Budget Processes, Institutional Power, and Political Courage: 1974-2024

• In Event: Revisiting Watergate: Crisis, Renewal, and the Presidency

Abstract

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 fell short of its stated institutional and policy expectations within a decade. Today, the procedural bones of the Budget Act exist, but the letter and spirit of the new processes, deadlines, and institutional responsibilities have been neglected across all manner of policy and partisan landscapes. While contemporary congressional “dysfunction” receives blame for self-induced fiscal crises and partisan gridlock, the Budget Act’s goals and processes were undermined by members, leaders, committees, and executive branch political strategies by the early 1980s. Today, repeated fiscal cliffs and short-term budget resolutions are the norm. Budget Committees are again holding hearings on legislative reform, but in ways intended to take power from congressional majorities. Recycled ideas include binding fiscal commissions, sequestration, across-the-board spending cuts, balanced budget constitutional amendments, and other automatic mechanisms, all of which purposely weaken member and majority power while still requiring difficult votes on the floor before or after their creation to work.
This paper’s literature review will assess three types of scholarly approaches to these multi-decade trends: principal-agent theory, majority party cartels, and institutional capacity analysis (favoring the latter). Paper data will rely heavily on primary sources from the Congressional Budget Office (itself a key vestige of the 1974 Act), Government Accountability Office, and interviews with former Budget Committee Chairs of the House and Senate representing both parties.

Author

• Jasmine Farrier, University of Louisville