Exceptional Proff 612 Paper

1018 Public Administration Review • November | December 2007

Fiscal management in the national government remains

just as important to public administration in 2007 as it

was in 1937. Arthur E. Buck and Harvey C. Mansfi eld’s

critique of the fragmentation among congressional,

bureaucratic, and presidential interests in budgeting and

accountability is a classic for those who argue for stronger

presidential power and capacity within American govern-

ment. Th is analysis draws the fi eld’s attention to what we

can learn about the politics of management reform from

the successes and limitations of this landmark study —

lessons that will serve the fi eld well as it confronts new

issues and reform agendas in the future.

T he fi nal report of the President’s Committee

on Administrative Management, published in

1937, provided both a conceptual framework

and a detailed set of recommended actions for budget-

ing and accountability. Th e nature and control of

budgeting and appropriations have always played a

central part in determining who governs in any sys-

tem. In their study Fiscal Management in the National

Government, Arthur E. Buck and Harvey C. Mans-

fi eld’s emphasis on budgeting, fi nancial management,

and accountability were appropriate in a document

that was intended to reform and refocus public man-

agement. Th e report’s critique of the fragmentation

among congressional, bureaucratic, and presidential

interests in budgeting and accountability is a classic

for those who argue for stronger presidential power

and capacity within American government.

Buck and Mansfi eld’s recommendations served to

bolster presidential leadership over the nation’s fi -

nances and charted a course for continuing these types

of reforms, which remain intact 70 years later. How-

ever, by placing the president at the center of manage-

ment reforms, the study did not articulate a

sustainable political strategy for undertaking the sig-

nifi cant changes in government management rooted

in our system of separated institutions sharing powers

( Neustadt 1960, 42 ). Ironically, many of the report’s

recommendations were fi nally implemented through a

pluralistic process, with major leadership from Con-

gress itself. Th e underappreciated role that Congress

plays in executive branch management will need to be

more deeply understood as the government confronts

other reform agendas designed to address the adminis-

trative, political, and institutional dynamics aff ecting

the administrative state in the 21st century.

Th is essay will fi rst provide an overview of Buck and

Mansfi eld’s study, which primarily emphasized bud-

geting, fi nancial management, and accountability. Th e

intellectual framework motivating Buck and Mans-

fi eld’s fi ndings will be assessed, as will their impact on

the world of practice. Next, the essay addresses the

legacy of their work and its continuing impact.

Finally, it draws the fi eld’s attention to what we can

we learn about the politics of management reform

from the successes and limitations of the President’s

Committee on Administrative Management — lessons

that will serve us well as we confront new issues and

reform agendas in the future.

The Prescription: Empowering Executive Leadership of Public Finances In issuing their call for greater executive leadership,

Buck and Mansfi eld’s study marked a turning

away from the two other paradigmatic values that

Herbert Kaufman (1956) suggests have animated

public administration before and since: representa-

tiveness, as refl ected in strong congressional gover-

nance, and neutral competence. Th e study refl ected

and further fueled the growing critique of congres-

sional and bureaucratic control, which were alleged

to undermine the cohesiveness of government and

the responsiveness of leaders to emerging needs and

domestic and international crises. It provided a

charter for strengthening presidential staffi ng,

controlling the budgetary process, and increasing

accountability and administrative leadership of the

bureaucracy that persists in supporting the presi-

dent as he extends his policy agendas throughout

the executive branch.

Paul L. Posner George Mason University

Th e Continuity of Change: Public Budgeting and Finance

Reforms over 70 Years

Paul L. Posner is a professor of public

and international affairs at George Mason

University. Previously, he was the director of

federal budget and intergovernmental

relations in the U.S. Government Account-

ability Offi ce. His scholarship focuses on

federalism, public budgeting, and public

administration. He is the author of The Politics of Unfunded Mandates: Whither Federalism? (Georgetown University Press, 1998).

E-mail: pposner@gmu.edu

Brownlow Report Retrospective

Public Budgeting and Finance Reforms over 70 Years 1019

Armed with a centralizing perspective, Louis Brown-

low and his colleagues confronted a budget and fi nan-

cial accountability process that was in transition.

Congress had dominated

the budget formulation

process from the early his-

tory of the republic through

the early 20th century. Th e

legislature’s authority to

appropriate public funds

became the foundation for

public budgeting and ac-

countability, preceding the

development of budgets by

executives ( Posner 2007 ).

