Welcome to Federal Credit Fridays! The U.S. government is one of the largest lenders and credit guarantors on earth. Its portfolio is estimated at over $3.6 trillion, as measured by loan assets and the face value of loan guarantees. The government uses credit for a wide variety of policy missions, including housing, higher education, small businesses, rural and urban economic development, infrastructure, and export promotion, among others. This podcast will familiarize you with the vast world of federal credit, and we hope that you’ll learn about similarities and differences between these programs as well as the importance of their work to achieving policy missions within the framework of public-private collaboration.
Today’s podcast is about the profession of budgeting within the executive branch of the federal government. As we know, the U.S. government is one of the largest organizations on Planet Earth, and the budget process—led by the Office of Management and Budget—is a profession all its own. The Budget Line of Business (affectionately called the BLoB) is the profession within the federal government that executes the will of Congress and the President. This profession, and its corresponding line of business, is a cadre of federal servants who are critically important to make government work. This community, and how they develop professionally, is worth understanding.
To shed some light on this, I asked Shalini Benson to join me on my podcast. She is a senior adviser and subject-matter expert in Summit’s federal financial management practice, and she brings 25 years of experience in the federal, private, and nonprofit sectors in leadership roles. Benson has been a leader at five different federal agencies, including three budget offices. She has extensively taught and led budget staff and policy makers through the federal budget process, and she is also an alumna of the Office of Management and Budget.
In this podcast I ask, and get some answers, about the BLoB: Is it an agency? An industry group? Who runs it? Why does it exist? We also learn how it has changed over the years and share ideas on the future of federal budgeting.
I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Keep your comments coming!
