The R Street Institute asked several leading budget experts the following question:
“What is the most important federal budget process reform that would achieve a more sustainable fiscal outcome?”
R Street compiled the contributions in the post, “Virtual Federal Budget Reform Forum: Recommendations for Congress”. Read my contribution to the project below.
Establish an Independent, Fast-Track Fiscal Commission
The United States is on a collision course with a fiscal crisis driven by automatic entitlement spending growth and chronic political paralysis. Federal debt is rising faster than the economy’s productive capacity, interest costs are consuming a larger share of the budget than national defense, and the programs driving the imbalance remain politically untouchable.
Congress should establish a fiscal commission that enlists independent experts to support legislators in making economically necessary but politically unpopular reforms and to fast-track their implementation.
Such a fiscal commission should be modeled after the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process and might operate as a fail-safe alongside a more traditional congressional fiscal commission—preserving Congress’s leadership role while ensuring that reform does not collapse once again under political incentives that reward obstruction and inaction.
Congress does not lack information about the nation’s fiscal crisis. The drivers are well known: automatic spending in Social Security and Medicare accounts for the entire long-term (75-year) unfunded obligation. Federal health care spending is by far the largest non-interest driver of growing deficits and debt, followed by retirement obligations.
What Congress lacks is a credible mechanism to overcome the political costs of reforming programs it placed on autopilot decades ago. Congress abdicated its fiscal responsibilities when it allowed entitlement spending to grow automatically without meaningful limits or regular review.
A fail-safe commission structure acknowledges political reality. Under this approach, Congress would first attempt to solve the problem through a congressional fiscal commission, guided by clear objectives such as stabilizing the debt at or below 100 percent of GDP and restoring long-term solvency to major entitlement programs. This preserves congressional ownership and accountability and offers lawmakers every opportunity to act responsibly.
But history suggests that Congress may fail. Previous commissions dominated by sitting politicians—most notably Simpson-Bowles—produced sensible ideas that Congress ultimately ignored. That failure was not accidental; it was baked into a process that required affirmative political courage at every step. A fail-safe BRAC-like commission ensures that failure is not the default outcome. It is a tool for reclaiming responsibility, not relinquishing it.
Modeled on the successful BRAC process, the independent commission would serve as a backstop. Its recommendations would become law upon presidential approval unless Congress affirmatively rejected them in their entirety. This “silent approval” mechanism flips the default from paralysis to action, while still preserving Congress’s ultimate authority to say no.
Most importantly, this approach allows reform to occur before a crisis forces far worse decisions. Crisis-driven policymaking invites panic, punitive taxation, and economically destructive shortcuts. A BRAC-like fail-safe enables gradual, predictable reforms that protect vulnerable populations, respect economic growth, and restore generational equity.
If Congress is serious about stabilizing the debt, it must design institutions that make success possible even when political courage falls short. A fail-safe BRAC-like fiscal commission does exactly that.
Additional Resources:
- A Fail-Safe Congressional Fiscal Commission to Fix Government Spending and Debt
- That’s Not How the BRAC Commission Worked: No Up or Down Vote but Silent Approval