The Evolution of the Federal Budget Process

Overspending is a pertinent problem facing the lawmakers in Congress. In 2012 discretionary spending reached $1.3 trillion and mandatory spending $2 trillion, while only bringing in $2.5 trillion in revenue. Since the turn of the century back in 2000, non-mandatory spending by the government has topped out a whopping $16.1 trillion just in the past 13 years (Boccia, Frasser & Goff 2013). This persistent overspending on programs and services that are not necessary to the functionality of the country is what is causing the deficit to rise year after year. To remedy this issue the government must either increase the revenue it brings in through taxes and trade or reduce the amount of money it spend or perhaps even both. In 2012 thirty-one cents of every dollar that Washington spent was borrowed (Boccia, Frasser & Goff 2013). Most of which went to large programs such as Social Security and Medicare and if these large, growing programs, or just the budget in general, do not undergo financial reform it could spell disaster for the economy and fiscal state of the nation.

In theory it was the president (The Department of the Treasury) who the necessary money, to cover the budget.

The federal budget deficit is a much discussed and little understood subject in American politics. The current recession has dramatically decreased tax revenues, driving the United States federal government to increase spending in an attempt to stabilize the economy. As a result the current federal deficit is at over $1.3 trillion dollars. This is approximately $47,754 per U.S. citizen or $137,552 per U. S. taxpayer (U.S. Debt Clock: Real Time, 2012).

“To budget is to fight over money and the things money buys” (Document A). The federal budget is adjusted every year and has to follow certain criteria set forward by the Preamble to the Constitution. The Preamble sets five goals that the budget must fulfill, these goals are: to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defence, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our prosperity. Furthermore, it is difficult to decide what clusters of the federal budget to allocate money to in order to meet the five goals of the Preamble which are “The Big Five”, “The Middle Five”, and “The Little Guys.” In each of the three budget clusters,

There are some differences and similarity between the State and Federal budget. The Federal budget is bigger than the State budget. The federal government have the sovereign bank. The Federal government have the ability to print additional money when the need arises. The federal budget needs not balance revenues and expenditures for each fiscal year. At the subnational level, appropriations must not exceed revenues in the State budget. This creates restriction which is mandated for almost all the state and local finances. “This imposes a discipline at state and local government which the federal government may chronically evade. States cope by setting aside reserves in good years to hopefully cover deficits in bad revenue years” (n.d., 2012).

Ronald J. Pestritto stated that the Congress refuses to control the power of the purse and the willingness to use the tools. So one of his solutions was to use the appropriation process to make the bureaucrats show them some respect and another way is, “to stop acting as if the Supreme Court gets a monopoly on interpreting the Constitution.” as stated by Ronald J. Pestritto. One problem stated by Terry Moe is, “members of congress have very distinctive incentives and those incentives are rooted in their states and their districts and what they need to do to get reelected and the kinds of things you can think of that would make the government more effective are not what’s motivating them.” The ultimate problem that Terry Moe stated was the constitution itself. His solutions are seeking out small constitutional changes that has big pay outs and moving Congress to the outer limits of lawmaking process, with the president in the centre with

Congress has the power not only to make its own laws, but to refute the president’s laws if it is deemed necessary and to override presidential vetoes. According to the separation of powers, Congress is the legislative branch. It is the most powerful branch of government because it can control who is in the other two branches. It has the power to impeach members of the other branches. It can also change the judicial branch by changing the size or number of Supreme Court justices in the federal court system and reject nominees for the Supreme Court. “The U.S. Congress is the “first branch” of government under Article I of our Constitution, and is also among the world’s most important representative bodies,” (pg. 186). However, the executive

The federal budget is an annual plan created by the president of the United States that sets a certain amount of money to fund different federal expenses such as national defense, transportation, and income security, in fact; the federal expenses are divided into two categories, mandatory and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending is any expenditure that is required by legislation in which Medicare and Social Security are the main funded programs. In addition, discretionary spending is spending not mandatory but decided by congress based on appropriations in which it funds education, agriculture,and administration of justice, just to name a few. The federal budget is created using the constitution’s preamble as a guideline in order for

The U.S. government budget is made up of different content that present financial proposals from the President with advised importance for ration of revenue from the local government. More importantly, the budgets focus being the budget year. This is the next budgetary year where changes would have to be made by Congress. The budget not only covers the present year, but the next 4 years after the budget year to be able to resonate the outcome of budget verdicts past the extended term. This includes funding zones given for the present year in order for the reader to be able to make a comparison of Presidential budget propositions and the newest executed zones. Here the President starts the lengthy procedure of creating a budget by means of policy guidelines, at least 9 months prior sending his budget proposal off to Congress. Following the guidelines, the Budget Office along with Federal agencies create a policy for the present and future budget years.

another one of congresses expressed powers is the ability to tax and spend for the defense and general welfare of the United States this is basically where congress gets the power to tax us this money goes back in to the United States for things that most stay funded

Limiting the powers of congress was need and accomplished by using checks and balances of other branches of government. Built within the Congress as a bicarmel structure are two houses that can keep each other in check. Both houses must approve new laws, and if a bill is revenue related it must originate in the house. This in known as the Origination Clause. Furthermore, the president has the power to veto any legislation produced by congress. Of course, the Congress can override the veto with a two-thirds vote from both the house and the senate. Additionally, Congress has the sole power to declare War, but the President is the Commander and Chief of the Military. Lastly, the judicial branch has the power of judicial review on laws passed by

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) acts as a financial planner to congress for our nations spending. The CBO is part of the legislative branch of government. The CBO aids congress by analyzing data to support the budget creation process. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is another entity with a similar responsibility.

The first step to creating the federal government budget is the President submits a budget request to Congress. The executive branch gets requests from the federal agencies saying that different things and projects need money or that they don’t need money. So basically they discuss what project is more important. Yet these are all only proposals so they can either be accepted or denied depending on what the people think the country needs.

While balancing the budget it occurred to me why congress would have so many problems balancing the actual budget; it is

Historically, incrementalism has characterized public budgeting because at its core, budgeting has evolved: increased and decreased through gradual stages within the realm of the political arena. The need for this one step at a time type of response, found within incremental budgeting, would have likely been caused by the known fact that prior to the 1900’s public welfare programs, federal, states, and even city spending did not exist in the way in which is more than obviously observable in today’s society simply because America did not employ an actual budgetary system. Therefore, as with any unchartered territory, it was approached in stages, with caution, a little at a time in response to the growing needs of the public. Aaron Wildavsky made this case in his book “The politics of the budgetary process,” when he pointed out “budgeting is incremental, not comprehensive. The beginning of wisdom about an agency budget is that it is almost never actively reviewed as a whole every year in the sense of reconsidering the value of all existing programs as compared to all alternatives. Instead, it is based on last year’s budget with special attention given to a narrow range of increases or decreases.” (Wildavsky 1964, p. 15)