Budget Matters Blog

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and President Obama/ White House photo by Chuck Kennedy

A better-than-expected cash flow at the U.S. Treasury has turned May 18 into just any old day.

That was supposed to be the deadline for lawmakers to come to an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, which is the limit Congress places on its own borrowing. But the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are expected to send tens of billions of dollars in profits to the Treasury over the coming months, while government spending has gone down due to the cuts of sequestration. That ...

Last week we explained that Congress was rushing to prevent airport delays, even as education programs and services for vulnerable Americans - such as shelters for victims of domestic violence - were seeing funding cuts. The following guest blog is an explanation of how lawmakers ultimately passed the "Reducing Flight Delays Act" - by lying about a typo and throwing transparency out the window.

By Jim Harper

Last weekend, we reported how Congress had failed to pass identical versions of the same bill in the House and Senate, meaning it couldn’t be signed into law. Now they’ve fixed the problem … by ...

Photo by John Krzesinski / Creative Commons flickr

They’ve hit a new low.

Citing significant concerns about long lines at airports and flight delays caused by the furlough of air-traffic controllers, Congress let the Federal Aviation Administration override strict sequestration rules and redirect funds within its budget. And they did so with lightning speed.

With their big fuss over aviation punctuality, lawmakers made it clear that they’re not feeling the pain felt by the majority of Americans. Their message: In the United States it’s fine to wait – and face a steep climb – for housing, health care, cancer treatment ...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled votes on a 2013 spending bill for this week

Photo licensed under Creative Commons

TL;DR

No. There is no federal budget for fiscal 2013, which began on Oct. 1, 2012.

What's Going On?

Last week I explained that the federal government is operating on a temporary spending bill called a continuing resolution instead of a real budget for fiscal 2013. That continuing resolution expires on March 27 – just a week from today. If lawmakers don't pass new legislation, the federal government will shut down on March 28. An extra complication in ...

2007 Economic Census Data courtesy of the Census Bureau

In recent weeks, NPP has written about the effects of sequestration on education, transportation, and health programs. We’ve also released a series of state-level fact sheets about sequestration and the Pentagon. But what about the effect of sequestration on government-produced data?

Last month, the Commerce Department estimated that sequestration will cut a total of $46 million from the Census Bureau, delaying the release of critical economic and demographic data and delaying preparations for the 2020 census. NPP recently signed on to a letter from the Census Project urging that the ...

Image courtesy of acmoraes

Monday House Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers (R-KY) introduced a bill that would extend the current stop-gap funding for government operations through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. The entire federal government has been operating without a budget since fiscal year 2013 began back on Oct. 1, and the current temporary spending bill – known officially as a continuing resolution (CR) – is set to expire on March 27.The legislation introduced yesterday would extend the current spending bill through the end of the fiscal year – in other words, Congress is proposing to go through ...

House Speaker John Boehner, President Barack Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Unable to broker an eleventh hour deal with congressional Republican leaders, President Obama signed the order activating the automatic across-the-board federal spending cuts – known as sequestration – on Friday.In the days prior to the March 1 deadline, the White House held a series of press briefings with the heads of various federal agencies highlighting the impact that sequestration would have on agency operations.Secretary of Education Arne Duncan warned that the $14.5 billion Title I budget – which provides assistance to low income communities – would be cut ...

Congressional leaders have not put together enough votes to avoid sequestration. Photo of Speaker Boehner licensed under creative commons

All signs point to sequestration taking effect as scheduled tomorrow, March 1. (For all the background on sequestration, check out our Fiscal Cliff II resource page.) To bring you up to date, here are alternatives to sequestration that have been proposed by both parties:

The president and Democrats in Congress have proposed alternatives to sequestration that include closing loopholes for oil and gas companies, a surtax on high incomes, and cuts to military spending phased in more gradually than those of ...

President Obama argues against a cuts-only approach to deficit reduction/ White House flickr

By now you've heard that federal budget cuts will take effect on Friday. And you've heard the strange-sounding name for these cuts: sequestration. Sequestration means across-the-board spending cuts, and this sequester was written into law in August 2011 as a kind of terrible incentive for lawmakers to pass a long-term deficit reduction plan. No one thought the cuts would actually take effect, but now – it is near certain – they will, and the fallout will reach all of us.

For instance. Fewer law enforcement officials in ...

One of the many sources of open government data that NPP scrubs and publishes in the Federal Priorities Database is U.S. Federal Tax Collections. We're highlighting federal income taxes this week as tax season gets into full swing.

With sequestration and Fiscal Cliff II looming, Congress and President Obama are once again tackling the spending side of the federal budget. But spending is only half of any budget. The income taxes due on April 15 — along with the excise, payroll, estate, trust, and gift taxes that we pay — are the other half of our nation's budget: revenue ...