Discover

(Redirected from United States Office of Management and Budget)

The 'Office of Management and Budget' (OMB) is a Cabinet level and is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP) and is an important conduit by which the White House oversees the activities of federal agencies. OMB is tasked with giving expert advice to senior White House officials on a range of topics relating to federal policy, management, legislative, regulatory, and budgetary issues. The bulk of OMB's 500 employees are charged with monitoring the adherence of their assigned federal programs to presidential policies. OMB performs their coordination role by gathering, filtering, and promulgating the President's annual budget request, by issuing circulars dictating agency management practices, by overseeing the "President's management agenda" (PMA)[1], and by reviewing agency regulations. The Office contains significant numbers of both career and politically appointed staff; OMB staff provide important continuity within the EOP since several hundred career professionals remain in their positions regardless of which party occupies the White House. Six positions within OMB--the Director, the Deputy Director, the Deputy Director for Management, and the Administrators of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and the Office of Federal Financial Management--are presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed ("PAS") positions.
Until mid-April 2006, the Director of OMB was Joshua B. Bolten, but Bolten was appointed to replace Andy Card as White House Chief of Staff effective April 15, 2006. On April 18, 2006, President George W. Bush nominated United States Trade Representative Rob Portman to replace Bolten; Portman was confirmed by the Senate on May 26, 2006.

Contents

Structure of OMB

History

Directors of the Office of Management and Budget

Other famous people who worked at the OMB

Related Links

Structure of OMB

The largest component of the Office of Management and Budget are the four Resource Management Offices (RMO) which are organized along functional lines mirroring the U.S. federal government, each led by an OMB associate director. Approximately half of all OMB staff are assigned to these offices, the majority of whom are designated as program examiners. Program examiners can be assigned to monitor one or even several federal agencies or may be assigned a topical area, such as monitoring issues relating to U.S. Navy warships. These staff have dual responsibility for both management and budgetary issues, as well as responsibility for giving expert advice on all aspects relating to their programs. Each year they review federal agency budget requests and help decide what resource requests will be sent to Congress as part of the President’s budget. They perform in-depth program evaluations using the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) [2], review proposed regulations, agency testimony, analyze pending legislation, and oversee the aspects of the PMA including agency management scorecards. In essence they are the “one stop shop” within OMB and the Executive Office of the President and are often called upon to provide analysis information to any EOP staff member. They also provide important information to those assigned to the statutory offices within OMB, which are OIRA, OFPP, OFFM, and the Office of E-Government whose job it is to specialize in issues such as federal regulations or procurement policy and law.
Other offices are OMB-wide support offices which include the Office of General Counsel, the Office of Legislative Affairs, the Budget Review Division (BRD), and the Legislative Reference Division (LRD). BRD performs government-wide budget coordination and is largely responsibly for the technical aspects relating to the release of the President’s budget each February. With respect to the estimation of spending for the executive branch, BRD serves a purpose parallel to that of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for the estimation of spending for Congress, the Department of the Treasury for the estimation of revenues for the executive branch, and the Joint Committee on Taxation for the estimation of revenues for Congress.
The Legislative Reference Division has the important role of being the central clearinghouse across the federal government for proposed legislation or testimony by federal officials. LRD distributes proposed legislation and testimony to all relevant federal reviewers and distills the comments into a consensus opinion of the Administration about the proposal. They are also responsible for writing an Enrolled Bill Memorandum (EBM) to the President once a bill is presented by both bodies of Congress for the President’s signature. The EBM details the particulars of the bill, opinions on the bill from relevant federal departments, and an overall opinion about whether the bill should be signed into law or vetoed. They also issues Statements of Administration Policy (SAP) that let Congress know the White House’s official position on proposed legislation.

