If President Obama was looking for Congress to rubber-stamp his request for additional “emergency” funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, he was sorely disappointed. He asked for the money last February but a wary Congress didn’t approve the funding until just last week, and only after considerable debate over the war effort and U.S. spending priorities.

Rep. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington state, offered a striking example of the trade-offs that are involved in heavy spending abroad at a time when communities around the country are struggling financially:  A police department in his district could lose as many as 23 jobs.

“We can’t pay for them – our first line of security in our neighborhood – but today we would be voting for something on the order of several years of about $4 billion to train police officers in Kabul,” Inslee said. Another notable dissent came from House Appropriations Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin, who expressed concern about the high cost of the war and doubts about the Afghan government.

The legislation provides for $59 billion in additional spending this year, with $33.5 billion going to the Department of Defense and the rest...

Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit last week to the United States underscored the important relationship between the U.S. and Britain, both politically and economically.

Britain’s new coalition government faces tremendous challenges, many of which are similar to the United States’ problems.  Britain’s public debt was 68 percent of GDP at the end of 2009; the comparable figure for the U.S. was 53 percent.

Cameron’s coalition aims to slash government spending over the next five years.  The eventual goal is to cut Britain’s annual budget deficits in half over five years, which will mean some ministries will face funding reductions of up to 40 percent.  Even the popular National Health Service (NHS) will be ordered to make personnel cuts, although overall it will face much lighter cuts than other ministries.  About 75 percent of deficit reduction will be achieved with budget cuts while the other quarter presumably will come from raising revenues.

The proposed cuts in Britain stand in stark contrast to the three-year freeze on domestic discretionary spending President Obama has proposed.  Although broad generalizations cannot—and, indeed, should not—be drawn from these figures, it is clear that both the U.S...

Last week President Obama nominated Jacob “Jack” Lew to be the new head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), replacing Peter Orszag, who is stepping down at the end of July. OMB is primarily responsible for developing the President’s budget.

If confirmed by the Senate, as expected, Lew will become OMB director for the second time. He served as President Clinton’s director from 1998 through the end of the Clinton administration in 2001.

While Lew is familiar with the job, the budget picture has changed considerably. Lew was OMB director during the only four years of budget surpluses since the late 1960’s. He was also a key negotiator on the bipartisan balanced budget agreement in 1997. Now the budget environment is even more partisan and the country is experiencing the largest deficits since the end of World War II.

The change in OMB leadership provides an opportunity to review the changes that have taken place since Lew’s last stint as budget director and also gives us another chance to review the major decisions looming for the federal budget.

The final budget presented by Lew for the Clinton administration in February of 2000 (FY 2001)...

As Congress returns from its July 4th recess, below are some of the budget stories we have been following since the last edition of the Washington Budget Report (sign up here) was published. 

• Before the recess, the House of Representatives passed a deeming resolution by a vote of 215-210. (For background material on deeming resolutions, a Congressional Research Service report can be found here and a Concord Coalition blog entry can be found here).  The deeming resolution was included as part of the...