Th e strong role played by Congress was accompanied

by an orientation toward accountability that empha-

sized control, constraints, and checks on government

to minimize its potential for doing harm. Th e process

for fi nancial accountability was, in the words of Fred-

erick Mosher, “slow, cumbersome, but safe,” as at least

three independent offi cers within both the Treasury

Department and each agency had to sign off on ex-

penditure warrants and vouchers before funds could

be disbursed ( Mosher 1984 , 16). As long as the

demands on the public sector were modest, this tradi-

tion posed little threat to other important governing

values. In the budget and fi nance arena, the potential

for fragmentation in policy direction and fi scal profl i-

gacy were minimized by the presence of a meager

national government with modest fi nancial needs and

a cohesive informal system in Congress for consider-

ing the parts of the budget (Schick 2000).

However, this informal system started to unravel in the

face of growing congressional fragmentation and the

expansion of the federal government’s role in the social

and economic life of the nation. Th e resulting rise of

defi cits prompted calls for stronger presidential leader-

ship to tame agency and congressional fragmentation

and to impose overall discipline on the executive and

congressional process, culminating in passage of the

Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. Th e foundations

for this had been set by the Taft Commission a decade

earlier and reinforced by the growth of national gov-

ernment during World War I. 1 Of course, the intellec-

tual foundations for the executive leadership model

harked back to Alexander Hamilton, who argued that

energy in the executive is the best guarantor of na-

tional well-being. In so doing, however, other intellec-

tual traditions in public administration were being

overthrown. Th e fi rst congressional system governing

public fi nance had both Jeff ersonian and Madisonian

roots. Limiting the power of the national government

while also accommodating the diverse political inter-

ests of the administration were goals best promoted by

a Congress that embodied the diverse pressures and

confl icting values of the nation ( Kettl 2002 ).

Th e 1921 act laid the foundation for the modern

system of budgeting, control, and accountability. Th e

president gained an executive budget offi ce, located in

the Treasury Department,

which would become the

fulcrum for projecting his

leadership outward to the

public, horizontally to the

Congress, and vertically

down the chain of com-

mand to the bureaucracy.

Although the act was sig-

nifi cant, advocates of stron-

ger presidential powers,

especially members of the

Brownlow Committee,

found that vestiges of the earlier era of congressional

infl uence and accountability controls continued to

hamper the president from fully actualizing the energy

of the executive in solving public problems. Impor-

tantly, Buck and Mansfi eld’s study forcefully argued

that the act further fragmented accountability by

creating the General Accounting Offi ce and assigning

it signifi cant roles in fi nancial administration and

accountability, thereby limiting what Hamilton called

the “unity of the executive” in Federalist No. 70

( Newbold and Terry 2006 ).

Th e Brownlow Report was important not for its

advancement of new concepts or ideas. Rather, its

primary goal was to build on the substantial reforms in

executive leadership that had been developed in earlier

decades at the municipal level and articulated force-

fully by the Taft Commission (1912). Of course, the

establishment of the Executive Offi ce of the President

was perhaps the crowning achievement in the after-

math of the report. Importantly, this new presidential

offi ce included the Bureau of the Budget, which was

wrested from the Treasury Department. Buck and

Mansfi eld made a forceful argument for expanding

the role of Bureau of the Budget beyond its traditional

role in budget formulation to encompass budget

execution and broader management studies and ac-

tions. Th ey concluded that the budget offi ce should

play a role in both actively reviewing the day-to-day

spending needs of agencies once budgets were ap-

proved and helping the president rationalize the orga-

nization and management of the executive branch.

With regard to fi nancial management and control,

Buck and Mansfi eld advocated revamping the Trea-

sury Department’s fi nancial management function.

Th ey viewed the procedures for gaining approval for

spending as plodding and overcentralized. Account-

ing systems were fragmented across and within agen-

cies, making it diffi cult — if not impossible — to

produce government-wide reports on the fi nancial

condition of the nation. Little or no eff ort was made

to develop managerial cost-accounting systems to

Armed with a centralizing perspective, Louis Brownlow and his colleagues confronted a budget and fi nancial accountability process that was in

transition. Congress had dominated the budget formulation process from

the early history of the republic through the early 20th century.

