Appropriation Tracking
How House Committees Get Their Money
Our 2019 and 2020 articles on how House committees are funded have been updated for the 117th Congress. Committee funding in the House of Representatives is accomplished through a somewhat obscure process. Appropriators on the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee set a top dollar amount for the committees — they appropriate the funds — but […]
Forecast for April 12, 2021
Welcome to the First Branch Forecast, your weekly look into the Legislative branch and government transparency. (Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.) TOP LINE Welcome back, Congress. Send me a final out-of-office email so that I know you missed me. Biden’s $1.5 trillion skinny budget was finally submitted to Congress on Friday. It would increase […]
What Items Are Due to Congress: April 2021
Congress routinely requests Legislative branch support offices and agencies provide reports to Congress on their activities, but there’s no central place to keep track of what they’ve requested. So, we built a public spreadsheet that maintains a catalog of projects, broken down by item due, entity responsible, and due date. The catalog covers reforms and […]
How Senate Committees Get Their Money
Senate committees are at the heart of the legislative process, but what resources are provided for them to do their work? We reviewed the funding levels for Senate committees this Congress as compared to last Congress and over the decades. Here is what we found: Senate committees are funded at $238.2 million for the 117th […]
What Items Are Due to Congress: March 2021
Congress regularly requests reports on strengthening Congress but there’s no central place to keep track of what they’ve requested. So we are keeping track so you don’t have to. We built a public spreadsheet that maintains a catalog of projects, broken down by item due, entity responsible, and due date. The catalog covers reforms and […]
25+ Years of Legislative Branch Appropriations: Data Spanning from 1994-2021 All In One Place
Every year Congress determines exactly how much money will be made available to the Legislative Branch and the purpose for which it can be spent. The Legislative Branch Appropriations bills directs congressional spending, line-item by line-item — but, alas, the instructions are published as prose, can run for dozens of pages, and it is difficult […]
What Items Are Due to Congress: February 2021
Congress routinely requests reports on modernizing Congress but there’s no great place to keep track of what they’ve requested. So we are keeping track so you don’t have to. We built a catalog of projects and their due dates that we are maintaining in this public spreadsheet, broken down by item due, entity responsible, and […]
2021 Congressional Budget Priorities: House vs. Senate
Senate appropriators released their Fiscal Year 2021 Legislative Branch spending bill proposal back in November — more than a month into the fiscal year. How does their pitch stack up against the House numbers released in July? To find commonalities and differences in funding, we created a side by side comparison, including dollar and percent […]
Forecast for November 16, 2020.
TOP LINE The next two months will be a legislative train wreck. On deck are the FY 2021 spending bills, COVID relief, the NDAA, and a ton of pent-up legislation. Notably, Republican Senators finally released draft text for the FY 2021 spending bills with less than a month until a shutdown. In addition, new Members are in […]
Congress’ Power of the Purse
Congress holds the power of the purse. That is, they decide where to spend federal money. The Constitution expressly provides that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The process is convoluted, opaque, and subject to exceptions and personalities. The purpose of this article is to […]
116th Congress Update: How Senate Committees Get Their Money
(This is an update of a 2019 article on how Senate Committees are funded. It has been updated for the 116th Congress.) UPDATED TRENDS IN SENATE COMMITTEE FUNDING How do Senate committees get their funding and how has funding changed over the last 25 years? We crunched the numbers for you and here are the […]