Waitin' on the Budget

For the first time in nearly a century, Congress will kick off the year’s budget process this week rather than the President.

The National Journal tracks back the history of the modern federal budget cycle using data from the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the New York Times.   According to that analysis, when House Republicans and Senate Democrats introduce their respective FY2014 budget resolutions this week, it will mark the first time since the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act that Congress goes first. 

The 1921 law created what is now known as the Office of Management and Budget and required the President to submit a budget to Congress each year. 

The National Journal doesn’t mention it, but the deadline of the first Monday in February for the President to submit the request to Congress was established in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Other Presidents have missed that deadline, but Obama is stretching the limit apparently.  The Administration still has made no official announcement about when the FY2014 budget request will be submitted, but some media reports say that it will not be until April 8.  That would be more than 60 days past the deadline, eclipsing the 45-day delay by the Reagan Administration in 1988 per the National Journal.