WASHINGTON — 2009 was supposed to be the year that federal budgeting was finally done smoothly and efficiently.
It didn’t happen.
Spending on discretionary items, or those under White House and congressional control, is expected to run about 4 percent higher than last year, well above the rate of inflation. And a big chunk of the budget was approved three months past due.
“For all the talk about the need to get spending under control, I don’t see any of that,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group.
This year, President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.6 trillion budget blueprint and pledged, “No part of my budget will be free from scrutiny or untouched by reform.” Congress then split his requests into a dozen bills, which were supposed to be completed by Oct. 1, the start of the 2010 fiscal year.
The process was not completed until this month — nearly one quarter into the fiscal year — as Congress previously approved stopgap measures to keep the government running.
Pentagon spending will rise 0.7 percent this fiscal year — though Obama is expected to seek more money for the Afghanistan war early next year — while domestic spending should rise 8.2 percent, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a budget watchdog group.
When those budgets are combined, spending will grow about 4.1 percent — less than the 7.5 percent average of the past 10 years but still well above the current 1 percent to 2 percent rate of inflation.
And the figures do not include “entitlements,” such as Medicare and Social Security, whose payments are fixed by law and are expected to grow about 3 percent this year. Nor do the numbers include most of the February economic stimulus or emergency spending for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Democratic leaders attribute the budget delay to several factors. Harsh economic times require more spending and result in less revenue, they say. And they point out that passing the $787 billion economic stimulus occupied much of early 2009, that war funding dominated spring deliberations and, according to Democrats, that Republicans kept throwing procedural roadblocks in the way.
As a result, said Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin, D-Ill., “we find ourselves consistently sidetracked.”
Republicans counter that there is no excuse for such delays and for so little discipline.
“Millions of families across the country and small businesses are tightening their budgets,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “But the budgets of these federal agencies and of the federal government itself keeps expanding.”
