Overview

The primary job of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is to craft the president's annual budget. But that task is much more comprehensive than simply drafting the budget for the president to present to Congress. Because funding is key to developing political priorities, the OMB director is often at the center of the president's policy debates. "The OMB director is as important as the president makes him or her," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, 2008 GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) top economic adviser. "If you have a president who tells other Cabinet agencies to go through OMB, the director is a player in every trade-off you have to make."

The Bureau of the Budget was created in 1921 as part of the Department of the Treasury. In 1939, it became part of the EOP, and it officially became the Office of Management and Budget in 1970.

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