Sponsors
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Andrew S. Biggs · Last progress January 3, 2025
The bill tightens baseline scoring and increases budget oversight to restrain automatic spending growth and compel budget agreements, but does so at the risk of eroding real program funding over time, encouraging emergency reclassifications, and imposing pay delays and added administrative burdens.
Taxpayers: Excluding emergency and supplemental resources from baseline calculations makes projected spending baselines more conservative, reducing automatic future baseline growth.
Budget scoring and oversight: Simplifies baseline treatment and requires OPM Inspector General verification/notification of OMB compliance, improving transparency and enforceability of executive budget rules.
Members of Congress: Preventing automatic payment of congressional salaries during a budget lapse increases pressure to negotiate and may speed budget agreements.
Many federal programs and recipients: Freezing baseline values (no automatic inflation adjustments) reduces real funding over time and will erode program capacity, likely forcing cuts or higher near‑term appropriations to maintain services.
Budget integrity risk: Excluding emergency and supplemental funding from baselines creates an incentive to reclassify ordinary spending as 'emergency' to bypass caps, undermining long‑term planning and fiscal transparency.
Members, staff, and some OMB officials: Escrow and suspension of pay during lapses or when statutes aren't met delays access to earned pay, creating cash‑flow hardship and (for some OMB officials) risk of permanent loss of pay for affected periods.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Tightens which resources are excluded from the federal budget baseline, requires Members' pay to be escrowed if no FY2026 concurrent budget by April 15, 2025, and creates OMB pay penalties for budget-submission noncompliance.
Amends federal budget baseline rules to narrow which resources are excluded from baseline adjustments and prohibits automatic inflation adjustments for those excluded items. If Congress has not agreed to a concurrent budget for FY2026 by April 15, 2025, Members' pay for the lapse period must be deposited into escrow and released only after the period ends; normal tax withholding still applies. The Office of Personnel Management Inspector General must quickly review whether the President and OMB complied with statutory budget submission requirements and notify congressional committees; if OMB fails to comply, pay for the OMB Director and two deputies is withheld for the noncompliant period and may not be paid retroactively. The payroll-escrow and OMB compliance enforcement provisions take effect on enactment.