Is The National Budget Controllable?

Previous scholarly analyses of national spending have shown a penchant for incre-mentalism in interpreting changes. They have also focused almost exclusively on annual national outlays or annual expenditures. This article argues that, in many cases, budget authority figures provide a better basis for analyzing the national budget. The author gathered annual budget authority (BA) figures from fiscal years 1969 to 1993 and used this BA data for an empirical test of budget controllability. If the national budget has or has not been controlled in the recent past, then it should help us to judge whether or not it is controllable now. Five potential major budget interventions from fiscal year 1980 to 1993 were tested using an interrupted time-series and two regression models. Different intervention results are anticipated depending upon whether one has a policy perspective that is incrementalist, international systemic, or domestic political. The analysis provides more support for the domestic political perspective than for incrementalist or international systemic views. Budget authority was found to be superior to outlays for linking budget results to policy decisions. The national budget responded appropriately to policy decisions in the recent past. In this sense, the budget was controlled and we should view it as controllable.     

A call for budget reform

This article calls for reform of the U.S. Federal budget from two perspectives, preparation and content. The first aspect of reform proposes to amend the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 by eliminating the requirement for an executive budget. It proposes replacing the executive budget submission with a budget prepared by a joint executive-legislative council. While the decision-making process for approval of the budget would remain the same, the council-proposed budget would eliminate several time consuming issues of disagreement such as whose economic estimates are used. The second aspect of reform proposes an examination of the contents of the budget. The current budget focuses on agency appropriations and the debt/surplus figure. Many more issues such as unfunded pension liabilities, true costs of credit, value of government-owned assets and the number of appropriations are largely neglected. This aspect of the budget should be examined by a non-partisan group of experts to make recommendations for an improvement in the informational content of the budget. Improved information could help support sound decisionmaking. The article contends that we can preserve the constitutional separation of powers dealing with the budget while we simply improve the methods used to prepare the document itself, and once the document is prepared it would be structured so it can be examined in a meaningful manner by interested citizens in order to ascertain the financial conditions of the country.     

Rules and Flexibility in Public Budgeting: The Case of Budget Modernisation in Australia

This paper explores the features of public budgeting that make it resistant to efforts to balance central oversight and situational flexibility. Its aim is to help explain why systemic efforts at budget modernisation in the name of ‘devolution’ may have failed to deliver expanded budget flexibility. After defining flexibility, and briefly surveying how it can be inhibited by budget practices using the example of collaboration, the paper applies a taxonomy of general ‘budget rules’ to illustrate the trade‐offs between control and flexibility. It uses an analysis of budget reform in the Australian federal government over the last 30 years to identify a key set of ‘legacy reforms’ – all intended primarily to enable budget flexibility – to show how their design and redesign were purposed as modification to the general rules, and how, ultimately, they were constrained by them.     

Budget Redirection in Georgia State Government

Budget redirection in Georgia state government represents a change from the expectation of continuous budget growth to an expectation that budget expansion will be accompanied by compensating budget reductions through an ongoing process of priority assessment. Its essential features are: the requirement that state agencies identify a minimum of 5 percent of their current year's budget which becomes the primary means for funding new programs and services in the coming fiscal year; and a limit, based upon revenue projections, on the amount an agency may request above the current year's budget. Like budget reforms in any era, it emanated from a combination of fiscal, managerial, and political objectives.     

Confessions of a Dinosaur

The old time budget officer has been all but wiped out—the species having been deprived of its natural habitat by the great smoke cloud that began to spread after the great cataclysm of 1974 when the Budget Act began to change all the rules. This, of course, is an overstatement. But it is clear—at least from the perspective of this old dinosaur—that the job of the budget officer has changed over the years, from what many perceived of as a master of financial magic to just another serf (or supervisor) in the bureaucratic feudal system.
This is not a polemic against the Budget Act or the changes that have taken place. The only thing constant about the budget process is change. Rather, it is a discussion of how these changes have affected budget officers over the decades that I have been involved in the budget business.     

