Legislative Budget-Making

Report Outline
First Experiments Legislative Budgeting
Legislative Budgeting and Fiscal Control
Proposals for Improving Present Procedure

First Experiments Legislative Budgeting

Crucial Tests for Legislative Budget in 1948

The legislative budget, center of one of the stubbornest of controversies at the first session of the 80th Congress, will receive a second and crucial test at the present session. Last year the Senate and House were unable to agree on an expenditure ceiling for the current fiscal year and the effort was finally abandoned. Republican leaders will give the legislative budget another try this year in connection with their projects to cut government spending and reduce taxes. The future of legislative budget-making may well depend upon the outcome of this second experiment.

The legislative budget is an innovation adopted by Congress as a part of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. Section 138 of the act provides that the four appropriating and taxing committees of Congress shall meet as a Budget Committee at the beginning of each regular session, and after considering the President's budget requests, shall formulate a “legislative budget,” estimating the government's receipts and expenditures for the ensuing fiscal year and recommending “the maximum amount to be appropriated for expenditure in such year.”

The Budget Committee is directed to report to Congress not later than Feb. 15, accompanying its report with a concurrent resolution adopting the budget and the appropriations ceiling. The purpose of Sec. 138, according to Rep. Monroney (D., Okla.), co-author of the Reorganization Act, is “to induce Congress to chart a financial course for the year and to follow it as closely as possible rather than continue the practice of unrelated action by spending and taxing committees, with the total expenditures still in doubt until the last appropriation bill is passed.”