Budgeteering

In his comment on yesterday’s entry about the not-to-be-tested missile program, Scott mentions the importance of an item being specifically identified and mentioned in the budget.  Interesting that he should mention that, since my company has just had an experience with exactly the phenomenon he speaks of.

A special study we’re working on has been mentioned specifically in the 2003 joint appropriations resolution that’s currently awaiting GWB’s signature.  There’s no money figure attached to it, just a sentence saying that the conferees are aware of this project and another similar one, and would like to see them both continued beyond their current one-year timeline.

So all of a sudden, we’re asked to add data from another state (one with a powerful Senator) to our analytic dataset, it’s strongly suggested by the government folks we deal with that we should write a bread-and-butter note to the chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee, since (we’re told by our contacts at CMS) he and another Senator were the ones who put that sentence into the resolution, our data requests get higher priority than they had previously, and so forth.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  I’m the lead data analyst and researcher on the special study, so this mention in the budget directly affects me and my work status.  We work with good people at CMS, people who were there before Bush and will be there after him ... many, if not most, of whom fervently hope that that “after” will be in 2005 rather than 2009.  The special study is potentially of great value to the healthcare of Americans, and I know we’ll do really good work in carrying it out.

Still, it’s really interesting to see the effect of that one little sentence in the budget resolution.  I have to wonder, though, what sort of non-innocuous, non-pleasant, non-positive little items are sprinkled around in the massive volume that is a budget resolution?

Comments

I meant to comment on this yesterday—fascinating stuff. Keep us up-to-date on it, as I’d love to hear how it pans out.

Scott, when/if interesting things happen, I’ll follow up.  In the meantime, not to worry about tardiness in commenting ... you have *much* more important things to be concerned about.

My thoughts are with you and Kim.

Thanks, it’s really appreciated. She’s doing better emotionally now than the other day, so that’s a good sign.

Our fingers our crossed, to put it mildly.

<< Back to main