By U.S. Sen. Angus King
(I-Maine)
This week, for the first time in four years, Congress successfully passed a budget.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 is a two-year budget resolution that finally provides the American people with a measure of certainty regarding our country’s financial situation. The agreement is far from perfect and contains a number of provisions that I would not have included, but despite that I believe it represents an important step forward for this institution and the country. At time when Congressional approval ratings are at an all-time low, it demonstrates that we as lawmakers still have the ability to perform the most basic functions of government.
The agreement, brokered by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), represents a true compromise; the type that has been absent from Congress for far too long. They both began their work on the conference committee knowing that no deal was going to make everybody happy. However, after a lengthy process of back and forth negotiations, with each side offering concessions, they were able to reach a middle ground solution that sets our country on a path towards improved economic stability.
The bill sets a spending limit for the current fiscal year– almost exactly halfway between the proposed Senate budget level and the proposed House budget level. It partially relieves the sequester over the next two years, which will alleviate the funding pressures on programs such as Meals on Wheels, Head Start, and local housing authorities that serve low-income individuals and families. It maintains important deficit reductions that have already begun and will now continue; over the next ten years the agreement will reduce the federal deficit by more than $20 billion. In addition, after four years of short-term, stopgap budgetary fixes, this budget provides our federal agencies, our military, and countless businesses and families across the country with the financial predictability they need and deserve to plan for the coming years.
While some, both on the left and the right, have criticized the agreement for falling short of a “grand bargain,” those arguments ignore the substantial benefits it provides for our economy, for jobs in Maine and elsewhere, and for renewing the public’s confidence in Congress. One of the most frequent questions I am asked is, “what can Congress do to stimulate the economy?” Well, this is it — simply doing our job.
Already this year partisan gridlock has left us with the sequester and pushed us into a government shutdown — both of which have hurt our economy, jeopardized our military readiness, and been an unnecessary burden on the American people. It’s time to move past this and the budget resolution is an important step in doing so. For the first time since 1986 a divided Congress has passed a budget resolution. That’s a significant accomplishment and the fact that it got done at all should provide a stimulus to the economy. This is what the American people elected us to do.
