Beyond PAYGO

Much of the federal budget is on automatic pilot and will continue to grow even with a strong PAYGO law in place. The White House recently projected that deficits will add over $9 trillion to the debt during the next decade. The budget process is partially responsible for the failure to address these challenges.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts have joined forces with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget to launch a landmark partnership to build bipartisan consensus for a core set of budget process reforms.

As the Commission prepares to release its first report, a bipartisan group of leading budget experts will discuss recent proposals by the Administration and Congress to gain control over mandatory spending and put the budget on a sustainable path. Among the proposals to be discussed are reinstating a statutory "pay-as-you-go" (PAYGO) rule and a strengthened Medicare advisory panel tasked with recommending Medicare savings - a "MedPAC on steroids."

But how far can these tools go in helping to get deficits under control? What are their limits? What other reforms should be on the table? How do we "bend the cost curve" for those parts of the budget that are on autopilot and that wouldn't be affected by PAYGO? http://www.newamerica.net/events/2009/beyond_paygo

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News & Politics

Tags:

• PAYGO
• Budget
• Reform
• Congress
• Policy
• Process
• Fiscal
• Responsibility
• Defecit