1.1: Long Term
Budgeting for the Long Term: Avoiding the Fiscal Cliff Other Information:
Summary: To address a large long-term gap between federal revenues and spending commitments, the budget process and institutions
can be reformed to be more far-sighted. Reforms will raise the salience of the long-term fiscal challenge and make it more
difficult for policy makers to ignore the long-term implications of their decisions or their failure to act. The President
and Congress should agree on fiscal goals as a starting point for work on the annual budget, and the budget resolution to
be a multi-year plan to meet specific fiscal targets. The President should show how his fiscal policies will play out over
the far horizon and how much his policies will do to close the long-term fiscal gap. Other procedural and institutional changes
can be made to provide the incentives and discipline needed to put the budget on a sustainable path.
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