deal amongst themselves and everybody else in the senate is left being a supplica nt, no chance to hav a voteon it. Theres not democracy. Its a mess. It does confer a very great amount of power, basically how we spend all our money gets decided by two hands full of people. In a totally nontransparent environment. Yeah, i mean, i think many of us share that frustration completely and i kind of think apt about it, i think, gosh, you two are u. S. Senators, that seems like it should be a pretty cool job and in the end it feels like youre not getting to make any decisions. Youre not getting to really push this nearly enough. So maybe were in a system that is designed to fail. Well, thats why were here. I mean, thats why weve engaged, thats why sheldon and i are trying to do something about it. 44 years. I look at my children in the eye, grandchildren, i was up here for a period of time, i didnt do anything about that . Are you kidding . 20 trillion of debt with the duration of less than three years. This is serious were talking about here. By the way, youre not going to solve the debt crisis by fixing the budget process, alone, but will not until you do fix the budget process. Let me say one other thing, too, i think when you look at right now the other players in this process, there are a number of ways to get at this, but the one thing i keep coming back to is you either need to make the budget a law, and therefore, its 60, and with real consequences if that budget is not done by april 15th. If you move the fiscal year to the calendar year if you do that. The second thing is i really think you got to have a longerterm plan. We dont have a Capital Budget in this government. Were buying billions and billions and billions of dollars of longterm capital goods. It takes decades for some of this stuff to actually get built. Yet we dont have a Capital Budget plan. So theres no longterm plan about how to allocate that. Senator whitehouse came up with an idea, we had a bill together that actually does that for the debt ceiling. Not the debt ceiling but debt as a percentage of gdp. Gdp. Its going to take time to get there. We know that. This is not something thats going to be fixed in 10 years or 15 years. This is a longterm proposition. I believe global bond markets would applaud if we came out with an acknowledgement we got a longterm problem and a longterm solution here that put a target out there for debt as a percentage of gdp, brought it back with guardrails. We embrace that. That was something that came out of this work weve been doing quietly behind the scenes, no cameras. Past chairmen of committees, democrat, republican, come in and tell us their view. These are small steps i hope the committee will begin to coagulate together here to come up with a meaningful recommendation and hopefully get it to the floor for a real vote this time. We both, i think, owe considerable gratitude to chairman enzi on the Budget Committee who has put a lot of hearing time into this. Hes put a lot of effort into this. Hes been very thoughtful about it. And, frankly, its really hard even for bipartisan things to happen if the chairman of a committee isnt giving it license to go. And chairman enzi has been, i think, really terrific about this. Well, and you brought up the debt targets which is an idea that we have organizationally supported as well for a long time and i think it is a heavy lift and i think one that would make huge changes and be very impressive if it were able to move forward. Would it change, would it replace the debt ceiling . What do you think about the debt ceiling . The debt ceiling is something were going to have to thats the only thing thats more dangerous and stupid than voteorama. Whats so interesting is the debt creoling is te debt ceiling is the only fiscal complaint out there and achieves nothing when you go through all the agony of the vote. Youve achieved nothing except avoiding a selfinflicted catastrop catastrophe. So thats not, in my view, productive legislation when you set a trap for yourself and then by managing to avoid the trap you set for yourself, you have a victory. No, you havent. Thats a time waster. You need to solve this problem and i think having a longterm glideslope to a sustainable debt to gdp ratio with some guardrails to police for when youre getting out of that range is a much more sensible way to go about doing it. And you look at the politics up close of these debt ceiling votes, it is a poisonous moment on the senate and house of representatives floor. Im just practical it doesnt work. Since. 