necessarily committing either them or the legislature to a definite line of action. It is an informal method by which budgetary information is passed on to the legislative leaders who can later use it in their discussions of the governor's budget on the floor. The general success of this procedure in the States suggests that the President might use a similar method in acquainting Congress with his budget policies. The chairmen of the appropriations, finance, and ways and means committees, and perhaps the vice chairmen and the chairmen of some of the more important subcommittees, might be invited to the White House to discuss the broad outlines of the budget with the President and his Budget Director. This step could be taken even before the President's budget message is transmitted to Congress.

Many State budget officers are in the habit of discussing their governors' budgets with the appropriate legislative committees. Sometimes their budget staffs function pretty much as staffs of these committees in the exchange of budgetary information, and even assist in the preparation of the appropriation bills. Taking its cue from this practice, the House Appropriations Committee invited General Dawes, the first Budget Director, to appear before it and discuss the Budget. But this procedure was not repeated, though a return to it has been discussed by some members of the committee from time to time. On a few occasions, budget examiners or other members of the Budget Bureau staff have testified at hearings. More frequently, they have discussed the budget with committee clerks, explaining the background of various items. Recently, Budget Bureau examiners testified before two of the subcommittees of the House Appropriations Committee regarding certain appropriations recommended by the President. But there is no procedure of any kind for making freely available to the appropriations committees of the two houses the Budget Bureau's specialized knowledge of budgetary requirements. In most instances, the task of justifying the President's budgetary recommendations to Congress is left to the spending departments and agencies who may not be in sympathy with the President's program.

It seems that the Budget Director or other key staff members of the Bureau might explain the budget as a whole to the appropriations, finance, and ways and means committees of the two houses of Congress, or to joint subcommittees of these committees appointed under the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 to recommend a "legislative budget." In addition, leading estimates examiners might be invited to attend the initial hearings of the appropriations subcommittees to present a justification of the President's recommendations with respect to each department or agency and to answer any general questions put by the members. They might also be asked to attend later sessions, in order to clarify points growing out of the hearings and dis

cussions of the subcommittees. The congressional committees would still be free under this procedure to obtain additional information from their own staffs, from the General Accounting Office, or directly from the departments or agencies asking for appropriations.

Better Timing of Budget Submission to Congress

The present timing of the submission of the President's budget to Congress has two serious shortcomings. In the first place, it requires the budget to be submitted by the outgoing President whenever there is a new President. According to present practice, the budget is sent to Congress soon after that body meets in the first week of January. Since a new President does not take office under the twentieth amendment until January 20, the budget for the first fiscal year of his administration has already been presented by his predecessor. In the second place, the present timing of the budget makes for poor estimating and for incomplete budget recommendations. The expenditure estimates have to be prepared by the operating departments and agencies as early as August or September of the previous year in order to have the budget document ready for submission to Congress early in January. These estimates are, therefore, made up almost a year before the beginning of the fiscal year to which they apply. The estimators must envisage the conditions and requirements of a period that is from 11 to 23 months away. This is a most difficult thing to do in an organization as complex as that of the Federal Government, with all of its vast economic and political ramifications.

Since the twentieth amendment was adopted in 1933 at least one proposal has been made in Congress to change the date of transmitting the budget to that body by a new President. Congressman Cochran of Missouri introduced a bill in the Seventy-sixth Congress to allow an incoming President 30 days after his inauguration to prepare and submit his budget. This idea was embodied as early as 1916 in the Maryland budget amendment. Even if Mr. Cochran's proposal had been adopted, it would not have removed all the difficulty. A new President would probably not be able to outline his budget policy in the first 30 days of his administration; he would have to get acquainted with the responsibilities of his office, and his Budget Director would also be new at the job.

While there is nothing in the law to prevent an outgoing President from cooperating with the President-elect in the preparation of the budget, this is not likely to happen, especially when the new President is from an opposing political party. The new President will probably have but one choice and that will be to submit a revised budget to Congress after he comes into office. The preparation of this revised budget is likely to take him and his Budget Director at least 2 months. The date of its transmission to Congress would therefore be around

April 1. And this time could very well be made the annual date of submitting the budget to Congress, as explained below. Of course, such a timing of the President's budget would throw completely out of kilter the schedule for the so-called legislative budget, but it now seems inevitable that this schedule must soon be changed.

A new timing for the submission of the President's budget to Congress-around April 1—would have several advantages, while the apparent disadvantages could be satisfactorily met. Briefly, the expenditure estimates could then be made up in November or December for the fiscal year opening on the next July 1. This latter preparation would make possible far greater accuracy in the estimates. The Budget Bureau could review the estimates of the more routine civil departments and agencies and pass them on with the President's final allowances to the appropriations committees by the time Congress met in January.

