2.7: Warrants, Apportionments, and Allocations

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After Congress and the president create budget authority, that authority gets divvied up to different agencies, bureaus, programs, and projects. How well documented are these processes? Not well. An appropriation warrant is an assignment of funds by the Treasury to a treasury account to serve a particular budget authority. It's the indication that there is money in an account for an agency to obligate and then spend. "OMB has a web portal that agencies used to send apportionment requests," notes the National Priorities Project's Becky Sweger, "so the apportionment data are out there." Where is this warrant data? We can't find it. Given Treasury"s thoroughness, it probably exists, but it's just not out there for public consumption. An apportionment is an instruction from the Office of Management and Budget to an agency about how much it may spend from a Treasury account in service of given budget authority in a given period of time. We haven't seen any data about this, and we're not sure that there is any. There should be. And we should get to see it. An allocation is a similar division of budget authority by an agency into programs or projects. We don't see any data on this either. And we should. These essential elements of government spending should be published for all to see. They are not published, garnering the executive branch an F.

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