The establishment of an executive budget process was coupled with a reconsolidation of appropriation jurisdiction in the House in 1920 and the Senate in 1922. This reconsolidation was made in order to allow for a more coordinated consideration of the consolidated budget to be submitted by the President.8 This period of consolidated consideration was short-lived. Beginning with the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in January 1932, Congress gradually reduced the portion of the budget under the direct control of the Appropriations Committees through the use of ``backdoor spending'' techniques that bypassed the annual appropriations process. Backdoor spending is created pursuant to legislation reported from authorizing committees and enacted into law. While such mechanisms do not formally allow authorizing committees to report legislation appropriating money, they do effectively control the dispersal of Federal funds. Today, the Appropriations Committees control less than half of all Federal spending. Backdoor spending can be created in several forms: CONGRESSIONAL BUDGETING, 1921-1974
- Borrowing authority, which allows a Federal entity to incur obligations and make payments for specified purposes with money borrowed in the form of either public debt or agency debt;
- Contract authority, which allows agencies to enter into obligations prior to an appropriation and compels the Appropriations Committees to provide funds for the liquidation of the obligation; or
- Entitlements and mandatory appropriations, which establish an obligation for the Federal Government to make a payment in advance of appropriations. A large portion of entitlements, such as Social Security and interest on the public debt, are provided by permanent appropriations. In other cases, such as food stamps and veterans' benefits, the Appropriations Committees must provide the funds in advance, but their actions are mandated by the laws that establish such programs, and they have no discretion to limit or reduce funding for such programs.
Both previous Joint Committees on the Organization of Congress (in 1946 and 1970) recommended more centralized congressional control over the budget and an increase in the budgetary power available to the legislative branch. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 provided for the members of the taxing and appropriating committees of both houses to come together each year as a Joint Committee on the Legislative Budget. This panel was charged with reviewing the President's budget, and then recommending its own spending ceilings in the form of a concurrent resolution by February 15 of each year. Congressional use of this device was ultimately short-lived and unsuccessful. As the experiment has been succinctly described: ``The first year, 1947, they failed to agree; the second, they reached an agreement but failed to abide by it; and the third, they simply gave up trying.''9 Although section 138 was not formally repealed until 1970, in May 1949, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Clarence Cannon pronounced it ``a dead letter.''10
In the 1960s Congress once again decided that it was in need of internal reorganization. It established a second Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress in 1965. The efforts of this second Joint Committee eventually resulted in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970. The hearings included a significant amount of testimony on the budget process. In general, both of the Joint Committee's co-chairmen, Senator A.S. ``Mike'' Monroney, D-OK, and Representative Ray J. Madden, D-NY, supported incremental reforms to increase legislative efficiency. As a result, Title II of what eventually became the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 included a large number of modest changes in the budget.
Of primary concern to the Joint Committee was the paucity of congressional budgetary information resources. Concerned that congressional power of the purse was being eroded by an inability to match executive branch analyses, the Joint Committee recommended several ways to improve legislative branch review of spending. The Senate report accompanying the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1967, which embodied the Joint Committee's recommendations, but which Congress did not enact, stated that it was important for Congress to ``equip itself to insure that it can continue to play a meaningful role in reaching major budgetary decisions.'' Further, it stated that Congress ``must have the means to test the assumptions and conclusions of cost-effectiveness studies or to conduct its own studies.''11 Accordingly, the General Accounting Office was assigned responsibility to produce cost-benefit studies and to help in the compilation of other budgetary information.
Other provisions designed to improve budgeting included the Joint Committee's recommendation for shifting to annual appropriations whenever possible as a means of maximizing oversight and review of spending; requiring the President to submit a supplementary budget (now known as the mid-session review of the budget) so that Congress would be better informed of any changes in budgetary projections; and promoting better long-range planning by requiring 5-year cost projections to be included in both the President's budget submission and in standing committee reports on legislation.
FOOTNOTES8 Reconsolidation of appropriations jurisdiction was accomplished in the House of Representatives by adoption of H. Res. 324 on June 1, 1920 by a vote of 200-117 (Congressional Record, v. 59. 66th Congress, 2d Session. p. 8120), and in the Senate by adoption of S. Res. 213 on March 6, 1922 by a vote of 63-14 (Congressional Record, v. 62, 67th Congress, 2d Session. p. 3432).
9 ``Like It or Lump It,'' editorial, Washington Post, May 16, 1988. p. A14.
10 Congressional Record, v. 95, 81st Congress, 1st Session, May 26, 1949. p. 6902-4.
11 U.S. Congress. Senate Special Committee on the Organization of Congress. Legislative Reorganization Act of 1967. Report to Accompany S. 355, S. Rpt. 90-1, 90th Congress, 1st Session, Washington, U.S. G.P.O., 1967.