Does The President’s Budget Matter – Plus The 7 Gov Stories That Matter

Christopher Dorobek

11 years ago

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But up front: Does the president’s budget matter?

The Obama administration on Tuesday will issue its fiscal 2015 budget. A few facts that we all know (but we don’t say):

The papers will be filled with stories dissecting the administration’s budget — most of them saying that programs are getting more (or less) money;
Most of those numbers will not become reality;
By in large, the administration’s budget will not be passed.

Most of these facts have been true for years, yet there seems to be a growing sense that the budget process is wasted. (Of course, Congress rarely passed the 12 spending bills by the October 1 start of the federal government’s fiscal year.)

NPR said:

Once upon a time, the president’s budget really was the starting point for making spending decisions in Washington. The budget spells out how much money the government expects to collect in the coming year, and suggests how it should be divvied up among various agencies and programs.

As an editor, I told reporters that the budget mattered because it gave an idea of the administration’s priorities. But budget watcher Stan Collender, from the communications firm Qorvis and author of the Capital Gains and Games blog (which recently moved to Forbes.com), recently suggested, It’s Time To Eliminate The President’s Budget.

The value of the president’s budget has diminished further as Congress has seen less and less need each year to adopt a congressional budget resolution.

Regardless of whether it has been Senate Democrats who either were unwilling or unable to pass a budget or House Republicans refusal to go to conference with the Senate, Congress’ failure to do what it is legally required to do each year by the Congressional Budget Act has further transformed the president’s budget from what should be a serious part of the policy process into nothing more than an act of political self-flagellation…

My suggestion? Change the Congressional Budget Act so that the president is not required to prepare and submit a budget the year after Congress fails to adopt a budget resolution. If Congress wants a presidential budget to play with, it has to produce a plan of its own.

In the meantime we should all save a few trees or bytes of memory when the president’s budget is released. It’s just not going to mean very much and should not be taken that seriously.

There is a proposal by Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI), which has some movement on Capitol Hill, to do biennial budgeting. From Ribble:

Congress consistently fails to pass a budget and the appropriations bills on time. Since 2001, Congress has only enacted 8.3% of appropriations bills before the deadline. Congress then relies on short-term spending bills that create more economic uncertainty and disdain among the American people. As a result, Congress wastes billions of dollars allocating funds to programs that are wasteful and duplicative because it doesn’t have enough time to properly review those departments and agencies and their budget and spending activities.