Hello, and thank you for joining me for this course on the federal budget as part of the Presidential Administration Academy. This academy and the training it provides to conservatives like you and I is a key part of an ambitious and much needed effort known as Project 2025 to prepare for the transition of power to the next conservative president of the United States. Project 2025 has brought together a coalition of conservative organizations dedicated to restoring common sense leadership, fiscal responsibility, energy independence, strong national security, personal liberty and freedom, and traditional cultural and family values back to our great nation. I’m grateful for the opportunity to participate in this effort and that you have taken time from your schedule to view this course, learn about the federal budget, and take steps toward making a substantive contribution to advancing the conservative movement. In the eyes of many in the world, this every 4 year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.
In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper. Whether we go forward together with courage or turn back to policies that weakened our economy, diminished our leadership in the world, America’s future will be in your hands. My name is Mike Duffy and I’m honored to join you today to discuss the federal government and how to apply this knowledge to promote conservative policies and help movement leaders fulfill the mandate of a conservative presidential administration beginning in January of 2025.
The federal budget is the allocation of money to fund the government’s activities and operations critical to achieving the government’s mission. Tasks won’t get completed. People are not paid. Policies are not implemented. Goals are not accomplished, and the government cannot perform its functions without federal funding.
Federal departments, agencies, offices, programs, and officials would not have the funding they need without the federal budget development and execution processes that have evolved into a long and complex process that we have today shaped over many budget cycles to enable officials to make recommendations and decisions about how to allocate funds across the multiple agencies of the federal government. Today, I wanna discuss a few key elements of the federal budget process with you. We’ll start with budget concepts such as authorization versus appropriations and discretionary discretionary versus mandatory spending. We’ll also talk about the structure and contents of the federal budget, the organization and stakeholders of the federal budget enterprise and their role in budget development and execution, and an overview of the federal budget process. The first concept that’s important to understand as you begin to think about how the budget is proposed, negotiated and enacted is the distinction between authorization and appropriation legislation.
Authorization is done by congress via legislation that according to the Congressional Research Service can establish, continue, or modify an agency, program, or activity for a fixed or indefinite period of time. In other words, Congress grants authority to the executive branch to spend funds on a given program, activity, or item, but not necessarily not that it will necessarily be spent on that program activity or item. You’re giving the option to the executive branch to spend that funding. When Congress recently passed a 2 year budget deal, it authorized $1,300,000,000,000 in government spending. That legislation only set the new levels for what the government was allowed to spend.
In order to actually spend the money, they had to pass another bill that appropriated the funding or made those funds available to the federal departments and agencies along with a set of rules in specific direction about how that funding could be spent based on the spending levels that had been set in the authorization bill. Congress may also set forth duties and functions of an agency or program, its organizational structure, and the responsibilities of the agency or program officials through authorizing legislation. Authorizing legislation can also authorize implicitly or explicitly the enactment of appropriations for an agency or program. If that authorization is explicit, the amount authorized to be appropriated may be specified for each fiscal year or it may be indefinite. The authorization of appropriations is intended to provide guidance regarding the appropriate amount of funds to carry out the authorized activities of an agency.
In contrast to authorizations, an appropriations measure provides budget authority to an agency for specified purposes. Budget authority allows federal agencies to enter into a commitment to spend those funds through a contract, grant award, etcetera, also known as an obligation of funds and authorizes payment to be made out of the treasury. Discretionary agencies and programs and appropriate and entitlement programs are funded each through year through the appropriations act acts of Congress. The power of appropriation derives directly from the Constitution, which in article 1, section 9 provides that no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law. The power to appropriate is exclusively a legislative power and functions as a limitation on the executive branch.
An agency may not spend more money than is appropriated to it, and it may use available funds only for the purposes and according to the conditions provided by Congress. The Constitution does not require annual appropriations, but since the 1st Congress, the practice has been to make the appropriations for a single fiscal year. Appropriations, unless otherwise specified, must be used in the fiscal year for which they are provided. For example, this fiscal year 2024 budget under consideration by the Congress right now will only make funds available for the period from October 1, 2023 through September 30, 2024 unless the law explicitly states otherwise. All provisions in an appropriations act, such as a limitation on the use of funds, expire at the end of the fiscal year, again, unless the legislation or the language of the act extends their period of effectiveness.
