As we went through Riedl’s list of budget gimmicks, it was clear that many of them are in play this year. She mentioned, for example, “fake expiration dates” and using a “current policy” baseline. A key feature of the recently passed congressional budget resolution is the use of a current policy baseline to assume that extending the expiration date of the 2017 tax cuts will have no budgetary effect.

We also got his candid take on this year's Congressional budget process, which he said "shows the level of perversity there is on telling the truth about the math.” Concord Coalition Executive Director Carolyn Bourdeaux joined the conversation. 

We began by discussing President Trump’s speech on Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress. Bourdeaux commented that Trump “did make a nice hat tip to a balanced budget, which I appreciated. He said he would balance the budget and he would address the debt. However, the revenues and expenditures that he talked about just don't add up.”

Anderson sees some similarities between the early days of the Clinton Administration in the 1990’s and the current situation.

In a new book, “Beyond Zombie Rule: Reclaiming Fiscal Sanity In A Broken Congress,” Steuerle updates an earlier book with a similarly chilling title, Dead Men Ruling. The main theme of both books is that too much of the federal budget has been predetermined by spending and tax decisions made long ago, leaving today’s policymakers and future generations with limited flexibility to make their own decisions.

There has been a lot of discussion in Washington about the major fiscal cliff coming up at the end of 2025 when a portion of the 2017 Trump tax cuts expire. Before the elections, most of the talk had been about the trade-offs that might be needed to get an agreement between the parties. 

But now, with the Republicans taking control of the House, Senate, and White House, it’s possible that Republicans can get what they want without compromising with Democrats by passing a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions, which is a budget process maneuver that would allow them to overcome a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate. 

Our guest was Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President of the American Action Forum and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Concord Coalition chief economist Steve Robinson joined the conversation.