Congress has not in recent years demonstrated a willingness to delegate fiscal authority to operating managers in the DOD. On the contrary, Congress has tended to increase the specificity and rigor of the constraints it imposes on the DOD. Critics of Congress’ propensity to use its legislative and fiscal powers to deny operating authority to the DOD, to second guess the DOD’s actions, and to centralize operating authority in its own hands, refer to these constraints as congressional micromanagement.(33) Jacques Gansler is especially critical of congressional micromanagement. He denies that detailed line-item appropriations serve any legitimate purposes whatsoever. He would prefer Congress to refrain entirely from choosing between weapons systems, determining their rate of acquisition, providing for deployment of military units, setting reserve stocks, and so forth. Instead, he would like Congress to be concerned with determining foreign policy objectives and constraints, with making strategic choices that have major political implications, and with allocating resources to the major military missions.
The answer, therefore, is to restructure the budget process so that Congress will be forced to vote on “top line” (i.e., total budget) dollars for the various “mission areas” rather than on the details of specific programs and projects that are clearly identified with districts and states.(34)
Gansler’s concerns about the consequences of congressional micromanagement are justifiable, but his proposal to restructure the budget appears to misunderstand Congress’ role in the American system of government. The point is not merely Harvey Brooks’ claim that Gansler’s proposal is naive that it “would deprive members of Congress of one of their principal opportunities to visibly serve their constituents — the main basis for their continuation in office.”(35) The significant point is that item-by-item budget approval is deeply rooted in the American constitutional order. It did not happen by accident or mistake. The Constitution vests all consequential powers of government in the legislative branch, including the power to raise armies and to provide a navy. The locus of Congress’ power lies in its mastery of the purse and the details of administration, as exemplified by item-by-item approval.(36) More than any other institutional arrangement, item-by-item approval distinguishes congressional government from parliamentary systems, in which the legislature’s power is largely sham.
That was the excellent Fred Thompson (1991), Management Control and the Pentagon: The Organizational Strategy-Structure Mismatch. Clearly, I agree with the late, great Jacques Gansler. I’ll nit-pick on a couple things:
First, line-itemization of the budget has always been a part of American financial control, but the line-items were for organizations, objects of expenditure (e.g., personnel), and classes of activities (e.g., procurement of aircraft). See the figure below. Line-items did not outline particular weapon systems or R&D projects. So the tradition of congressional control really did change in the 1960s with the PPBS. It changed dramatically how resources get allocated throughout the Department, from delegated and flexible to centralized and rigid.
Leave a Reply