The subcommittees of the appropriations committees of the House and Senate are each responsible for one of the regular appropriations acts that provide budget authority for the next fiscal year beginning on October 1st. If the regular appropriations acts are not completed by October 1st, Congress will typically adopt a continuing appropriations act, commonly referred to as a continuing resolution, to provide a stopgap funding to continue funding levels at the amount in the previously enacted fiscal year until a final appropriations act is passed by Congress. In some years, instead of adopting a regular appropriation measure individually, Congress may bundle several bills into an omnibus appropriations bill. We saw that last year in the fiscal year 2023 when a $1,700,000,000,000 omnibus bill passed Congress at the end of last calendar year. In rare circumstances, a continuing appropriations bill could be passed providing funding for the full fiscal year, which would mean no new levels of spending would be enacted for the year.
Instead, we’d be continuing whatever the funding levels were approved for the previous fiscal year. Longstanding rules of the House and Senate attempt to retain the separation between the authorization and appropriation tasks within this process. The House and Senate placed restrictions on appropriations for agencies and activities not authorized by law. However, it is also important to note that unauthorized appropriations or legislative provisions in an appropriations act that are signed into law would have, in most cases, full force and effect regardless of the fact that they violated those congressional restrictions. Most federal agencies operate under a patchwork of authorizing statutes that govern various requirements and duties.
There is no requirement in either chamber that the structure of authorizations mirror the account structure of appropriations bills. Rules of the House and Senate establish a general expectation that agencies and programs will be authorized in law before an appropriation is made to fund them. An appropriation in the absence of a current authorization, in excess of an authorization ceiling, or for purposes not authorized by law is commonly called an unauthorized appropriation. Conversely, while authorizations can impose a procedural limit on appropriations, Congress is not required to provide appropriations for an authorized discretionary spending program. So if the authorizers in the House or Senate Armed Services Committee authorize a program and authorize a dollar amount to fund that particular weapon system.
The Appropriations Committee is not compelled, therefore, to fund the weapon system to the level that the authorization committee has set in their authorization. House and Senate rules also preserve the distinction between authorizations and appropriations by prohibiting the inclusion of general legislative language in appropriations measures. In other words, appropriations bills are exclusively dedicated to setting the funding levels for the federal budget. The division between an authorization and an appropriation, however, is a procedural construct of House and Senate rules created to apply to congressional consideration. Consequently, the term unauthorized appropriations does not convey a legal meaning with regard to subsequent funding.
Next, let’s move to mandatory spending. Federal spending is classified into 2 basic categories, mandatory and discretionary. About 65% of the federal budget is classified as mandatory spending. 25% or $1,700,000,000,000 in the f y 20 24 president’s budget request submitted to Congress this past March is discretionary spending. The remainder of the budget is interest payments on debt.
These categories of mandatory and discretionary refer to the relationship between the law that authorizes a program or activity and the law that determines the spending, much the way we just distinguish between authorization and appropriation. In the case of mandatory spending, also known as direct spending, Congress will authorize a program through legislation that both determines its purposes and rules and also sets the funding amount, often through eligibility. That criteria that establishes who such as a person, a household or a level of government is eligible for the benefit and or who must pay user fees. The authorizing law provides that all who meet this eligibility criteria can receive the benefits determined by the formula. Take for example Social Security.
The Social Security authorizing legislation sets the age at which beneficiaries are eligible to receive payment and the rules about how and how much they can receive. Every US citizen that satisfies these criteria are authorized to receive payment and the funding is made available through the Treasury. Therefore, Congress does not set a dollar amount when it comes to the total funding made available to fund the program as it does in discretionary spending. But rather, the total amount of mandatory spending is set based on the number of beneficiaries qualifying for the program. Other examples of mandatory programs include Medicare, Medicaid, federal military and civilian retirement, veterans disability compensation, and some farm price support programs.
These authorizing laws are written by the committees of jurisdiction over each such program, such as Medicaid and the House and Senate House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Finance Committee and the Veterans Disability Compensation, which is written by the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees. Other mandatory programs can have specific funding amounts directly provided in the authorizing law. Examples might include grants to states to support childcare assistance, highway and transit assistance financed by the federal gas tax, and some of the funding for community healthcare centers. Changing mandatory programs and their funding requires amending the relevant authorizing law to modify the eligibility or benefits or to adjust those funding levels that are set in the authorizing law. For discretionary spending in contrast to mandatory, the authorizing law that sets up the program agency or activity does not itself determine the funding level, which is instead set in annual appropriations legislation.
