<P> The United States budget process is the framework used by Congress and the President of the United States to formulate and create the United States federal budget . The process was established by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and additional budget legislation . </P> <P> Prior to 1974, Congress had no formal process for establishing a federal budget . When President Richard Nixon began to refuse to spend funds that Congress had allocated, they adopted a more formal means by which to challenge him . The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which gained more control of the budget, limiting the power of the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The Act passed easily while the administration was embroiled in the Watergate scandal and were unwilling to provoke Congress . </P> <P> The United States budget process begins when the President of the United States submits a budget request to Congress . The President's budget is formulated over a period of months with the assistance of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the largest office within the Executive Office of the President . The budget request includes funding requests for all federal executive departments and independent agencies . Budget documents include supporting documents and historical budget data and contains detailed information on spending and revenue proposals, along with policy proposals and initiatives with significant budgetary implications . The President's budget request constitutes an extensive proposal of the administration's intended revenue and spending plans for the following fiscal year . The budget proposal includes volumes of supporting information intended to persuade Congress of the necessity and value of the budget provisions . In addition, each federal executive department and independent agency provides additional detail and supporting documentation on its own funding requests . The documents are also posted on the OMB website . </P> <P> The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 requires the President to submit the budget to Congress for each fiscal year, which is the 12 - month period beginning on October 1 and ending on September 30 of the next calendar year . The current federal budget law (31 U.S.C. § 1105 (a)) requires that the President submit the budget between the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February . In recent times, the President's budget submission has been issued in the first week of February . The budget submission has been delayed, however, in some new presidents' first year when the previous president belonged to a different party . The 2014 United States federal budget was not submitted by the President until April 10, 2013 due to negotiations over the United States fiscal cliff and implementation of the sequester cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 . (The House had already prepared its budget proposal on March 21, and the Senate proposed a budget on March 23 .) </P>

Who begins the budget-making process at the national level