About the Committee
Federal budget deficits have re-emerged, the national debt is growing, and no progress has been made in reforming the nation's dangerously underfunded entitlements programs. Meanwhile, few effective mechanisms to control the budget remain in place and the commitment to fiscal discipline in the political arena has, for the most part, been lost.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is a bipartisan organization committed to educating the public regarding the budget process and issues that have significant fiscal policy impact. The Committee, founded in 1981, became a part of the New America Foundation in 2003.
Co-chaired by Bill Frenzel and Leon Panetta, the Committee is made up of some of the most important minds in the budgeting world, including: Barry Anderson, Roy Ash, Charles Bowsher, Dan Crippen, Richard Darman, Cal Dooley, Willis Gradison, William Gray, Ted Halstead, Jim Jones, Lou Kerr, James Lynn, James McIntyre, David Minge, Marne Obernauer, June O'Neill, Rudolph Penner, Tim Penny, Peter Peterson, Robert Reischauer, Alice Rivlin, Jim Slattery, Charlie Stenholm, David Stockman, Paul Volcker, Carol Cox Wait, and Joseph Wright.
The main activities of the Committee include:
Nonpartisan Analysis and Reports
The Committee regularly provides Members of Congress, their staffs, the media, and the public with unbiased, nonpartisan analysis of pressing budgetary topics. These reports focus on issues that are in the news or under consideration by the Administration or Congress such as the annual budget, appropriations, and supplemental legislation, as well as longer-term topics such as Social Security and healthcare reform, and the overall budget process and accounting reform issues.
The Committee works with Members of Congress and experts in the policy community to develop new and improved approaches to important budgeting matters. In this pursuit, the Committee hosts a variety of expert working groups to study issues such as appropriate accounting techniques for the government's long-term liabilities, potential improvements to budget baselines,and the development of a framework with which to compare various entitlement program reform plans.
Additionally, the Committee's website, located at www.crfb.org, serves as a centralized clearinghouse for congressional staffers, the media, and the public for information relating to the budget. The website includes detailed and summary policy reports, regular updates on policy issues affecting the budget, and a number of useful links.
High Profile Symposia and Events
The Committee is well known for convening the nation's top budget experts to discuss important budget-related issues. Throughout the year, the Committee hosts day-long conferences that serve to bring together members of both parties and policy experts to create a better understanding of policy objectives and options on a variety of topics. In the past, conferences have focused on: budget process, economic issues affecting the budget, healthcare, entitlement reform, and tax reform.
The Exercise in Hard Choices
In order to educate the public about the choices involved in achieving and maintaining a balanced budget, the Committee created the Exercise in Hard ChoicesSM to simulate the federal budget process. The Exercise allows participants to grapple with the same difficult choices faced by the President and Congress. The Exercise is updated regularly to reflect actual choices Congress and the President are considering in the current fiscal year or may consider in the near-term future. Many Members of Congress choose to run the Exercise in their home districts both as a tool to educate their constituents and as a way to receive feedback about how national priorities should be reflected in the federal budget. Currently, the Committee is working with the University of Akron to develop a real-time, interactive, on-line version of the Exercise so that it can be offered across the United States using the latest e-learning technologies.
