FY 2011 Budget Proposal: A Guided Tour

Few things receive as much attention - or have such a broad impact on the nation - as the annual federal budgeting process. With yesterday's budget release, noted here, the annual process begins anew.

It's a complex process with significant moving parts, of which the President's budget proposal is the first step, so here are a few resources for students trying to make sense of it.

• The Congressional Research Service has produced a must-read introductory report on the budget process, available here in PDF.
• In the Executive Branch, the Office of Management and Budget is the lead office on developing the budget proposal.
  
• The President proposes the budget, but Congress must approve or modify the President's request. The key committees are the House and Senate budget committees, which create the initial budget resolution to serve as a budgeting blueprint; and the House and Senate appropriations committees, which actually appropriate funding.
  
• Congress doesn't approve the President's budget as one document. Instead, it divides spending by subject into twelve different appropriations bills, which can be passed individually or combined into omnibus bills.
• The Library of Congress keeps track of each spending bill. This link shows spending bills from last year (FY 2010). The library will update its site when the current (FY 2011) appropriations bills are devised and move forward.

Finally, there are several places to find detailed information about the budget proposal.

• The Office of Management and Budget provides an overview and summaries of the budget requests for each department here.
• Individual departments and agencies provide much more detailed budget information. For example, see Commerce; Energy; Veterans Affairs; State; as well as individual agencies like NASA; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; the Small Business Administration; and many others.
• Finally, a good resource for budget analysis is the Congressional Budget Office.