TABLE 2-5. OMB Projections of Deficits
| Year | Deficit $ Trillion | Deficit as % GDP | Debt as % GDP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1.1 | 5.1 | 79.5 |
| 2020 | 1.1 | 4.9 | 80.7 |
| 2021 | 1.1 | 4.5 | 81.6 |
| 2022 | 1.0 | 4.2 | 82.1 |
Source: White House: The President’s FY2020 Budget Request (2019), Summary Tables: S-1, p. 107; S-4, p. 110; S-5, p. 112.
In 2018, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the United States would continue to spend significantly more than the revenues it would bring in and that the national debt would be near 93 percent of GDP by 2029 and 150 percent by 2049.58 The consensus among CBO, OMB, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was that current trends in deficit spending and accumulation of the national debt were unsustainable. Health costs were rising and would continue to increase, as would Social Security expenditures due to demographic shifts.59 Even keeping the debt-to-GDP ratio at its relatively high 2019 level of 77 percent of GDP until 2047 would require cuts in the deficit (that is, tax increases and/or spending cuts) of $380 billion in each year, beginning in 2018. To achieve a debt-to-GDP ratio at the average of the previous fifty years would necessitate net savings of $620 billion annually.60
OMB as an Institution
In its most recent fifty years, as OMB leadership increased its influence with presidents, career staffers had less influence on overall administration policy. Nevertheless, they were masters of the details of government operations that often fall below the level of “political interest.” Consequently, OMB career staffers continued to wield considerable control over their bailiwicks in the executive branch.61 For instance, budget issues below the level of political visibility were often left to the discretion of OMB staff, and if there was a need to cut agency budgets, career staffers had significant discretion in how and where to make the cuts.62
The institutional staff of OMB peaked at 686 in 1975, and as the White House staff grew in size over subsequent decades, OMB staffing shrank to 480 in 2018 (the White House Office itself comprised 450 personnel).63 In 2016, there were more than fifty political appointees, seven of them Senate confirmed.64 Four recent presidents (Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Trump) highlighted the importance of OMB directors to their political fortunes by appointing their OMB directors subsequently to be their White House chiefs of staff.65
OMB has always had a reputation for how much work it extracts from its staff. The five Resource Management Offices, housing the traditional budget staff, from PADs to budget examiners, had only 235 FTE in 2016.66 Its workload has only increased, because of the shrinkage of total staff and the functions added to its jurisdiction since 1970: Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) in 1974; Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in 1980; Office of Federal Financial Management (OFFM) in 1990; and Office of E-Government & Information Technology and the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator in 2002. Management functions, such as the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) of the Bush administration, also consumed much energy, though without significantly affecting budgetary decisions in Congress.67
DISINTEGRATION OF THE BUDGETARY PROCESS
Increasing polarization between the political parties has led to the disintegration of the traditional budgetary process. The continuing fissure is that Republicans favor cutting taxes and Democrats resist cuts to domestic programs, especially Social Security and Medicare. Political moderates (and realists) understand that deficits cannot be eliminated and the national debt reduced without some combination of increased taxes and programmatic cuts of these key uncontrollables. This section will explain the factors leading to the implosion of the budgetary process: the breakdown of the regular order, increasing occurrence of continuing resolutions, and the rise of uncontrollable spending.
Collapse of the Regular Order
Between the 1974 passage of the Congressional Budget Act and 2015, Congress adopted a budget resolution by the mandated date (May 15, changed to April 15 in 1986) only six times.68 The most recent year in which all appropriations bills were passed before the beginning of the fiscal year and signed by the president was 1996.69
As developed in the 1950s and 1960s, and fraying in the late 1970s, the regular order on appropriations involved the origin of appropriations bills in the House (from subcommittee to full committee to floor passage); then consideration in the Senate (from subcommittee to full committee to floor passage); then conference committee and final passage on the floors of both chambers. From 1975 to 2012, only 61 percent of regular appropriations bills were passed in the regular order.70
The regular order is sometimes still observed within the appropriations committees, which hold hearings and draft bills. But more often, there is a hybrid model in which continuing resolutions are passed and then spending bills are lumped together in omnibus or smaller “minibus” bills. Between 1986 and 2016, twenty-two separate omnibus laws were passed in nineteen different fiscal years, each covering some or all of the twelve (or thirteen) appropriations bills.71 Omnibus legislation results in less transparency and time for deliberation, but it also allows both Democratic and Republican priorities to be packaged together, making it easier to get bills through both houses.72
While the House more often passed its bills before the beginning of the new fiscal year (88 percent), the Senate was often the sticking point. As the Senate became more individualistic, appropriations bills were increasingly filibustered or subjected to numerous amendments. As a result, the majority party in the Senate often combined appropriations bills into omnibus packages and brought them to the floor just before deadlines.
Peter Hanson has suggested some reforms that might ameliorate these problems: 1) limit filibusters on appropriations bills (though this has not solved the problems with executive branch appointments); 2) the Senate should not wait for House appropriations bills to pass before beginning Senate consideration; 3) allow limited earmarking to broaden coalitions; and 4) reduce transparency by publicly