Executive branch budget proposals are gathered into a single push from the White House for its spending priorities, with more detail about how exactly the agencies want to spend the funds they’re requesting. Then Congress gets its turn, sometimes embracing some of the president’s wishes, and sometimes ignoring them. But even when lawmakers put together a plan for final consideration, the process can get derailed by politics, as the U.S. has seen in the current federal budget effort, which has flirted repeatedly with failure and government shutdowns. Congress is currently evaluating a budget for 2024, after several false starts and continuing resolutions.