Assignment task:
Please provide a peer response to you below classmate post
"Hello Class,
Good evening class this week in unit 6 we get into the concepts and ideas involved in government budgeting in Chapter 11 and Implementation & Performance in Chapter 12. I will be budgeting in this week's discussion as I selected an Article from Reuters that covers the same topic I found in the Wall St Journal only without the paywall. The article is titled "US Senate to move on stopgap bill to avert partial government shutdownLinks to an external site." by Moira Warburton, Richard Cowan, and Any Sullivan. As October 1 quickly approaches Congress once again is struggling to craft and approve a federal budget. President Biden submitted his budget proposal on March 11th with a total of $7.266 trillion with plans to shore up Medicare, lower drug prices, and cut taxes for the working class. As Kettl states in Chapter 11 after the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act which moved the preparation and execution of the federal budget to the executive branch (Kettl, 2021, pg. 310). Kettl also states the executive will craft the budget to support their policy and program goals, but this basically is a recommendation to the legislature which must approve of the final budget with the executive approval or veto.
The appropriations process can be very dramatic with the high level of political division making the budget a political football. According to the article the US Senate must pass a continuing resolution (CR) to temporarily fund the government and avoid a government shutdown. A bill was proposed on monday but it was rejected by the Democrats in the House for many reasons but one of the main one is for how long the CR should last, the Republicans proposed a six month timeframe and the Democrats wanted 90 days (Warburton et al., 2024). The reason for the delay this time is to wait until after the presidential election before passing an actual budget allowing administration some influence on the next budget. This article aligns with Chapter 11 section on "Bumps in the federal budget process" where Kettl explains the consistent delays by Congress when it fails to meet its timelines can result in continuing resolutions or even government shutdowns (Kettl, 2021, pg. 318).
Another key aspect of federal budgets are the uncontrollable expenditures which is also known as entitlement spending which include programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Social Safety Net programs like SPAP. Entitlements are mandatory expenditures which has made them political targets of the right for a long time as they ideologically want to cut government programs in favor of a smaller government and increased market based options. The other side is discretionary spending which includes programs like the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and the EPA. With all of the food fighting over the federal budget it has continued to grow and expand the government deficit over the past few decades reacting to national emergencies such as military conflict or pandemics and economic recessions like the 2008 crash. I have seen the impacts of economic instability on a government agency as I saw outcomes like furloughs drive good employees to leave the government and create a new contingency that all managers must now plan for every budget cycle. I train mid and senior fire officers on practical strategies for unpredictable budgets so they must be proactive and have a plan to make cuts and advise leaders what that means in terms of risk and loss of mission capability. The government budget must become a more depolarized process in the near future as the consequences could impact the overall economy in negative ways. Kettl even mentions how government budgets are shaped by and shape the economy (Kettl, 2021, pg. 309). This will be a very difficult goal requiring a fundamental shift in politics in the USA.
References:
Kettl, D. F. (2021). Politics of the Administrative Process. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Warburton, M., Cowan, R., & Sullivan, A. (2024, September 19). US Senate to move on stopgap bill to avert partial government shutdown. Reuters.