Sponsor
Roger Wayne Marshall
Senator · R-KS
Senator · R-KS
The bill makes discretionary-budget baselines simpler and more stable for scorekeepers and Congress by freezing adjustments and excluding one-time emergency funding, but does so at the risk of understating future funding needs, enabling political manipulation of scoring, and potentially cutting or eliminating grant support for vulnerable populations.
Budget scorekeepers (CBO/OMB), Congressional budget committees, and Congress get a simpler, more predictable discretionary-funding baseline by assuming continuation of current funding levels and excluding emergency/supplemental resources and inflation adjustments, which simplifies scoring and short-term planning.
A more stable, non-indexed baseline improves year-to-year comparability of budget scores and may make it easier to compare policy proposals across fiscal years.
Households, state governments, and beneficiaries of discretionary programs could face increased pressure for cuts because removing inflation indexing and certain exceptions understates future discretionary needs and reduces apparent offsets.
Altering baseline methodology could politicize CBO/OMB scoring and make it easier for lawmakers to claim savings or justify policy changes without real dollar reductions, undermining trust in budget accounting.
Striking a grant-related subparagraph in 42 U.S.C. §603(a)(3) may remove or reduce an existing HHS grant authority, directly harming recipients served by those grants and increasing burdens on state programs.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Changes the statutory budget baseline: assumes continuation of current discretionary levels, excludes emergencies/supplementals, and forbids inflation or other adjustments to baselines.
Official title: Clarify that the baseline is based on current laws and the assumption of continuation of current levels of discretionary appropriations, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 22, 2026 by Roger Wayne Marshall · Last progress April 22, 2026
Changes how the federal budget baseline is calculated by directing that baselines be projections “based on current laws and the assumption of continuation of current levels of discretionary appropriations,” removing a set of prior exceptions and adjustments (including inflation indexing and other automatic adjustments), and excluding emergency and supplemental appropriations from discretionary baseline calculations. The amendments alter statutory text used by CBO, OMB, and congressional budget committees and will change how future budget scores and multi-year baseline projections are produced. The bill is short but technical: it deletes enumerated exceptions and prohibits adjustments (such as inflation indexing) that were previously applied in baseline projections, and makes two conforming deletions in related statutory provisions to align with the new baseline definition.