The federal budget

Sundance writes at The Last Refuge,

No single aspect to the President Trump policy agenda will more specifically, and consequentially, impact the swamp draining process than the creation of a prioritized federal budget.

The last federal budget was signed into law in September 2007 (for fiscal year 2008) by President George W. Bush. As a strategic political maneuver, since ’08 every aspect of federal spending has been by the vehicles of baseline budgeting, continuing resolution, omnibus spending bills and raises in the debt ceiling. Our nation has been through almost a decade without a federal budget.

In December of 2015 Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and a republican controlled congress eliminated the debt ceiling in a massive $2+ trillion Omnibus spending bill that carried and authorized federal spending through to April 1st of this year.

Fiscally, their decision highlighted how the DC UniParty operate. The 2015 decision by Ryan/McConnell was the final sunlight needed to prove beyond any question that Republicans never held any intention to reduce the size, scope and reach of government.

President Donald Trump has appointed, and the Senate has confirmed, Mick Mulvaney as OMB Director. The Office of Management and Budget actually creates the White House budget proposal based on the policy and instruction of the President.

Read more here.