1020 Public Administration Review • November | December 2007

analyze and compare costs across agencies and pro-

grams. Th e orientation of most agency fi nancial man-

agement systems was to prevent violations of the

Anti-Defi ciency Act, which contains steep personal

sanctions for federal offi cials who stray from alloca-

tions mandated in appropriations acts. An accounting

system premised on controls and checking was too

cumbersome to provide information to inform the

budgetary trade-off s or fi nancial results for policy

makers. Buck and Mansfi eld recommended a modern

accounting system for government, standardized

across agencies, with periodic statements of budgetary

and proprietary totals that would be both relevant

and reliable.

While enhancing the president’s leadership role, Buck

and Mansfi eld sought to recast and reform the role of

Congress in budget formulation and execution. First,

the authors advised Congress to abandon detailed

line-item appropriations and to provide instead broad

grants of authority to agencies in lump-sum amounts.

Th e Brownlow Committee was prescient in observing

that detailed line-item accounts and directives enabled

Congress to “brush aside” the executive and control

the administration directly. Th e authors further

advised Congress to halt the earmarking of revenue

funds for special purposes in trust funds and other

special funds, as these arrangements erode future fi scal

fl exibility. Echoing the latter-day words of the New

Public Management, the study in essence argued that

Congress should “let managers manage,” satisfying its

accountability interests by shifting from front-end

controls on agency actions and budgets to oversight

and audits of agencies after the fact.

Shifting the congressional role in executive manage-

ment from ex ante to ex post would, if adopted, con-

stitute a major shift in the

congressional role and infl u-

ence as well. Buck and Mans-

fi eld appear to have drawn on

the experiences of parliaments

in justifying this proposal,

notwithstanding the stark

constitutional diff erences in

the role of legislatures in a

separation-of-powers system.

In what amounts to a deadpan

observation, they reported, “Congress so far has taken

no action in the matter.”

Th e most specifi c and critical analysis in the study on

fi scal control and accountability was reserved for the

role of the General Accounting Offi ce (GAO). Buck

and Mansfi eld argued that the 1921 act creating the

GAO had provided that agency with executive respon-

sibilities that confused accountability, undermined

executive effi ciency, and established a confl ict of

interest between the agency’s post-audit role and its

executive responsibilities to settle claims against the

government and the prescription of agency account-

ing systems. Th e agency’s control over the form and

content of agency accounting systems was an adminis-

trative function exercised by the GAO. Th e study

recommended that these executive functions be re-

turned to the Treasury. Buck and Mansfi eld also rec-

ommended that the GAO be removed from its ex ante

role in determining the legality or propriety of agency

expenditures, switching instead to a post-audit role

involving the evaluation of agency spending after the

fact. To reinforce the transition from executive ac-

countant to legislative auditor, they prophetically

recommended a name change — from the General

Accounting Offi ce to the General Auditing Offi ce.

Th ey also advised Congress to establish a Joint

Committee on Public Accounts to review the GAO’s

reports and recommendations.

Th e GAO of the fi rst period — 1921 through 1940 —

was a far diff erent agency than it is today. It had an

ambiguous status in government, embodying legisla-

tive, executive, and judicial functions. Its function as a

fi nancial control agency was and still is typical of

many national audit offi ces throughout the world,

following the Court of Accounts model, in which the

audit agency has not only an evaluative and investiga-

tive role but also quasi-judicial authority to review the

legality of transactions ( Havens 1990 ). In 1939, while

issuing more than 200 reports to Congress and the

executive, the GAO audited 14 million approved

vouchers, preapproved 538,000 additional vouchers,

reconciled 152 million checks, and settled 445,000

claims ( Mosher 1979 ).

Subsequent Impact on Administrative Practice and Democratic Institutions

Sorting out the impact of the

Brownlow Report is diffi cult

because it adopted ideas and

practices that were gaining

increasing support from

many in public administra-

tion theory and prac tice dur-

ing its time. Developed during

an era when government’s role

was outgrowing its structure,

the principal authors

grounded the agenda in more than theory alone.

Rather, they considered it a strategy to enable govern-

ment to step up and be the positive force that the

nation seemed to need at the time. Kaufman (1956)

has observed that those who embraced executive lead-

ership models had a distinctly political agenda: to

expand the capacity of the national government to

adopt and deliver an expanded set of programs. Th ose

who championed congressional governance, on the

other hand, tended to favor a limited federal role in

the nation’s life.

