Biophysical Society Bulletin | April 2019

Public Affairs

HowDoes Congress Decide on the Annual Spending of Our Tax Dollars? Jonathan King , Sean Winkler, and Eric Sundberg Public Affairs Committee Figure 1 shows the overall federal budget for 2017.

The clearest and deepest expression of our national priorities are the annual budgets voted by our Senators and Repre- sentatives. The budget process is generally much less well understood than the passing of legislation. No agency of the federal government communicates back to the citizenry how their income taxes are being spent. In the spring, when the budget allocations are being debated in the House and Sen- ate, news outlets rarely report the actual sums being debated for the various national programs such as housing, education, environmental protection, biomedical research, infrastructure investment, Pentagon budgets, or the costs of wars abroad. Of course, the Biophysical Society and our sister professional societies report the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) budgets, but we have not routinely reported on the other categories which represent 95% of the Congressional Discretionary Budget. The Public Affairs Committee has recommended that we begin to include this information in reports to our members. Before describing the congressional budget processes, it is important to distinguish between the annual overall Feder- al Budget – which includes mandatory spending and debt interest payments – and Discretionary spending – which Congress appropriates each year. In overall budget the ma- jority of spending goes to the major mandatory programs, most notably Social Security and Medicare that are trust funds. Citizens pay into them, in the expectation of receiving subsequent services. They are not paid by income taxes, and the funds cannot be used for other federal expenses, such as housing or biomedical research. Altering these trust funds requires explicit legislation and cannot be done through the annual budget appropriations process.

Figure legend: These charts were prepared by the Nation- al Priorities Project, part of the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC). Most of the data is derived from federal budget data published by the White House Office of Manage- ment and Budget (OMB)(http:/www.whitehouse.gov/omb/). Additional input was from the Congressional Budget Office and occasionally other Government agencies. The categories group together the official Government categories or “func- tions” (which are numerical) according to common public useage, rather than strictly according to which Appropriations Committee approved them. Thus construction of Veteran’s Administration facilities are grouped with other VA budget items, even though they might be separated in the Budget Appropriation process. The budget category most relevant to the scientific communi- ty is the Congressional Discretionary Budget, which excludes the mandatory programs and debt payments but has all other expenditures under Congressional control. Annual appropri- ations bills are voted on each year by the House and Senate, with differences resolved through a joint conference. The ma- jority of these funds are derived from individual and corporate income taxes. The funding levels for example for NIH, NSF, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Seronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other agencies are specified in these bills. The failure of Congress to pass all of its Fiscal Year 2019 appropriations bills, due to the standoff with President Trump over his request for Border Wall construction funds, led to the partial Government shutdown of the past months.

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April 2019

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