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Observations on the Current State of the Federal Budget Process - Luncheon Address by Dan L. Crippen at the Fall Symposium of the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis, Budgeting for Better Public Service, Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C. November 22, 2002 [i] (November 2002)

handle is hein.congrec/cbo8306 and id is 1 raw text is: Luncheon Address by Dan L. Crippen at the Fall Symposium of the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis, Budgeting for Better Public Service, Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C. November 22, 2002 Observations on the Current State of the Federal Budget Process~ Good afternoon. I am going to start by saying that I never say anything very profound, and I'm not likely to break that record today. I say that because what I'm about to say is probably not very surprising, but, nonetheless, I think it needs to be said. Namely, from where I sit, at least, the Congressional budget process is dead. One might say, Long live the budget process! But it is dead for all practical purposes at the moment. And before I explain why I think that is the case and some of the implications, I want to regale you or bore you with a few highlights and low lights of the history of the budget process as we have known it in the recent past. I understand that a number of you are getting training credits for this, so you may like the history lesson that you are getting here, and you can say that it was an important part of your course work. As most of you know, the Congressional budget process of the modern era started with the Nixon impoundments. For those of you who do not know, President Nixon chose not to spend certain appropriations. Although he did not have a line-item veto, the apportionment power, which the executive branch still has, was used to essentially not spend some funds-effecting an impoundment. The Congress, not surprisingly, was not particularly pleased with that action so, among other things, it eventually fashioned and passed the Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which, in his closing days and weakened position, Nixon signed. So the modern budget process was created, not as an afterthought but certainly as an ancillary thought to the driving force of the legislation, which was to gather back to the Congress some of the budgetary power that the President had sought to claim as his own. The Budget Act, which created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as well, provided for the Congress to have a much better formulation of the budget in an overarching sense than it had probably ever had. You are all familiar with 13 appropriation bills' being passed

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