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The six universal dives are asked of every subject at this tier. This is not one of them. It exists because of one thing this subject has been — office-holder — and a subject who has not been that never gets this page. That is why this record has 7 overlay dives to write rather than a number every record shares. All six base dives were written first, and that ordering is a rule rather than a habit: an overlay dive published on its own is a page about the part of someone chosen by whoever built it.
The first overlay dive on this record. Its universal tables are the same ones the other office-holder at this tier is measured on — that is what makes two records comparable rather than two separate arguments.
The six base dives and the other 6 overlay dives are listed on the full record.
Before any figure about fiscal control means anything, this is the number that bounds it. Discretionary spending is the part Congress appropriates annually and a president signs or vetoes; the rest pays out by formula until a law changes it.
Share of total outlays. OMB Historical Table 8.1 — outlays by Budget Enforcement Act category, actuals only, earliest year 1962. Years inside this term carry a dim rule; yellow marks the low point of the whole series.
The share of federal spending set by the annual appropriations process — the part a president signs or vetoes — has fallen from just over two-thirds in 1962 to about a quarter now. The low point of the whole series, 24.0%, falls in FY2021, and it is a pandemic artefact: emergency spending that no annual bill set inflated the denominator. The share then recovers to between 26 and 28 per cent, which is where it has sat for a decade. Nothing in this trend belongs to any one president; it is what happens when benefits paid by formula grow faster than programmes funded a year at a time.
The first of seven overlay dives on the full record — this record carries two overlays, so it has seven, while Donald Trump carries three and has eleven. That difference is a fact about them rather than a gap. Barack Obama carries the same two and will get this dive on the same tables.