Congress is set to return this week when we will begin consideration of the first of the 12 (annual) appropriations bills. It’s been a long time since Congress actually passed all 12 bills and that means, in other words, it’s been a long time since Congress actually sat down and looked at all of the line items.
In short, the way the process is supposed to work, each chamber looks at the President’s budget request, then comes up with their own proposed framework. Then the House and Senate get together and iron out an agreement on a common set of top-line numbers. Those numbers then dictate the spending caps for each appropriations bill. Once the caps are set, the relevant committees roll up their sleeves and try to allocate the available funds in the most intelligent way possible.
That’s the way it’s supposed to work…
The budget agreement that Congress reached before Christmas marked the first time in four years that the Senate had even passed its own budget and it also marked the first time a compromise set of caps had been set into law. And since the House and Senate actually have agreed upon top-line budget numbers set for the next fiscal year, the House is going to take a crack at actually getting the entire job of budgeting done – right down to the last line items in the last of the 12 bills. So I’m proud of that and I’m forever hopeful that the Senate will follow suit.
U.S. Rep. Rich Nugent represents The Villages in Congress.