Free «Problems with Federal Budget Process » Essay Sample

Riedl (2005), states that Federal budget process refers frame work by which the budget for United States of America is created as laid out in Budget and accounting Act of 1921, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and through other budget legislations. The whole process of creating federal budget is faced with a number of problems. The glitches include: the fact that the budget process has not produced sustainable results, it is also too much complicated and can often be misleading. The process also takes too much time and may at times come out as unfinished. It also encourages excessive partisanship.

According to simulation done by the Government Accountability Office (2007) on current fiscal policy shows that it is running on an unsustainable path. This is because the simulation shows that discretionary expenditure grows with the economy after year 2007 and the expiring tax provision are extended. After 2017, revenue is held constant as a share of GDP.

The complexity of the process is evident especially when the scoring practices used are hard to comprehend and may be subject to gimmickry, for example, use of non urgent crises, PAYGO benefit shelves and improbable offsets. Also the process may be too long and sometimes unfinished as seen during fiscal years 2003, 2005, and 2007 when budget resolutions were not passed. Also appropriations for FY09 were not finished at all.

There has been too much partisanship involved in the process where one party blames the other side over solving problems. The presidents and congress rarely agree even on the widest budgetary blue print. Hence forth negotiating a bargain on funding of number of programs that need annual appropriations is intimidating and time consuming process. In general, federal budget process has been faced by a number of issues that have rendered the whole process to often be time consuming, daunting and a number of people to raise questions.