In general, Congress provides a set of a specific level of funding through each appropriation and agencies can spend up to that amount as defined in the appropriations bills. Almost all funding for the Department of Defense is appropriated through discretionary accounts along with the operating budgets of civilian agencies, the funding of medical care for veterans, and grant programs for education and medical and scientific research. In other words, authorizing legislation will authorize the establishment of a program, such as a new Department of Defense Weapon System. And then in case of the DOD annual authorization bill, those authorization bills can authorize a certain amount of money that could be appropriated to an individual program. But it’s the annual appropriations bill that determines how much funding is made available to the program through 1 or more accounts and budget line items.
It’s at the discretion of the congressional leaders how much money is made available, and that therefore why it’s called discretionary funding. The budget is organized into a hierarchical structure that includes budget functions, federal departments and agencies, budget accounts, and budget line items. The first level of organization within the federal budget parses the total federal spending into approximately 20 categories known as budget functions. These functions include all spending for a given topic, regardless of the federal agency that oversees the individual federal program. A function comprises a set of programs that serve a shared purpose or activity such as agriculture, health, or national defense.
While some programs serve more than one purpose, they are generally assigned to a function based on their primary purpose. Occasionally, spending a lot spending within a large program may be split across multiple functions. Each function is assigned a number and the budget resolution passed by congress lists spending by function in order of the function number. Under OMB definitions, there are currently 20 functions. 6 of them represent roughly 70% of federal funding and are are primarily devoted to human resources.
The National Defense function, for example, accounts for another 15% of total spending. Other functions make up smaller shares of federal of overall spending. As an example, the budget the budget’s function 0 50, National Defense, includes spending for the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the National Nuclear Security Administration and smaller activities in other federal agencies such as DHS and FBI. Both the president’s budget and congressional budget resolution comprise all 20 functions. The next division of the federal budget occurs by agency.
Funding in the federal government ties back to appropriations accounts, which in turn are owned by departments and agencies. OMB Circular A11 Section 20 defines an agency as a department or establishment of the government. Every agency has at least one appropriations account. The vast majority of agencies have dozens or scores of appropriations accounts, and larger departments have hundreds of appropriations accounts. As the primary organizational concept for the federal workforce and alignment of federal missions, the agency is the most obvious and most frequently referenced division of the federal budget.
Each agency conducts its own budget development process. The proposals are submitted to OMB by agency. And the budget chapters are organized by agency. Executive branch agencies carry out programs financed through approximately 7,000 500 appropriations accounts in the Federal budget. Each appropriations account is established by Congress and includes an agency, account name, and specific timeframe in which to commit and spend the funding made available through that account.
Although federal budgeting has undergone considerable change over the years, today’s federal budget account structure retains a focus on the individual appropriations account. In establishing a budget account, the Congress expresses its priorities which in turn defines an account’s orientation. According to a Government Accountability Office report, the current budget account structure displays a mix of orientations reflecting both the 200 years of the federal budget development and varying congressional interests over that time. Each of the 4 orientations examined by GAO, object, organization, process and program reflects a specific focus or interest of the Congress. An object orientation emphasizes the item of an expense such as an F 35 aircraft or an aircraft carrier.
While an organization orientation such as funding the operating expenses for a military installation focuses on the government unit that is authorized and responsible for spending the funds. In effect, the former allocates control of spending on an item by item basis, how many f 30 fives does congress wanna authorize the department to buy. The latter prioritizes accountability for spending the funds with the responsibility and in accordance with congressional guidance by organization. Accounts with a process orientation concentrate on specific operations or approaches underlying federal activities while those with a program orientation focus on the missions and objectives of governmental units. Object, organization, process and program orientations are found throughout the federal budget structure.
Budget line items. A budget line item further subdivides budget accounts into a particular expenditure such as a program, subprogram, or object class. In appropriations accounts, it usually refers to an individual account or a part of an account which a specific amount is for which a specific amount of funding is available. The president’s budget request proposes funding levels by budget line item as published in congressional budget justifications. Appropriations bills appropriate funding by budget line item as a subdivision of the appropriations accounts and published in tables that accompany each enacted appropriations bill.
