Sponsor
Roger Wayne Marshall
Senator · R-KS
Senator · R-KS
Official title: Improve the budget process.
Introduced June 17, 2025 by Roger Wayne Marshall · Last progress June 17, 2025
The bill increases fiscal transparency and moves budgeting to a two‑year, more predictable framework while pushing agencies to justify and pare spending — trading greater long‑term planning and pressure for efficiency against reduced annual flexibility, higher implementation costs, and risks of program disruption and disclosure/privacy challenges.
Federal agencies, OMB, and Congress would plan and budget on a two‑year (biennial) basis, giving taxpayers and state/local partners greater budgetary predictability and reducing annual reporting burden.
CBO would be required to publish models, code, assumptions, and sufficient data details so researchers and members of Congress can replicate cost estimates, improving transparency and trust in fiscal scoring.
Agencies must provide activity‑level (zero‑based) justifications and alternative funding levels, which helps identify cost‑efficiency opportunities, improves performance management, and clarifies tradeoffs for budget decisions.
Program beneficiaries, state and local partners, and taxpayers could face program cuts or service disruption because agencies must identify lower funding alternatives and zero‑based reviews emphasize reductions.
Locking many appropriations into two‑year commitments and prohibiting one‑year appropriations reduces Congress's ability to respond quickly to recessions, emergencies, or changing needs, risking slower relief or inappropriate funding levels.
Implementing publication, redaction, zero‑based analyses, new baselines, and revised systems will raise administrative workloads and one‑time and ongoing costs for CBO, OMB, and agencies, funded by taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Shifts budgeting to biennial cycles, requires CBO model publication, mandates agency zero‑based budget submissions, tightens baselines, and raises Senate enforcement thresholds.
Requires major changes to how Congress and the President prepare and present the federal budget: shifts the congressional budget process from annual to biennial, requires the CBO to publish its models and non‑disclosable data summaries, mandates zero‑based budget materials from agencies (with some exceptions) beginning in 2027, rewrites baseline rules to a biennial baseline, and raises Senate voting thresholds and enforcement tools for budget points of order.