Every Friday C-SPAN’s The Sidebar podcast goes beyond the headlines of the stories shaping the conversation in Washington and across the country with interviews that provide background and context to the issues and events dominating the news cycle. Our guest this week is Steve Bell, a senior advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He's a veteran of the Senate Budget Committee, working in various roles – including Staff Director – from the early 1980's until 2009. We talked with him about the process of creating the federal budget and why the President's budget proposal is important.

You can find C-SPAN's The Sidebar podcast in its own feed on iTunes, Google Play Music, Stitcher, and TuneIn. Be sure to subscribe now.

Be sure to follow C-SPAN and C-SPAN Radio on Twitter and let us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes using the hashtag "CSPANSidebar". If you like the program, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast player. Every C-SPAN podcast is available on the FREE C-SPAN Radio App for Apple and Android devices as well as iTunes, Google Play Music, Tune-In and Stitcher. C-SPAN's The Sidebar, coming soon to a podcast player near you.