With the January 15 deadline to pass the FY14 appropriations bills fast approaching, on Friday House Appropriations Chair Harold Rogers (R-KY) filed a “clean” three-day extension of the current continuing resolution, which is expected to pass both chambers by Wednesday. Both sides continue to report good progress on the $1.012

Late Wednesday the Senate passed the budget agreement that had passed the House last week, generating considerable speculation as to whether the bipartisan deal would herald a new era of bipartisan functionality, or whether its limited scope simply confirmed Congress’s inability to get big things done. In either case, it

Although yesterday’s historic Senate vote to eliminate the filibuster for most presidential nominees grabbed most of the headlines, there was a second Senate vote, later in the day, that was perhaps equally historic. If there was any doubt over whether finally exercising the “nuclear option” would lead to even greater

Director’s Desk Over the last year fiscal hawks have been warning that if we didn’t drastically cut spending and enact major reforms in entitlement programs to reduce the federal budget deficit, the United States would become another Greece. Greece, however, after years of severe fiscal austerity, is now running a

Over the last year fiscal hawks have been warning that if we didn’t drastically cut spending and enact major reforms in entitlement programs to reduce the federal budget deficit, the United States would become another Greece. Greece, however, after years of severe fiscal austerity, is now running a budget surplus,

Earlier this month the House passed two appropriations bills, Milcon/VA, and Homeland Security, both of which the president opposes. No appropriations bills have come to the floor in the Senate. As discussed in the newsletter, with a $91 billion gap between the House and Senate discretionary spending levels (302a allocations),

I’ve been closely following the federal budget for more than two decades, and at no point have things been more confusing, not only to observers like myself, but more importantly to federal managers and executives who are trying to plan their department budgets. One of our goals is to try

More good news bad news: Unlike this year, the sequesters scheduled for FY14 to FY21 will not cut spending across the board, but simply impose caps on discretionary spending, which ought to allow agencies to make more rational budget decisions. The bad news is that by making the cuts more