When the President’s budget request is submitted to the Congress each February, it’s transmitted as several volumes that set forth the President’s request for funding by budget function, agency, account, and line item. The main budget volume contains the president’s budget message and statements of policy. The appendix contains detailed information by agency, bureau, or program group including budget accounts, programs, and activities, and proposed appropriations amounts for each account. Other volumes in the budget requests such as analytical perspectives and historical tables provide technical perspectives on the budget. The budget as submitted covers the agencies of all three branches of government, executive, legislative, and judicial.
The information contained in the president’s budget request is based on information submitted by agencies and revised in the annual budget process to reflect the president’s priorities. The budget and accounting act requires the president to formally transmit the buzz president’s budget request to congress by the 1st Monday in February. Although there are no sanctions imposed if the budget is not submitted by that date as the Biden administration has proven for the last 3 years. The budget focuses primarily on the upcoming fiscal year for which the congress must make appropriations. However, it also includes data for the most recently completed fiscal year, the current fiscal year that it’s requesting funds for, and the 9 years following the budget known as the out years in order to reflect the effect of budget budget decisions over the long term.
In addition to proposed appropriations for the budget year, the budget may include proposed changes to appropriations for the current year in the form of a supplemental request or a rescission and legislative proposals that would affect mandatory spend spending and revenues over any time period. In summary, the budget provides data and information including the amount by account that each agency may obligate the government to pay known as budget authority, and estimates of the payments, known as outlays, that result from these obligations by agency and by account. Also includes the amount of receipts that each agency collects from various sources such as fees for passports or other or other sources of government revenue, and the resulting surpluses or deficits when receipts exceed outlays or outlays exceed receipts, which in turn affects the level of the national debt. Beyond the primary submission of the president’s budget request that is submitted to congress on the 1st Monday in September, federal departments and agencies are required to work with their counterparts in OMB to prepare detailed justifications for the funding levels requested in each budget. These justification books, often exceeding a 1,000 pages each, provide intricate detail about the purpose and structure of federal programs, the plans that each agency proposes for the expenditure of those funds, and additional details as needed to inform congressional staff and members about the administration’s proposals.
These congressional budget justification books are publicly available often published for access to the public on the website of each department or agency’s chief financial officer. The budget committees in the House and the Senate were created by the Congressional Budget and Empowerment Control Act of 1974. While the duties and functions of the committees have changed over time and the enactment of new laws and changes to the committee and chamber budget responsibilities, the committee remains responsible for drafting budget plans for Congress and for monitoring and enforcing rules surrounding spending revenue and the federal budget. The budget committee’s principal responsibilities are to develop a concurrent resolution on the budget to serve as the framework for congressional action on spending, revenue, and debt limit legislation. Each chamber individually introduces its own resolution at the beginning of the congressional budget process.
When jointly agreed to by the House and the Senate, those bills become the so called budget resolution. The adoption of the resolution does not result in the new law of the United States as the president does not sign the resolution. Section 301 of the 1974 Act requires Congress by April 15th each year to complete the action on a concurrent resolution. The central purpose of the budget resolution is to set a blueprint for the overall fiscal and budgetary policy and to establish a framework for the subsequent consideration of spending revenue and legislation during the session. The 1974 Act did not dictate that Congress annually approve a particular fiscal or budgetary policy such as a balanced budget but relies on the House and Senate to determine the appropriate mix of budget policies each year.
The budget committees are also responsible for the enforcement of this current concurrent resolution and associated budget laws. The committee tracks the appropriation process throughout the year to make sure that spending levels in the appropriations bills conform to the level set in the budget resolution. The committees also hold hearings on the economy, oversight hearings to monitor performance of government agencies, and in the Senate hearings to consider nominations for the president’s office of management and budget. The United States House and Senate Committees on Appropriations are standing committees within each chamber that are responsible for passing appropriations bills. The bills passed by the Appropriations Committee regulate the expenditure of money by the government, making them amongst the most powerful committees in Congress.
The constitutional basis for the Appropriations Committee comes from Article 1, Section 9, clause 7 of the US Constitution, which says no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law. An irregular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time. Upon submission of the president’s budget request to congress, the appropriations committees convene hearings with witnesses to review and consider the president’s budget proposal. In 2007, the number of subcommittees on the Appropriations Committee was increased to 12 where it sits today. The Congressional Budget Office, also known as CBO, is a federal agency within the legislative branch that provides budget and economic information to Congress in a strictly nonpartisan fashion.
