The Budget Process As Told By House Of Cards

Check out these House of Cards GIFs and see how the budget process is supposed to work and how it is currently working.

1. The president is required to submit a federal budget request to Congress annually for the next fiscal year by the beginning of February.

2. But in recent years, presidents have missed their deadlines. President Obama just submitted his budget proposal for FY2015 this week.

3. Once Congress receives the president's proposal, both the House and Senate budget committees are supposed to come up with budget resolutions by the beginning of April -- these establish totals for spending and tax revenue.

4. Lawmakers then "reconcile" any differences between the two resolutions and produce a conference report.

5. This conference report is the blueprint that goes to the House and Senate appropriations committees, who hold hearings on the programs in its jurisdiction and produce a bill.

6. Next, the full appropriations committee in each chamber makes their changes to each spending bill. After that, a final conference report is sent to the floors of the House and Senate for votes.

7. This final report, comprising the spending bills, is then sent to the president to be either signed or vetoed by October 1.

8. The process -- called "regular order" -- hasn't worked for years and usually gets tripped up from the start with the House and Senate unable to agree on a budget resolution.

9. In recent years, Congress has relied on a series of "continuing resolutions" that keep the government funded at its current level to keep the doors open.

10. But as you probably recall, late last year the process really broke down and the government shut down. Now, on the heels of that budget stalemate, a different process is in the works.

11. After the economic uncertainty of last year's budget impasse—and in anticipation of the 2014 midterm congressional elections—the president and Congress leapfrogged the process this year by agreeing in December to a two-year budget plan that sets caps for both the current (2014) fiscal year and fiscal year 2015, which begins in October.

12. The Senate has indicated that it will use the allocations adopted in December to conduct its appropriations process and ignore the proper steps.

13. But the GOP-led House is working on a budget plan to set out its priorities for FY2015.

14. So, as politicians move into an election year, the stage is set for more posturing and rhetorical fights over dueling visions of the government's role -- the sort of actions expected from children, not leaders.

15. If both parties worked together to develop goals and priorities for the country that they shared -- and these common objectives do exist -- the always contentious budget process might finally return to "regular order" and work the way it was intended to work.