One of Congress’s most fundamental constitutional duties is to appropriate government funds, directing money each year for everything from the national defense to interstate roads and bridges to food assistance for low-income seniors.
The office of Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester accepts two types of appropriations requests: programmatic requests and Congressionally Directed Spending requests.
- Programmatic requests are requests for Congress to fund an authorized federal program at a specific level or to include language directing a federal agency to implement a program in a specific way.
- Congressionally Directed Spending requests are requests to fund a specific project or organization.
For example, increasing funding for Amtrak would be a programmatic request, while providing funding for a specific rail project in your town would be a Congressionally Directed Spending request.
Due to the constraints of the federal budget, Congress will not be able to fund every programmatic or Congressionally Directed Spending request, but your feedback will help our office determine what requests to advocate for. Our team is here to be your voice in Washington and we want to hear from you about how Congress should spend federal dollars.