Sorting out the impact of the Brownlow Report is diffi cult because

it adopted ideas and practices that were gaining increasing support

from many in public administration theory and practice during its time.

Public Budgeting and Finance Reforms over 70 Years 1021

In the years since, signifi cant progress has been made

on their agenda of reform. Whether Buck and Mans-

fi eld’s study helped trigger changes is debatable, but in

the 70 years since the report was issued, major changes

have been made in budgeting, fi nancial management,

accountability, and the organization of the GAO

that are consistent with the recommendations in

their study.

Th e changes instituted in budgeting were immediate

and far-reaching. Th e development of the president’s

budget offi ce into a strong, if not preeminent, force in

governmental budgeting and priority setting has be-

come a central driver for the entire federal budget

process. Th is annual process, even after passage of the

1974 Congressional Budget Act, begins with the

publication of the president’s budget — a long-lived

legacy of the Brownlow Report. Th e committee was

prescient in making budgeting the fulcrum of presi-

dential leadership of the policy making and manage-

ment of government. An offi ce dedicated to the

president’s interests was critical to enable him to proj-

ect his leadership across government and become at

least a viable contestant with Congress in meeting and

shaping public expectations and controlling the bu-

reaucracy. Buck and Mansfi eld had little to say about

the structure and policy rules guiding budget formula-

tion itself, however. Th e future content of budgets was

driven partly by future commissions, most notably the

fi rst Hoover Commission, whose recommendations

led to a signifi cant consolidation of appropriations’

accounts and the 1967 Budget Concepts Commis-

sion, which, in turn, led to the adoption of the unifi ed

budget. Important congressional enactments, includ-

ing the 1974 Congressional Budget Act and the 1990

Budget Enforcement Act, together defi ned the all-

important multiyear budgetary baseline and set in

place the current regime of separate budgetary control

and treatment for discretionary and mandatory

programs.

Th e Brownlow Committee also proved to be percep-

tive in defi ning an expansive central management role

for the budget offi ce. Th e study accurately foresaw

that the president would become accountable for

providing a central management and policy guidance

focus to the increasingly far-fl ung bureaucracy and an

ever more complex array of federal programs. How-

ever alluring in concept, the pursuit of the holy grail

of central management change proved to be far more

diffi cult to sustain across administrations, leaving the

OMB with a checkered history of bold promises, false

starts, and all too frequent stops in carrying out man-

agement reforms and organizational reforms. Th ough

the Administrative Management Division within the

budget offi ce in the Roosevelt and Truman years is

remembered by many as the high point of manage-

ment focus inside the budget process, during the

following 50 years, the OMB lurched from a central-

ized, cross-cutting, stand-alone management focus to

an integrated model in which management issues were

devolved to examining units. Regardless of organiza-

tional structure, the OMB’s ability to sustain a con-

centrated focus on management reform was hampered

by common problems: the diversion of resources and

attention to the budget, inconsistent support from the

OMB directors and the White House, and the rapid

dissipation of energy to which management reforms

seem to fall prey in the face of more compelling con-

cerns and programmatic and budget issues ( Tomkins

1998, 199 ). Given the many crosscurrents surround-

ing presidential priorities in budgeting, one of the

lessons that many reformers have learned is that the

prospects for sustainability increase in direct propor-

tion to congressional interest; policies with a statutory

base in particular have proved to be surprisingly long

lasting.

In the area of fi nancial management, the vision of

fi nancial information and analysis that Buck and

Mansfi eld articulated has taken decades to take shape

and gain a foothold in administrative management.

As late as 1993, Charles Bowsher, the comptroller

general, reported that the GAO’s audits of federal

agencies revealed systemic problems so severe that

the fi nancial management information needed to

manage agency operations was just not available

( Bowsher 1993 ). In 2006, the Department of De-

fense records could not be audited, resulting in a

disclaimer in its fi nancial audit and preventing the

GAO from making a defi nitive conclusion on the

government-wide fi nancial statements as a result.

However, beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in

the 1990s, Congress passed key legislation that led to

substantial progress on this long-standing agenda,

prompting one GAO senior manager to testify that

there had been “substantial progress” in recent years

in strengthening federal fi nancial management. Th is

led him to conclude that fi nancial management had

gone from the backroom to the board room at the

federal level ( Steinhoff 2005 ).

