"President Trump’s support for a plan to lop more than 30,000 Federal Aviation Administration workers from the federal payroll gives fresh momentum to an effort that stalled in Congress last year.
The proposal is included in Trump’s 2018 budget, which would cut funding for the Transportation Department by 13 percent."
No, they propose, sign, use the veto threat to shape the legislative process on, and use various administrative powers and means to rearrange the actual spending resulting from them, but “passing” budgets is the name for a step in the middle of the process done by someone else.
Not sure what your point is; the President is by a very wide margin the single most powerful actor in the shaping of both nominal budgets and actual federal spending.
It's the folks that hitch themselves to a political party narrative that are the most dangerous, because they can't decouple when the party fails them repeatedly. They start to make excuses, moving the goal posts, and white washing obvious corruption. They become so enamored in it, that they find people on the internet to harass, just so they can feel big and important for putting them in there place.
Presidents propose budgets (the CBO even uses the term "the President's budget"; https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58417), sign them into law, threaten Congress with vetos, and have significant influence over their party as a whole. Trump in particular was successful in drubbing opponents out of office; Liz Cheney went from #3 in House leadership to a pariah largely overnight.
This is all a lot of weasel words to avoid the fact that the President does not pass the budget, and their proposals bear little resemblance to what actually get passed.
Liz Cheney is completely irrelevant here.
Post FAA's ACTUAL BUDGET over the last 8 years and let us judge.
I'm not the one who made the budget assertion; you're mad at someone else.
I'm just contesting the idea that the President has no power over the US Federal budget.
(I'm of the general opinion that the FAA is fairly well funded, has been very effective at its mission, and could still do with some specific capital projects to modernize non-sexy stuff like NOTAM and METAR handling.)
There is no US federal budget - not a binding one at any rate. The president recommends and Congress passes budgets for internal purposes, but they do not carry the force of law. The numbers that matter are how much Congress appropriates, and if Congress appropriates $X dollars for something the executive branch is expected to spend it, not second guess Congress and say we really didn't want to spend that money.
> There is no US federal budget - not a binding one at any rate.
Yes there is.
> The president recommends and Congress passes budgets for internal purposes
This is simply false.
> but they do not carry the force of law.
Yes, budget bills, like other bills, have the force of law once passed and either signed by the President or vetoed and the President’s veto overridden by both Houses (the President’s budget proposals do not have the force of law, just like other unpassed legislative proposals.)
> The numbers that matter are how much Congress appropriates
“The budget” is just the aggregate of tax and appropriations bills (sometimes, there is an annual package entitled a “comprehensive” or “omnibus” budget bill that covers some tax policy and most or all of the annual appropriations, but that’s rare, and even in that case there are typically continuous and multiyear appropriations and tax policies that are left untouched and outside of it, but which are considered part of the “budget” even though they are aren’t part of the “budget bill”; more commonly, this doesn’t occur.)
> if Congress appropriates $X dollars for something the executive branch is expected to spend it, not second guess Congress and say we really didn’t want to spend that money.
While this is true, and more than just a soft expectation, since Train v. City of New York and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, it is not invariably the practice notwithstanding the expectation and the law (cf., the withholding of funds appropriated for Ukraine aid that was central to Trump’s first impeachment.)
> budget bills, like other bills, have the force of law once passed
First of all congress generally does not pass budget bills, they pass budget resolutions, and congressional resolutions are not submitted to the president for his signature and do not have the force of law.
As far as budget bills (like the Budget Act of 1974) are concerned, it is impossible for a previous congress to pass laws that govern the actions of succeeding congresses in a binding fashion because such laws have the character of congressional rules not statutes, and under the Constitution each house has complete authority over its own rules. So Congress can simply neglect to pass a budget resolution and the only remedy is for individual representatives to raise points of order. The executive branch cannot indict or prosecute anyone in Congress for neglecting to follow congressional rules or laws that have the character of congressional rules.
On the other hand, if you wish to refer to an appropriations bill as a "budget bill" you are merely disagreeing with me (and with congressional practice) over nomenclature. Personally, I have never heard of an appropriations bill referred to as a "budget bill", but I am sure someone does it.
> First of all congress generally does not pass budget bills, they pass budget resolutions
The budget resolution is a planning framework for the appropriations bills that make up the budget. It is not a “budget”.
> and congressional resolutions are not submitted to the president for his signature, and congressional resolutions are not submitted to the president for his signature and do not have the force of law.
