President Obama’s FY 2015 Budget Delayed Until March
On Thursday January 23, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced that the President’s FY 2015 budget would be delayed until March 4, 2014. Under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, “On or after the first Monday in January but not later than the first Monday in February of each year, the President shall submit a budget of the United States Government for the following fiscal year.” According to this statute, President Obama’s FY 2015 budget should have been released by February 3rd.
This is the fifth budget delayed by the Obama Administration in his six years in office; although a few of his submissions arrived a week to ten days after the February deadline. However, the FY 2014 budget received an extensive delay and was not released until April 10, 2013. The Administration has cited recent passage of a FY 2014 appropriations package and a spending cap for FY 2015 that was included in the November Bipartisan Budget Act. “Now that Congress has finished its work on this year’s appropriations, the Administration is able to finalize next year’s Budget. We are moving to complete the Budget as quickly as possible to help Congress return to regular order in the annual budget process,” budget office spokesman Steve Posner said in a statement. The spending cap for FY 2015 was set at $1.014 trillion.
While the submission deadline of the President’s budget is required by law, the actual numbers and funding levels in the budget are not legally-binding. Instead the President’s budget serves as a framework for Congress to compare and complete its own budget, and it also serves as a set of policy recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year. NAHMA will follow that status of the budget and provide an overview of its proposals once it is released.
Farm Bill Would Change the Definition of a Rural Area
On Wednesday, members in the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2642, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013, by a recorded vote of 251-166 (this bill may also be known as the “Farm Bill”). This bill was introduced by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) in July of 2013.
The main focus of the Farm Bill is centered on agriculture activities and subsidies to farmers. Rural Development is affected under the bill but rural housing programs, such as Section 521 Rental Assistance, are not altered or addressed. However, the bill does make changes to the definition of what constitutes a “rural” area, which may increase access to housing programs for low-income families living in underserved locations.
Currently, the population threshold for an area to be considered rural is 25,000 and the USDA certifies this through use of census data from the year 2000. Under H.R. 2642, the population limit used to define areas as rural will increase to 35,000, and the USDA will include Census data from 2010 for more recent information. Qualified areas will be given guaranteed program eligibility and retain their rural status through 2020 as well. This expansion on the population limit and usage of 2010 Census data has been previously proposed under Senator Tim Johnson’s bill S. 766, and under another unsuccessful Senate bill, the Agricultural Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013 (S.954).
H.R. 2642 will now head to the Senate for passage.