Federal Budget Concepts—Bright Lines or Black Holes?

This article reviews a range of issues that are central to the organizing principles of the federal budget—the guidelines that determine whether a transaction belongs in or outside of the budget; and, if it belongs in the budget, how it should be recorded. The article starts by discussing the nature of the federal budget, the powers and responsibilities of the federal government, and related issues, and then discusses four broad sets of budget concepts issues: (I) Budgeting for Earmarked Taxes and Spending; (II) Budgeting for Capital Investment; (III) Classification Categories Within the Budget; and (IV) Evasions of Budgetary Coverage.     

The President's Fiscal Year 1992 Budget: Almost Quiet on the Budgetary Front

The Fiscal Year 1992 Budget was prepared under unusual conditions. The Persian Gulf War, the piesident's disinterest in domestic issues, the bitter debate over the fiscal year 1991 budget, and the upcoming re-apportionment all combined to make this year atypical The result is a document in which the most substantial change is the cover—a patriotic red, white, and blue Inside, it uses the "one book" format of fiscal year 1991 The budget examines different interpretations of the budget deficit, implements major changes in budgetary accounting, and outlines assumptions made in preparing the budget. Overall, the budget document consolidates the gains made in 1990     

Budget Procedures and the Size of the Budget: Evidence from Danish Local Government

This paper analyzes procedural influences on budgetary outcomes in Danish local government. By analyzing local governments the study can remedy two shortcomings of most procedural budget studies. The first is that most studies analyze national budget procedures, which means that only a limited and quite heterogeneous number of cases can be analyzed. The second and more fundamental shortcoming in most studies is the lack of a distinction between political institutions and budget institutions. Although this distinction is difficult to establish for empirical analysis at the national level, it is immediately clear when dealing with local governments. The paper tests a number of hypotheses on procedural influences. It finds that budget institutions have no certain effects on budget outcomes in the preparatory phase. However, in the implementation phase budget institutions seem to matter.     

The Evolution of Accounting for Receipts in the Federal Budget

This article discusses the fundamental concepts governing budget scorekeeping of federal receipts. It is a companion to a previous article that discussed "offsetting collections," which is income that is recorded as offsets to federal outlays rather than as federal receipts. This article begins by showing the structure of the receipts table in the first presidential budget, which was the 1923 budget, and it provides a chronological discussion of how the budget presentation of receipts has evolved since then. The article then recapitulates the present budget concepts for receipts and lists the five most common challenges to them. It ends with a brief reference to the best sources for data on federal receipts, and two appendices that discuss technical issues that arise in the course of the article.     

The Pending Revolution in Federal Accounting Standards

Accounting standards constitute the body of guidance needed to provide coherence and direction to accountants on how to keep the books. They inform the accountant about the logic of the way that accounting data should be organized and displayed in order to maximize its value to the prospective user. (The prospective users, in the case of federal accounting, range from the president and Congress through agency managers to the general public.) Federal accounting standards are the equivalent, for accounting, of budget concepts for the federal budget. After a long genesis, federal accounting standards are in the midst of a revolution which, if it succeeds, will transform the way accounting reports on federal fiscal activities and how it relates to the federal budget. This article, written from the perspective of a budget concepts technician who has participated in this effort, reviews these developments and where they seem to be heading.     

论人民代表大会在绩效预算改革中的运作与影响——以广东省A区为例

在当代中国的人民代表大会制下,加强人民代表大会对政府预算的监督是深化预算制度改革的核心内容。但是,在信息不对称的背景下,由于缺乏科学有力、具体可行的制度安排,人大的预算监督在实践中往往被大大弱化。通过参与式观察及无结构访谈的形式搜集广东省A区开展绩效预算改革的实证资料后发现,尽管以财政部门为主导的绩效预算改革模式缓解了人大与政府间的信息不对称现象而有助于加强人大的预算监督,但由于人大在改革中未能发挥主导作用而损害了绩效预算改革的最终效果。因此,发挥人大的内在优势,并以构建强化人大预算监督的制度安排为主要目标,应当是当前地方政府推行绩效预算改革的不二选择,而强化预算体制的公共性则应当是绩效预算改革的基本主轴。     

