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 The White House will release the main budget volume, which
contains all of President Barack Obama's key proposals and
government agency-level information on March 4 as scheduled, a White
House official said. The administration will also release the
appendix that includes background information that is considered
useful to lawmakers who will ultimately pass legislation detailing
how the government will spend its money, the official said.
However, historical tables and a volume containing supplemental
analyses of budget data will be released the following week, the
official said, citing the short span of time between the passage of
a spending bill in January and the budget rollout seven weeks later.
"All relevant information for the Congress and the public to
understand and evaluate the President's Budget will be released on
March 4," the White House official said.
The materials to be released the following week "provide highly
technical background and historical information, the vast majority
of which is already publicly available," the official added.
The president's budget proposal is for fiscal year 2015, which
begins October 1.
Analysts said the two-stage release is unusual but that it should
not prevent lawmakers from analyzing the presidents' proposals since
all of his requests for future spending are in the main budget
document.
However, a spokesman for Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican
on the Senate Budget committee, said that committee Republicans
expect to have the entire budget prior to the testimony of the White
House Office of Management and Budget, Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
Burwell is due to testify in the days after the budget release.
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Obama and congressional Republicans have fought bitterly over
spending and taxes since 2011, resulting in a near default and a
government shutdown in October.
The president's annual budget proposal is primarily a wish list that
has no binding effect on congressional appropriators. Still, Obama's
requests will provide a starting point for his fellow Democrats, who
control the Senate but are in the minority in the House of
Representatives.
But the president's budget proposal will be of even less
significance this year than it has been in past years because
lawmakers agreed in January not only to an overall spending cap for
2014 but for the following year as well.
Even so, the request will be a road map for some of the policy
initiatives Obama plans to throw his weight behind in coming months.
(Editing by Ken Wills and Eric Walsh)
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