Today is Passback Day

by Steve Charles, Co-founder & Executive Vice President

Today, OMB passes it’s mark-up of the proposed agency budgets—submitted to OMB the day after Labor Day— back to the agencies. Here’s a blog post on the same topic.

I recently heard other prognostications about the FY12 appropriations process indicating that we may be in for a CR scenario like last year.  This is due to all the different fiscal debates that will occur around unrelated things like the expiring payroll tax holiday and the Medicare doctor reimbursement 27% rate cut (both occurring January 1 if Congress doesn’t take action).

The thinking is that these will create political/money debates between now and the first of the year such that a CR into January is inevitable.  Then, depending on the outcomes of those debates, Congress will circle back to the Approps.  By then, we should have more clarity on what else, if anything, will need to be done in 2012 under the Budget Control Act. But with all the politics swirling around this topic and the 2013 proposed budget in the first week of February sure to make news, it’s possible that Congress will wait until March to wrap 2012 like they did last year for 2011.

I guess we can be thankful for the three bills that have passed!