Congress Has the Power of the Purse. It Just Doesn’t Use It.

The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. It is one of the legislature’s central responsibilities and one of the most important checks on the executive branch. Yet in modern Washington, Congress increasingly treats budgeting as an inconvenience rather than a duty.

That abdication is not a mystery. It reflects incentives that reward delay, diffuse accountability, and replace deliberate governance with crisis management.Congress recently passed most of the annual spending bills funding the federal government for the remainder of fiscal 2026. That progress deserves recognition. But it is noteworthy precisely because it has become so rare. Most years, Congress fails to complete its basic budgeting work on time, relying instead on massive omnibus legislation or short-term extensions negotiated under the threat of shutdown.

This was not always the case. A century ago, Congress exercised close control over federal spending, debating individual programs and making explicit trade-offs. Over time, that discipline eroded. After World War II, large entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare expanded alongside a more complex tax system. These programs were placed on autopilot, exempt from annual review, while discretionary spending continued to require regular approval.

In 1974, Congress tried to restore order by creating the Congressional Budget Office, establishing budget committees and setting a clear budget timeline. The system worked for a while. But it failed to keep pace with political reality.

Mandatory spending continued to grow, while reforming popular programs became politically risky. Rather than confront those trade-offs openly, Congress learned to avoid them. Decisions were delayed, bundled, or pushed into last-minute omnibus bills negotiated behind closed doors.

This evolution did not occur because Congress lacks the capacity to budget. It occurred because dysfunction became easier than accountability.

Omnibus bills shield individual lawmakers from responsibility. Crisis legislating allows difficult choices to be blamed on circumstance rather than judgment. Emergency procedures designed for rare contingencies have become routine shortcuts. Over time, Congress has trained itself to prefer disorder because disorder spreads blame.

The result is a budget process that provides neither meaningful oversight nor long-term strategy. Committees are sidelined. Deadlines are missed. Spending decisions are made in compressed timeframes with limited transparency. Meanwhile, most federal spending continues to grow automatically, insulated from regular scrutiny.

No private institution would operate this way. No responsible board of directors would approve expenses without periodic review. Yet Congress has normalized a system in which the largest share of the budget runs on autopilot while the smallest share absorbs most of the attention.

That is why the proposed Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act of 2026 matters.

The bill, cosponsored with congressman Blake Moore from Utah, would require Congress to complete a real, comprehensive budget each year. It would force committees to participate fully by submitting detailed spending and revenue proposals for the programs they oversee, including major mandatory programs currently shielded from review. It would strengthen the budget resolution by making it enforceable rather than symbolic, reduce reliance on procedural shortcuts, and require Congress to debate spending and policy together instead of hiding priorities in rushed deals.

This reform would not be painless. It would surface conflicts Congress has long preferred to suppress. It would force lawmakers to acknowledge costs rather than defer them. And it would end the convenient fiction that everything can be funded without consequence.

That is precisely the point.

No set of rules can substitute political will, and this reform alone will not solve every problem. Committees must be allowed to negotiate. Members must accept that difficult choices are unavoidable. Enforcement mechanisms will need careful calibration. But the bill builds on existing institutions rather than trying to reinvent Congress overnight.

Most importantly, it reasserts a basic principle: budgeting is not clerical work. It is governance.

When Congress fails to manage the budget, power shifts elsewhere, deficits grow, and policymaking stalls. Restoring Congress’s role as a responsible steward of public money will not happen through speeches or shutdown threats. It will happen only if lawmakers are required — by rules and by expectations — to confront trade-offs openly and regularly.

The Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act of 2026 is not a quick fix. It is a necessary one. If Congress wants to govern effectively and regain credibility, it must once again treat the power of the purse not as a formality, but as the core of its constitutional responsibility.