Congressional Budget Resolution

Articles & Analysis

Congress Passes Year's First Spending Bill With Plenty of Riders, Declares Pizza a Vegetable

The Backup Budget

A bizarre ritual is going on in Congress in advance of fiscal year (FY) 2012. Appropriators are doing their job, writing and passing bills setting the year’s discretionary spending levels, but their efforts might be wasted. With the budget becoming tightly entwined with the looming debt ceiling deadline, all of the recent appropriations activity is probably for naught.

Budget Process Stuck at Square One and In Danger of Irrelevance

From the outside, a great deal seems to be happening with the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget process. The House debated a "clean" bill to raise the debt ceiling and is starting to vote on its yearly appropriations bills, and the Senate just voted on four budget proposals. But looks can be deceiving: despite these recent actions, the nation's budget process is teetering on the edge of irrelevance.

FY 2011 Wrapped Up, Still More Bumps on the Budget Road Ahead

Even though the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget battles are over, Congress is still deeply mired in fiscal work. News about "the budget" continues to flood the airwaves, along with breathless reporting about the impending debt ceiling crisis as federal debt levels reach their statutory limits. Incredibly large numbers are part of each new report, leaving many to wonder what's in the offing for fiscal policy in the coming months.

Analysis: Rep. Paul Ryan's FY 2012 Budget Resolution

Like all congressional budget resolutions, House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan's (R-WI) fiscal year (FY) 2012 Budget Resolution is not simply a chart of preferred spending and revenue levels, it's also a political statement guided by ideology. And Ryan's ideology demands that the federal government divert ever increasing sums from middle- and low-income families to big business and high-income families.

The Long, Downhill Road to a 2011 Budget

Appropriations for fiscal year (FY) 2011 are now six months late. The fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2010, but the nation is not much closer to having a budget than it was back then. As Congress comes face-to-face with the expiration of the current stop-gap spending bill, the budget's downward march may have stopped, but the possibility of a government shutdown still lingers.