Federal Reorganization and Budget Reform

Report Outline
Quest for Government Efficiency
Past Efforts at Federal Reorganization
The Progress of the Carter Reforms
Special Focus

Quest for Government Efficiency

Carter's Plan to Revamp the Bureaucracy

A major promise of President Carter's 1976 election campaign was to improve the effectiveness of government. Since taking office, the President has proposed achievement of that objective through reorganization of the management and budgeting of more than 2,000 federal agencies. Intended to curtail wasteful expenditures and unnecessary duplication of activities, the Carter reforms may put a brake on future federal spending. Little effect can be expected in the 1978 fiscal year, beginning Oct. 1, 1977, and inflation may prevent reduction of total expenditures in future fiscal years. But the reforms may at least hold spending increases in check to some degree.

Carter said last June that the reorganization effort initially would focus on streamlining the performance of the federal government in areas of social welfare, civil rights and economic development, where a variety of bureaus conduct programs with similar goals but with sometimes conflicting methods and standards. Over the long run, the administration is planning to consolidate or abolish hundreds of federal activities. But some fiscal experts are dubious about the promised benefits of such a venture. Specifically, they question whether transforming the structure of the bureaucracy will actually reduce its size and cost.

The Reorganization Act of 1977, which the President signed into law on April 6, gives him authority for the next three years to submit to Congress reorganization proposals that will take effect in 60 days unless rejected by either the House or the Senate. The first plan Carter has submitted under this act becomes effective Sept. 13, barring congressional rejection. Congress had granted a similar prerogative to chief executives from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon, but allowed it to expire in 1973 during the height of Nixon's Watergate crisis. Under the new law, Carter can create, regroup or eliminate sub-cabinet agencies; however, he does not have the power to reorganize cabinet-level departments or limit the enforcement functions of independent regulatory commissions.