This article is part of our President’s FY2024 Budget Request Coverage. Visit our Rolling Analysis Page for more.

In releasing the FY24 Budget Request, the Biden Administration continues a practice that should concern taxpayers. Just like with the FY23 request, this year’s budget is being rolled out in drips and drabs, rather than in one fell swoop. Several regular volumes of the budget are missing in this initial budget release.   

This includes volumes such as Historical Tables, the Analytical Perspectives, Appendix, and Federal Credit Supplement. Notably the budget page contains links to most of these materials, but the links simply bring you back to the main budget page. We expect these to be released next week, or possibly earlier, but will have to wait and see. 

When the president submitted his first budget request (FY21) in a “skinny” form in early April 2021 that was later followed with a complete, robust request in June, one could see the break from norms as excusable. The first budget request of a freshly inaugurated president tends to come out later than the first week of February. Plus the Biden Administration and Congress were focused on the nearly $2 trillion COVID-19 relief/economic stimulus bill the American Rescue Plan package the first few months of President Biden’s tenure.  

But to follow-up that “aberration” with consecutive years of piecemeal budget releases, makes it seem the administration is more concerned with controlling the message and winning the news cycle than informing taxpayers. It does a disservice to taxpayers who need the administration and Congress to start tackling some of the pressing fiscal challenges facing our country.