United States Congress M4 peer reply

Please post a response of at least 275 words, and a shorter response (approx. 125 words) to one of your fellow students whether you agree or disagree with their discussion.

ANSWER

USC M4 Peer Discussion Reply

I agree with Natasha that the arrangements and practices of the federal budget for the house and senate is to create a budget plan, review the plan and try merging them in a way before presenting to the president. During creating a budget plan, the house and senate appropriation committees set spending limits for federal agencies and programs. They also specify how much money each agency can spend on specific activities. The budget plan is then sent to the president who can sign it into law or veto it (Loomis and Schiller, 2018). The subcommittees are responsible for the appropriation bills which then start the connection between the house and senate. Considerably, the house and senate have different ways of handling their budget process.

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees are responsible for writing the appropriation bills that provide funding for the federal government agencies. These committees are made up of twelve subcommittees, each of which oversees the funding for a specific group of federal agencies. The subcommittees hold hearings at which government officials testify about their budget requests. After considering the budget requests, the subcommittees make recommendations to their respective Appropriations Committees (Loomis and Schiller, 2018). The Appropriations Committees then write the appropriation bills and send them to the full House and Senate for consideration.

I also agree with the post regarding the decentralizing and centralizing forces that affect decision making about the federal budget since there’s power in congress The centralizing forces influence the decisions involved in federal budget since the president can push a policy agenda and give a budget of his liking. The House generally follows a top-down approach, in which the Speaker of the House and other leaders determine how much money will be allocated to each subcommittee. The Senate, on the other hand, takes a bottom-up approach, in which each subcommittee determines its own funding levels.  I also disagree with allowing partisanship to be the driving force in decision making since this leads to biasness of members in the house and senate. The members tend to make decisions based on their political party or agenda rather than considering what is necessary for the budget.

References

Loomis, B. A., & Schiller, W. J. (2018). The contemporary congress. Rowman & Littlefield.