BY THEIR NATURE, legislative bodies don't pull in unison as smoothly as the executive branch. Unless the leaders are dictators — and civic associations and editorial writers don't like that the power is dispersed among a host of committee chairmen and other individualists who are likely to have their own notions about what the government ought to be doing. When it comes time to match up revenues and expenditures, the problems of arriving at coherent decisions are especially difficult.
No matter how a state legislature goes about this, its fiscal policy is allowed to happen more often than it is planned with any kind of careful foresight. Although the fiscal consequences are greater, there is even less compulsion for the U. S. Congress to act responsibly because the national legislators are relieved of the necessity of balancing the federal budget. But this may change if the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 works out as its supporters hope.
In the past, members of the House and Senate never had to make a conscious decision about (or vote on) the size of the annual deficit. Early each year the President submitted his spending requests in the form of the executive budget. Various congressional cornmitees considered the separate pieces without any effort at coordination. taxes were levied by committees that had no jurisdiction overspending. In the House, nearly autonomous subcommittee on appropriations, the power of their chairmen so great that not even the full appropriations committee could overturn them very often. Still other committees got around the appropriations process by obligating "contract authority" or giving an agency the right to borrow directly from the Treasury.
Naturally, a system grew up whereby there were diverse sources of goodies for distribution among the members. Congress fell into the habit of not passing the last of the appropriations bills until the fiscal year was half over.
No one could tell what the deficit would be until it was too late to do anything about it. There was no point in the proceedings when the senators and representatives were confronted collectively with the overall economic implications of their separate sets of actions.
With passage of the 1974 legislation, Congress gave itself a mechanism for change. Budget committees were set up in both houses under Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D., Maine) and Rep. Brock Adams (D., Washington). In addition, there is a separately staffed central congressional budget office to gather information. Previously the legislators had no way of testing the figures prepared by the executive Office of Management and Budget.
Switching over to an October (rather than July) start of the new fiscal year, Congress is about to find out whether binding decisions reached in advance can be made to stick. Last year's trial walk-through demonstrated that there is still some question about whether the new system can withstand the stress created by the threat to the established power of other committees.
By May, the two houses are required to agree on target budget figures for the upcoming fiscal year, including income estimates, spending ceilings, and the projected deficit. Then in September, again acting on recommendations brought to the floor by the budget committees. Congress can make adjustments in the May figures. What is particularly threatening to the other comittees is that the budget resolution will include a breakdown on categories of expenditures so much for defense, so much for employment programs, etc. Not only is this an incursion onto the turf of committee barons who are accustomed to getting their own way — Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis(D., Mississippi) to name one — but it necessarily cuts into the highly technical domain of the tax committees. If, when the figures are added up in September, the appropriation bills that have already been enacted total more than the ceiling amount, there is a process for Congress to reconcile the budget just before the new fiscal year begins by taking money from here and putting it there. Once before, in 1946, Congress tried a similar budget coordinating system, but it flew apart in 1952 for the simple reason that most of the members didn't want it.
One of those whose life should be simplified if the new system succeeds is the President. Heretofore he had nobody to talk to, to deal with, on budget policy. The appropriations subcommittee chairmen ran their own shows without talking even to one another.
Whether the new procedures survive or not will be a fascinating political study. Liberals, who ordinarily are identified with governmental reform, have the most to lose if the system works. How much will it cost, and how does it stack up alongside some other public need, are not usually the first questions that they ask themselves. A congressman who is deeply concerned about, say, education, may not welcome the budget office's analytical studies of how well various programs are working. Most would much rather spend a dollar for education and a dollar for health and a dollar for a jobs program than have to make a choice of which deserves an available dollar the most. If the new arrangements fail, it will probably be because the "spenders" liked it better the old way.
February 1976/Illinois Issues/31