Congress keeps proposing this fiscal fix but never votes on it

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(The Center Square) – A Republican bill to force spending cuts alongside any debt-limit increase has been introduced in six of the seven Congresses since 2013. As standalone legislation, it has never once reached a vote.

When the bill first appeared in 2013, the national debt stood near $16 trillion. It has since more than doubled, to $40 trillion. Interest on that debt now runs more than $1 trillion a year, the government's third-largest spending category, behind only Social Security and Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office. All three major credit-rating agencies have downgraded the U.S. from their top rating. The measure meant to address that keeps returning and keeps going nowhere.

The idea is straightforward: any increase in the debt limit must be matched by an equal cut in projected spending. Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, first introduced the Dollar-for-Dollar Deficit Reduction Act in 2013, when it drew 29 cosponsors, including much of the party's leadership at the time. He also offered it that year as an amendment to a debt-limit bill; the Senate voted to table it, 54-44. He filed the standalone bill again in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Each time, it drew fewer cosponsors: 11, then five, then four. Each time, it was referred to committee and never seen again.

The bill disappeared in the Congress that followed, but returned in 2023, when Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming introduced a Senate version and Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa filed a House companion. Barrasso introduced the Senate bill again in March, and Rep. Greg Steube brought a new House version this month. Barrasso's Senate bill has two cosponsors, Sens. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and David McCormick of Pennsylvania. The House version has none.

Barrasso and Steube cast the bill as basic discipline. "Congress cannot keep raising the credit limit on the American people without cutting up the credit card," Steube said in announcing the House version. Barrasso framed it as a check on "the Democrats' out-of-control spending spree." The National Taxpayers Union endorsed the measure, calling it "a much-needed, commonsense reform."

The measure's enforcement rests on a point of order, a procedural objection any member can raise, that can be waived in the Senate with 60 votes and in the House by a majority. Congress has a long record of establishing such rules and then setting them aside; it has repeatedly waived or reset the pay-as-you-go rules and the spending caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Romina Boccia, a budget expert at the Cato Institute, said a waivable point of order "isn't meaningless, but it isn't a fiscal straitjacket either." Its value, she said, is in "forcing lawmakers to make a visible choice to waive the rule." But she said the bill aims at the wrong target: "Dollar for dollar doesn't cut it." What matters, she said, is putting the debt on a sustainable path, not offsetting a single increase.

The measure has never advanced in any Congress, under either party. "The obstacle isn't a lack of clever budget rules," Boccia told The Center Square. "It's Congress's unwillingness to abide by them."

Barrasso's and Steube's offices did not respond to questions about why the bill has never received a vote or what has changed this Congress. The office of Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, also did not respond.

Boccia said a debt-limit deal could impose real discipline if it tied borrowing to a credible plan to stabilize the debt as a share of the economy, rather than matching a single increase dollar for dollar.

She pointed to a cap on annual deficits of 3% of gross domestic product, paired with an independent commission to overhaul the biggest drivers of the debt, federal health care and retirement programs. For now, the standalone bill sits where it has for more than a decade: introduced, referred to committee and waiting for the floor vote it has never received.