Our Fiscal Irresponsibility

April 14, 1947

In the present temper of the country, and under our political setup, the champions of government economy labor under a heavy handicap. They work first of all against the implicit assumption that the burden of proof is on those who wish to economize to point out exactly where and how they would do so. The burden of proof, on the contrary, must always be on those who are asking for the appropriations. They should be made to justify affirmatively every dollar of expenditure they propose.

It is right here that we encounter the first great dilemma of budget-making. Only those asking for the money are in position to know intimately how much is really needed. Yet these are precisely the persons whose personal interests are most directly involved. Their usual interest is to obtain as large an appropriation as possible. And the farther away any official is from the point of origin of the request the less he can know at firsthand about its justification. Requests for Army funds may be filtered up from captains to colonels, colonels to generals, generals to procurement officers or an Assistant Secretary of War, from him to the Secretary, and thence to the Budget Bureau or the President. Each in turn must rely in large part upon the word and judgment of his subordinates.

It follows from this that even a very conscientious and economy-minded Bureau of the Budget can do only a partial job of screening out wasteful and unnecessary expenditure. It can only cut down or eliminate the items that look excessive or wasteful on paper or in replies to questions. And what a conscientious Budget Bureau can only do inadequately by working full time, Congressional appropriation committees, without such a conscientious Budget Bureau, must do far less adequately. Their so-called investigation is too often perfunctory. They cannot hope to do this task well unless they are assisted, not only by a staff of full-time experts who know what questions to ask the department heads requesting money, but by field examiners who can see for themselves how money has been, is being, or could be spent.

If the appropriation committees, acting half-blindly, go into a huddle and emerge with a proposed slash of $6,000,000,000, or 16 percent off the amount that the President has requested, without publishing in detail the wheres and whys of their cuts, they find their well-intended efforts denounced from all sides.

The department heads who have asked for the appropriations accuse them of “undermining the national defense,” or torpedoing foreign aid, housing, social security, or what-not. Newspaper editorial writers who are not in a position to know the real facts join in the clamor. Their usual line is that the President must be supported. They forget that even the President has been obliged to rely for his estimates on many anonymous and not disinterested subordinates. The beginning of any Congressional budget control would consist in the establishment of an adequate staff of experts to act as the eyes, ears, and legs of the Congressional appropriation committees.

But we shall never have any real fiscal responsibility at Washington without far more basic reforms even than this. The first of these would be to adopt the wholesome rule that has prevailed in Great Britain since the time of Queen Anne—to wit, that the legislative body cannot make any appropriation whatever not recommended by “the government.” Only such a rule can prevent raids on the Treasury by Congressional logrolling. Only by making the executive solely responsible for the budget can there be a responsible budget.

The proper function of members of Congress is to act on behalf of the people as watchmen of the Treasury. They cannot be suitable guardians of the public till as long as they are themselves permitted to stick their hands into the till. The proper use of the legislative power of the purse is to deny the purse to the executive for wasteful or unjustified expenditures. Congress will do this best only if it is itself removed from the temptation of trying to buy votes with the people’s money. It will be a vigilant watchdog only if it is itself denied access to the Treasury. As Henry Jones Ford has put it: “There is no propensity of human nature more marked than jealousy of opportunities that one does not share.”