OMB-Preparing the Presidential Budget
The president, through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), located in the Executive Office, has the key responsibility for budget preparation. Work on the fiscal budget starts more than a year before the beginning of the fiscal year for which it is intended. After preliminary consultation with the executive agencies and in accord with presidential policy, the OMB develops targets or ceiling within which the agencies are encouraged to build their requests. This work begins a full sixteen to eighteen months before the beginning of the fiscal year for which the budget is being prepared. (In other words, work would begin in January 2002 on the budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2013, and ending September 30, 2014.) Budget are named for the fiscal year in which they end, so this example describes the work on the Budget of the United States Government, 2014 or more simply, “FY14.”