Ryan schedules grilling on Obama’s 2015 budget
New White House Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell will have her first turn defending an Obama budget on March 5.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has scheduled a hearing on the 2015 presidential budget request a day after the budget is released on March 4.
Burwell was confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget after Obama released his 2014 budget, so this is her first time receiving what is usually a grilling from House Republicans on a fiscal blueprint.
{mosads}The budget, officially due on the first Monday in February, is coming out a month late. It was delayed by the two-year budget deal that Congress passed in December and the omnibus spending bill that was passed this month.
Last year, Obama delivered his budget on April 8, more than two months late and after the House and Senate had passed their own blueprints. The administration blamed that delay on the early January resolution of the “fiscal cliff” fight.
Obama has met the official budget deadline only once during his time in office.
Under the budget deal passed last year by Congress, discretionary spending for 2015 is already set at $1.014 trillion. That means congressional appropriators will be able to start crafting their 12 annual bills before Obama delivers his budget request.
Ryan has said he will produce a budget blueprint this year, but it remains unclear when it is coming.
Also unknown is whether the Senate will unveil its own budget resolution. Last year, the Senate passed a budget for the first time in four years after Congress imposed a “no budget, no pay” law.
That law is no longer in effect this year, but some staffers have talked about trying to tie it again to the debt ceiling, which must be raised this month. A Senate budget vote would afford the GOP a chance to force vulnerable Democrats to take uncomfortable votes on defending spending.
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