It was created as a nonpartisan agency by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. CBO produces independent analysis of budget and economic issues to support to support the congressional budget process. Each year, the agency releases reports and cost estimates for proposed legislation without issuing any policy recommendations. Section 202e of the Budget Act requires the CBO to submit periodic reports about fiscal policy to the House and Senate budget committees to provide baseline projections for the federal budget. This is currently done by preparation of an annual economic and budget outlook, plus a midyear update.
The agency also each year issues an analysis of the President’s budgetary proposals for the upcoming fiscal year, per a standing request of the Committees on Appropriations. These 3 series are designated essential titles distributed to federal depository libraries and are available for purchase from the government publishing office. The CBO also often provides testimony in response to requests from various congressional committees and issues letters responding to queries made by members of Congress. The role of the Office of Management and Budget is to manage the process of producing the annual budget proposals of the president for consideration by Congress. Every President requires and demands for this purpose a source of advice and counsel on the broad aspects of the government’s current and proposed policies and budgets, a source that can provide advice in an analytical context, balancing the views of advocates of specific policies with the broader goals of the administration.
The technical work necessary to produce this budget is time consuming, often tedious, contentious and difficult, but necessary. Despite journalistic and political dismissals of some budgets as dead on arrival by Congress, in fact, this document sets the basic detailed benchmarks from which Congress make subsequent changes and from which those same journalists and politicians measure congressional action. OMB completes this work. OMB is headed by a director who is a member of the president’s cabinet, whose nomination must be confirmed by the senate. The director has sweeping responsibilities for policy and management.
Presidents frequently turn to their OMB directors for advice and assistance. And the relationship between the president and the OMB director may have an important bearing on an administration’s success, both in enacting and effectively executing its policies. A deputy director, also senate confirmed, serves as the director’s general deputy with responsibilities for particular matters as determined by the director. OMB also has traditionally had 5 recently changed to 6 resource management offices organized by agency and program area. These offices headed by a politically appointed program associate director account for most OMB staff.
I myself was a program associate director for national security in the administration of President Trump. Each pad oversees a set of executive agencies and related policy and management issues. With guidance and technical support from a central budget review division, the RMOs carry out OMB’s central role of assisting the president in preparing the budget transmitted to Congress and also help supervise the agency age each agency’s administration of law and policy. In helping to formulate the President’s budget proposals, the Resource Management Offices of OMB assess the effectiveness of agency programs, policies and procedures review and assess agency funding proposals and policy initiatives and help OMB leadership prioritize competing funding demands consistent with presidential priorities and guidance. Once budgets have been enacted, RMOs oversee their execution by approving the apportionment of funds to budget accounts and activities consistent with the law.
The RMOs analyze and evaluate program performance and budget proposals, routinely oversee implementation of policies and support initiatives to improve agency management. The RMO staff are the core source of expertise on all matters pertaining to programs and operations of the federal departments and agencies. OMB also contains a central budget review division, which manages the production of the budget, provides input to the budget database, and facilitates a growing array of cross agency information exchanges. The Budget Resource Division also works with the RMO staff on a variety of tasks and government wide data collection exercises for special circumstances both during budget preparation and throughout the year. OMB splits budget related work among the 6 RMOs organized by policy and program area.
While 6 RMO par par portfolios may change slightly from time to time, they are generally organized as follows. National Security oversees the Departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, and the Intelligence Community. Education Income Maintenance and Labor also known as IMO oversees Social Security and the Departments of Education and Labor and other labor programs. The Health Pad and RMO office oversee Medicare, Medicaid, the National Institutes of Health, the Food Food and Drug Administration, and other public health programs. Natural Resources Energy and Science oversees agriculture, energy, federal lands, pollution control, and most science non health related programs such as NASH NASA and the National Science Foundation.
The Financial Services and Housing RMO oversees the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, Small Business Administration, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And the PAD and RMO for Homeland Security, Justice and Transportation oversees appropriate agencies and programs that fit that category. Each federal department and agency has a chief financial officer that works directly and almost daily with the program associate directors in OMB and the RMO staff. These chief financial officers are often a politically appointed and senate confirmed official in larger departments and in smaller agencies are occupied by, by civil servants, career civil servants. Each year, the federal budget process occurs in 3 main phases.