History

The Bureau of the Budget (BOB), OMB's predecessor, was established as a part of the Department of the Treasury by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. The BOB was moved to the EOP in 1939, and reorganized into OMB in 1970 during the Nixon administration. The first OMB included Roy Ash (head), Paul O'Neill (assistant director), Fred Malek (deputy director) and Frank Zarb (associate director) and two dozen others. In the 1990s, OMB was reorganized to remove the distinction between management staff and budgetary staff by combining those dual roles into each given program examiner within the RMO.
Source

Directors of the Office of Management and Budget

Name	Dates Served ↓	President	Notes
Rob Portman	May 26, 2006 - 19 June 2007	George W. Bush	Portman resigned on June 19, 2007. Bush designated Jim Nussle as his replacement.
Joshua B. Bolten	June 26, 2003 - April 15, 2006	George W. Bush	Bolten was designated on March 28, 2006, to replace Andy Card as White House Chief of Staff.
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.	January 23, 2001 - June 6, 2003	George W. Bush	Daniels left and successfully ran for Governor of the state of Indiana.
Jacob J. Lew	May 21, 1998 - January 19, 2001	Bill Clinton	Jack Lew served as Deputy Director of OMB from 1995 to 1998
Franklin D. Raines	September 13, 1996 - May 21, 1998	Bill Clinton	Raines went on to be CEO of Fannie Mae
Alice M. Rivlin	October 17, 1994 - April 26, 1996	Bill Clinton	Rivlin became a Governor of the Federal Reserve after leaving OMB.
Leon Panetta	January 21, 1993 - October 1994	Bill Clinton	Panetta went on to become President Clinton's Chief of Staff
Richard Darman	January 25, 1989 - January 20, 1993	George H.W. Bush
Joseph R. Wright, Jr.	October 16, 1988 - January 20, 1989	Ronald Reagan
James C. Miller III	October 8, 1985 - October 15, 1988	Ronald Reagan
David A. Stockman	January 21, 1981 - August 1, 1985	Ronald Reagan
James T. McIntyre	September 24, 1977 - January 20, 1981	Jimmy Carter
Bert Lance	January 21, 1977 - September 23, 1977	Jimmy Carter	Lance resigned amid a corruption scandal.
James T. Lynn	February 10, 1975 - January 20, 1977	Gerald Ford	Lynn left to head Aetna Insurance.
Roy Ash	February 2, 1973 - February 3, 1975	Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford
Caspar Weinberger	June 12, 1972 - February 1, 1973	Richard Nixon	Weinberger would later become Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense.
George P. Shultz	July 1, 1970 - June 11, 1972	Richard Nixon	Shultz would later become Secretary of Labor and Secretary of the Treasury under Richard Nixon and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan.
Robert Mayo	January 22, 1969 - June 30, 1970	Richard Nixon
Charles Zwick	January 29, 1968 - January 21, 1969	Lyndon B. Johnson
Charles Schultze	June 1, 1965 - January 28, 1968	Lyndon B. Johnson
Kermit Gordon	December 28, 1962 - June 1, 1965	John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson
David E. Bell	January 22, 1961 - December 20, 1962	John F. Kennedy
Maurice H. Stans	March 18, 1958 - January 21, 1961	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Percival Brundage	April 2, 1956 - March 17, 1958	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Rowland Hughes	April 16, 1954 - April 1, 1956	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Joseph Dodge	January 22, 1953 - April 15, 1954	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Frederick Lawton	April 13, 1950 - January 21, 1953	Harry S. Truman
Frank Pace	February 1, 1949 - April 12, 1950	Harry S. Truman
James E. Webb	July 13, 1946 - January 27, 1949	Harry S. Truman
Harold E. Smith	April 15, 1939 - June 19, 1946	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Daniel W. Bell	September 1, 1934 - April 14, 1939	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Lewis Douglas	March 7, 1933 - August 31, 1934	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Clawson Roop	August 15, 1929 - March 3, 1933	Herbert Hoover
Herbert Lord	July 1, 1922 - May 31, 1929	Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover
Charles Dawes	June 23, 1921 - June 30, 1922	Warren G. Harding	Dawes would later become Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge and the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's (the United Kingdom) under Herbert Hoover.

Source

Other famous people who worked at the OMB

★ Joel Kaplan

★ Lawrence Kudlow

★ Sean O'Keefe -- later the Administrator of NASA

★ Jim Tozzi

★ Robert Webb

Related Links

★ Office of Management and Budget - organization's web site

★ Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

★ TheBudgetGraph.com a visual representation of the 2007 federal discretionary budget.

★ "The Decision Makers: Office of Management and Budget" GovExec.com, August 22, 2005

★ OMB Regulatory Officials By Administration

★ History OMB Regulatory Review

★ Office Of Management And Budget Meeting Notices and Rule Changes from The Federal Register RSS Feed