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38 Tax Foundation's Tax Review 1 (1977)

handle is hein.tera/tafoutaxt0041 and id is 1 raw text is: Tax Review] Needed Disciplines In Federal Budget Policy By Samuel M. Cohn Instead of listing specific budget disciplines, I want to address the environment in which the Fed- eral Budget is formulated and executed. Then I shall make a few general suggestions that I believe would niprove that environment and also improve the decision-making machinery of the Federal Govern- mnent. As for my credentials, I participated in the formnu- lation and the execution of twenty-eight annual Federal Budgets. For the last eight of those budgets, I was the senior career service Budget Official in the Executive Office of the President, which ieant in the Bureau of the Budget and its successor agency, the Office of Managemnent and Budget. With all that experience, the Tax Foundation thought I ought to have learned a little bit that might interest \,oul and perhaps be of importance to \,oul. But, let mie warn you, because of all that experience, I feel less sure now that I know the answers to crucial issues than I felt many years ago, before I had all that experience. Nevertheless, there are basic questions I do want to address. First, is there a need for budget disci- pline? Of course, there is. And it can be summed up in a story told to mile by anypredecessor, as the senior career budget official in the government. 1le said, and I quote, I've been in this business a long time, in both Democratic and Republican Adininistrations. Now, make no mistake about it. They're both spend- ers. And then he said, after reflection, But some- how, I seem to have the impression that the Demno- crats enjoyed it more! In twenty-seven of the twenty-eight budgets I helped formulate, even after the President provided JAN., 1977 Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1 specific policy guidance to the federal agencies, and even after the Bureau of the Budget had sharply honed the agency proposals, the tentative spending total was substantially higher than the President found acceptable to him. So, the staff had to go back several times, clarify issues, suggest possible trade- offs, get more information, negotiate deferrals, negotiate sacrifices, and so on. Even after that was done, every one of these Presidents, there were fiv'e of them-had some very tough policy decisions to make. And even after they made them, they were not necessarily happy, but perhaps they w\,ere recon- ciled to the total of their budget proposals. Each seemed to think the total was too high, but it was the best he could do. And even when he was fin- ished, somehow, in most cases, the Congress usually found ways to reduce his total. This Issue In Brief If the nation's economy could be encouraged to operate closer to its capacity, many Federal budget problems would be relieved, the author believes. But the crucial function of the budgetary pro- cess, states this veteran of 28 annual budgets, is making choices. And that is the objective of a list of disciplines he outlines. If government disciplines are matched by busi- ness and labor restraint in prices and wages, we can have a maximum potential economy, says Samuel M. Cohn. Success will be measured in our utilization of resources.: Copyright 1977 by Tax Foundation. Inc., 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10020, JUdson 2-0880 1