Unified Budget in the United States

Unified Budget in the Federal Budget Process

Meaning of Unified Budget in the congressional and executive budget processes (GAO source): Under budget concepts set forth in the Report of the President’s Commission on Budget Concepts, a comprehensive budget in which receipts and outlays from federal and trust funds are consolidated. When these fund groups are consolidated to display budget totals, transactions that are outlays of one fund group for payment to the other fund group (that is, interfund transactions) are deducted to avoid double counting. The unified budget should, as conceived by the President’s Commission, take in the full range of federal activities. By law, budget authority, outlays, and receipts of off-budget programs (currently only the Postal Service and Social Security) are excluded from the current budget, but data relating to off-budget programs are displayed in the budget documents. However, the most prominent total in the budget is the unified total, which is the sum of the on- and off-budget totals. (See also Nonbudgetary; Off-Budget; On-Budget.)

Resources

See Also

• Federal Appropriations
• Entries about the United States Budget Process in the Encyclopedia (including Unified Budget)
• Public Debt

Further Reading

• Legislatures and the budget process: the myth of fiscal control

  (J Wehner, 2010)

• Reconcilable Differences?: Congress, the Budget Process, and the Deficit (JB Gilmour, 1990)
• Fiscal institutions and fiscal performance

  (JM Poterba, J von Hagen, 2008)