Carving up discretionary dollars: The work of the 12 Appropriations subcommittees

Budget Process By Adrienne Ramsay August 27, 2025

As former Appropriations staff, I have been in the front row (and sometimes on stage) watching and participating in the analysis of requests and the negotiations that must take place for legislation to be enacted. In my experience, there are always a lot of interesting ideas about what to do with federal dollars, however, there are limited resources. Choices must be made that will enable final passage. While this sounds quite final, it is not. The Appropriations process is an annual exercise and funding that does not get enacted one year might become law the next year or some year thereafter.

The Big Picture: Two Types of Federal Spending

Before diving into the subcommittees, it’s important to understand that the federal government has two main types of spending.

• Mandatory spending happens automatically based on laws already on the books. This type of spending includes Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the national debt. While exact amounts can be adjusted, Congress doesn’t vote on these every year – they just happen.
• Discretionary spending is the $1.5 trillion of the federal budget that Congress must approve annually through the appropriations process. It includes everything from military equipment to national parks to scientific research.

This latter type of funding is bargaining out by Appropriations Committees.

How the Pie Gets Sliced

Of the 12 pieces, the largest portion of discretionary funding by far goes to defense-related spending, which typically comprises 50 to 55% of all discretionary dollars. The remaining 45 to 50% covers everything else the government does – from running the FBI to funding cancer research to maintaining highways. The second-largest slice usually goes to Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education programs, though this can vary significantly from year to year.

Meet the 12 Subcommittees

Each subcommittee has jurisdiction over different government agencies and funding:

• Defense includes not just the Pentagon, but also the Intelligence Community;  
• Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education covers a huge range of programs affecting daily life, from job training to medical research to student aid;
• Homeland Security manages border security, immigration enforcement, and disaster response; and
• Commerce, Justice, and Science funds the FBI, federal courts, NASA, and weather services.

The other eight subcommittees cover agriculture, energy, transportation, foreign aid, interior and environment programs, financial services, military construction, and the legislative branch itself.

The staff behind the scenes

As one budget insider puts it, “appropriators know they are gods” when it comes to federal spending. If you don’t have money, you don’t have a program. It’s that simple.

Yet, here’s something most people don’t know: the analysis and recommendations to the chamber’s membership gets done by professional staff members who are budget experts, not politicians. These staffers typically come from agency budget offices, the Office of Management and Budget, the Congressional Budget Office, or the Government Accountability Office (GAO), among other places. They’re non-partisan professionals who think like accountants – their job is to scrutinize every funding request and try to fit as many priorities as possible into their allocation.

Why this matters for oversight

The subcommittee structure creates natural tension that’s actually healthy for democracy. Each subcommittee becomes an expert in its area and develops relationships with the agencies it funds. This means appropriators can spot problems early and hold agencies accountable.

For example, if a defense program is behind schedule and over budget, the Defense Subcommittee staff will discuss the problems with the organization and contractors to determine how they can get back on track. This can mean that the annual budget requests may be adjusted (up or down) to reflect the program’s performance.

This oversight happens more often that you might imagine, but, yes, it also is true that sometimes appropriators, the agencies, and contractors they fund can become too friendly with one another, forming what political scientists call an iron triangle.

The Annual Budget Battle

Every year, the federal spending process is supposed to repeat like clockwork. The President submits a budget request in February. The two chambers haggle over adopting a budget resolution (developed by The Budget Committees) to set total spending. Appropriations subcommittee staff spend months analyzing the President’s Budget Request, holding hearings with agency officials, and develop funding and policy recommendations presented to the Committee Chairmen and Ranking Members for consideration in the annual appropriations bills. Then comes the real drama: House and Senate subcommittees often disagree, leading to intense negotiations to reconcile differences.

When you hear about a possible government shutdown or a continuing resolution (CR), it’s a sign there is an impasse in negotiations. It is not uncommon for a majority in the House and a super majority in the Senate to struggle reconcile the differences in the funding levels for the federal government’s operations. Congress has passed at least one CR each year in 46 of the last 49 years to give legislators more time to bargain out a deal.

What It All Means

The Appropriations subcommittee system might seem bureaucratic, but it serves a very important purpose. It uses its expertise to conduct oversight, and force hard choices about national priorities. There are many reasons why one program may get funded and another may not. It can be politics, programmatic problems, changes in policy direction, or limited resources. What needs to be understood is that while it seems that there are winners and losers, in most cases, the goal is to make everyone mostly happy and only a little unhappy so that they vote for final passage.

The next time you hear about a budget battle in Congress, remember it’s really 12 separate battles, each fought by specialists trying to balance competing demands with limited resources. And in the end, those decisions shape what government can and can’t do for the American people.

Adrienne Ramsay is the founder of Delphi Strategies and previously worked for the House of Representatives Appropriations and Armed Services Committees, the Office of Management and Budget, and at the Congressional Budget Office. She writes the Let’s Talk Congress newsletter on Substack.