President Clinton's Fiscal 1998 Budget: Political and Constitutional Paths to Balance

This article examines President Clinton's FY 98 budget proposals and the political and economic factors that led to the balanced budget agreement. Also explored are the constitutional approaches to fiscal discipline: the balanced budget amendment, the tax supermajority amendment, and the line item veto that was used 80 times by President Clinton to delete over a billion dollars. The analysis reveals that budget bargaining was continuous before and after the budget agreement was reached, moving downward from decisions on macro-budgetary totals to micro-budgetary choices on tax cuts and appropriations. The study concludes that President Clinton was relatively successful in achieving budgetary goals under divided government, that the agreement was significant despite the economic growth that made it easier, and that constitutional remedies will continue to be important in the coming years.     

Toward a Regulatory Budget

A regulatory budget would require the federal government to treat compliance costs incurred by the private sector as if they were incurred by the government, without requiring the government to actually assume those costs. For example, EPA could be given a regulatory compliance budget of say $80 billion in FY98. A regulatory budget would provoke an annual debate in Congress on the size of EPA's or OSHA's budget. Such a debate would force the proponents to weigh the benefits and costs of various regulatory programs, something now lacking in the political process.
Interest in a regulatory budget reflects the slight gains in the quality of regulatory decision making resulting from mandatory regulatory review. It is now apparent that better information about the costs, benefits, and distributional consequences of regulation will not automatically improve regulatory decision making-although it would not hurt.     

Budget Balancing in Difficult Times: The Case of the Two New Yorks

The objective of governments is to efficiently provide essential services and infrastructure to their jurisdictions at a competitive tax rate within the constraint of a balanced budget. In recent years, several states have found it difficult to maintain this standard. This article examines the nature of the problem in the overlapping jurisdictions of New York City and New York State. Specifically, it explains the nature of projected budget gaps that have emerged in New York, and describes how the two New Yorks' political leaders have managed their budgets in recent years. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that expenditures significantly exceed revenues, thus leading to inevitable budget gaps, and that policies designed to close the gap have harmful consequences.     

Federal Agency Budget Officers: Who Needs Them?

This article examines the role of federal agency budget officers and their responsibilities from the author's own perspective and experience. The article suggests that it is inadequate to standardize the role of an agency budget oficer other than that used by the agency head to determine if he or she is satisfied with the budget processes in the agency.     

Budgetary constraints and municipal revenue forecasting

Conclusion The objective of this research has been to determine whether key budget participants see forecasting as making significant contributions to the budgetary process. The issue is important for at least two reasons. Budgetary tools will be used to the degree budget players perceive them as providing net budgettary benefits. Moreover, the continuing trend toward technological sophistication gives governments opportunities, red herrings or not, to incorporate the technology into the budget process. The issue is also very timely; with the demise of packaged budget reforms but not the values of budget reforms, there may be new opportunities for improving budgeting on a less grandiose, more piecemeal basis, such as using forecasts to analyze budgetary options. The findings here provide some insight into two questions concerning governmental forecasting. First, why do governments use complex methods? In support of previous research, since cities most dependent on intergovernmental aid tend to use complex forecasting, such methods may indeed be seen as a way to help cope with fiscal stress. Also, reflecting the ambiguity of current research, since cities tend to use relatively simple techniques regardless of the revenue source being forecasted, the source is at best a partial determinant of complexity. The most important predictor of complexity, however, was budget format; cities that emphasize reform methods, especially planning, tend to use the most complex forecast methods. The forecasting process was not as important as expected.Second, so what? Does forecasting influence budgetary choices? The evidence from the second part of the study suggest that it can, but within definable limits. Budget directors are more likely than councils to value outyear estimates, but both actors are much less likely to value long-term estimates. The survey results also indicate that revenue forecasts are not as useful for making political decisions as for making management decisions: the forecast is usually used as an internal document, is only sometimes intended to affect council decisions, and is not usually included in the budget. In short, the forecast may be most useful for making managerial decisions since that is what most cities want out of it. It also tends to be more useful if the budget format is less traditional. Finally, the findings indicate that forecasting may be more useful to management to the degree the council finds it politically useful. This is extremely important since it suggests that as powerful as technology may be, budgetary tools that do not meet political needs will be managerially confined.Clearly, more research is needed in this area. Does forecasting actually shape long-range plans? In the long run, will the forecasting effort change the ways cities budget? Can the availability of forecasting information strengthen one actor relative to another? These are important questions that need answering to clarify the impact of forecasting and other technologies on the budget process.     

