2012 United States federal budget

The 2012 United States federal budget was the budget to fund government operations for the fiscal year 2012, which lasted from October 1, 2011 through September 30, 2012. The original spending request was issued by President Barack Obama in February 2011. That April, the Republican-held House of Representatives announced a competing plan, The Path to Prosperity, emboldened by a major victory in the 2010 Congressional elections associated with the Tea Party movement. The budget plans were both intended to focus on deficit reduction, but differed in their changes to taxation, entitlement programs, defense spending, and research funding.^[5][6]

The House resolution did not pass the Senate, nor did the Senate pass a resolution of their own, so there was no 2012 budget of record. The actual appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2012 included four continuing resolutions and three full-year appropriations bills enacted in November and December 2011, in accordance with the United States budget process. These appropriations were greatly affected by the Budget Control Act of 2011, passed in August 2011 as a resolution to the debt-ceiling crisis; it mandated budget cuts over a ten-year period beginning with Fiscal Year 2012. In addition, legislation was passed to extend a cut in the Social Security payroll tax for the entirety of calendar year 2012.

The government was initially funded through five temporary continuing resolutions. Final funding for the government was enacted as an omnibus spending bill, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012, on December 23, 2011.