Budget

• Author: Dennis J. Mahoney
• Pages: 260-261

Page 260

The federal budget is the comprehensive annual program of income and expenditure of the federal government. The budget is not a constitutional requirement, nor does it answer to either the "appopriations made by law" or the "regular statement of account" of Article I, section 9, of the Constitution. Rather the budget is a legislatively created device to regularize the exercise of the TAXING AND SPENDING POWER.

In the nineteenth century there was no overall annual spending program. Appropriations bills were formulated by various congressional committees, which thereby exercised considerable control over the executive departments. A national budget process was first recommended by the Commission on Economy and Efficiency, appointed by President WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT in 1908; and the BUDGET AND ACCOUNTING ACT, which governed the budget process for over half a century, was enacted in 1921.

Because expenditure is an executive function, the President, as chief executive, was given authority to prepare and submit the budget. This represented a major shift of power within the government in favor of the executive branch. President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT further consolidated presidential authority in 1939 by transferring the Bureau of the Budget (created by the 1921 act) from the Treasury Department to the Executive Office of the President. In 1969, President RICHARD M. NIXON restyled the bureau OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET and increased its control over the operations of executive departments and agencies.

Congress reasserted its role in fiscal policymaking by the CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET AND IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT (1974). The act created a permanent budget committee in each house of Congress, established the Congressional Budget Office to provide independent evaluation of executive economic planning, and prescribed a timetable for each phase of the budget and appropriations process. Even after passage of this act, however, the budget process is...