The newly appointed Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform has begun examining ideas for making the broken federal budget process work better. The appointment of this committee is a welcome development, even if the odds of something meaningful making it through Congress this year are remote. Highlighting the problems with the current budget process through public hearings and developing some creative ideas for reform would be progress at this point.
Congress inserted the appointment of the joint committee into the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (BBA), which raised the caps on discretionary spending for 2018 and 2019 by a combined $300 billion.
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