1913, it hasnt worked. We keep bumping it up, bumping it up so theres always a release valve. The great thing about american politicians is they always leave a backdoor and the backdoor is a release valve, the release valve is more spending. Have a democrat, republican, sitting here saying 21 trillion is not acceptable today, we have to find a way to solve it. Well differ on how to solve it. Thats what were arguing for, create a politically neutral platform during the budget process that is actually meaningful. We dont have that today. We dont get to sit in a room. With the cameras or without the camera. And actually argue tax increase, tax expendtuiture we dont er get to do that and thats whats missing in this whole process i think. Another thing thats missing in this process which the two of you have overcome, at least with the two of you, is the bipartisan cooperation. The trust that were going to need. Because the bottom line is, fiscal success is going to require hard choices. There are two Political Parties that are very at each other right now, with very little trust. One of the things we covered today is a really wonderful effort by convergence which came out with big budget process reforms. You both have copies of, be familiar with all their work. The nice thing about what day did, they brought a bunch of stakeholders who were very different in their perspectives, didnt trust each other in the beginning, worked through a process until they came to a shared set of recommendations. How do we do that in the senate, on this commission or Budget Committee . The incentives are set up for you not to Work Together and not to succeed, particularly on these hard choices. I will add, we just had two big bills, a tax bill and spending bill, that have contributed to the fiscal debt which we have that have added to the mistrust between the parties. How are we going to pivot to where we have the hole we dug ourselves into to working together and doing really hard things . Id go back to process. I think that when you have the process set up so that all of the rewards that are built into the process are rewards of partisansh partisanship, then thats what youre going to get. The part of what brings david and i and other people from the were not the only ones having this conversation, on the Budget Committee together, is that i think we have a shared common interest in either fixing the Budget Committee, so that it actually amounts to something again, or getting off of it. Getting rid of it. We got other things to do with our time. Theres just no point going through this. To make it useful again, to make it effective again, i think is a very valuable common cause. Theres lots of bipartisanship in that. Once youre over that, your question is, okay, were going to Work Together, which we are, what is what were working on going to look like . Well, if you havent set up a process in which there is any reward for bipartisanship, and the only meaningful prize that can be taken from the whole enterprise is a partisan reconciliation bill to jam something through under the 60vote threshold, its the only prize in the game. Youre either not going to play the game at all or thats the prize youre going to go for. Youve got to set up another path where the prize can be what david said, a glide slope over a reasonable period of time to a reasonable debt to gdp ratio with rcheasonable guardrails to police it and process that internally has some teeth so the appropriators dont just blow through it, covers tax spending, regular spending, and health care costs, and creates that bipartisan path if youre doing that. In our proposal, you dont even open the gate to that path until youre significantly bipartisan. You want to use it, you got to be bipartisan. So you provide a big reward for going there. Which is that you can solve this problem. You cant solve americas budget problem through the Budget Committee now as its present presently as its process is presently constituted. Yeah, i think that the reason the need for the select committee is that the Budget Committee, itself, is not by its structure not capable of fixing the process or it would have been fixed. There have been smart people on the Budget Committee for the last 44 years but its never been addressed. The problem here, though, is in my view, is that you dont just have one budget. We spent a little over 4 trillion this year or last year, only about 1 trillion of that, 1. 1 trillion, is discretionary and of that, 600 billion is military, about 200 billion is v. A. In the balance, 350 billion is all other domestic Discretionary Spending. People who say on my side, we need to cut spending. Okay. Youre going to have 1 trillion next year annual deficit shortfall so you dont have enough room to just cut there. So then the other 3 trillion is the mandatory side of this thing. Thats Social Security, medicare, pension pbenefits for federal employees and interest on the debt. By the way, is going up like gangbusters. Already doubled. Going to double again shortly. Theres a growing realization that this is not acceptable anymore, were in the crisis phase, past the Tipping Point here. If we dont do something about it, were going to walk in and its going to be draconian, the result if we dont to something. Theres the debt sheldon and i are working and on and the budget process. We dont have just one budget. You got a discretionary budget. A medicare budget protected by trust fund. The problem is the two trust funds go to zero in 15 years. If we dont do something now, i promise you the day the federal government has to start telling Social Security sip yerecipiente been irresponsible with this trust and youre not going to get your full benefits, there will be