Reflections on Budget Systems

Several prominent budget systems of past years, such as the Planning Programming Budget System and Zero-Base Budgeting, are no longer popular as comprehensive systems, each system has had a continuing effect on current practices. This article comments on the usefulness of several features of budget systems particularly from a management perspective. It also offers several criteria for design of budget systems which, it is hoped, would help prevent some of the problems that have been encountered in the past.     

参与式预算的公共投资效率意义——以浙江温岭市泽国镇为例

主要的论题是政府在公共预算制定过程中,通过怎样的机制实现公共投资效率的最大化.采用了规范研究与实证案例研究相结合的研究方法.研究表明,公共投资效率的涵义是公共投入为相关民众带来福利的最大改进,其规范性制度意义是相关民众就公共预算方案达成一致同意.研究指出,实现公共投资效率的核心问题是居民偏好的有效表达与偏好的集结;基于偏好表达与偏好集结的不可能性困境,在居民偏好给定的情况下,通过居民参与公共预算方案的讨论与协商,居民的偏好能够有效表达,并在协商过程中理性地、非强制地改变自己的偏好,进而就公共决策达成一致同意.浙江省温岭市泽国镇实施的参与式公共预算模式,有效解决了公共投资决策中的偏好表达与偏好集结的问题,促进了公共投资效率的实现,在基层公共预算制度改革中具有普遍意义.居民在公共预算制定过程中的协商参与,不仅使得政府公共决策具有了政治上的合法性,公共决策满足了民众需求,更重要的是促进了公共投资效率的实现.     

Rating the Chancellors and their Budgets

The annual budget presentation is one of the most important forms of public, partisan behaviour in a parliamentary democracy. As such, it should share many features with the addresses of US presidents, including their presumed efficacy. Yet public reactions to budget presentations have been studied only indirectly, and a link between these reactions and government standing has not been established. We use Gallup data over four decades to investigate how voters assess Chancellors of the Exchequer and their budgets. We find that voters' assessments are a product of the performance of the economy, the content of the budget, the media's reaction to the budget and political factors, and are not simply derivative of general feelings about the government in power or intended vote. While developed independently, evaluations of the Chancellor and the budget affect short-term voting intentions of the public. Thus, in unitary, parliamentary governments, as in federal and presidential systems, voters use more than one focal point (in a single party) to evaluate the government and its actions.     

The Variety of State Capital Budgets: A Survey

In 1986 the staff of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget reviewed issues concerning the possible development of a federal capital budget. As part of this study, a survey of all 50 states was conducted concerning state capital budgets. This paper summarizes the results of the survey. According to the survey responses, 42 states have capital budgets. Of these 42, 37 generally borrow to finance some public capital and 5 generally do not. Of the 8 states that said they do not have a capital budget, 4 generally borrow to finance some public capital and 4 generally do not. The survey also found that the form of a governor's capital budget, the way legislatures enact capital spending, the coverage of the capital budget, and the method of financing capital vary widely among states, making it virtually impossible to define a state capital budget in a precise way. Large amounts of state capital spending, especially for transportation, are generally not included in state capital budgets.