US Budget vs Appropriations, what is the difference?

[Xlar]

Can someone explain this to me? Congress just passed a budget but there is now a deadline of March 23 to pass appropriations. How are appropriations different from the budget? What happens if they don't pass the appropriations?

[wordnerd]

Budget set caps and overall spending goals. Appropriation bills go line-by-line and tell each agency what they spend specifically on each line item. Agencies need an appropriation to keep operating, whether or not there's a larger budget deal.

[Fomerly known as something]

AKA the Budget is the outline for the Governments term paper.

[Peachtea]

And the budget deal only gave a 6 week CR - contining resolution - on current appropriations. With CRs, agencies get appropraitions at the current spending levels for the duration of that CR. This is what Congress does when they don’t agree on a budget/appropriations for the FY but don’t want to shut down the government. So under the current deal, appropriations will end after six weeks and the government will shut down again if Congress doesn’t either pass another CR or pass the remaining FY18 appropriations by the deadline. But given the budget deal, it should be easy for Congress to pass the FY18 appropriations and a shutdown is highly unlikely.

[Xlar]

That makes sense, thank you all! So a the budget set a new outline with spending goals and the appropriations detail specifically how they will meet those new spending goals.