Should Presidential Budget Submissions Not Automatically Increase Agency Budgets to Adjust for Inflation? (H.R. 4066)
Do you support or oppose this bill?
What is H.R. 4066?
(Updated January 1, 2020)
This bill — the No Adding, No Padding Act — would require the president’s annual budget submissions to Congress to list the current fiscal year spending level for each proposed program and give a separate amount for any proposed spending increases. For any proposed budget increases, the president would be required to include the amount of the adjustment that’s related to inflation and the amount of the adjustment that’s due to increases in employee salaries or benefits. This would represent a change from current budgeting processes, in which inflation is used to automatically increase agency budgets.
Argument in favor
By requiring separate lines for each agency’s budgetary increases, this bill would increase accountability for federal spending to fund each agency.
Argument opposed
Not automatically adjusting agencies’ budgets to account for inflation would effectively decrease budgets from year to year. This would hurt agencies’ abilities to carry out their important work.
Impact
Federal agencies; federal budgeting process; and the president’s annual budget submissions to Congress.
Cost of H.R. 4066
A CBO cost estimate is unavailable.
Additional Info
In-Depth: Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) reintroduced this bill from the 114th Congress to prevent agencies’ budgets from automatically increasing based on inflation and create more transparency for agency budget increases.
This legislation has one cosponsor, Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX), in the 116th Congress. In the 114th Congress, it had 17 bipartisan cosponsors, including 10 Republicans and seven Democrats, and didn’t receive a committee vote.
This bill was first introduced in 2013 as part of the No Labels Problem Solvers Coalition’s bipartisan nine-bill Make Government Work! legislative package. All nine bills in the package were good-government bills. Cumulatively, they sought to fix everything from bulk purchasing to legislative inertia.
Media:
Summary by Lorelei Yang
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