is there a history of the FBI's budget and breakdown of how it was spent?

Factual Questions
1

Listening to Ashcroft’s testimony last night I was a little suspicious of the comparisons between the Clinton/Bush senior/junior budgets for the FBI. Is there an online source for that sort of information? I got bogged down on the fbi’s own website and google did not come up with anything useful.

2

Regarding Ashcroft’s testimony, I heard him say (paraphrasing) that the reason why the FBI was so unable to properly communicate amongst it’s own was because it’s computer programs were outdated and not linked. (Something like 42 programs were in use that didn’t link together.) And that had a proper budget been allotted, they would have been better equipped to transmit information to the FBI as a whole.

Can someone comment on this as well.

Thanks.

3

All I can find at the moment are these stats:

Cite.

Haven’t found a breakout of the funding.

4

Maybe they should ask their own commission member - Jamie Gorelick - who was in charge of the FBI’s budget under Attorney General Janet Reno? I believe she recused herself from Janet Reno and Louis Freeh’s testimony yesterday, part due to this conflict.

MeanJoe

5

Thanks for the info ravenman. How much of the budget is controlled by the president, and how much is controlled by Congress? Does the president have much influence on the budget anyway?

6

Don’t concern yourself with the Budget Authority numbers. Go to this link to see what Congress actually appropriated for the FBI in Fiscal Years going back to FY1999:

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/approplink.html

You’ll find the FBI information under the Commerce-State-Justice bill. It will take some digging to find what you’re looking for, but it’s there.