That's not true. All Congressional actions are resolutions (e.g. the USA PATRIOT Act was "House Resolution 3162" of the 107th Congress), and many end submitted to the President and with the force of law. Some are even primarily characterized as "resolutions" after they are signed and have the force of law (See, in terms of the budget space, the use of "continuing resolutions".)
There are types of resolutions that are nonbinding, and do not have the force of law, and the "budget resolution" (which, again, is not the same as the budget) is one of them, but this isn't generally true of "congressional resolutions".
> As far as budget bills (like the Budget Act of 1974) are concerned, it is impossible for a previous congress to pass laws that govern the actions of succeeding congresses in a binding fashion
The 1974 Budget Act is not (relevant to this discussion) a budget bill, it is a meta-budget bill, or maybe even a meta-meta-budget bill (that is, a bill on the process by which Congress will plan future budgets.) You are correct that it is not binding on future Congresses, but this has no bearing on the budget not being binding, merely a past Congress's plan on how to plan annually to arrive at a budget is not binding.
> So Congress can simply neglect to pass a budget resolution
…which isn’t a budget, but a plan for one…
> and the only remedy is for individual representatives to raise points of order.
Well, sure, but the budget resolution isn’t the budget. If Congress doesn’t pass a budget (or only passes part of one), then the remedy is “spending governed by the parts not passed stops” (that is, a government shutdown.) This is…rather noticeable.
> On the other hand, if you wish to refer to an appropriations bill as a “budget bill” you are merely disagreeing with me (and with congressional practice) over nomenclature. Personally, I have never heard of an appropriations bill referred to as a “budget bill”, but I am sure someone does it.
While it is common to refer to the aggregate of appropriations as a “budget”, its not usually used for individual appropriations bills as a “budget bill” unless they are a single consolidated bill, which is typically referred to as a “budget bill”. Budget bills are frequently introduced, but less frequently passed. But not having a single budget bill passed is not “not having a budget” or “not having a budget with the force of law”, its “not having a budget in which the annual appropriations were adopted in a single bill”. Which is…less significant.
> The budget resolution is a planning framework for the appropriations bills that make up the budget. It is not a “budget”.
Guess what the President's budget proposal says on the cover?
"Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2023"
And if we look inside do we find a list of congressional appropriations? No. Instead we find a list of appropriations requests and explanatory information for congressional appropriators. Typical chapter headings have language like this:
"The Budget requests $773 billion in discretionary funding for DOD, a $69 billion or 9.8-percent increase from the 2021 enacted level."
So I am sorry, I cannot take seriously the idea that appropriations bills are "budget bills" or specify a federal "budget" except in an informal sense, one contrary to that used by the federal government itself.
> All Congressional actions are resolutions.
I certainly agree in the technical sense, and since we are debating nomenclature here I should be more careful.
A budget from the executive branch is just a recommendation. Congress might use use it as a starting point, if they bother to pass a budget at all, which they are not in the habit of doing lately unfortunately.
As far as Cheney is concerned, Trump had been out of office for months by the time she lost her leadership position. Anything he did was from the sidelines by that point.
> Congress might use use it as a starting point, if they bother to pass a budget at all, which they are not in the habit of doing lately unfortunately.
A budget is a budget even if it is neither comprehensive (i.e., all functions in one bill) nor for a full fiscal year at a time nor uses the word “budget” in its title.
In congressional nomenclature however a budget is a guideline for appropriations bills, not something that carries the force of law. And Congress is quite specific about what it appropriates money for, even if it does it all in a several thousand page bill at the last minute.
So a federal agency like the FAA generally prepares a budget recommendation that would be submitted to Congress as part of the president's budget, but then Congress would decide how much (if any) to appropriate for each activity, down to the level of individual programs in many cases. By the time Congress gets done with it becomes a list of appropriations, and the agency has no authority to transfer things around, spend money on what Congress did not authorize, or even purposely refuse to spend money (or spend less without a good reason) on what Congress has appropriated funding for.
Whatever you think of her actions, her journey (and similar for a variety of other anti-Trump Republicans) illustrates the power a President can have over Congress. This has pretty clear implications for the budget process.
Trump was not President at the time of the Liz Cheney leadership controversy, that was after he was out of office. Trump is not President anymore and no one should pretend that he is.
Correct. I guess the lines are blurry for those that let Trump live rent free in their brain. Everything is Trump, even when it isn't. The PsyOp really worked.
Presidents don't pass budgets.
FAA funding has increased, not decreased.
I can criticize my government all I want. You're turning this into a political party thing when it's a government service failure.