If you pay close attention this week to news about the budget in Congress, it will be okay if you mix yourself a stiff drink by Wednesday or so to deal with what might seem like a series of confusing series of budget plans from the House and Senate.
First, work on the current government budget will resume this week in the Senate, where Democrats as early as Monday will unveil their plan to fund the government through the end of September, as well as give the military and some other agenices more leeway to deal with the sequester.
Last week, the House easily approved a bill that embraces the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts, voting for full year budgets for the military and veterans, while leaving other government agenices on a stop-gap budget.
Senate Democrats are expected to fill in details on full year budgets for several other cabinet departments and agencies, and add in their own touches on the sequester issue, though the overall spending level is not expected to increase from the $984 billion approved by the House for the discretionary budget.
So, let's step back for a moment and set the stage for our first two budget plans:
1) House bill to fund the government through the rest of the 2013 fiscal year
2) Senate bill to fund the government through the rest of the 2013 fiscal year
While the Senate works on that funding bill this week, House Republicans and Senate Democrats are expected to unveil their own budget plans for next year, Fiscal Year 2014.
House Budget Committee Chair Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) are in charge of their chamber's respective budget plans for next year; Ryan will evidently lay out those House GOP details on Tuesday; Murray reportedly will follow suit for Senate Democrats on Wednesday, though neither side had issued any definitive public schedule as the week got underway.
Both of these budgets will lay the groundwork for votes on the "budget resolution," a non-binding document that is a framework for the actual budget bills.
The "budget resolution" is what Democrats have not approved in the Senate since 2009. Congress has approved an actual budget each year or a stop-gap budget to keep the government running (see #1 and #2.)
This is the "budget resolution."
Sometimes the budget resolution is very detailed; but often it is also more general in terms of how it would achieve certain budget goals - remember, this is a non-binding budget outline, where the House and Senate approve the overall "goals" for certain budget numbers, but don't fill in the fine print on how it is done until they work on the budget bills later in the year.
The House GOP plan is expected to produce a balanced budget in 10 years; Democrats meanwhile are expected to use the word "balanced" in their budget to mean greater tax revenues.
So, let's add two more budgets to the Congressional mix:
3) House GOP budget outline for Fiscal Year 2014
4) Senate Democratic budget outline for Fiscal Year 2014
As for the President's budget plan for Fiscal Year 2014, that was supposed to be delivered to Congress the day after the Super Bowl, but now it seems that it won't arrive until April 8, more than two months late.
So, once that is actually proposed, it can be budget #5.
Mix in visits by President Obama this week to Capitol Hill where he will meet with Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, House Republicans and House Democrats, and you are likely to hear an awful lot about budgets, deficits and debt.
There will be a quiz on Friday.
