President Biden Skips Budget Deadline for Third Year Straight

Press reports indicate that President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget will be submitted this March, well after the statutory deadline of the first Monday in February. This is the third year in a row that the President has missed the budget submission deadline, and it likely means that the rest of the Congressional budget process will be delayed.

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

In yet another sign that the budget process is utterly broken, we won’t even be seeing the President’s budget until at least a month after its due date. In the first year of a Presidency, it’s understandable. But by the third year, the President should be able to meet the legally required deadlines. And the same goes for Congress.

The President’s budget marks the beginning of the Congressional budget process and budget season. With every missed deadline, it becomes more and more likely that policymakers fail to abide by any of the regular order and instead just kick the can down the road, waiting until the last possible second to prevent a shutdown or pass a massive omnibus that no one has read.

Congress has not passed a budget on time in 20 years. They have not passed appropriations bills on time in 26 years. When lawmakers cannot agree – they shut down the government. Last year, neither budget committee even bothered to draft a budget resolution. That’s a disgrace.

Only 36 current Members of Congress were in office the last time we passed the appropriations in time, when the “Macarena” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

President Biden should do his legally required job and put forward a budget. The budget committees should then put forward their budgets to pass out of each chamber and then work out their differences and agree to a concurrent budget resolution. And we need to pass appropriations bills, at responsible levels, well before the end of the fiscal year.

The United States needs to stop governing by crisis and start showing some leadership. That begins with budgeting for our priorities and requires that we take the process seriously. Congress and the President should do their jobs.

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For more information, please contact Kim McIntyre, Director of Media Relations, at mcintyre@crfb.org.