Federal Budget and Appropriations
November is a time of change (to your budgets)
Josh Huder | November 1, 2018
November is a beautiful month of transition. The air is cooler. The leaves are turning. And because it’s an even-numbered year, the change is particularly jarring on Capitol Hill. Appropriators are wrapping up their business while Americans are electing a new Congress. The confluence of elections and appropriations in November is fitting because the election
Five Cheers for the FY19 Appropriations Process
Matt Glassman | October 1, 2018
The 2019 federal fiscal year begins Monday, October 1st. To the surprise of many, the FY2019 appropriations process in Congress resulted in on-time passage of several of the annual appropriations bills. On September 21, President Trump signed the FY2019 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which contained the annual appropriations for three of the traditional twelve
Budget Dysfunction: Potential Reforms
Laura Blessing | July 11, 2018
The federal budget process, laid out in the 1974 Budget Act, is a complex, multi-stage process with many opportunities for partisanship and intra-party divisions to derail it. And derailed it has been, with workarounds like omnibus appropriations and Continuing Resolutions (CRs) becoming the new normal. The myriad challenges in the present-day process were discussed at length in
Budget Reform: Diagnosing the Problem
Laura Blessing | May 3, 2018
The federal budget process is broken. There are few things that political actors across the spectrum agree on; the deep dysfunctionality of congressional budgeting is one. This topic has received considerable attention in recent years, most recently via a joint select committee created to seek reforms. The need for such an investigation
Art of the Very Difficult Budget Deal
Josh Huder | January 18, 2018
Three months into the 2018 fiscal year, Congress and the President have yet to finalize a budget deal. Delayed funding of government is not new to this Congress or its predecessors. Similar debates about how much to raise the Budget Control Act (BCA) caps (commonly referred to as sequester) occurred in 2013 and 2015, and
Senior Fellow Mark Harkins on The HILL AM View Podcast
GAI | January 10, 2018
GAI Senior Fellow Mark Harkins was a guest this morning on The Hill AM View Podcast. He and correspondent Alexis Simendinger discussed the value of earmarks as a legislative technique. Interesting discussion in light of recent comments by President Trump expressing enthusiasm for bringing back this congressional practice.
Outlook for the FY2018 Appropriations Process
Matt Glassman | January 9, 2018
The FY2018 appropriations process in Congress—which will provide funding for the federal government from October 1, 2017, until September 30, 2018—is once again approaching a deadline. After its failure to enact full year appropriations bills by October 1, Congress has passed a series of continuing resolutions (the first through December 8; a
Mark Harkins | November 20, 2017 November 16, 2017, will be a day long remembered in the annals of Congressional history. Not because of the Franken picture or the fact that Sen. Menendez’s trial ended in a hung jury or even that Roy Moore had another revival press conference. No, this day will be remembered as the day the budget hawks The 2016 election was a near universal shock. President Trump beat (nearly) all prognosticators. House Republicans only lost 6 seats, retaining their 4th largest House majority since 1930. Senate Republicans also beat the odds and held on to a 52 seat majority. Suddenly, the 2016 Election that was supposed to go bad for Republicans turned Mark Harkins | May 30, 2017 Sequestration put into place by the Budget Control Act in 2011 (BCA) is still on the books. But Congress, with the acquiescence of the President, has found a way to make that point moot. By invoking another section of budget law, section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) and (ii) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of
R.I.P. Budget Hawks
Republicans’ Inability to Do Routine Things Is Scuttling Their Big Plans
The Sequester Died on May 5