The Congressional Budget Act

The tax expenditure budget helps in the evaluation of these trade-offs, by quantifying the earnings results of various preferences, in addition to by publicizing the use of this avenue of supporting personal activities.

The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act can also be intended to impose discipline on an otherwise undisciplined Congress (and President). In principle, expenditures can't be legislated without having regard for their budgetary consequences; indeed, inside absence of extraordinary economic growth, either budgetary expenditures or tax expenditures (or both) ought to be reduced or tax rates need to be raised if the targets are to become met. An important result from the act might be described as the requirement of revenue neutrality at a lower level of deficit. That is, the deficit needs to be reduced by a specified amount; given that, any tax benefit that survives or is increased must be matched by cuts in another. Thus budgeting becomes a negative-sum game (Rivlin, 1987, pp. 5-6).

As a result, some expenditure proposals are accompanied by proposed methods of finance. This really is most well-known inside the case of expenditures subject towards the jurisdiction in the tax writing committees, especially Ways and Means. In addition, as a result of the discipline on the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings targets, proposals for changes in budget policy that would lose revenues are, almost of necessity, framed in a revenue-neutral context.

The intrusion of the media, public interest groups, policy entrepreneurs, and tax reformers into the budget policymaking system inside the late 1970s and early 1980s reflected the weakening from the congressional institutions of budget policymaking--in particular, the Residence Methods and Approaches Committee. With declining national parties and leadership, there was small resistance to this kind of encroachments upon the budget policymaking method by interests external towards the formal institutions of government. It is not merely personalized particular interests which discover entry to public decisionmaking through the budget and tax committees; the media and lobbyists for public interest groups do as well. Institutional boundaries have weakened so much that almost each organized interest has open access. Being a result, budget policy has had little direction. Or a lot more properly, whatever direction budget policy may perhaps take the short term, regardless of how strong the apparent commitment to this sort of policy, political coalitions soon melt away, and budget policy takes off inside a new direction. As has been noted, the "inability on the tax system to resist alter makes a policy morass that may be perpetuated by its personal structure" (Witte, 1985, p. 62).

In the Household Methods and Methods Committee, the executive's initiative was in response to pressures from regional interests that penetrate the congressional decisionmaking process. Similar dynamics had been evidenced inside Senate's consideration of the bill. All individuals tendencies uniquely characteristic of the Senate simply because the 1960s (excessive generosity in bestowing tax preferences) had been evident in markup from the Senate Finance Committee. However, within the end, the Senate followed the House bill, with only many notable departures; the conference committee markup easily resulted in agreement on most issues.

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