In the United States Congress, appropriations are annual decisions about how the federal government spends some of its money. These funds generally address the discretionary portion of the budget, not mandatory spending. Congressional appropriations for some important Breast Cancer programs, such as the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, must be approved anew every year. The process for enacting appropriation bills has a lot of moving parts. This diagram explains all the steps and shows the general timeline. (Click on the image to download a high-res PDF.)
Image and PDF from ResearchAmerica.org