The Republican staff of the House Budget Committee released a working paper (Congressional Budgeting: The Need to Control Automatic Spending and Unauthorized Programs) this week to lay the groundwork for changes in the budget process. The staff outlined a number of potential new budget restrictions to force cuts to entitlement programs including: placing caps on all automatic entitlement spending, requiring entitlement programs to be reauthorized periodically to ensure great scrutiny, creating long-term budgets for entitlements with five-year review periods, and creating “triggers” that would force benefit cuts or revenue increases whenever projected spending exceeded authorized levels. House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) has held a series of public hearings to generate ideas this year, but has put off rewriting the 1974 Congressional Budget Act until next year.
House Budget Committee Working Paper:
http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/direct_spending.pdf