Budget Matters Blog

Category: Budget Process


Biden Group, Senate Get Serious About the Budget

This week the Senate may begin its work on the FY2012 federal budget, while Vice President Joseph Biden holds a second high-level meeting with leading congressional figures on the budget.Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) is likely to release his FY2012 budget resolution sometime this week. As in the ...

Our Latest Webinar: Hitting the Debt Ceiling

Our latest webinar Hitting the Debt Ceiling is a 45-minute presentation (with Q&A) that will introduce people to the current debate in Washington related to raising the legal limit on the U.S. national debt, which will shortly reach $14.3 trillion.The government is set to officially reach the debt limit by ...

FY2012: Defining the Debt

National Priorities Project has released a new analysis of the competing budget plans issued by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  In addition to its new analysis, NPP provides a set of tools which summarize the outcome of the FY2011 federal budget process and offer ...

Continuing Resolutions 7 and 8: Finale

td p { margin-bottom: 0in; }p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }a:link { } Friday, April 8, the House of Representatives and the Senate worked until almost midnight to draft and pass legislation to keep the government open. This seventh Continuing Resolution cuts another $2 billion from the FY2011 budget in the ...

Congress, President Agree on FY2011 Spending Plan

Late Friday night, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and President Obama reached agreement on a spending bill that will fund the last six months of Fiscal Year 2011, which ends on September 30, 2011. The agreement is actually two bills -- a seven day continuing resolution that will allow time ...

Blossoms, But No Budget

It’s Cherry Blossom season in Washington, D.C. Each year at this time hundreds of thousands of people from across the country and around the world flock to our nation’s Capitol to stroll along the banks of the Tidal Basin, “ooo-ing” and “ahhh-ing” at the vibrant pink flowers on hundreds of ...

Despite Deep Spending Cuts, GOP Plan Achieves Little Deficit Reduction in 2012

Chairman Ryan’s deep cuts would only achieve modest deficit reductions in 2012The budget proposal released by Rep. Paul Ryan’s this week includes a slew of cuts to “non-security” discretionary programs in 2012.  The deepest cuts are illustrated below.   Rep. Ryan proposes we spend less than half as much as President ...

Updated Data: Federal Tax Collection

This week, the IRS released the 2011 edition of its Data Book. Thank you and congratulations to the IRS on being so quick to release 2011 numbers. As a result, NPP has updated the following Federal Priorities dataset: Federal Tax Collection: updated through 2011

Taking the Budget Off Into the Sunset -- Committee, That Is

On March 16, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) proposed an amendment to a bill reauthorizing two award programs offered by the Small Business Administration. It has not gotten much press, but it proposes serious, long-term changes to how Washington does business and places eight members of Congress in charge of the ...

Continuing Resolution Number 6: The End?

The Senate passed a sixth Continuing Resolution on March 17, 2011, which cuts an additional $6 billion from the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. The FY 2011 year ends September 30, 2011 and Republican leaders are under pressure to meet the $100 billion-cut-goal set by the House Appropriations Committee. As this ...