When we look at the Federal Budgeting process in simple terms, it really isn’t very hard to understand. It starts with the President compiling his budget request and submitting it to Congress. Only Congress can authorize the spending of money under our Constitution. When the President puts the budget request together, the first step is to compile the expected spending associated with all the legislative actions that have been approved by Congress in the past. Much of this spending is known as “entitlement” spending. Next, the spending on the administration of our government is added in. Then there are the things that the President hopes Congress will pass into law and what those would cost. Finally, there is some amount of additional discretionary funds added to the request to cover spending that was not anticipated. Sometimes it sounds like the budget opponents are saying that the President has loaded the budget with only discretionary spending. So the Budget Request is the total of all spending obligations from past Congresses plus some estimates for new and unexpected spending.
We’re not done just yet. We need to accomplish those same steps for four more years into the future. That’s right – each budget request contains relatively detailed information about spending obligations for the coming five years. Anything farther into the future is known as the out years and the budget provides estimates for five of those out years. So each year’s budget contains information for the coming ten years.
If Congress wants to cut back on spending, we would imagine that they would first remove the discretionary spending and then remove the estimates for new spending which would leave the budget with only those spending items that are part of the government’s current obligation. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate must agree on the final budget before it can become law and the Executive Branch actually spend the money. If the House and the Senate cannot agree, the government can be kept in operation through Continuing Resolutions (CRs) until those disagreements are resolved. It is really pretty simple until we add in the complication of politics. It is the influence of politics that can turn good government into bad government.
When the politicians come to the microphone to talk about money, think about their words in these simple terms and you will quickly figure out who is playing politics and who is working on good government. In the current situation, the President has met his responsibility to prepare and submit his budget request. The Legislative Branch has NOT met their responsibility to debate and approve a budget for the coming year. As a result, we are operating on Continuing Resolutions that just kick the can down the road.
Any fingers not being pointed at the Legislative Branch are pointing in the wrong direction.
The Sausage Grinder is Broken – will you help to fix it?
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