something done then. What happens in a lot of countries is they actually dissolve the government. We dont do that. There will be dramatic results part of the problem is as you mentioned we dont focus on the long term, so in so many ways you see the political incentive of let me put my head down, get through this year and cycle and not focus on longerterm issues which are the next election. Right. Instead of the next sort of economic issue and there are so many challenges, things were not prepared to deal with as resources being repldeployed ins than perfect ways. One thing im curious about when you go home to your states, what do you hear from voters . I know you dont hear about budget process. What are you hearing about the debt and overall fiscal situation . I think of this as something thats leadership driven, voters dont care unless politicians are telling them to care and less discussion the last couple years than it was before. I think it will come back with 1 trillion deficits. Heres the problem. They understand what its going to take. Heres the problem. We have conditioned the populous of america, the federal government can solve every problem you have and fund all the problems you have. The hurricanes, the bad, the fires. Were losing our right to do what we want to do, provide a safe safety net, not only to retireties and people who need medical care but people in emergencies. The problem, weve been irresponsible in our truths. I hear it back home, i ran on debt. I mean, people in the political sphere said you cant run on that. We did. They basically convinced people this is a crisis and we have to do something about it. In georgia, i continue to hear that because we started that dialogue four years ago. I also think, this is just a personal opinion, i cant prove it with data, but i believe one of the Reasons Congress has a low Approval Rating is because we dont do the basic. Number one thing our constitution says is to fund the government. People back home dont understand what crs are and omnibus. Im going to create a dictionary one day for all thing a nice ia never heard of before. Reconciliation, i never knew what reconciliation was. Voteorama. These are silly manifestations of a crowd in washington that created this that just doesnt work. In rhode island, if i had to compare concerns i hear about medicaid, medicare, Social Security, against concerns i have hear about the debt or the deficit, its probably 901. It just is not a big public concern. If you confront people with it, theyll say, oh, yeah, that seems like a lot. Part of the problem i think is that for a lot of folks, the debt and deficit discussion, particularly since it seems to be turned on and off depending on whether the democrats in h the white house or not, has an overlay of this isnt for real to it, it has an overlay of, oh, this is just politics, oh, every time they say deficit its because they want to come after my Social Security, oh, every time they say deficit, its because they want to come after my medicare. So theres been a flinch that has been built in in recent years that you dont need to take the debt and deficit concerns seriously because they turn on and off depending on the politics of whos in the white house and they tend to be a vehicle for focusing on a very specific set of outcomes so if we end up with a circumstance in which the people of america associate doing something about the deficit with taking away their medicare, we are in a heap, heap, heap, heap, of trouble. And that is not a real choice, that is a false choice but the politics of the way this has morphed itself in ten years, ive been on the Budget Committee, anyway, thats coming up. Those that the are watching this, they got to flinch, wait a minute, im putting both hands on my medicare, dont you come after that. Thats a real problem. Thats where the bipartisan process helps. You can put together health care expenses, appropriated expenditures, the backdoor of the tax code, revenues where you need to fill them in. Its not one side taking turns trying to clobber the other side and its that back and forth that i think is part of what is disabling in the public discussion about the debt and deficit. Its seen as political leverage to achieve lesser goals. Yeah. I completely agree with you that when fiscal responsibility is only used as defense, then you lose all your credibility when youre talking about it and if its not done in a bipartisan way, there wont be enough cover, wont be trust by people from opposite parties. Anything this hard, theres going to have to be more bipartisanship and more consistency. Final question because our time has run over, but one of the things i was thinking about actually with the budget process commission is we dont know whos going to be Running Congress down the road. This is the rule. This is creating the rules of the game. Not the outcomes. Not the policies. Just the rules that will work with them sort of to the point of the guardrails. So where the decisionmaking gets done. It does seem like maybe theres an opportunity to come up with these solutions and say they wont go into effect until after the election, we