President Obama released a budget in February, the House passed a very different budget in March, and the Senate has declined to do a budget. The seeds are planted for stalemate this election year. Why can't Congress just pass a budget without all this conflict?

The House and Senate return this week from their spring recess with the seeds of a summer budget stalemate already planted.As required by law, in February President Obama released the Administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2013 (which begins on Oct. 1). Although just a proposal, the annual request serves ...

Rebecca from Lititz, Pennsylvania, asked: Why are there different versions of the budget, and who decides which one becomes the actual budget for the federal government? It’s a good question. You might have read in the news recently about the House budget introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan. And back in ...

When I pitched the idea for this blog to my co-workers, my research colleague Mattea quipped, “surrrrre, because when I think about the IRS, I think of fun.”That’s pretty much the sentiment of most Americans when it comes to paying taxes, which is a subject of a lot of jokes. ...

It's tax week here at National Priorities Project. You might have seen our Tax Day numbers, or watched our Tax Day video on YouTube, or gotten your personalized tax receipt. If you did, you saw that 27 cents of every 2011 federal income tax dollar went to the military, while ...

Ronda of Kennewick, Washington, wrote in to ask about tax revenues. In particular, she wanted to know if federal revenue has gone down over the past several decades with the enactment of lower tax rates and various tax exemptions. The answer is yes. Federal tax revenues as a share of ...

This is where the federal government spent each one of your federal income tax dollars in 2011: Once we pay our income taxes, they're designated by the U.S. Treasury as "federal funds," which means Congress and the president can use that money to fund just about any government activity. This ...

The president submitted his fiscal year 2013 budget request to Congress on Feb. 13. Earlier this week, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, unveiled his draft budget resolution. The role of the annual budget resolution is to set the overall spending limits that appropriators will use ...

Nancy Albert, of San Juan, Puerto Rico asks how much do we spend on the CIA, and where in the budget would you find that money?The short answer is, we don't know. Now here's the longer answer, which includes what we do know about what the government spends on intelligence, ...

I had an interesting discovery while combing through the numbers of the president's budget. I found that President Obama's spending priorities match pretty closely with the things Americans say they want. Of course the budget is complicated. But let’s say for a moment that it’s as simple as a public opinion polling question.