Appropriations / Spending

Appropriations / Spending: News Background Analysis Data

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OMB Watch has launched a new series examining how long-term resource shortfalls at federal regulatory agencies have affected the ability of those agencies to protect the public and fulfill their missions.

Read more about it in Bankrupting Government: How a Decades-Long Campaign against Federal Spending Has Undermined Public Protections

News

Contract Reform Takes Center Stage in House 04/29/2008
A group of reform bills that would bring accountability and transparency to the federal contracting process has been approved by the House in the last few months, potentially setting the stage for federal contracting reform to be a major area of legislative action in the remaining months of the 110th Congress. Read More

Lack of Action in Congress on Pivotal Fiscal Policy Issues 04/29/2008
Congress continues to wrestle with a number of high-profile budget and financial bills that will have broad impact on citizens throughout the United States and around the world, including legislation on war funding, economic stimulus, housing, and the last budget of the Bush presidency. Despite significant congressional rhetoric and media coverage of these efforts, Congress has made little real progress on reaching compromise or instituting policies. Read More

Bills Improving Federal Contracting Gain Momentum 03/18/2008
In FY 2007, the federal government paid contractors about $420 billion to provide thousands of goods and services, but it had little insight into whether those companies were delinquent in paying their federal taxes, had broken contracting rules or laws, or if those firms paid top-level executives exorbitant levels of compensation. However, if several proposed bills become law, these obstacles to oversight and transparency will be greatly reduced. H.R.s 3033, 3928, and 4881 were approved by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee the week of March 10, while H.R. 5602 and a companion Senate bill were introduced the same week. Read More

Budget Resolution: Recap and the Road Ahead 03/18/2008
Late on March 13 and early in the morning of March 14, the House and Senate adopted $3 trillion budget resolutions for Fiscal Year 2009 by votes of 212-207 and 51-44, respectively. While the resolutions are similar in terms of broad policy outlines and priorities, they differ on a few major points, including the total amount of discretionary spending and whether to offset the cost of a one-year patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Read More

GAO Report Examines Overuse of Supplemental Spending 03/18/2008
In a recently released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined ten years of supplemental spending (FY 1997-FY 2006) and found not only a five-fold increase in the amount of expenditures funded through the supplemental process, but also that procedures that enable legislative deliberation are bypassed when Congress funds government operations through supplemental spending. Supplemental spending has become an alternative funding process, parallel to the normal annual appropriations process. This allows certain expenditures to elide close congressional and public scrutiny and allows Congress to escape debate over federal funding priorities. Read More

Federal Meat Inspectors Spread Thin as Recalls Rise 03/04/2008
The federal regulator of meat, poultry, and egg products, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), faces resource limitations that make it more difficult for the agency to ensure the safety of the food supply. Although the agency's budget has risen since it was created, staffing levels have dropped steadily. Widespread vacancies in the agency have spread FSIS's inspection force too thin. Meanwhile, the number of meat, poultry, and egg product recalls has risen, and a recent recall of 143 million pounds of beef is the largest in the nation's history. Read More

FY 09 Budget Resolution: Goals, Strategies, and Challenges 03/04/2008
The House and Senate Budget Committees will soon turn to the congressional budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2009. The draft versions of the budget resolution, to be offered by House Budget chief Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) and Senate Budget head Kent Conrad (D-ND), are likely to be considerably different from President Bush's unrealistic budget proposal submitted to Congress in February. Read More

Emergency War Spending Lacks Transparency, Increasingly Used for Non-Emergency Items 02/20/2008
The Bush administration's emergency supplemental spending requests for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have lacked the transparency that normally accompanies the appropriations process, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In addition, the CBO war spending report, however constrained by available data, revealed the composition of the war funding requests has been evolving into broader Defense Department spending initiatives, such as acquiring next-generation aircraft and replacing aging aircraft. Read More

Coal Mine Safety Shortchanged by Years of Budget Cuts 02/20/2008
Congress created the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 1977, placing a new federal focus on miner safety and health. However, the agency's budget and staffing levels have been cut over the past three decades. The budget for MSHA's coal mine safety and health program has been particularly abused. In the past two years, a spike in coal mine fatalities and high-profile coal mine disasters have prompted many Americans and Congress to look to MSHA to improve miner safety, but years of budget cuts and the loss of qualified employees have left the agency struggling to fulfill its mission. Read More

