The Political Economy of Budget Choices: A View from Congress
认为，1974年预算改革法案通过后，国会在处理预算和财政战略问题上取得了巨大进步，为总统的经济计划提供了辩论和决策平台，但也带来了决策超载的新问题。
In recent years, several astute observers of the federal have argued that the separation of executive and legislative branch powers makes the formulation and execution of a coherent set of federal policies -including economic policies-nearly impossible. James Sundquist has suggested that, while the separation of powers has always hampered presidents' efforts to translate their programs into action, recent trends-the disintegration of political parties, haphazard selection of presidential candidates, and congressional self-assertiveness, combined with fragmentation of congressional leadership -have brought us to a ... crisis of competence in government (p. 531). Barry Bosworth, citing many of the same weaknesses, alleges that ... the economic and political system we have created may make the task of leadership virtually impossible (p. 70). Going farther, Lloyd Cutler advocates constitutional reform reducing the separation of powers and allowing a president to form a able to lay out and implement its policy, unimpeded by the Congress (pp. 126-27). This paper sounds a more hopeful note. It argues that, since the passage of the Budget Reform Act of 1974, the Congress has made enormous strides in its ability to consider and act on major questions of budgetary and fiscal strategy. The new procedures have given a president who has a well-articulated economic program a forum for debate and decision that did not exist before. They have also given a Congress that finds the president's program wanting a mechanism for choosing an alternative. But the new procedures have brought their own problems. There simply is not enough time to make the major strategic decisions and to continue the Congress' traditional role of annual appropriations and minute examination of detailed spending and taxing legislation. If the Congress is not to collapse under the stress of decision overload, choices will have to be made in less detail or with less frequencyor both.