Do Politicians Listen to Experts? The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 and The Capacity to Budget

Last year offered a unique opportunity to compare the ideas of experts and politicians. The 1990 Budget Enforcement Act changed the federal budget process. Allen Schick's 1990 book, The Capacity to Budget, included ideas on how to improve budgeting at the federal level. A comparison is made between the new law and the new ideas in several areas of the budgetary process: deficit reduction; resource rationing; adjustment to changing expenditures; increasing budget honesty; decreasing conflict; rou-tinizing the process; integrating the parts of the budget; and balancing claims and resources.     

The Budget Enforcement Act in 1991: Isometric Budgeting

The immediate effect of the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA) of 1990 was to cancel a pending $110 billion sequester and to change the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit targets. These and other changes allowed Congress and the administration to escape responsibility for increases in the deficit if discretionary spending was kept within the caps and no new entitlement programs or revenue enhancements were added. This assumption and others relating to the empowerment of the Appropriations Committees and the new authority of the OMB are explored in this article.     

The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990: The Path to No Fault Budgeting

The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, included in the controversial and comprehensive budget legislation passed by Congress in October, makes a number of significant changes in federal budgeting. It shifts the focus of the budget process from deficit reduction to spending control, provides five-year spending totals and mini-sequesters for defense, international and domestic appropriations, and puts entitlements and revenue expenditures on a pay-as-you-go basis. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit targets have been raised substantially, Social Security surpluses taken out of the deficit calculation and allowance made for further adjustments for inflation, Operation Desert Shield, and other emergency spending, minimizing the prospect for general sequestration. OMB has been given important new estimating authority and the roles of the congressional committees involved in budgeting have been altered.     

An Overview of Adjustments to the Budget Enforcement Act Discretionary Spending Caps

This article reviews the adjustments that have been made to the limits on discretionary federal spending that were enacted as part of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. Each type of adjustment authorized by that act is described, and the actual adjustments made by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget are discussed. Tables that display the amounts and timing of the adjustments are used to support the narrative. The article also discusses the relationship of cap adjustments to changes in the federal budget deficit.     

The Voting Rights Act and Louisiana: Twenty Years of Enforcement

This article examines the interaction of structural change (lawsaffecting voting rights) and cultural continuities (differencesbetween the Protestant and black Catholic political cultures)on the level and quality of black political participation inLouisiana. Blacks who at mid-century resided in the French-Catholicparishes were more likely to register and vote than blacks wholived outside these parishes. The advent of the Voting RightsAct has radically changed this pattern. Northern parishes havingthe highest proportion of black population, the highest landtenancy rates, and a tradition of a plantation economy are nowamong the parishes exhibiting the highest rates of black voterregistration.     

The President's FY 1990 Budget: The Last Act in a Decade of Change

This article examines the budget requests of Presidents Reagan and Bush for fiscal year 1990, and how the federal budget has changed during the decade of the 1980s. The author concludes that the federal budget has become less controllable, as the priorities and composition of federal expenditures have shifted during the Reagan years. While the Reagan and Bush budgets do not differ significantly, the manner in which they were constructed does. The effort of President Bush to define his budgetary version of a "kinder, gentler" America may be more illusory than real. The author also traces the change in federal assistance to state and local governments, concluding that, apart from transfer payments, the federal role has markedly declined.     

The first decade of the Congressional Budget Act: Legislative imitation and adaptation in budgeting

The influence of institutions on budgetary behavior at the federal level is the subject of this article, which examines the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. While its impact on budgetary priorities and growth seems modest at best, the Act has had a substantial impact on the process of budgetary decisionmaking, the nature of budgetary debate, and the budgetary strategies employed within Congress. These new and generally dysfunctional forms of congessional budgetary behavior are consequences of a budgetary reform that attempted to transfer many of the resource allocation procedures of the Executive branch to a legislative context. The transfer of many Executive branch budgetary procedures has led to the appearance within Congress of budgetary behavior previously confined largely to the Executive branch. The article also discusses attempts to render the congressional budget process more compatible with the legislative environment, analyzing the modifications in the original budget process that have been effected and proposed in recent years.Earlier versions of this article were delivered at the Workshop on Budgetary Control in the Public Sector, Brussels, Belgium, October 13–14, 1983, the meetings of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, October, 1983, and the meetings of the American Political Science Association, September, 1983. Allen Schick, Robert X. Browning, Alex Hicks, Robert Strauss, John R. Hibbings, Evelyn Brodkin, and Rod Kiewiet provided helpful comments, and Pamela Reyner provided secretarial assistance. All remaining deficiencies are the responsibilities of the authors.     