Th anks in no small part to the passage of the Chief

Financial Offi cers Act in 1990 and subsequent legisla-

tion, federal agencies are now required to prepare

annual fi nancial statements in accordance with the

accounting standards issued by the Federal Account-

ing Standards Advisory Board. Th e standards go be-

yond traditional budgetary accounting by requiring

accrual-based accounting on costs and income that

recognizes fi nancial transactions based on when they

occur, not when cash goes out the door ( Tierney

2000 ). In fi scal year 2005, 18 of 24 major agencies

received a clean opinion on their fi nancial statements,

up from only six agencies 10 years earlier.

In examining the factors responsible for progress,

several stand out. One is the prodigious activity by

1022 Public Administration Review • November | December 2007

Congress in developing new legislation to advance the

agenda of fi nancial reform. A litany of legislation has

poured from Congress since 1990 — the Chief Finan-

cial Offi cers Act, the 1993 Government Performance

and Results Act, the 1994 Government Management

Reform Act, the 1996 Federal Financial Management

Improvement Act, the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, the

2002 Accountability of Tax Dollars Act, and the

2004 Department of Homeland Security Financial

Accountability Act are some of the key statutes.

Congress has joined in a partnership with the OMB

to advance these goals as a means of supporting its

institutionalized commitment and leadership to

these areas.

With regard to the GAO, Congress never supported

the recommendations of the Brownlow Committee.

In fact, the Senate commissioned the Brookings Insti-

tution to assess the committee’s recommendations on

the GAO. It was concluded that the GAO should not

only retain its existing powers but gain new ones as

well. While President Roosevelt, and President Her-

bert Hoover before him, sought to bring the fi nancial

and accounting roles of the GAO into the executive,

Congress resisted, emboldened at the time by the

president’s ill-fated Supreme Court packing plan.

Th ough the issue was never formally resolved, the

GAO nonetheless changed on its own, jettisoning the

intrusive executive roles that Brownlow and others

had inveighed against while becoming the audit

agency they essentially recommended. Th e sheer

growth in government during the New Deal and

World War II brought the GAO to the point of col-

lapse. Even with a staff of more than 14,000, the

agency could not keep up with the workload coming

in from the expanding government.

At the conclusion of World War II, a collaboration

among the GAO, the Bureau of the Budget, and the

Treasury brought about a new approach to fi nancial

management and accountability. Th e departments and

agencies would do their own voucher checking and

accounting, while the GAO would prescribe account-

ing principles and check the adequacy of agency

fi nancial controls and processes. Th is agreement set

the course of fi nancial management through the

modern era, which was formalized in the Budget and

Accounting Procedures Act of 1950. Far from being

an actor involved only after the fact, the GAO played

an instrumental role in achieving fi nancial manage-

ment reform as a catalyst in bringing together agencies

from throughout the government, as a consultant to

the Bureau of the Budget and other fi nancial manage-

ment agencies in promulgating guidance, and as a

policy developer in working proactively with Congress

to develop much of the legislation discussed earlier.

Congress further ushered in the transformation of the

GAO’s role by upgrading its oversight function in the

1946 Legislative Reorganization Act, which included

the expectation that committees would consider re-

ports from the GAO to fulfi ll their oversight responsi-

bilities. Th e impact on the GAO was impressive: Th e

agency downsized after the war from a staff of 15,000

to 4,000 in the 1960s ( Havens 1990, 14 ). Th e agency’s

staff profi le changed as well, from audit clerks to a

multidisciplinary workforce of public administration

and policy analysts, economists, information technol-

ogy specialists, and accountants, among many others.

