April 15 is the statutory deadline for Congress to complete a joint budget resolution for the next fiscal year. Congress will miss that deadline for the 20th year in a row.
The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 laid out a timetable for the annual process. The president is supposed to kick off the process by submitting his budget proposal by the first Monday in February, a deadline President Joe Biden missed for the third straight year. And Congress has only rarely met the deadlines set out by the 1974 law or a related one from 1985.
“Congress has completed action on a budget resolution prior to April 15 four times since FY1985, the last time being for FY2004,” the Congressional Research Service said in a report last year. “In years when Congress has completed work on a budget resolution, it has typically been in late spring or early summer in the months of April through June.”
This year, neither the House nor the Senate have put forth a budget plan, let alone pass one. And Congress is likely to skip the joint budget process this year. “That means that in the past quarter-century, Congress will have taken a pass on a budget in almost as many years — 12 — as lawmakers have actually adopted one — 13,” Roll Call’s Peter Cohn writes. “It's become practically optional given other tools Congress has to put internal controls on budget bills, such as "deeming" appropriations limits or statutory spending caps like the ones imposed in 2011 as part of that year's debt ceiling deal.”
Cohn notes that the last time Congress adopted a joint budget that wasn’t just meant to grease the path toward a budget reconciliation package was in 2015.
“Budgeting is a fundamental part of governing, and the fact that Congress has not taken this role seriously shows just how broken our budget process has become,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement. “Passing a budget is one of lawmakers’ most basic tasks, and it is absurd that it’s been eight years since we passed one that wasn’t just a vehicle for budget reconciliation bills. It is long past time for lawmakers to do their jobs and put out their budgets.”
