Gluesenkamp Perez, Bipartisan Colleagues Introduce Legislation to Bring Transparency to Federal Budget Process

Last week, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03), along with Reps. Glenn Grothman (WI-06), Marlin Stutzman (IN-03), and Ed Case (HI-01), introduced the bipartisan Stop the Baseline Bloat Act to bring more transparency to the federal budget process by removing emergency spending from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline. 

Currently, the CBO includes emergency spending in its annual baseline projections, relied on by lawmakers. This practice distorts long-term fiscal projections, skews the baseline budget toward higher spending, allows Congress to claim credit for artificial savings, and contributes to our nation’s growing debt crisis. This bill ensures emergency spending is treated as temporary and does not artificially raise expectations for future spending.

“In order to seriously take on our national debt and avoid passing it on to our kids, we need to address budgetary distortions that help politicians justify spending through the roof,” said Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez. “Our bipartisan bill will remove emergency spending from the baseline set by the Congressional Budget Office, creating a more accurate reflection of our annual spending and how we should responsibly budget for the future.”

Last month, Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez stood with her Blue Dog Coalition colleagues for fiscal responsibility and voted against a budget reconciliation bill that would explode the deficit by $3.8 trillion.

This year, Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez introduced bipartisan bills to establish a bipartisan fiscal commission and to ensure Congress evaluates the impacts of interest on our national debt.

“The Stop the Baseline Bloat Act will increase transparency between the government and the American people, painting a clear and honest picture of how Washington is spending their hard-earned money,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman. “The CBO cannot continue to create a budget baseline that justifies outrageous spending levels. Getting the country’s fiscal house in order starts with an unbiased CBO baseline.”

“The path out of our growing budget crisis starts with accurate and transparent budgets,” said Rep. Ed Case. “A budget that inflates prior year spending to conceal real growth year-to-year is neither accurate nor transparent. Our measure would eliminate these budgetary tricks that conceal our dangerous journey into fiscal irresponsibility.”

“Taxpayers should not have to spend more because the CBO continually has inaccurate projections for America’s fiscal future,” said Rep. Stutzman. “Emergency spending is supposed to address urgent funding needs with non-permanent spending. Instead, the CBO has chosen to treat emergency spending like regular appropriations, inflating discretionary spending

“The bipartisan Stop the Baseline Bloat Act would enhance the accuracy of Congressional Budget Office projections by excluding temporary emergency and supplemental spending from the baseline,” said Demian Brady, Vice President of Research at the National Taxpayers Union. “This commonsense reform would prevent one-time expenditures from inflating long-term spending projections and promote greater fiscal accountability.”

“The Stop Baseline Bloat Act would help restore fiscal restraint in the budgeting process by stripping out the cost of emergency and supplemental appropriations from the CBO baseline,” said Tom Schatz, President of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste. “As is evident from the designation of their purpose, such legislation is not meant to have a permanent impact on the budget by inflating the amount of future spending.”

“One-time emergency spending can artificially inflate the baseline produced by the Congressional Budget Office, creating the opportunity for lawmakers to use fake savings as an offset,” said Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “We appreciate the efforts of Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI) to improve the budget process and provide greater transparency by removing emergency spending from CBO’s baseline.”

“Under current baseline rules, CBO and OMB must assume that emergency spending will increase from its prior year level by an amount equal to inflation. Since this may be a one-time outlay, including it this way artificially inflates the baseline, particularly in years with large amounts of emergency spending,” said Keith Hall, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office. “Lower levels of emergency spending in the future would then appear to generate budget savings. I support removing emergency spending from the CBO baseline as a common-sense solution to this problem.”

Full text of the legislation is available here.