OMB seeks 10 percent cuts for fiscal year 2015

Federal agencies are being asked to cut their discretionary budgets for fiscal year 2015 by 10 percent below levels previously requested in the president's 2014 budget submission, according to new budget guidance from Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Burwell.

Agencies are being asked to adopt proposals from the Government Accountability Office's annual report on duplication and overlap in government programs as part of an overall effort to achieve savings. OMB wants to see these savings proposals broken out in a separate section of the budget submission, per the May 29 memorandum.

Per the memo, the Obama administration is preparing for the spending framework of the Budget Control Act, which established the current policy of sequestration, to continue. Burwell wrote: "Your budget submission will provide the President with the options needed to make the hard choices necessary to adhere to the [Budget Control Act's] discretionary funding levels, invest in priority areas, and focus on programs that work."

Agencies are instructed to exclude across-the-board reductions, cuts to mandatory spending, cost-shifting, and the reclassification of discretionary spending to mandatory spending, and new fees from factoring in to their requests. Burwell said that agencies could separately propose such solutions as a way of hitting the targeted 10 percent reductions.