House Budget Committee Chairman Steve Womack announced Monday that his committee will officially mark up a 2019 budget resolution this week, even as prospects for the full Congress to pass one remain iffy at best.
The budget committee is planning to mark up a 2019 resolution on Wednesday and Thursday.
Mr. Womack, who took over as budget committee chairman in January, said last month it was always his intent that his committee would produce a 2019 budget resolution.
Sen. Mike Enzi, chairman of the Senate budget panel, says he’s working on a 2019 plan as well but noted that the Senate floor schedule appears to be pretty full with a renewed focus on presidential nominations and 2019 spending bills.
Since gaining complete control of Congress in 2015, Republicans passed a budget that year and failed to pass one in 2016.
They passed two budgets last year, but those were largely seen as vehicles to unlock a special fast-track tool to pursue Obamacare repeal and tax reform with simple majorities in the House and Senate.
A spending bill earlier this year already set overall funding levels for 2019, providing lawmakers with even less of an incentive than usual to approve a non-binding budget resolution.
Congress is supposed to pass a budget blueprint by April 15 every year to give appropriators time to fill in the spending levels before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, but lawmakers haven’t met that deadline in 15 years and there’s no real penalty for blowing through it.
House and Senate appropriators are already in the middle of writing next year’s spending bills based on the budget levels in the deal reached earlier this year to lift strict spending caps in 2018 and 2019.
That deal also set up a joint select committee tasked with overhauling the budget process, which is supposed to report back with its ideas by the end of the year.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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