The Executive Budget in the Federal Government: The First Century and Beyond

This article reviews the history of executive budgeting in the United States a century after President William Howard Taft's Economy and Efficiency Commission proposed an executive budget. This history, the authors argue, does not suggest that giving more budget power to the president will improve budget outcomes. Instead, what is needed is more cooperation between the branches of government and a better‐educated public—goals that were shared by budget reformers when the Taft report was published.     

The 1983 Federal Budget

Editors' Note: The following material is taken, with permission of the author, from the first chapter of The Brookings Institution's Setting National Priorities: The 1983 Budget.     

The Use of Executive Guidance in State Budget Preparation

The method by which a state budget is developed is critical to the policy-making process. A longitudinal study of states finds an increasing use of budget guidance techniques that control how agencies may propose policy changes and request funds to support those changes. The article examines whether the use of budget guidance is associated with several factors, including regions of the United States, state socio-economic characteristics, state government characteristics, various aspects of state budgeting (such as the use of policy analysis by the executive), and the educational characteristics of the professional staffs in state budget offices.     

Offsetting Collections in the Federal Budget

Offsetting collections are one of the largest and least understood types of transactions in the federal budget. This article discusses a number of the most common questions that arise with regard to offsetting collections.     

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.     

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.     

Reflections on the President's 1991 Federal Budget

The president's new budget arrived to Congress two and one-half weeks late. Its contents had been reduced to a single volume and a brief pamphlet. And it included proposals for improving the federal budgetary process. That budget is profiled herein, including discussions of the conditions under which it was submitted, the economic assumptions made within it, and the proposed expenditures and anticipated revenues.     

Perceptions on Federal Budget Reforms: Public Budgeting Researchers' View

This study examines budget experts' perceptions on suggested federal budget reforms. Based on the response of a group of selected public budgeting professors (N = 46), the study identifies several specific reforms that are supported by the experts from both the viability and adoptability consideration. The study also reveals the fact that the respondents are less optimistic about the adoptability of the suggested reforms even though they generally agree with most of the reforms. Addressing the federal deficit problem, the authors further discuss the implication of the experts' perceptions on federal budget reforms.     

The Reiterative Nature of Budget Reform: Is There Anything New in Federal Budgeting?

This article will attempt to demonstrate the limitations of budget reforms to bring about fundamental change in budget outcomes. In an effort to determine the extent to which these reforms have had any lasting effect, the author first discusses the history of federal budgeting since the advent of the executive budget in 1921. Second, the author reviews three reforms that are prominent in the U.S. Congress current budget debate—enacting fixed budget targets, granting the president increased power in the budget process through enacting a line item veto, or implementing a performance-based budget. Lastly, the author will cite the limitations of each to bring about lasting changes in budget outcomes or decision processes.     

The U.S. Federal Executive in an Era of Change

This article examines changes in the background characteristics, attitudes, and behavior patterns of high-level U.S. federal executives. It also considers the impact of the New Public Management (NPM) movement. The data indicate that despite intense struggles about the role of the public sector, top civil servants remain a well-educated, experienced, and highly motivated group, the members of which compare favorably to top executives in the private sector. The data also suggest that the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 has been effective in producing a more politically responsive corps of career civil servants, and that administrators (both career and noncareer) are increasingly attuned to the more technical and legal aspects of their roles and less oriented to protecting particular interests or clientele groups. NPM-style changes are still in progress and remain controversial, but it appears that political leaders continue to have an excellent (and increasingly diverse) group of career people to work with and a system that—at least in part due to the CSRA reforms—is more responsive to them than before. The top part of the U.S. bureaucracy may have been bent and reshaped in many ways over the last thirty years, but, despite widely publicized fears, it has not broken.     

Federal Grants, Earmarked Revenues, and Budget Crowd-Out: State Highway Funding

This paper examines the potential for budget crowd-out in state highway financing. Highway projects are funded primarily through state earmarked tax revenues and federal highway grants. Theoretically, these two sources of revenues could crowd-out state general funds, freeing up these funds for other uses. Previous studies of highway funding show little evidence of significant crowd-out, providing support for the "flypaper effect." The empirical model of this paper better controls for the endogeneity of federal highway grants and state earmarked highway revenues than previous studies and results suggest little to no crowd-out. Also, our study concludes that state budgeting decisions in the post-Intermodal Surface and Transporation Efficiency Act era still support the "flypaper effect."