This year the federal government is expected to collect more than $3.5 trillion in taxes— a vast amount of money by any measure. One of the key functions of Congress is to pass a budget. But often that seems close to impossible.

Lack of agreement over federal spending regularly threatens to bring about government shutdowns that have a negative impact on millions of Americans. Yet few of us can even begin to understand the byzantine budget process.

Both of our guests in this episode have worked with other policy experts to make the budget process function better, with greater efficiency and transparency.

Alison Acosta Winters is a fiscal conservative and was most recently a senior policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity. Emily Holubowich is vice president for federal advocacy at the American Heart Association, and often supports more government spending.

Brought together by Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, Alison, Emily and other stakeholders from diverse backgrounds spent months working together to come up with several major proposals for overhauling the budget process.

This podcast is one of a series of episodes co-produced in partnership with the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution. Each show highlights the common ground that resulted from one of Convergence's structured dialogues across differences.