Restoring Reconciliation

The federal government can’t raise or spend a single dollar unless Congress says it can. Fiscal responsibility rests with lawmakers—and can’t be dodged, or DOGEd.  

Fifty years ago Congress developed a process specifically designed to bring spending in line with revenues: budget reconciliation. Unfortunately, it has rarely been used for its intended purpose.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Rep. McClintock discusses restoring the budget reconciliation process.

Read the op-ed here or below:

A True Budget Reconciliation Plan
The new Congress has a chance to get the U.S. on the road to fiscal solvency.
By Tom McClintock

Our country is in dire economic straits. Years of profligacy under both parties have dug a fiscal hole so deep that interest on the national debt exceeds defense spending. To address this growing crisis, some are counting on the nascent Department of Government Efficiency. Others propose a bipartisan fiscal commission to spending cuts.

But Congress alone holds the purse strings. The federal government can’t raise or spend a single dollar unless Congress says it can. Fiscal responsibility rests with lawmakers—and can’t be dodged, or DOGEd.

Fortunately, 50 years ago, Congress developed a process specifically designed to bring spending in line with revenues: budget reconciliation. Unfortunately, it has rarely been used for its intended purpose.

Reconciliation is beautiful in its efficiency. First, a majority in the House and Senate adopt a budget resolution setting revenue and spending targets. The appropriate committees then formulate and report plans to meet these targets. The Budget Committee in each chamber combines the plans into a single bill, and both chambers separately pass their versions of the bill via simple majority. They then reconcile any differences in the legislation before sending it to the president for his signature.

There’s one catch: The reconciliation process can be used only for reforms necessary to implement the budget. It can’t be used for general policymaking.

When budget reconciliation is used as intended, it significantly reduces deficits. During the Clinton administration, reconciliation bills in 1996 and 1997 helped create a balanced budget in 1998, including by establishing landmark work requirements that dramatically reduced welfare rolls. These reforms restrained government spending, created incentives for work, and gave the economy room to grow.

Too often, though, reconciliation has been used to enact comprehensive policy changes that failed or fizzled. In 2021 Democrats used reconciliation to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which ballooned the deficit and helped ignite the worst inflation in 40 years. In 2017 Republicans attempted to enact comprehensive healthcare reform within the narrow confines of reconciliation, resulting in a mess that collapsed on the Senate floor. The Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 passed via budget reconciliation, but to conform to the process’s requirements, most of the provisions were made temporary.

Republicans in 2017 achieved no healthcare reform and only temporary tax relief, and in exchange, they squandered the chance to prevent the fiscal debacle we now face.

The incoming Republican congressional majority has a rare second chance to save our country from insolvency. It must not repeat the mistakes that brought us here. Republican leaders in the House and Senate are again proposing to use the reconciliation process not as it was designed—to set and adhere to spending limits—but rather to chase shiny policy objectives, including tax reform, energy development and border security.

These are vital reforms, and many aspects of them can indeed be realized through the reconciliation process. But reconciliation can’t produce comprehensive policy reform. What it can produce is comprehensive fiscal reform at a moment when our nation most needs it. Congress must pass a reconciliation bill to amend the laws that put so much government spending on autopilot.

The American people voted in November to give us the tools and the trust to save our country. We must prove worthy of that trust by averting fiscal disaster.

Mr. McClintock, a Republican, represents California’s Fifth Congressional District.

Appeared in the December 26, 2024, print edition.