Congress, the Deficit, and Budget Reconciliation

President Clinton's veto of the 1995 reconciliation bill, the largest and most ambitious such legislation ever passed by Congress, was the first time a reconciliation bill was ever rejected by a president. It was also the first reconciliation bill in two decades to include a tax reduction rather than a tax increase. The fate of this bill, and its scope and contents, suggest the need to assess the evolution of reconciliation within the congressional budget process. In the early 1980s, Congress altered budget reconciliation procedures, putting in place a powerful new capability for deficit reduction. Reconciliation became the primary means within the budget process of restraining entitlement spending and increasing taxes as part of congressional efforts to reduce the deficit. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings magnified certain problems Congress encountered in using reconciliation to control entitlements, producing increased pressure to cut discretionary spending. While the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 included new authority to use reconciliation to restrain entitlements, congressional spending priorities combined with the Peace Dividend to maintain the relative sanctuary entitlement programs have enjoyed. The limits of reconciliation as a deficit reduction tool, both in terms of increasing revenues and curtailing entitlements, are detailed. The inherent procedural advantages accorded to entitlements are contrasted with the treatment of discretionary programs, explaining in part the widening gulf between these two categories of spending. Congress has attempted, without success, to find alternatives to reconciliation. The failure of the seven-year, deficit-eliminating reconciliation bill of 1995 may indicate that certain Limits on the use of reconciliation may have been reached.     

党的七大的成就及时代意义

1945年是所有中国人民值得铭记的一年。在这一年中,抗日战争画上了句号。此刻的中国面临两种道路的抉择,一种是由中共领导建立民主自由的新中国使中国走向光明大道;另一种是仍然让蒋介石维持一党独裁,使中国滑向黑暗深渊。党的七大就是在这个背景下召开的,2015年恰逢中国共产党七大召开70周年,也是纪念反法西斯胜利七十周年。在当下,重温党的七大,对于我们党和人民无疑是十分必要的。本文从七大的背景与内容来阐述党的七大的成就,结合当今时代发展潮流和现今共产党员的实际来分析其时代意义。     

The OMB Budget Examiner and The Congressional Budget Process

This is the second of a two-part retrospective on the evolving role of the OMB budget examiner. The examiner has become more active in negotiations with the legislative branch and tracking the legislative status of various fiscal measures. A new central budget management system was created to monitor appropriation bills. The OMB budget examiner has also been increasingly used to provide information for advocacy purposes before Congress and the public. The institutional effect on OMB of these changing roles is examined and suggestions for organizational reform are made.     

Organizational design and its consequences for administrative reform: Historical lessons from the U.S. Budget and Accounting Act of 1921

The landmark U.S. Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 (BAA) instituted a series of administrative reforms that proponents claimed would improve budgetary control, stability, and coherence. We maintain that the compatibility of governance structures between agency and system levels is critical for understanding why these administrative centralization efforts were successful in achieving these aims for some federal agencies but not others. The BAA reforms impact on budgetary outcomes is evaluated using panel data on major U.S. federal agencies between 1894 and 1940. Applying semiparametric heterogeneous treatment estimation techniques, we find compelling support that administrative centralization of the federal budgetary process enhanced budget stability and coherence for executive departments while resulting in a lower caliber of budgetary performance for independent agencies. These findings imply that system‐level administrative centralization efforts may be effective only when public agencies are structurally amenable to such reforms.     

Incremental Thinking: "Congressional Debate on the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 (Excerpts)"

Editors' Note : The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 was designed to improve the budget-making process of the national legislature. Although this new process has been in use for less than a decade, proposals for a constitutional amendment to limit the budget powers of the federal government are advancing through Congress. In assessing the potential and problems of budget reform, it would be wise to recall the expectations that animated the introduction of presidential budgeting more than 60 years ago. The following excerpts from the October 1919 debate in the House of Representatives on the legislation that ultimately became the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 have a contemporary ring. The problems are not new, and one wonders whether the solutions are as easy as some claim.     

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.     

发达国家科技预算管理体制及对中国的启示

国家科技预算体制是决定一个国家科技发展的重要因素.分析了发达国家所实行的科技预算体制的不同模式,并对其所依赖的基础作了分析.发达国家的科技预算体制有一些共同点,如大都有较好的科技预算协调机制,大都有一个在科技预算中起重要作用的部门,但似乎不存在最优的科技预算体制.发达国家的科技预算较分散,而追赶性国家的科技预算较集中.分析了发达国家科技预算体制对中国的启示,认为中国应该采取相对集中的科技预算管理体制,但要加强跨部门的协调,减少重复分散,最后提出了自己的建议.     

Mini-Symposium: The Federal Executive Budget

James Edwin Kee, Introduction
Bernard Pitsvada, The Executive Budget: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed
Naomi Caiden, Comments
Louise Fisher, Comments
Lance T. LeLoup, Comments     

The Capital Budget: History and Future Directions

While there is a substantial body of literature concerning capital programming and budgeting in the private sector, there is only a modest literature on this subject in the public sector. Government researchers and public administration scholars have, for about seventy-five years, recognized the value of budgeting for operating expenses and have tried to develop theoretical frameworks for the public budgeting process. However, very little of this attention has been devoted to capital budgeting. As Alan Steiss has stated," The theory of capital budgeting has not been set forth; rather the emphasis... has been on devising and improving the techniques of capital budgeting." Michael White has called capital budgeting an "elusive subject" that "lacks clear definitions, organized traditions of inquiry, conceptual boundaries, standard questions, and reliable data sets."