Moving from transactional to post-audit evaluations,

the GAO has become an entirely diff erent agency

from the one that had angered public administrators

in the fi rst two decades of its existence, especially

Buck and Mansfi eld. Th e agency retains some residual

functions involving the executive branch — it provides

opinions on the legality of federal expenditures when

requested, and it serves in a bid protest role to hear

the complaints of those aggrieved by federal contract

decisions, a process that serves the interests of the

broader acquisition community, including federal

agencies. However, the lion’s share of its work now

consists of providing evaluations of programs, opera-

tions, and problems for Congress. In 1969, only 10

percent of GAO reports responded to requests and the

GAO testifi ed only 24 times ( Havens 1990 ). By 1988,

80 percent of the agency’s work responded to congres-

sional priorities and requests, culminating in 200

testimonies, and these trends continued through 2006

( GAO 2006 ). Admittedly, some of the projects that

are recorded as congressional requests actually origi-

nated with the GAO, illustrating how interdependent

Congress’s agent is with its principals. Th e 1986

Bowsher v. Synar (1486 U.S. 714) decision further

reinforced the agency’s position in the congressional

orbit, as the Supreme Court ruled that the GAO

could not assume the quasi-executive role of ordering

cuts in agencies’ spending in response to defi cits under

the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget

legislation.

Th e contemporary GAO, however, has gone further

than the post-audit role contemplated by the Brown-

low Committee. Th ough a legislative branch agency,

the independence that is the mainstay of the GAO’s

credibility and infl uence enables it to play a more

expansive role than acting as a simple agent carrying

out studies for its congressional principal. Rather, the

GAO is empowered by Congress not only to assess the

eff ectiveness of programs and operations but also to

help defi ne the agenda of problems that should be

considered by the nation’s policy makers. Th e GAO’s

position as a neutral broker of ideas and information

is valued by many committees and members of Con-

gress, and the agency is invited in to help shape con-

gressional agendas, formulate legislative proposals, and

even serve as an arbiter on commissions and other

advisory groups, brokering solutions to thorny policy

issues. Th e comptroller general, for example, was

Public Budgeting and Finance Reforms over 70 Years 1023

asked by Congress to chair a commission on competi-

tive sourcing in 2001 whose report led to changes in

federal guidance on contract management. Th e cur-

rent comptroller general, David M. Walker, notes that

the GAO has recently become more active in conducting

“foresight” on behalf of the Congress — studies that

identify emerging trends, placing new issues more

prominently on the policy agenda. For example, the

GAO was among the fi rst to simulate the long-term

fi scal defi cits arising from the aging of our nation, and it

has engaged with a variety of other groups in generating

greater attention on these issues, not only in Congress

but also across public forums throughout the nation. 3

Substantive and Intellectual Contributions to Public Administration Th e Brownlow Committee’s recommendations and

underlying reforms were premised on a formal

separation of powers between Congress and the

president. As in Wilson’s dichotomy between politics

and administration, the committee’s views rested in

the premise that management and administration

should be the primary province of the president,

freed from congressional control and interference.

Th is vision has proved compelling for many advo-

cates of management reforms, but it has also proved

unrealistic and self-defeating for a separation-

of-powers system of government, as sustaining

management reforms in our regime requires active

participation and ownership by both Congress and

the president. Ironically, as the discussion that

follows will illustrate, concerted action by Congress

was often necessary to bring about and institutional-

ize many of the reforms in budgeting and fi nancial

management recommended years ago by the

Brownlow Committee’s authors.

Th e limited vision of Congress’s role in executive

management that was articulated by the committee’s

fi nal report, and by Buck and Mansfi eld’s study, is

often shared by contemporary management reformers

in and out of the executive branch, and thus its prem-

ises are important to examine. In the area of public

fi nance, the study essentially argued that Congress

should delegate broad discretion to the agencies for

managing fi nances and securing accountability for

public resources, reserving the right to oversee the

outcomes of agency decisions after the fact. Th e advice

for Congress to consolidate appropriations accounts,

eliminate earmarks, and remove itself from the busi-

ness of executive management control were key rec-

ommendations. According to the study’s vision, the

congressional role in management would be reposi-

tioned from an ex ante set of constraints and controls

to an ex post role in overseeing decisions and actions

after they have been taken by executive agencies. Such

a limited role is consistent with what I call the

“delegated board of directors” model of congressional

involvement in management.

Such a limited congressional role is also consistent

with important themes in the tradition of American

public management reform. Paul Light (1987) ob-

serves that two of the four “tides of reform” that have

animated management reforms in our system in re-

cent decades — “scientifi c management” and “libera-

tion management” — have been championed by

advocates of executive leadership seeking to streamline

bureaucracies and liberate managers from what are

perceived to be excessive controls and micromanage-

ment by political superiors, including those in Con-

gress. Congressional interests are supported by the two

other reform thrusts that Light identifi es: “war on

waste” and the “watchful eye.” Interestingly, in this

framework, the congressional role in management is

premised on a distrust of government and its civil

servants. Th e implicit message of this administrative

history is that when we want government to work to

achieve positive national goals and priorities, we gen-

erally relegate Congress to the managerial back seat.

