Abstract
In Chap.4, congressional funding data provided by the Army for 1,152 programs over six fiscal years will show that Congress modifies over 40 percent of program funding requests during the budget review process each fiscal year. This is much different from what you might assume given evidence from both domestic and defense budgets over the past 25 years. Program funding is markedly non-incremental and is not confined to a particular or consistent subset of programs. Individual program funding fluctuates wildly as political and programmatic battles are won and lost, contrary to the conventional portrait of an immovable budget. Significant program funding variance occurs both relative to the previous year’s appropriations and the President’s current budget request.
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- 1.
Data is from fiscal years 2004–2009. The average percentage change from the previous year’s budget request is 18%; from the President’s request, only 4%. Budget figures include base procurement and RDTE monies.
- 2.
Department of Defense, “Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy,” http://www.acq.osd.mil/mibp/faqs.shtml (August 10, 2012).
- 3.
Aaron Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1964). Incrementalism in budgeting is an extension of Charles Lindblom’s work, “The Science of ‘Muddling Through’,” Public Administration Review 19 (1959): 79–88. Lindblom proposes a theory of incremental decision-making in bureaucracies.
- 4.
- 5.
Schick (1983), p. 21.
- 6.
Dempster and Aaron Wildavsky (1979), p. 377.
- 7.
Agency budget data is from the Office of Management and Budget (2010). Budget figures are adjusted to constant 2010 dollars.
- 8.
This is described as “punctuated equilibrium” in Jones and Baumgartner (2005), p. 20.
- 9.
Simon (1945), pp. 93–94.
- 10.
- 11.
Data includes Department of Defense base budget authority figures only, not supplemental funding.
- 12.
Fenno (1966), p. 354.
- 13.
Natchez and Bupp (1973), p. 962. John Wanat’s critique of incrementalism concludes that “further research attention must be paid to the programmatic portion of the budget…this is the only part of the budget that is ‘variable.’ It is only in this component of the budget that the ‘politics’ of the budgetary process can be found.” Wanat (1974), p. 1228. See also John Gist’s use of Department of Defense RDTE accounts to reveal both incrementalism and large fluctuation in budgeting at both the program and bureau levels. Gist (1982).
- 14.
Congressional Budget Office (2007), p. xii.
- 15.
Congressional Budget Office (2007), p. 3.
- 16.
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, Committee Print to Accompany H.R. 3326, 111th Cong., 2d sess.
- 17.
Aerial Common Sensor is now named the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System, or EMARSS.
- 18.
Wlezien (1993), p. 58.
- 19.
U.S. Government Accountability Office (2009a).
- 20.
See the Appendix for a comprehensive list of all the programs contained in AIM for fiscal year 2007 and their funding tracks through Congress.
- 21.
Data obtained from House Committee on Appropriations, Making Appropriations for the Department of Defense for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1997, and for Other Purposes, 104th Cong., 2d sess., H. Rpt 104-863; House Committee on Appropriations, Making Appropriations for the Department of Defense for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1998, and for Other Purposes, 105th Cong., 1st sess., H. Rpt 105-265; House Committee on Appropriations, Making Appropriations for the Department of Defense for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1999, and for Other Purposes, 105th Cong., 2d sess., H. Rpt 105-746; House Committee on Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, Committee Print to Accompany H.R. 3326, 111th Cong., 2d sess.
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Demarest, H.B. (2017). Uncovering Turmoil in Stable Budgets. In: US Defense Budget Outcomes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52301-9_4
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