Biden budget release faces extended delay
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration still has no public timeline for sending the president’s first budget request to Congress.
While first-year presidential budget delays have become something of a tradition, initial “skinny” versions have often come sooner. President Barack Obama released early details on Feb. 26, 2009; his predecessor, George W. Bush, did so on Feb. 28, 2001. Bill Clinton gave an overview in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 17, 1993.
President Donald Trump set a perhaps modern record for delays: departments and agencies got their topline numbers from the Trump administration on Feb. 27, 2017 in a process known as a “passback.” But details weren’t released to the public until a skinny budget was released March 16.
This year, that might be an aggressive timeline since administration officials say the Office of Management and Budget is still dealing with the aftereffects of obstinacy from the outgoing
Trump administration during the presidential transition.
“In a dramatic departure from past presidential transitions, the previous administration’s political appointees at OMB placed severe limits on the type of assistance career professionals could provide the Biden transition team, including blocking analytical work that is necessary to developing a budget,” OMB spokesman Rob Friedlander said in a statement to CQ Roll Call.
During the post-election period while Trump was still in office, OMB officials argued that they were providing appropriate assistance to the presidential transition effort once ascertainment was ultimately made.
However, Trump OMB Director Russ Vought also said in a letter to longtime Biden adviser and former Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-del., who was involved in overseeing the transition, that “[r]edirecting staff and resources to draft your team’s budget proposals is not an OMB transition responsibility.”
Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress and Biden’s nominee to lead the budget office, has had at times contentious hearings before both the Budget and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees and is awaiting votes before either or both panels.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki mentioned Tanden’s confirmation process in response to a question about the timing of the fiscal 2022 budget at Wednesday’s White House briefing. She also noted delays in the General Services Administration’s “ascertainment” of the
2020 election results, which makes more services available to the transition team.
“As you know, our nominee to lead the OMB just had her hearing yesterday, and hopefully she’ll be in place soon. But there was — there were some challenges that came about during the transition in terms of a bit of intransigence from the outgoing administration and lack of cooperation, as it related to OMB on the budget process,” Psaki said.