Formulation. During the formulation phase, which starts about a year and a half before the fiscal year begins and ends the following February, the executive branch prepares the president’s budget request. 2nd phase is congressional. This phase starts in late January when the Congressional Budget Office submits its baseline to the Congress. The 3rd phase is execution.
After Congress has appropriated funds, the OMB RMOs apportion those funds. That is, they specify the amount of spending authority that an agency may use during a set period of time by program, by project, or by activity so that the agencies may obligate those funds consistent with the amounts and purposes specified by law. The following highlights major milestones during the formulation phase of the budget process in a normal year. In spring, the OMB director issues a letter to the head of each federal agency providing policy guidance for the agency’s budget request. Throughout the subsequent spring summer, agencies will analyze budget issues and options, build their budgets, make trade offs to allocate their funding requests across their department while working to stay under the OMB directed department top line budget amount.
In July, OMB issues a circular number A11 to all federal agencies, which provides detailed instructions for submitting budget data and materials the following fall. In early September, agencies finalize their budget requests and submit them to OMB where the RMOs will begin their process of evaluation. Each October 1st, we have a new fiscal year beginning. Once final appropriations are made by Congress, agencies will often update their budget requests for the upcoming budget year. Throughout September, October, November, the OMB staff will review the agency budget proposal in light of presidential priorities, program performance, and budget constraints.
In November, the OMB Director will recommend a complete set of budget proposals to the President after OMB has reviewed all agency requests and considered overall budget policies. In late November in a process called pass back, OMB informs executive branch agencies about OMB’s decisions on their budget requests. An agency head may ask OMB to reverse or modify certain decisions. In most cases, OMB and agency heads resolve such issues and if not work together to present options to the president for decision. In December, any final appeals on OMB’s pass back are submitted to and decided on by the president.
In the 1st Monday in February, OMB transmits the president’s budget to the congress. Following submission of the president’s budget request to congress, we enter the congressional phase of the budget process. In this phase, the house and senate create their own budget resolutions which must mean must be negotiated and merged into a concurrent resolution. Following that proposed funding is divided amongst the 12 subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee, which proceed to hold hearings inviting testimony from executive branch and external witnesses as part of the budget review process. Each subcommittee is responsible for funding different government functions such as defense spending or energy and water.
In May, the congress begins the consideration of the 12 annual bud appropriation bills for the next fiscal year based on this discretionary spending allocation made in the budget resolution. As these bills move through hearings, markups, and floor consideration, They are constrained by the levels and allocations in the budget resolution and the enforcement of the budget act and through house and senate rules. Congress, when approved, sends the final funding bills to the president for signature or veto. Once the budget has been enacted and signed by the president, OMB and federal agencies are empowered to begin executing those funds, paying personnel, obligating funds to enter into a contract, and using those funds for general operations as proposed in the original budget request and amended by Congress. Inevitably, a budget that was developed months or years ahead of its execution will have access or be short funding required in order to fulfill the mission of the government.
In that case, agencies, through cooperation with OMB, will undertake a midyear review to better understand how the agency is executing the funds that were approved by Congress. And we’ll propose a reprogramming package routed through OMB seeking congressional approval to move funds that were originally budgeted to an individual account or budget line item where there’s excess to an account or budget line item where there’s a shortfall, enabling the redistribution of funds to maintain efficient operations of the agency. It is my hope that if you are a new political appointee arriving at your federal agency or a seasoned veteran returning to public service, you can apply the knowledge we’ve discussed here today and these concepts immediately in advancement of the conservative movement. The first major activity for a new administration is revising an already developed federal budget to reflect the priorities of the new President to be submitted to congress within the 1st few months of an administration. If you think about inauguration days in January and a budget is due to the congress the first Monday in February, there’s a very compressed amount of time to make sure that the budget that’s been prepared is reflective of the new president’s priorities.
As an incoming political appointee, understanding the new president’s policy priorities, learning the budget process, personnel, and priorities of the office and agency you are working within, and identifying the funding needs required to implement the president’s priorities you’ve been appointed to oversee will be a fundamental skill that you can utilize to succeed in your role as a political appointee. I want to thank you for taking the time to watch this course and learn about the federal budget process.