Reform of the Budget Process
分析美国联邦预算决策过程，指出当前问题并非程序性缺陷，而是政府职能复杂和国会角色所致，认为简化预算流程需简化政府本身。
Budget decision making at the federal level in the United States can hardly be described as casual, haphazard, or ill-informed. The budgeting process is lengthy and elaborate. The principal decision makers-the president and the Congress-are assisted at every stage by an army of highly trained economists and budget analysts who assemble masses of information, use sophisticated forecasting models, and have access to state-of-the-art computers. Everyone works very hard. No government in the world devotes as much time, energy, and talent to budget decision making as our's does. Nevertheless, almost everyone is unhappy, with both the outcome of all of this effort and the process itself. Of course, some dissatisfaction with the outcome is normal. No matter how smoothly the mechanics of budget decision making are carried out, some will feel that the government spends too much or too little, spends on the wrong things, or taxes in the wrong way. But the current situation is not normal. Unless recent budget decisions are changed, they will lead to high and rising structural deficits that almost no one defends as desirable fiscal policy, a rapidly escalating burden of debt service, and a mix of fiscal and monetary policies that is reducing U.S. competitiveness in international markets and seems likely to retard growth. Moreover, quite apart from its unsatisfactory outcome, both participants and observers decry the shortcomings of the budget-making process itself. Budget decision documents are complex, technical, and difficult to understand. Even the experts have a hard time following what is going on. There never seems to be enough time for debate or deliberate decision making at any stage of the process, but the whole process takes too much time. Executive officials and members of Congress seem to do nothing but defend, question, and debate the budget and still they never finish before the budget year begins-and sometimes not before it ends. On top of all this, the economic assumptions are always proving wrong. Decisions are out of date almost before they are made. It is all very frustrating. It is tempting to ask whether there are not some procedural reforms that could solve all of these problems. Couldn't we change the budgeting process so that it would be easier to understand, less time consuming, less uncertain, and, above all, less prone to produce large budget deficits? I will argue that our current problems are not primarily procedural. The budgeting process is complex and time consuming primarily because the federal government does so many different kinds of things, and because Congress is so reluctant to concentrate on major directions of policy while leaving the details to executive departments or state and local governments. We can simplify the budget process only by simplifying the government itself and changing the role of the Congress. We can make the budget process less time consuming only if we are willing to make decisions less often, or to give up some checks and balances. Moreover, the world is an unpredictable place, and, while we could perhaps handle unpredictability in the budget process better than we do, no procedural changes can eliminate it. Nor does the failure to make the hard decisions neces* Director, Economics Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036. The views expressed in this paper are my own and should not be ascribed to the officers, trustees, or other staff members of the Brookings Institution.