THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIO-POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE

The Economic and Socio-Political Significance

The Economic and Socio-Political Significance

Introduction

Since the early 1980s, the budget has been the dominant issue of American national politics, overshadowing all other policy concerns. A good indicator is media coverage. According to David W. Brady and Craig Volden, the attention paid to the budget by the media has increased dramatically. During the 1970s, the New York Times ran an average of about 200 stories per year on the budget; during the 1980s, it averaged 1,800 stories a year. This trend has continued into the 1990s. When reporters cover Congress, their stories are frequently budget related.(Davila, 2005)

Discussion

The reason journalists emphasize budget issues today is not because they are deeply interested in the substance of public policy (though some reporters no doubt are), but because reporters instinctively love a good political fight--and the budget process is where some of the biggest recent clashes have occurred. Think of the Clinton-Gingrich budget battle of 1995. Or the squabble between House Republicans and President Bush over the abandonment of his "no new taxes" pledge at the 1990 budget summit at Andrews Air Force Base. The arcane federal budget process is now the stuff of high politics.

This is a relatively new development in American government. Traditionally, budgeting attracted little political attention. Standard accounts of federal budgeting during the 1950s and 1960s--such as the late Aaron Wildavsky's classic 1964 book The Politics of the Budgetary Process--described budgeting as a vital, but sedate, process of incremental bargaining between Congress and bureau chiefs. Budgeting was considered so technical and dull when the book was first published that Wildavsky felt compelled to reassure his readers on the book's first page that the topic was actually of some political interest.(Davila, 2005)

Budgeting in the 1950s and 1960s lacked obvious drama for three main reasons: First, budget deficits were generally small as a percent of GDP. While programs were growing, spending was considered to be under control. Second, there was a rough ideological consensus among politicians over many taxing and spending issues.(Cadez and Guilding, 2008) To be sure, liberals and conservatives during this era had their budget fights. But the scope of conflict over the budget was muted by the backdrop of the Cold War, the distributive nature of many spending programs--the pork barrel was still growing--and the existence of large numbers of political moderates in Congress. Finally, the rules of congressional budgeting created an artificial, yet meaningful, distinction between money decisions and policy decisions--and thus between high politics and mundane public administration.(Ferreira and Otley, 2006)

The new budget regime

By the 1980s, all this had changed. First, the economic and budgetary situation had worsened. Budget deficits began rising after the mid 1970s and exploded after 1981. Second, as Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution has documented, the number of political moderates on Capitol Hill declined. The Democratic congressional caucus became more liberal, the Republican conference more conservative. Finally, the rules of federal budgeting were ...