Comment on The President's Budget as a Source of Agency Policy Control

• Date: 01 August 2017

8-2017 NEWS & ANALYSIS 47 ELR 10707

C O M M E N T

Comment on The President’s Budget

as a Source of Agency Policy Control

by Russell Shay

Russell Shay is Director of Policy for the Land Trust Alliance.

From the perspective of a lobbyist for a conserva-

tion nonprot organization in Washington, D.C.,

for three decades, Prof. Eloise Pasacho ’s article—

particularly the descriptive part—is truly insightful and

an excellent look at how the Oce of Management and

Budget (OMB) works and the amount of inuence it has.

e budget part of OMB controls what the government

actually does; whereas, the Oce of Information and

Regulatory Aairs, the regulatory part, controls (or tries to

control) what people outside the government do.

For a number of rea sons, I a m a little skeptica l about

Professor Pasacho ’s recommendations for reforms. Unlike

countries with parlia mentary systems and multiparty

coalitions, where there are largely independent ministers

who are not of the same party of the president, here in the

United States, the president is the boss a nd someone has

to see that his orders get implemented. James Q. Wilson’s

book Bureaucracy is a great work about government and, in

particular, American government. One of the anecdotes in

his book describes how when eodore Roosevelt was Pres-

ident there were six levels of command between President

Roosevelt and a ranger in Yellowstone National Park; when

Wilson wrote the book in the 1980s, there were 24 levels.

e size and complexity of the U.S. Government is such

that it is a very dicult job to reconcile a lot of diering

opinions. But, the role of government is to make decisions,

and that works best when people can come to agreements

with give and take. When people are unable to speak freely

and gure out what is really important to them (and horse

trade), it really impairs the ability of people with disparate

viewpoints to agree to move forward. But the ability to keep

those discussions internal is important to getting the best

decisions—and, indeed, to actually getting a decision made.

Accordingly, I am skeptical of too much disclosure in

certain situations. For example, disclosure is appropriate

when the president discusses his agenda, but when the

details of the budget that reects his agenda are devel-

oped—all of that does not all need be public. I can see

recording and publishing who comes in to talk with OMB;

that is a great idea a nd relatively easy to implement. is

would disclose what everyone should know, but tends to

be obscured—that people who have money at stake seek

out and talk to the people who control the government.

Whereas, for others who are merely interested in good

policy decisions, we sometimes ignore the budget sta—at

our own peril.

In addition, it is probably not appropriate to use policy

cures to address the fact that the current members of Con-

gress are not using their oversight authority very responsi-

bly. Today, there is no John Dingell, the former Chairman

of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who will

bring a deputy assistant secreta ry of Energy up t he Hill to

aggressively grill him or her about the rationale for their

decisions, and about alternatives. Congress has the power

to do this and it is a power that they probably should

be using more. Congress also has the whip hand on the

budget. W hen Congress puts funding in the budget and

requires the money is spent in a certain way, then it will be

spent that way.

What we are seeing in Congress are irreconcilable argu-

ments over and over again on the same subject. What you

want in the budget is to ma ke a decision so the govern-

ment can move forward. But, to do that, you cannot allow

participants in the decisionmaking to say what they would

have done because that just takes you backwards a nd rein-

forces outsiders who wish to re-argue the same question.

ere are a lot of points of view represented in the cur-

rent budget process, both from outsiders and from within

the federal agencies. For example, everyone thinks their job

is importa nt—which is great, because it means that they

are trying really hard to get their jobs done. But someone

has to decide which of those jobs receives more resources

than others. And, that someone has a very tough job.

In sum, Professor Pasacho’s article is a great addition

to the literature. Her art icle will focus more attention on

these issues and could increase accountability. But we have

to be cautious, so that we don’t end up making Adminis-

trative decisions more like the current state of Congres-

sional decisions, where compromise and ba lance and  nal

resolution are less and less rewarded and broad-based sup-

port for these decisions become rarer and rarer.

is Comment is based on a transcription of remarks at the

Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review conference on

March 31, 2017, in Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2017 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.