Biden Will Send Congress His 2025 Budget Proposal on March 11

President Joe Biden will send lawmakers his fiscal 2025 budget proposal March 11, days after his State of the Union address and a deadline to avoid a shutdown, White House Office of Management and Budget staff exclusively told Bloomberg Government.

Biden’s March 11 budget plan follows fiscal 2024 funding deadlines on March 1 and March 8 and the president’s annual address to Congress, scheduled for March 7. It will cap a frantic few days with lawmakers likely racing to finish this year’s government-funding bills — more than five months late — before quickly turning to fiscal 2025 negotiations.

The president’s budget request often features ambitious, big-picture proposals, such as last year’s pitch to hike taxes on top earners to extend the solvency of Medicare. It also includes specific, fine-grain requests by agencies that inform congressional negotiations for the rest of the year.

Lawmakers already acknowledged the late start, combined with election-year politicking, will make it difficult to make much progress on appropriations bills ahead of the Sept. 30 funding deadline. The budget proposal is technically due the first Monday in February, though presidents rarely met that deadline in recent years.

Congressional appropriators will try to make as much progress before Sept. 30 as possible but will likely rely on a continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1, said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the Rules Committee and the House Appropriations Transportation-HUD Subcommittee.

Senate Appropriations Committee member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she’s already concerned about the late start to fiscal 2025.

“I have one of the largest bills, as ranking member,” said Capito, the top Republican on the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee. “We need to start if we’re going to finish. So I’m discouraged for what it means next September.”

Presidential budget proposals typically don’t incorporate the effects of spending legislation enacted close to when the plans are sent to Congress, and this year there may just a few days between the two. But the White House has known the broad parameters of an eventual spending deal since congressional leaders agreed to high-level defense and nondefense funding levels on Jan. 7.