Office of Management and Budget
In February 2025, Donald Trump appointed Russell Vought to direct the Office of Management and Budget. The appointment put him atop the largest office within the Executive Office of the President. That office carries out the president's agenda across the entire executive branch, shaping decisions most Americans never see. None of that reach was written into the office when it started. How did a routine budget function grow into such a powerful tool for a president to control? And what actually happens inside it, day to day, to make that possible?
Congress passed the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, and President Warren G. Harding signed the bill that created the Bureau of the Budget. The new bureau sat inside the Department of the Treasury, tasked with helping the president build a budget for Congress to accept or reject. That arrangement lasted until 1939, when the bureau moved into the newly formed Executive Office of the President. Harold D. Smith ran the bureau through that transition, overseeing it as government spending expanded rapidly during World War II. James L. Sundquist, who worked at the bureau as a staffer, described the relationship between the president and the bureau as extremely close. The directors who followed him tended to be politicians rather than public administrators. That political character carried into 1970, when a new president moved to remake the bureau entirely.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon led a reorganization of the Bureau of the Budget. It emerged as the Office of Management and Budget, reporting directly to the president. The first OMB roster included Roy Ash as head, Paul O'Neill as assistant director, Fred Malek as deputy director, and Frank Zarb as associate director. About two dozen other staff filled out the rest of the team. What had started as a politically neutral, analytical body grew into one of the most powerful institutions directly under a president's control. In the 1990s, OMB reorganized again, erasing the old line between management staff and budget staff. Each program examiner inside the Resource Management Offices took on both roles at once. That consolidation of power did not go unanswered in Congress.
In 1974, Congress enacted legislation to create the Congressional Budget Office, a counterpart built specifically to answer OMB. The same wave of legislation included other laws aimed at limiting presidential impoundment. Even so, presidents after Nixon kept expanding OMB's scope and power. Congress's pushback stayed occasional, and it stayed limited. None of that back-and-forth changed what OMB is actually asked to do every budget cycle.
OMB's reach runs from the Department of Defense to NASA, since budget development touches every agency a president oversees. Every year, OMB prepares the president's budget proposal for Congress and supervises how executive branch agencies carry it out. It evaluates whether agency programs, policies, and procedures are actually working, weighs competing funding requests against each other, and sets priorities for where money goes. Agency reports, rules, testimony, and proposed legislation all get checked against the president's budget and administration policies before they go anywhere. OMB also oversees the government's procurement, financial management, information, and regulatory policies. The goal is to improve administrative management, build better performance measures, and cut unnecessary burdens on the public. Two missions sit at the center of that work: developing and executing the budget, and managing other agencies' financials, paperwork, and information technology. Carrying out both missions takes a specific kind of staff, one built to outlast any single president.
Six positions inside OMB require presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. They are the director, the deputy director, and the deputy director for management. The list also includes the administrators of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. It ends with the administrator of the Office of Federal Financial Management. Everyone else is mostly career staff, providing continuity that survives a change of party in the White House. The five Resource Management Offices form OMB's largest component. Each one is led by an associate director and organized to mirror the structure of the federal government. Roughly half of all OMB staff work in these offices, most of them serving as program examiners. A program examiner might track a single agency or follow one topic across government, such as issues relating to U.S. Navy warships. Examiners also offer expert advice on their assigned programs. Each year, they review federal agency budget requests, run in-depth program evaluations using the Program Assessment Rating Tool, and analyze pending legislation. Their work also feeds OMB's four statutory offices. Two are the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. The other two are the Office of Federal Financial Management and the Office of E-Government and Information Technology. Other divisions handle support functions, including the Office of General Counsel, the Office of Legislative Affairs, and the Legislative Reference Division. The Legislative Reference Division acts as the federal government's central clearing house for proposed legislation, distilling comments from federal reviewers into a single administration position. Once both chambers of Congress send a bill to the president, the division writes an Enrolled Bill Memorandum. It lays out the bill's details, department opinions, and a recommendation on whether to sign or veto it. The Budget Review Division handles government-wide budget coordination. It manages the technical work behind each February's budget release. Its role parallels the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of the Treasury, and the Joint Committee on Taxation. Each of those bodies estimates a different piece of federal revenue or spending. That continuity has not always been smooth. While Young served as acting director, Jason Miller took over her duties during her maternity leave, from October 2021 to December 2021. One director even ran OMB while simultaneously serving as Acting White House Chief of Staff, a dual role that began the 2nd of January 2019. All of that machinery has one job each year: turning itself into an actual federal budget.
Building the federal budget takes nearly a full year from start to finish. The process begins with OMB briefing the president on the country's economic situation. Next comes what's known as the Spring Guidance, when OMB sends executive agencies policy instructions and due dates for their budget requests. OMB and the agencies then meet to work through issues in the upcoming budget. In July, OMB issues Circular A-11, spelling out exactly how agencies must submit their proposals. Agencies turn in those proposals by September. The fiscal year begins on the 1st of October. Through late November, OMB staff meet with senior agency officials to check whether proposals match the president's priorities and to flag budget constraints. The OMB director then meets with the president and advisors from the Executive Office of the President. Together they weigh the agencies' proposals and settle on a recommended federal budget. Agencies are notified of the decisions, and if they disagree, they can appeal to OMB and the president in December. Once disputes are resolved, agencies and OMB draft a budget justification document for congressional committees, particularly the Appropriations Committee. By the first Monday in February, the president must submit the final budget to Congress. Alongside the budget, OMB prepares Statements of Administration Policy, telling Congress where the White House stands on proposed legislation. Interest groups lobby throughout the review, trying to shift the budget in their favor. Without an approved budget, federal employees go unpaid and federal buildings cannot open. Federal programs stop entirely, the shutdown scenario that unfolds whenever Congress fails to pass one. That same office also writes the fine print government agencies live by every other day of the year.