dont know who will have the majority. Maybe that will somehow make whats going to be a reasonably difficult task somewhat easier. My final question to both of you, you gave bucket of areas of improvement. If you could only make one change to the bruudget process, what would the change you think would be most helpful would be . Thats a tough one. Im torn between you can do two. Kick the penalty for breaking the budget up to 67 votes like its a treaty. That at least puts the Budget Committee back into the field. Make it real. In some way. I dont think it gets you very far. I think that the alternative to that would be to simply stop the Budget Committee, end the farce and make people confront this problem headon, realizing that we are not we actually dont have a process for coping with this that is effective. Lets knock it out. The best of all would be obviously getting the kind of fix that david and i are talking about done. Thats got about five or six facets to it so its not just one thing. The challenge is i think in this order by december 5th we are to provide a bill back to the congress. Thats light years. Thats moving in light years, light speed. It seems to me that the first thing you have to do is to realize what a crisis this creates. And, again, ill repeat myself, i dont im not tied up with any of the minute changes that need to be made to make a budget work. There a lot of different ways to do that. But if you dont have the consequences, anyone it doesnt really matter. In the last nine years, since 2009, weve taken about 400 billion out of Discretionary Spending in our federal government. The mandatory is where the problem is because of our age and because of the way nose a are these are just the realities. This is why now is the time i got to meet general chairman greenspan a couple times over the last couple years and reminds me every time about a meeting like this in 1983. When they started talking about the budget process and the mandatory expenses and did the math out when the baby boomers all get into retirement age and so forth and say this is not sustainable. They knew it in 83. Here we are 30 years later. Were still talking about this. One thing i would do, you cant do just one thing because the structure, itself, is so bad, the Committee Structure is so bad, the appropriating and and authorization tiein does not work, will never work. I go back to, ill be redundant in this, doesnt matter what you do to change it, you have to have consequences that are real to the member. Not just to the staff, not just to expenditures. Sequestration was the stupidest thing ive ever seen come out of washington. Ill tell anybody that. They thought it was so draconian it would never happen. Guess what, it did happen. It was a release valve. I voted against it. You know what, that day is over that i can go home and tell people, yeah, it didnt pass but i voted for it, it passed but i voted against it. Thats no longer good enough back home. Theyre Holding Us Accountable and should. For the number one responsibility we have in congress. That is to fund the federal government. Senators, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. They survived. Yeah. Let me just say thank you all for your interest, i hope you took away from this that there is strong bipartisan interest in getting this done. You know, david and i disagree about a lot. There are lots of people were talking with who feel the same way. So i hope that this closes at least our piece on a note of bipartisan optimism. We can always screw this up. Thats where we want to end. We can always screw this up. Theres a big opportunity now to improve it dramatically. Perfect. Thank you so much to everybody for joining us today. Really. Deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, cspan will have live coverage beginning at 4 00 p. M. Eastern. Also Available Online at cspan. Org and listen with free cspan radio app. Congress is opening the u. S. Capitol this week to honor the reverend billy graham. Reverend graham died last week at the age of 99. The Memorial Service with House Speaker paul ryan and Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell will be followed by reverend graham lying in honor in the Capitol Rotunda for the public to pay their respects. Cspan will have live coverage wednesday morning, starting at 11 00 eastern. Tonight on cspans landmark cases, well look at the Supreme Court case, mcculloch v. Maryland, a kate that solidified the federal governments ability to take actions not explicitly mentioned in the constitution and restricted state action against the liblegitimate use of this power. Explore this case and the high courts ruling with university of West Virginia associate law professor, and mark killenbeck, university of arkansas law professor and author of mcc mcculloch v. Yn maryland securia nation. Watch landmark cases, or listen with the free cspan radio app. For background on each case, order a copy of the landmark cases companion book available for 8. 95 plus shipping and handling at cspan. Org landmarkcases. Theres a link on our website to the National Constitution centers interactive constitution