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

Free Market Ends as Washington and Wall Street Merge 09/23/2008
Following a string of guarantees, buy-outs, and bailouts for various financial firms, Congress is now rushing to authorize the Treasury Secretary to spend $700 billion to bail out the rest of Wall Street. Since its role in the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to rival J.P. Morgan in March, the federal government has intervened three times in the nation's financial markets by using taxpayer dollars to prop up the value of various private banking and mortgage entities. While taxpayers ought to be concerned about the sums of money involved in these transactions, a more fundamental problem exists: the bottom-line cost is anybody's guess. Read More

Commentary: On Bailouts, Congress Should Move with Great Care 09/23/2008
The pace at which Congress is considering the largest intervention into financial markets in the history of the United States, if not the world, is shocking. Over the weekend, the Bush administration proposed legislation that would grant it the authority to buy up toxic financial assets in an amount equal to five percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The magnitude of the funds requisitioned is matched only by the administration's requested level of unchecked power and opacity in how it would execute this historic market intervention. Congress has responded with uncharacteristic haste, setting the stage for passage of monumentally flawed legislation that purports to fix a yet-undiagnosed problem in roughly one week. Read More

Congress Returns with Little Time, Huge Workload 09/09/2008
Congress returned to Washington the week of Sept. 8 to a jam-packed schedule and just three weeks left to complete work for the year before the target adjournment date of Sept. 26. Below is a brief summary of some of the major pieces of legislation covering fiscal policy issues that will likely be addressed: Read More

Defense Contract Oversight Faces Multiple Challenges 08/19/2008
Over the last seven years, the Defense Department has doubled the amount of money spent on private contractors, yet it has remained disturbingly lax on contractor oversight. Recent evidence has emerged showing that the Pentagon spends too little on contract oversight and interferes with current auditors to restrict the length and scope of investigations. Read More

Appropriations Breakdown Threatens Federal Investments 07/22/2008
As the FY 2009 appropriations process grinds to a halt, a new OMB Watch analysis of the past nine fiscal years reveals that the nation's priorities are better served when Congress and the president work together to complete the annual appropriations process. Congress's abandonment of the FY 2009 appropriations process increases the risk that the resources critical to vital government supports will be further constrained as both sides of the aisle simply refuse to work toward agreement on FY 2009 appropriations legislation. Read More

Bush Signs War Supplemental, Cements Fiscal Legacy 07/08/2008
Contrary to his assertion that he would "not accept a supplemental over $108 billion," President Bush signed a $257 billion war supplemental spending package on June 30. The bill will fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of the fiscal year (ending Sept. 30) and through the first several months of the next president's term. Read More

Fiscal Responsibility, War Critics Take a Back Seat in House War Supplemental 06/24/2008
When the House Democratic leadership introduced a supplemental appropriations bill the week of June 16, chock-full of popular spending measures, it ensured easy passage of the $257 billion package. The Democrats and President Bush can each claim they won items in the negotiation over the bill: the Democrats won increased spending on domestic programs; Bush was able to kill any requirements for withdrawal of soldiers from Iraq. Yet the bill remained controversial because the Democrats refused to include fiscally responsible measures or accede to the opinion of 63 percent of Americans that soldiers should return home within two years. Read More

Obama and Coburn Shine Brighter Light on Government Spending 06/10/2008
Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) have joined forces again to craft legislation that would increase the transparency of how the federal government spends taxpayers' money. The Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act (S. 3077), introduced June 3, is a follow-up to the 2006 Transparency Act, which was also spearheaded by the two senators. Obama and Coburn, along with Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and John McCain (R-AZ), introduced the new legislation with the goals of making important new data easily accessible and enabling citizens to hold our government accountable for the fiscal stewardship of our shared resources. Read More

Congress Adopts Mixed-Bag Budget Resolution 06/10/2008
A rare event occurred in Washington on Thursday, June 5: Congress approved a budget resolution during an election year, a feat not seen since 2000. This fact and a human needs-oriented approach to spending signal that Congress is addressing national priorities while attempting to more responsibly manage the country's finances. However, Congress's eliding of pay-as-you-go rules and unrealistic assumptions about war spending and Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) relief have marred an otherwise responsible budget resolution. Read More

Spike in Jobless Rate Restarts Focus on Unemployment Insurance 06/10/2008
On June 6, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported a jump in the national unemployment rate from 5.0 percent in April to 5.5 percent in May, the single biggest month-to-month increase in 22 years. Another 49,000 Americans joined the ranks of the unemployed in May, bringing the yearly total thus far to 324,000. The news took analysts by surprise, and along with rising oil prices, helped push stocks down by three percent on all three major American exchanges and re-ignited talk of a possible recession. Read More

President Bush: Veto Rhetoric vs. Fiscal Reality 05/28/2008
Although Congress has not yet begun to consider any of the appropriations bills that will finance the federal government in FY 2009, the White House threatened to veto Democratic spending bills — even before any details were unveiled. With the flurry of veto threats late in his presidency, President Bush appears to be attempting to erase seven-plus years of reckless fiscal management of the federal government with token gestures that feign fiscal responsibility. Despite these recent actions, budget watchdogs say the Bush legacy on fiscal policy will be one of irresponsibility, inattention to detail, and futility. Read More

War Supplemental Bill Awaits Final House Approval 05/28/2008
When Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, the House will take up the Senate's $250 billion supplemental war spending proposal. After the Senate added on $165 billion for war funding to the House's bill (which contained no money for the wars), it also tacked on some $10 billion in additional non-defense discretionary spending above the House's level of $21.1 billion. Although similar to the House version, the Senate's bill differs in a few key aspects, and the House will have to approve the Senate version or continue negotiating by amending it and passing it back to the upper chamber. Read More

House Relentless in Pursuing Contracting Reforms 05/28/2008
In the last several weeks, the House has continued its efforts to address federal contracting reform. With bills stalling in the Senate, the House has begun to attach various reform provisions to legislative vehicles that are more likely to be enacted into law this year. Marrying these proposals to the war supplemental bill and the Defense Authorization bill, for example, greatly increases the chances these important reforms will be implemented in 2008. Read More

House Foreclosure Legislation Meets GOP Ambiguity 05/13/2008
Despite a worsening housing crisis across the country, Congress continues to move slowly to enact legislation intended to ease the burden for homeowners. On May 8, the House adopted comprehensive legislation (H.R. 3221) that would seek to reduce foreclosures in the face of an administration veto threat issued just days before. But Senate negotiations between the chair and ranking member of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee have gone on for weeks, with no deal in sight. Most members' eagerness to pass a bill to address the crisis before Memorial Day has thus far been thwarted by key GOP leaders in Congress and some in the Bush administration. Read More

Congressional Hearings Explore Contracting Waste, Fraud, and Abuse 05/13/2008
The Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC), the political arm of the Democrats in the Senate, has been holding a series of investigatory hearings concerning contracting problems during the Iraq war. The series of hearings has been aimed at increasing accountability and oversight of the federal contracting process, particularly related to the reconstruction of Iraq and the increased outsourcing of key military functions during the war. Read More

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

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