Op-Ed: Lawmakers five decades ago passed a big budget fix. It made a difference

Gov. Kasich teamed up with G. William Hoagland, former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee to co-author this op-ed. You can read the full op-ed on the L.A. Times website (here).

Fifty years ago, Congress tried to rein in deficits and fix the budget process — or, perhaps, lawmakers were mostly just trying to wrest back some spending power from the White House.

If the goal was fiscal responsibility, the results have been mixed at best. But if the goal was only for Congress to flex its power over the budget, five decades of experience show: mission accomplished.

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, signed by President Nixon while he was at risk of impeachment, established the House and Senate Budget Committees and the Congressional Budget Office to guide lawmakers in establishing and enforcing spending plans. It also created a process for Congress to create a budget each year and procedures to enact the spending and revenue measures that that budget envisioned.

If that sounds straightforward today, it wasn’t always so. Nixon had long fought with Congress over controlling spending, and he had been holding back money that Congress had authorized and appropriated.

Read the full op-ed on the L.A. Times website (here).