Conversely, when we begin to distrust the hopes and

dreams of previous reformers, we turn to Congress to

vent our deeply rooted suspicion of government and

its employees.

Th e past two presidential administrations — those of

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — have been guided

by a vision of the congressional role that is markedly

similar to that of the Brownlow Committee’s authors.

Th e National Performance Review of the Clinton era

carried a strong assumption that congressional micro-

management had saddled agencies with layers of in-

effi cient rules and funding set-asides that hampered

their entrepreneurial spirit and capacity to deliver

greater services at less cost ( Gore 1993 ). Th e Bush

administration’s Presidential Management Agenda

consists of fi ve major areas in which agencies are

judged based on their achievement of a management

scorecard developed by the Offi ce of Management and

Budget (OMB). Th ough some of the standards them-

selves are derived from underlying statutes, the OMB’s

specifi cation of criteria and the use of public approba-

tion as a tool to enforce agency compliance constitute

a centralizing approach to agency management. In the

area of performance budgeting alone, the administra-

tion veered away from the approach of the Govern-

ment Performance and Results Act, which relied on

agency performance plans developed in consultation

with Congress, to adopt a more centralizing initiative,

the Program Assessment Rating Tool. Under this pro-

cess, the criteria, program selections, and assessments

are done by the OMB itself without signifi cant consul-

tation with Congress, as the GAO has pointed out

(GAO 2004). Coupled with the administration’s other

initiative to resurrect presidential power, this manage-

ment approach is intended to minimize Congress’s role.

Some have argued that Congress often embraces a mini-

malist management role itself. Richard F. Fenno (1973)

1024 Public Administration Review • November | December 2007

argues that reelection and legislating are the central

pursuits of members who have little time left to pursue

the details of policy implementation. When comparing

the relative electoral payoff s from engaging in new legis-

lation, campaigning, and constituency service, oversight

and management are said to carry lower rewards for

political offi cials. Th e recent polarization and strength-

ening of party discipline in Congress has further attenu-

ated congressional interests in executive management,

according to Th omas Mann and Norman Ornstein

(2006) . In their recent book, they argue that members

of Congress now see themselves as fi eld lieutenants in

their party’s army, bound to support their president and

his executive establishment when the same party con-

trols both the Congress and the presidency.

Th is depiction of the congressional role in manage-

ment is not complete and fails to encompass the sig-

nifi cant actions Congress does in fact take to infl uence

and control executive agencies and management poli-

cies. However, members of Congress themselves en-

dorse this cynical view of their own role. For example,

a senior member of Congress who was instrumental in

enacting and overseeing implementation of many of

the management reforms in recent years told this

author in a private forum that the legislative branch

does not care about management. When the author

reminded him of his own leadership role in Congress

in bringing about many valuable management re-

forms, the congressman nonetheless persisted in his

position of institutional self-deprecation. 2

Th e recommendations by Brownlow and succeeding

generations of reformers in their tradition would, if

adopted, further attenuate the congressional role in

executive management. Shifting Congress from an ex

ante role in specifying agencies structures and con-

straints to an ex post reviewer of agency actions

would, no doubt, improve the discretion enjoyed by

agencies, perhaps increasing effi ciency as well.

However, Congress would lose considerable infl uence

in the process. Essentially, these reforms are modeled

after principal – agent theory, whereby Congress en-

gages in implicit or explicit contracts with bureau-

cratic agents to carry out its policy goals. As we know,

it is diffi cult for principals to monitor the behavior of

agents in such settings, partly because of the informa-

tion monopolies that agents possess in such relation-

ships. Congress and other principals can use ex post

facto oversight, but such strategies are expensive and

are practiced only selectively, often leading Congress

to rely instead on what Mathew D. McCubbins and

Th omas Schwartz (1984) call “fi re alarm oversight,”

whereby it institutionalizes opportunities for interest

groups and other monitoring agents to share the

information costs of monitoring agencies behavior.

