Expert: Eric Shangle - 2/21/2007

Question
Hello Eric!

Can you please tell me when the U.S. Dept of Justice's 2007 budget was passed?  I can't find this info anywhere and I need it for a report.

Thank so very much!

Answer
Eric,
Thank you so much for asking this question.  I am sorry for the delay in responding.  There is no excuse, however I truly am sorry.

The Department of Justice is a branch of government that is a part of the budgeting process.  Our government’s budget cycle is complex beast that is really quite elegant once you learn it.  To make this simple, I will say that money is "appropriated" to the Department of Justice (DOJ) through Congress.

Basically the House and the Senate have committees that meet on specific budget line items such as energy, defense, and justice.  The DOJ's budget is actually grouped with Science, the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce.  These all fall under H.R.5672.  Unfortunately this has NOT been voted on for Public Law yet.  The last action that was done on this was in July 2006.  It is still in markup.

In cases like this, Congress will pass continuing resolutions.  These are meant to allow the government agencies to continue spending at the same rate they were before.  Currently we are in the 4th continuing resolution for this fiscal year.  It was set as Public Law on 2/15/2007 and is valid until 9/30/2007.  This means that there will most likely not be an approved budget for the DOJ this fiscal year.

FY06's budget approved PL109-108 for the DOJ.  This was set as Public Law on 11/22/2005.  This was the last approved budget for the DOJ.

All of this information is available through an amazing website:  http://www.budgetanalyst.com/
One of my MBA professors turned me on to this site.

Also, check out: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app07.html
You can check the status of congressional appropriations here.

Eric, I hope that this was useful information.  I love looking into this type of information.  Please let me know if this was helpful for you.  I tried to give you some other information instead of just saying that the DOJ's budget had not been passed yet.

You can also rate my service on this site.  It helps me a lot.  Thank you.

Eric