This week the U.S. Senate will consider a series of amendments to the budget resolution. A budget resolution sets out spending and revenue guidelines for Congress’s annual appropriations process.Except that the Senate won’t pass a budget resolution this year. To Hill watchers, this isn’t too surprising – the media is quick to point out the Senate hasn’t passed a budget resolution in three years. Although they usually just say “a budget,” which is technically wrong. But that’s another story.The House has already passed its own budget resolution introduced by House Budget Committee Chair ...

This week we announced the release of our new book A People’s Guide to the Federal Budget, and in yesterday’s blog post we admitted to being idealists: A book can change the world, we said. But it’s not just because we’re idealists that we think so. Consider the evidence.

Regular Americans can tackle federal budget deficits – when armed with information. A study by the Program for Public Consultation gave randomly-selected Americans solid budget information and asked them to consider trade-offs faced by lawmakers in Washington. Respondents made choices and cut deficits, most often by reducing military ...

National Priorities Project is thrilled to announce the release of our new book, A People's Guide to the Federal Budget. Call us idealists, but we at NPP believe that a little information goes a long way, and that a book can change history.

A People's Guide to the Federal Budget is a friendly, down-to-earth handbook for Americans of all ages and backgrounds who want to have a voice in our democracy and ensure the U.S. federal budget reflects their priorities. It's even got cartoons in it.

Most Americans say they're not happy with the way ...

Update 5/14/2012: The Senate is expected to consider its own version of the Department of Commerce/Census Bureau budget as early as Tuesday of this week. If you oppose the elimination of the American Community Survey, please contact your Senators and urge them to support the ACS.

5/10/2012: Today the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5326, the appropriations bill for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, NASA, and other related agencies.

H.R. 5326 includes an amendment that would prohibit the Department of Commerce from funding the American Community Survey (ACS), a yearly household survey ...

During Pie Week, we’ve explored three types of federal spending pies: total, mandatory, and discretionary. Judging from your comments on our Facebook page, you have strong opinions about the numbers on these charts.

To wrap up the week, we think it’s important to see the spending charts next to one another and understand the relationships between them. Below is an experimental way to make these charts more interactive. Just hover over the pie slices and click them to see the detailed data.

Educational? Confusing? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

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Our final pie of Pie Week! We showed you total federal spending, mandatory spending, and discretionary spending. Today's flavor of pie? Where the money comes from to fund the federal budget.

Tomorrow we'll review all the great kinds of pie we brought your way this week.

Pie Week continues today with the part of the federal budget that often receives the most scrutiny: discretionary spending.

Discretionary spending is often the most scrutinized part of the federal budget because it's the part that lawmakers directly determine each year during the appropriations process. That makes discretionary spending different from mandatory spending, which is determined not at the discretion of lawmakers, but rather by how many people qualify for benefits from mandatory programs like Medicare. Check out yesterday's post for the mandatory pie.

And stay tuned! We'll have another fresh slice of pie for you tomorrow.

For the second day of Pie Week, we present the mandatory spending pie. Mandatory spending is part of total federal spending, which we explored in yesterday's total federal spending pie.

Spending for mandatory programs is not determined by lawmakers during their yearly process for passing the federal budget. Instead, mandatory programs like food stamps and Medicare have certain eligibility criteria; anyone who meets them receives benefits from the program. Want to know more about mandatory spending? Check out Federal Budget 101. And visit the Budget Matters blog again tomorrow, when we'll have another pie for your enjoyment.

This week we're talking about pie. Federal budget pies, that is. The first pie we're looking at is total federal spending.

Join us every day this week for a different slice of pie! Check back here or on Twitter and Facebook.

The House and Senate return this week from their spring recess with the seeds of a summer budget stalemate already planted.As required by law, in February President Obama released the Administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2013 (which begins on Oct. 1). Although just a proposal, the annual request serves as the jumping off point of the annual budget process, and in this, a critical election year, it sets out the president’s vision for the country’s future.In March, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), released “Path to Prosperity,” a Republican alternative to the President ...