Suchergebnisse

The paper looks back to time when budgeting was easier and budget outcomes were superior. Although it is impossible to replicate the past exactly, there are certain characteristics of past budgets that might be emulated. The paper focuses on Eisenhower's battles to balance the 1960 budget. The task was not easy and the result had to be bipartisan since Democrats had significant majorities in the House and Senate. But budgeting was less difficult than it is today, because almost all spending was controlled by annual appropriations, and popular, rapidly growing entitlements for the elderly were very much less important. The president's budget was also much more prestigious and influential. Approaches to gaining more control over entitlements are explored as is the more difficult task of restoring the influence of the president's budget.

The article reviews the history of past budget projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The projections have been extremely inaccurate because of errors in the choice of economic and technical assumptions. The errors grow rapidly as the projection's period is lengthened. The projections are unlikely to get better soon. Therefore, the question becomes how CBO, the Congress, and the media should react to the extraordinary uncertainty that must be attached to the budget outlook. Among other things, the author suggests de‐emphasizing projections made for periods longer than five years, because such projections are only a little better than random noise. He also points out the futility of aiming for rigorously enforced numerical targets for the budget balance, as was done in Gramm‐Rudman and as has been proposed in various types of "lock box" legislation. The targets move around too rapidly to ever be hit.