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.

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

“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,

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.

Congress and the President focus on this heavily. Mandatory spending is money that is given for entitlements such as Social Security and Medicaid. It is the largest portion of the budget and expected to grow. Congress and the President focus on this area of the budget the least because the money given out is determined by a formula based around the number of eligible households. Tax revenue is the money the government receives from taxes to fund its spending priorities.

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.

Those who develop culturally responsive faculty development programs should examine the foundational principles upon which they are built; they will demonstrate the level of commitment to developing a cadre of culturally responsive educators. Any program, curriculum or agenda that does not have at its core the intention of creating an equitable society for everyone is a tool to maintain hegemonic practices (Gorski, 2008). While there is no set model or format for culturally responsive faculty development, there are certain traits that should be evident from such a program.

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).

Edgar Allen Poe is an author that contributed an abundance amount of knowledge and passion to American literature through his books and short stories. He was one of the first authors who made his living through writing alone. This resulted in a great deal of financial hardships in which he had to learn to prevail through and continue to write stories and books that contributed to American Literature as a whole. Through these hardships he gained a great deal of compassion for his work and for the lives he created through his novels.

Expressed powers of congress are powers that are specifically given to congress in the constitution.

The second step to creating the federal government budget is the House and Senate pass budget resolutions. “A budget resolution is not a binding document, but it provides a framework for Congress for making budget decisions about spending and taxes.” In this process they set limits but do not create the actual budgets for the programs. “After the House and Senate pass their budget resolutions, some members from each come together in a joint conference to iron out differences between the two versions, and the resulting reconciled version is then voted on again by each chamber.”

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).

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)