OMB indexes its circulars by category: Budget, State and Local Governments, and Educational and Non-Profit Institutions. Other categories cover Federal Procurement, Federal Financial Management, Federal Information Resources, and other special purposes. Circular A-119 tells agencies to adopt voluntary consensus standards before turning to industry standards, and to rely on government standards only as a last resort. U.S. agencies widely follow international standards under that circular. The Environmental Protection Agency references ISO 14001 for environmental management. The Department of Energy references ISO 50001 for energy performance, aligned with the International Energy Agency. The Department of Labor references ISO 45001 for occupational health and safety. The Food and Drug Administration references ISO 13485 for medical devices and ISO 22000 for food products. OMB also polices who gets excluded from doing business with the government. President Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12549, issued in 1986, created the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee to monitor that system. The order requires agencies to take part in a government-wide suspension and debarment process. It also requires shared criteria and minimum due process rules before suspending or debarring anyone. Agencies must also send the names of debarred and suspended participants to the General Services Administration. Those names go on an exclusion list now known as the System for Award Management. That system remains the government's official record of who is barred from federal contracts.
Common questions
What does the Office of Management and Budget do?
The Office of Management and Budget prepares the president's budget proposal for Congress and supervises how executive branch agencies carry out that budget. It evaluates agency programs, sets funding priorities, and oversees procurement, financial management, and regulatory policy across the government.
When was the Office of Management and Budget created?
The Office of Management and Budget traces back to the Bureau of the Budget, created under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 and signed into law by President Warren G. Harding. It became the Office of Management and Budget in 1970, when President Richard Nixon reorganized it to report directly to the president.
Who is the current director of the Office of Management and Budget?
Russell Vought is the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, appointed by Donald Trump in February 2025.
Why did Congress create the Congressional Budget Office as a counterpart to the Office of Management and Budget?
Congress enacted legislation in 1974 to form the Congressional Budget Office as a direct counterpart to the Office of Management and Budget, alongside other laws limiting presidential impoundment. This followed the 1970 restructuring that turned the OMB from a politically neutral office into one of the most powerful institutions under direct presidential control.
How long does it take the Office of Management and Budget to build the federal budget?
Developing the federal budget within the executive branch takes nearly a year, running from an initial economic briefing through the Spring Guidance, Circular A-11 in July, agency submissions in September, and a final deadline of the first Monday in February.
What happens if the Office of Management and Budget and Congress cannot agree on a budget?
Federal employees go unpaid and federal buildings cannot open when the Office of Management and Budget and Congress fail to secure an approved budget, halting federal programs entirely. This shutdown scenario occurs whenever Congress refuses to pass a budget.
All sources
37 references cited across the entry
- 3BookManagement and the President's Budget: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency and Financial Management of the Committee on Government ReformUnited States Government Publishing Office — March 26, 2003
- 4JournalThe Contemporary Presidency: The Personnel Process in the Modern PresidencyDavid E. Lewis — 2012
- 6BookExecutive Policymaking: The Role of the OMB in the PresidencyMeenekshi Bose et al. — Brookings Institution — 2020
- 7JournalOMB and the Presidency: the Problem of 'Neutral Competence'Hugh Heclo — National Affairs — 1975
- 10NewsAsh, Malek, O'Neill, Zarb & Co.: Not household names but their power is great, and growingJohn Herbers — March 3, 1974
- 11OMB Organization ChartOffice of Management and Budget
- 13BookThe Office of Management and Budget and the Presidency, 1921-1979Larry Berman — Princeton University Press — March 8, 2015
- 14BookThe Art of PolicymakingGeorge E. Shambaugwh IV et al. — CQ Press — 2016
- 15JournalInfluence and the Administrative Process: Lobbying the U.S. President's Office of Management and BudgetSimon F. Haeder et al. — August 2015
- 17CircularsThe White House
- 18CIRCULAR NO. A-119 RevisedThe White House
- 19National Examples - United States of AmericaInternational Organization for Standardization
- 20Environmental Management Systems (EMS)EPA — November 5, 2014
- 21Environmental ManagementInternational Organization for Standardization
- 22ISO 50001 Energy Management StandardOffice of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy
- 23Energy ManagementInternational Organization for Standardization
- 24Guidance for Executive Order 13673, "Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces"; Final GuidanceUS Department of Labor
- 25Medical Device Single Audit Program (MDSAP)FDA — February 7, 2022
- 26Medical DevicesInternational Organization for Standardization
- 28Food ProductsInternational Organization for Standardization
- 29Directors of The Office of Management and Budget and The Bureau of the BudgetOffice of Management and Budget(Archived)
- 31NewsMulvaney sworn in as OMB director after Senate confirmationEd Adamczyk — February 16, 2017
- 32Mulvaney eggs Trump on in shutdown fightNancy Cook — January 4, 2019
- 33Senate confirms Russ Vought to be White House budget chiefCaitlin Emma — July 20, 2020
- 34NewsShalanda Young sworn in as director of Office of Management and BudgetDanielle Haynes — March 17, 2022
- 35Acting OMB Director Young to Take Maternal Leave Soon, Jason Miller to Handle Day-to-DayLamar Johnson — October 20, 2021
- 36Democrats frustrated by vacancies across governmentMorgan Chalfan — November 21, 2021
- 37NewsRuss Vought confirmed as White House budget chiefKatherine Tully-McManus — February 6, 2025