Why Is This Contest Necessary?

In the case of the federal budget and tax or spending policies, any idea—no matter who has originally come up with it—has to ultimately capture the attention and support of a Member of Congress in order for it to go anywhere. The legislative process begins when a Senator or Representative introduces a policy proposal as a bill, but members of Congress do not come up with these ideas on their own. They are advised by their staff, lobbied by private industry, hear testimony from experts and advocates representing various interests, and consult and work with (or take positions counter to) the Executive branch. At the request of a Congressperson, bills or proposals can also be subject to a “full treatment” of analysis from the Congressional Budget Office and/or Joint Committee on Taxation—where the economic and budgetary effects of the proposed policy is considered as the legislation is debated in full view of the American public.

But this policy “pipeline” taps into a very select population of ideas—mostly cultivated from industry lobbyists, the inside-the-Beltway policy community, and not much beyond. Policy ideas from outside this sphere often go unnoticed.

This project, “Democratizing the Budget Process,” will open up the budget process pipeline to a much wider field of policy ideas than usual. The winning proposals will receive a full treatment of budget and economic analysis, bringing analytical credibility (or “heft”) to proposals that could achieve (1) some social good and (2) budgetary savings but (3) have not yet captured the attention of policymakers. Submissions should achieve net federal budgetary savings over a 10- or 30-year window. Proposals in the former category have a much higher chance of getting through the budget process under “reconciliation”, while the latter category captures ideas that require a longer period to generate budgetary payoffs.

This contest will proceed in three phases.

Timeline

• In Phase 1, which will run July 6 - August 7, 2020, PWBM is soliciting as many policy ideas from as many participants as possible. The goal of this stage is to gain a deeper understanding of the policies people care about and why those policies might not receive enough legislative attention. Phase 1 enables people to submit policy ideas without spending days preparing a full policy proposal that might not end up being analyzed by PWBM economists.

  Please apply using the form below.

• In Phase 2, which will run August 8 - September 30, 2020, PWBM will select the top policy ideas and then curate and send invitations to people to write the policy proposals.

  Finalists will be announced on September 30, with invitations sent to experts to provide additional details and develop the winning policy ideas into proposals to be analyzed by PWBM economists. The deadline for these proposals will be October 30, 2020.

• In Phase 3, which will run November 1 - December 1, 2020, PWBM will review the finalist proposals and select winners. Analysis of the winning proposals will be released by January 15, 2021.

Basic Requirements

Anybody can submit a policy idea for consideration. But submissions must be:

1. A federal-level policy idea that could potentially be acted upon by Congress or the executive branch.
2. A single, self-contained policy that does not rely on unrelated “offsets”/extraneous add-on policies to raise revenue or cut spending.
3. A policy with a well-defined objective beyond budgetary savings, but also...
4. Likely to produce net savings to the federal budget over a 10-year or 30-year horizon. (Proposals with 10-year savings would qualify for expedited consideration in “reconciliation” legislation, while a 30-year savings window allows investments that would pay off more than their upfront costs over the longer term.)

How Will Finalists Be Chosen?

The evaluation process will include a panel of full-time PWBM staff and advisors comprising Penn / Wharton professors as well as external experts. They will select finalists based on the following criteria:

1. Policy idea is toward the public good;
2. Policy idea achieves specific policy goals;
3. Policy is likely to produce net savings to the federal budget, without shifting costs to state and local budgets, over a 10-year or longer-term window;
4. Idea has not received much attention from the policy community or the media thus far;
5. Policy area is starved for fact-based analysis;
6. Relevant microdata or evidence are available to inform policy analysis; and
7. Effects of the policy can be rigorously modeled and predicted.

The submission period closed on August 7, 2020.