PMAP 8161: Public Budgeting & Finance Process

Step-by-step guide from USA.gov.

Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. It is presented by the Library of Congress (LOC) using data from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, Congressional Budget Office, and the LOC’s Congressional Research Service.

Congress.gov is usually updated the morning after a session adjourns.

An increasingly constrained budget environment underscores the importance of managing federal agency budgets prudently, and developing strategies to address uncertainty in the federal budget process.

Congress passes laws that authorize agencies to spend federal dollars (“incur an obligation”). Various laws provide mandatory budget authority, while appropriations acts provide discretionary budget authority.

The annual process of funding the government is a monumental task, and staying on top of the many moving parts can be complicated and time intensive. To help you make sense of how the federal budget is determined, we break down the theoretical timeline, explain the significance of each step, and highlight how details of the federal budget impact state budgets.

Ideally, following submission of the president’s budget proposal, Congress passes a concurrent budget resolution setting total spending, revenue, and deficit targets for at least the next five years, and then passes annual appropriation bills to fund discretionary programs and legislation to enact any changes to mandatory programs and taxes. The process has typically broken down at various points in recent years, however, with Congress failing to pass a concurrent resolution or not completing timely action on appropriations.

This backgrounder describes the laws and procedures under which Congress decides how much money to spend each year, what to spend it on, and how to raise the money to cover some or all of that spending. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 lays out a formal framework for developing and enforcing a “budget resolution” to guide the process but in recent years the process has not always worked as envisioned.

In this paper, I review US federal budget rules and present some evidence on their possible effects. From an analysis of how components of the federal budget behaved under the different budget regimes, it appears that the rules did have some effects, rather than simply being statements of policy intentions. NBER WORKING PAPER 14288

This paper presents a primer on Medicare budgeting. I review of Medicare financing and budgetary history, and use some
alternative plausible forecasts of long-run spending growth to highlight
the considerable uncertainty about forecasts of future program expenditures.

Medicaid’s federal-state matching system of financing is the nation’s largest example of fiscal federalism. Using generous federal subsidies, the Affordable Care Act incentivized states to expand Medicaid, which became a state option in the aftermath of a 2012 Supreme Court ruling. NBER WORKING PAPER 26862

We analyze the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on state and local government finances, with an emphasis on health spending needs and the role of the Medicaid program. We arrive at three conclusions. First, we find that nationwide, and over the entirety of the federal budget window, the enhanced federal matching funds are of roughly the same magnitude as expected increases in state Medicaid costs....NBER WORKING PAPER 28670

The Hutchins Center Fiscal Impact Measure shows how much local, state, and federal tax and spending policy adds to or subtracts from overall economic growth, and provides a near-term forecast of fiscal policies’ effects on economic activity.