The Bush Budget Legacy: Misleading Claims and Misguided Priorities 02/05/2008
On Feb. 4, President Bush laid out, in a rather slender volume, his federal budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2009, which begins on Oct. 1. Unfortunately, Bush has made little progress toward constructing an honest, fiscally responsible budget that meets the needs of America's communities. In fact, criticisms identical to those levied a year ago against his FY 2008 budget are still quite suitable in their application today — Bush's assumptions about war spending and Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) reform are unrealistic if not outright spurious. His attempt to balance the budget by 2012 requires massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other popular domestic investments Congress will certainly not enact. His proposal to terminate or radically cut 151 federal programs is fantastical — wholesale cuts to popular discretionary programs are not only unlikely but are irresponsible in the face of worsening economic conditions. Read More

Stimulus Status: The Eye of the Storm 02/05/2008
Momentum in Congress to pass a fiscal stimulus plan has halted for the moment, with the nation's political attention focused on the biggest primary day ever and, to a lesser degree, on the release of the president's FY 2009 budget proposal. Indeed, because Super Tuesday has three senators hop-scotching around the country, Senate leaders have put off an expected showdown over the plan until Wednesday, Feb. 6. Read More

Product Safety Regulator Hobbled by Decades of Negligence 02/05/2008
The nation's premiere consumer product regulator, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), has been crippled by budget cuts and staffing losses that now span decades. Every president since Gerald Ford has proposed cutting the agency's budget at least once, and Congresses controlled by both parties have obliged. Recent attention surrounding massive product recalls prompted Congress at the end of 2007 to give the agency one of its biggest funding boosts, and lawmakers are considering additional legislation to ensure consistent long-term funding. President Bush's FY 2009 budget request, announced Feb. 4, proposes level funding for the agency. Read More

Workers Threatened by Decline in OSHA Budget, Enforcement Activity 01/23/2008
The consolidated appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in December 2007 cuts the budget of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for Fiscal Year 2008. OSHA, like many other federal agencies, already faces budget constraints that make it more difficult for the agency to achieve its mission. Over the past three decades, OSHA's budget, staffing levels, and inspection activity have dropped while the American workforce has grown and new hazards have emerged. Read More

Despite New Majority in Congress, Fiscal Policy Still Mostly Stuck in Neutral 12/18/2007
A new congressional majority in 2007 promised a clean break from past practices of a Congress noted for its corruption, dysfunction and profligacy. It moved on a modest agenda and successfully enacted a few important policies, but overall, it failed to chart a new direction in fiscal policy. This failure was due in large part to the majority underestimating the ability and willingness of a coalition of conservative policymakers and the president to fiercely obstruct even the modest reform policies on the new Congress's agenda. Read More

Republicans Keep Obstructing Common-Sense Investment Initiatives 11/20/2007
Over the past few months, an intransigent president and a conservative coalition in Congress have waylaid a host of common-sense, progressive spending initiatives, including the reauthorization of the nutrition section of the Farm Bill, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and funding for domestic priorities in the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education. Read More

The Real Long-Term Health Care Challenge 11/20/2007
Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been issuing reports challenging conventional thinking about the long-term fiscal problem facing the nation, which holds that it is primarily related to the influence of demographic changes on Social Security and Medicare. These reports draw on the work of researchers and writers who found that the long-term fiscal challenge is almost entirely unrelated to demographics and Social Security, and it is mostly confined to inefficiencies in the private and public health care system. Read More

Congress to Send Labor/HHS Appropriations to President While SCHIP Conflict Continues 11/06/2007
President Bush is soon expected to veto a congressionally approved version of the Labor/Health and Human Services/Education (Labor/HHS) appropriations bill, which funds an array of human needs programs. It is still uncertain if there is enough support in the House to override the president's veto. Meanwhile, enough Republican opposition remains to a proposed reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that the months-old conflict over the program drags on. Read More

House Conservatives Sink SCHIP 10/23/2007
Despite a considerable lobbying campaign by supporters, House Republicans blocked an effort to override President Bush's veto of a five-year, $35 billion funding increase for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that would have provided an additional 4 million uninsured children with health insurance. Read More

Congress Avoids Tough Questions of FY 2008 War Funding 10/10/2007
President Bush and Congress continue to deny the fiscal realities of prosecuting two simultaneous wars that cost about $12 billion per month. By classifying the president's FY 2008 $193 billion war funding request an "emergency supplemental" and stifling discussion of war financing, Congress sidesteps the critical task of setting and adequately funding national priorities. Read More

Congress, President Spar Over Children's Health Insurance 10/10/2007
Congress overwhelmingly approved the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization at the end of September, with $35 billion in new funding that would provide health care coverage for about four million more uninsured children. As expected, President Bush vetoed the reauthorization, and the House is scheduled to hold what promises to be a close override vote on Oct. 18. Read More

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