These first estimates would be followed at frequent intervals by the more questionable ones, including those for national defense, so as to keep the committees well supplied with estimates for study and hearings. By the 1st or 15th of March all the requests for funds should be in the hands of the appropriations committees. Then the President and his Budget Bureau would prepare the budget message and supporting summaries, including up-to-the-minute revenue estimates and proposals, if any, for keeping the budget in balance. The budget document, embodying this material, should be as different from the present one as night from day. It should be stripped down to a few hundred pages from its present volume of over 1,500 pages, and it should be presented on a program basis. This new set-up will be explained briefly below.

A budget presented by the President at this date and in this form should be comprehensive as to both expenditure requirements and revenue estimates and proposals. That is more than can be said of the budgets which have been submitted to Congress during the past 15 years.

During the Roosevelt Administration, prior to World War II, the President's budgets were never complete or comprehensive when submitted to Congress in January. Large appropriations for relief or other purposes were nearly always proposed sometime in the late winter or early spring. These later additions to the expenditure side of the budget, coupled with inexcusably poor revenue estimates prepared in the Treasury Department, made the President's budget submitted in January a rather meaningless document.

During World War II the President's budget also mean very little, but for a different reason. Since the frequent crises of a war period compel temporizing in finance as in most other fields of human endeavor, the budget rarely presented an adequate picture of what the

Government's fiscal requirements would be. But when the war came to an end the President's budget continued to be presented on an incomplete basis, particularly with respect to the revenue estimates and proposals. A major purpose of the Government Corporation Control Act of 1945 was to provide Congress with a more complete budget. This act required that about 40 wholly owned Government corporations must be included in the budget, but the method so far used in including them has confused rather than clarified the budgetary status of these corporations.

To sum up: A procedure under which the President on April 1 or thereabouts would submit to Congress his budget—a document minus the detailed expenditures estimates already sent to Congress, but with work program figures and justifications for each department and agency-would have the great advantage of producing a comprehensive financial plan late enough in the preceding fiscal year so that very little change would be likely to occur before the budget was actually put into operation.

The April 1 submission date would not hamper the work of congressional committees on appropriations, since they would have the estimates as soon as they got organized for work. The estimates would be much more accurate, particularly the revenue estimates. The President would have more opportunities for conferences with congressional leaders during the budget-making process; and the unsatisfactory situation arising when a new President is inaugurated would be avoided.

Complete Recasting of the Present Budget Document Needed

In order to produce a simpler, more understandable, and more satisfactory budget plan for congressmen, newspaper reporters, and the general public, the present ponderous budget document needs to be completely recast along the lines of work programs. This is known as the program or performance budget which analyzes the work of governmental departments and agencies according to their major functions, activities, or projects. It thus concentrates attention upon the general character and relative importance of the work to be done. or the service to be rendered rather than upon the things to be acquired by the departments and agencies, such as personal services, contractual services, supplies, materials, equipment, and so on. The latter things are only means to an end. The all-important consideration in budgeting is the work or service to be accomplished.

In the course of this type of budgeting, the appropriations are made for the principal purposes or functions of the departments and agencies and not necessarily for the objects secured to carry on their work. Congressional review of governmental needs, as set forth in the budget, is therefore focused upon the work to be done. And this

work is stated in terms of general operating policy, which Congress determines quantitatively by the amount of the appropriations. The appropriation limits are thus set in broad outlines which do not hamper administrative action and which provide for legislative control at the point where such control is most effective, that is, in the determination of policy. In short, when the budget schedules are clearly related to the objectives to be accomplished through the expenditure of Government funds, and when the emphasis throughout is upon programs first and upon fiscal requirements secondly, then the budget becomes a more useful and valuable document for both executive management and legislative control.

The program budget facilitates congressional and executive control of the scope and magnitude of Federal activities. It shows clearly the relationship between the volume of work to be done and the cost of this work. Moreover, the program budget greatly encourages the application of cost analysis per unit of work performed. If adopted, it would provide the Budget Bureau and the departmental and agency heads with a real basis for studying the efficiency of governmental operations, since it stresses service or output-the end product of work done-and reveals the input elements of men and materials. Since efficiency is ordinarily calculated in terms of the ratio between output and input, the present type of budget does not encourage this kind of analysis. Indeed, the program budget would come nearer to producing the equivalent of a profit and loss statement in Government than probably any other device that could be employed. It would also reveal overlappings and duplications more clearly than the present budget.

The idea of the program budget is not new; it has been gradually taking shape for a number of years. Several of the more progressive cities of the country have already applied many elements of the program budget. Some of the States have also developed programming in connection with their budgeting. A good example is the California State budget, where the program idea is definitely carried into the appropriations. The Federal budget document has recently come to include some of the constitutents of the program budget, especially in the so-called justifications of the estimates which unfortunately are not adequately reproduced in the document and are not followed in the present scheme of appropriating funds. The chief difficulty with the present budget is that no concerted effort has been made on the part of Congress and the Executive to modernize it; hence, it remains more or less of a hodgepodge, totally inconsistent and incomparable within itself. When the budget reaches the appropriation stage, it contains huge sums in some instances and picayune details in others. Much of this is due to historical accident, and should be systematically cleaned up.