The Office of Management and Budget has issued a new memo that would direct federal agencies to ensure that their discretionary budget requests for fiscal 2019 are in agreement with the White House’s fiscal 2018 spending measure, Government Executive reported Wednesday.OMB Director Mick Mulvaney wrote in a memo released Friday that agencies should determine additional investments in programs that seek to meet a federal role and support their mission and submit their FY 2019 discretionary budget requests by Sept. 11.
“These investments should reflect no more than a 5 percent increase above your submission level,†he noted.
Agencies should exclude from their proposals shifts of activities or costs to other parts of their budgets, cuts to mandatory spending and enactment of new user fees.
Mulvaney advised agencies to include in their budget requests workforce and reform plans that seek to include proposals across four categories such as elimination of activities, mergers or restructuring and workforce management.
He also noted that OMB plans to work with agencies in the next few months to evaluate and refine the mandatory budget proposals.
“Any new mandatory proposals should be at least budget neutral, or should be accompanied by new mandatory offsets that fully cover the costs of the new proposals,†Mulvaney added.
