For budget watchdogs like your resident nerds at Taxpayers for Common Sense, the day the federal budget request drops is usually the cue for us to remember that Christmas classic “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!”

But with release of the President’s Budget Request (PBR) delayed, and delayed again, it’s more like “Button, Button. Who’s Got the Button”?

After announcing a PBR release date of March 9th (already about a month late!) the Biden Administration is hedging its bets by releasing spare topline numbers and one single volume of federal budget information this week. The real, programmatic level, information won’t be released until next week.

They’re punching all our buttons, now. After all, Congressional oversight hearings begin this week, but the details of the budget request are still under wraps. We’re glad we aren’t staffing a Budget or Appropriations Committee member for an important hearing. And sending agency officials to the Hill to testify without being able to speak about budget details is…weird.

This Weekly Wastebasket is a handy listicle of a few items TCS would like to see in the Fiscal Year 2024 President’s Budget Request. (And a couple of things we don’t want to see!)

National security spending. This is the Big Kahuna of discretionary spending with an overall topline creeping up and up and up. Remember that Pentagon spending is a subset of national security spending. And we have a handy cheat sheet from last year to help you understand the differences. Here’s what we’d like to see:

• A combined (Budget Function 050) topline of less than $1 trillion. It may seem shocking, but last year’s request had a topline of $827 billion. Congress added more than $40 billion, and we’re hearing a lot of loose talk about inflation factors.  
• No return of Overseas Contingency Operations accounts. Unfortunately, this supposedly “off-budget” account could make a comeback, particularly if the overall request approaches $1 trillion (we’re getting a little woozy just thinking about it). Just, no! 
• Service Secretary requests to retire legacy systems. We’d like to see a continuation of these common sense requests. We’d also like Congress to get out of the way and let the retirements happen.

Agriculture

• Common sense cuts to the highly subsidized federal crop insurance program and wasteful farm subsidies. There wasn’t a lot that former Presidents Trump and Obama agreed on, but somehow they both gave a thumbs-up to cutting wasteful agricultural subsidies. Not just any subsidies, but lucrative subsidies for the largest and wealthiest agricultural landowners. President Biden has yet to jump on this bipartisan bandwagon, but we’re hopeful this year is different and the Administration can identify tens of billions in common sense savings.  
• Smart conservation and climate investments. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can build upon past efforts to increase the adoption of smart agricultural conservation practices. In particular, opportunities exist to stretch taxpayer dollars further while achieving more public benefits for water quality and carbon sequestration. Expanding the current alphabet soup of USDA programs, however, without Congress’s approval, won’t achieve lasting benefits for the climate or taxpayers.

Energy & Natural Resources

• Hardrock Royalty. In the President’s Budget In Brief last year, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced the creation of an Interagency Working Group (IWG) to consider potential hardrock mining reforms. TCS submitted comments to the IWG expressing the need for Congress to adopt a royalty on hardrock as well as other reforms. Hardrock royalty was included in the House version of the Build Back Better Act but was later removed. A budget proposal that includes hardrock royalty, like we saw in FY12, may be able to restart the conversation about the need for Congress to end a giveaway that has lasted for more than 150 years. 

• Eliminating fossil fuel tax breaks. The FY22 President’s Budget called for thorough elimination of fossil fuel subsidies in the tax code. However, we found that the Administration was backpedaling on this promise in the President’s FY23 budget request. Although the FY23 budget called for cutting the same 13 tax breaks as the prior year for fossil fuel companies’ domestic income, tax breaks for these companies’ foreign income were no longer on the chopping block. Modifying the rules for dual capacity taxpayers and other accounting rules, which was missing in last year’s budget proposal, would have saved an additional $86.2 billion over 10 years. 
• Update grazing fees. Another low hanging fruit that could raise revenues is reforming the grazing program so that users pay for a greater portion of the program instead of taxpayers. In FY20, federal taxpayers spent more than $162 million to administer the federal grazing program but collected only $17.8 million in grazing receipts. Private grazing fees average almost 20 times higher than federal rates. Charging fair market value for the privilege of grazing on federal lands should be the first step of grazing program reform.

Deficit Reduction

• Reductions Must Be Real. The President has promised $2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. While we welcome any deficit reduction, the Congressional Budget Office projects $22 trillion in deficit spending over the next decade – so a $2 trillion cut is more like slight trim. With that in mind, it is especially important the proposals be tangible and realistic. Offering the same proposals (e.g. massive tax hikes) that didn’t pass even when Democrats had full control is not credible. This applies to members of Congress too. Counterproposals for sweeping cuts to discretionary spending programs are equally unrealistic.

Entitlement Reform

• Impending issues with Medicare must be addressed. Medicare revenues are not going to be able to pay all of Medicare bills in just a few years’ time (at least in Part A Hospital Insurance, other parts rely on general revenue). That means some changes have to be made to shore up the finances. To the Biden Administration’s credit, they are proposing increased Medicare taxes on those making more than $400,000 in earned and unearned income and increased ability to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry, among others. We’re not saying these are the right or best reforms, but it is important that this be part of the budget discussion. Speaking of which, Social Security is next, in ten years’ time it won’t be able to pay full benefits, representing a 25 percent cut if nothing is done to shore up that program’s finances.

Check back with us as we comb through the budget and write up the most interesting details. We read the budget documents so you don’t have to!