As the month of June arrives, the congressional budget process is getting into full swing. Members of Congress are returning from the recess to mark up appropriations bills. Molly Reynolds, senior fellow for governance studies at Brookings, says that the process is progressing well.
“The most pressing issue in budget world this week is that the House is getting ready, starting on June 12, to bring the appropriations bills that the House Appropriations Committee has been working on to the floor, Reynolds said. That’s a pretty typical calendar for the House to do that. But in terms of any hope of getting anything done before the end of the fiscal year on September 30, it is a good sign that the House is preparing to bring some of those to the floor.”
Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the CSIS International Security Program, says that there’s been much more cooperation than he expected on the budget, but that could change.
“When the Democrats took over the House and made critical comments about defense spending, raised questions about nuclear programs, I expected there would be a lot more controversy. But when we look at the HACD mark, it is very close to where the president was…There has been a lot of agreement. Having said that, there are [a few] areas of controversy that are arising and you will see them play out.”
