The Federal Budget Process

The process starts in February when the president sends Congress a budget proposal, a wish list with no legal force. Congress's budget committees then draft a budget resolution, which sets overall spending and revenue targets and divides them among categories. That resolution also has no legal force: it funds nothing. It just gives appropriations committees a framework to work within. From there, two separate steps have to happen for any program to get money. First, an authorization bill creates or renews a program and sets rules for how it can operate, sometimes for multiple years. Second, an appropriations bill actually provides the cash, and it has to pass every single year before October 1, the start of the fiscal year. Congress usually splits appropriations into twelve bills covering different chunks of government.

This two-step split is why a program can be fully legal and still broke. An agency can have a permanent authorization, say, to run a national park, but if the appropriations bill funding the Interior Department stalls in the Senate, the park gets no money. When no appropriation is in place by October 1, agencies covered by that bill lose spending authority and must stop non-essential operations, a shutdown. Congress can buy time with a continuing resolution, which temporarily extends old funding levels while negotiations continue.

This machinery connects directly to the separation of powers theme running through the unit: the president proposes, Congress disposes, and because appropriations require actual bicameral passage and a presidential signature, any one veto point, a Senate filibuster, a committee holdup, a presidential veto, can freeze the whole machine.