In the Broadway musical “Gypsy,” built around the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, one of the show-stopping tunes is “You gotta get a gimmick.” Congress may be a long way from New York (and way off Broadway), but it is not shy about borrowing show biz techniques. Gimmicks abound in this political theater in the round dome.
Rose’s gimmick was “less is more” — clothes that is. Congress’s is “more is more.” The more gimmicks the better. The more baubles and bangles to dangle and dazzle the public, the better. The more squiggly charts pointing nowhere, the better. The more confusing budgetary terminology tossed around, the better.
As discussed in my previous column, ignoring the “Impoundment Control Act” is the latest anti-gimmick gimmick being flashed by Elon Musk, who was tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead DOGE, the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency.
I am not suggesting that Congress purposely devise gimmicks to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. Having been directly involved at the staff level over three decades in many of the so-called budget reform efforts, I can attest that Congress is deadly serious about finding new ways to reduce government spending and even balance the budget. But we are all familiar with where we end up by paving the road with good intentions. It is not to a zero-deficit nirvana.
Looking back on the gimmick-cluttered history of congressional budgeting, one can only wonder: “What in the world were they thinking?” It is fitting that we are reviewing this terrain on the 50th anniversary of the Congressional Budget Reform and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The act was Congress’s response to the growth of the “imperial presidency,” whereby presidents, going back to Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were slowly chipping away at Congress’s core constitutional powers.
The 1974 Act established a budget calendar for each fiscal year with deadlines to meet spending and deficit limits, revenue targets and debt limit ceilings. If Congress did not approve by law a president’s impoundments (spending cancellations) within 45 days, the money was released and spent. The Budget Act remains to date the tree on which Congress has hung all its shiny new ornaments (gimmicks). The thought is that if one does not work, try another.
My favorite (serious) gimmick was contained in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings “Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985,” named after its sponsors, Sens. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D-S.C.).
The gimmick was called “sequestration” — automatic across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending to kick-in if Congress did not meet its deficit reduction targets. Some of us jokingly referred to it as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings “amazing, slice-em, dice-em automatic spending reduction machine” (think Veg-O-Matic). But it was no joking matter.
Some credit that law with imposing the first binding constraints on the federal budget. The Supreme Court ended that dream in the 1986 case of Bowsher v. Synar which found the law unconstitutional because it had ceded to the Comptroller General, a quasi-official of Congress, certain executive powers. Congress tried to resurrect the law in 1987 in a more acceptable form, but it just did not do the cost-cutting job Congress intended.
When Gramm-Rudman-Hollings went by the board in the late 1980s, Congress came up with a new gimmick called PAYGO (“pay as you go”). But that too had less than shining results. It originally manifested itself in the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. The concept was simple enough: any new spending or tax changes should not add to the debt. Instead, any new proposal must either be “budget neutral” or offset by savings derived from existing funds.
The requirement was incorporated both in federal statutes and rules of the House and Senate. As Congress drifted from budget surpluses in the late 1990s to deficits in the early 2000s, the scorekeeping got trickier, as did the games being played. By 2002, the last year the original PAYGO law was in effect, Congress was running a deficit of $377.6 billion, and it continued to get worse. PAYGO was adopted as a House rule from 2007 to 2010, but that was finessed when Congress faced demands for tax cuts.
It is difficult, even for budget-savvy folks to follow the rocky road of PAYGO and its many iterations and exemptions. Suffice to say, the best laid plans often go awry. And congressional budgeting has been a big catcher in the awry.
What good have all these budget gimmicks done over the years? If we look at the current budget situation at the end of this 118th Congress, it’s a mess. Congress has not adopted a budget resolution for this fiscal year, has not enacted any of its 12 regular appropriations bills, and is running a deficit of $1.83 trillion.
Over the years, Congress has steadily been losing its grip on the fiscal purse strings of its Constitutional power of the purse. Gypsy Rose might smile at the sight of the first branch shedding its fiscal garments. But members should be outraged, especially over threats from some in the incoming administration to strip Congress of its final fiscal fig leaf.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran, culminating as chief-of-staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).