Allen Schick (1982) argues that oversight will always

be episodic in a Congress that prefers lawmaking;

controlling the details and design of programs at the

front end is a more certain pathway to real infl uence

than ex post facto oversight and hearings. Accordingly,

Congress fi nds that its infl uence over bureaucratic

behavior is more eff ectively secured by relying on a

range of systematic ex ante controls, including such

activities as prescribing detailed budgetary categories

and instructions, articulating the key elements of

program design in authorizing legislation, articulating

procedural requirements for agencies to follow, pre-

scribing organizations and structures for agencies in

legislation, and controlling agency staffi ng and nomi-

nations ( Shipan 2005 ). In eff ect, the principal – agent

model does not adequately capture the range of con-

gressional infl uence over management. Unlike tradi-

tional principals, Congress can and does exercise

authority to reshape the agents themselves, as agents

are in large part creatures of Congress. In essence,

Congress is an active principal that refuses to take its

bureaucratic agents as it fi nds them. Rather, it insists

on its prerogative to create new agents, change the

structure and functions of existing agents, and reshape

their priorities through the budget and oversight

process.

Th e current performance management reform models

echo the recommendations of the Buck and Mans-

fi eld’s study in calling on Congress to reposition its

oversight of agencies from process to results. Unlike

other reformers, those arguing for the performance

model conclude that Congress would gain from this

exchange by providing greater control over the ulti-

mate actions that matter — outcomes. Such a results-

based model for accountability may indeed work in a

parliamentary environment, in which legislatures have

always been weak actors in infl uencing agencies. How-

ever, in a separation-of-powers system, this model has

asymmetrical implications for congressional infl uence.

Congress would give up control over inputs, which

are easily monitored and directly connected to legisla-

tive appropriations, in exchange for a focus on out-

puts and outcomes, which often have a far more

indirect and contestable linkage with congressional

budget actions.

Agencies gain the benefi ts of increased discretion

immediately, whereas the prospects for holding agen-

cies accountable for failing to reach performance

outcome targets are far more contestable and challeng-

ing. Legislatures may be left grasping for someone to

blame for performance shortfalls, which may be

caused by social, economic, or demographic forces

having little to do with the actions of executive agen-

cies. Accordingly, in a separation-of-powers regime,

reforms that introduce performance into budgeting

can be expected to be additive, supplementing rather

than replacing traditional information and controls.

Although performance can and should be encouraged

as an important perspective for budgeting, other

Public Budgeting and Finance Reforms over 70 Years 1025

perspectives are equally important to political actors

in our budget process. As the foregoing suggests, our

system thrives on multiple forms of accountability,

refl ecting the multiple players empowered to play a

role in governance of our system (Posner and Fantone

2007).

Fundamental Assumptions Th e limited role consigned for Congress in manage-

ment is out of step with normative theory and with

empirical behavior. David Rosenbloom (2000) has

made the case on both counts for a “legislative-centered

public administration.” Th is concept attempts to

reconcile the requisites of an expansive administrative

state with the political and constitutional values at the

core of our democratic separation-of-powers system.

Administrative procedures, far from being simply

neutral business practices, embody political and value

choices for which Congress must ultimately share

accountability and responsibility. In the American

system, Congress has formative responsibility for the

organization, authority, and processes of executive

management, and agencies typically serve as exten-

sions of the legislature in their rulemaking and admin-

istrative implementation of programs. Rather than

retreating to their own separate spheres, as contem-

plated by the Brownlow Committee and other re-

formers, Congress and agencies should be joined in

the common enterprise of formulating administrative

policy, consistent with shared public values. Recogniz-

ing our system of separated institutions sharing pow-

ers, boundary drawing is usually a fruitless enterprise,

denying the fundamental fact that both the president

and Congress have what Francis Rourke (1993) calls

“joint custody” of the federal agencies.

From an empirical perspective, the congressional

interest in management and administration has been

growing over the years. Th e resurgence of Congress in

the 1970s refl ected the restructuring of congressional

committees, the augmentation of staff , and the grow-

ing use of such agencies of the GAO to support active

intervention in program and management oversight.

Joel Aberbach’s (1990) careful work on congressional

oversight further supports these observations. With

the eclipse of breakthrough opportunities and the

cloud of defi cits often hanging over their heads, many

legislatures face greater pressure to justify and improve

existing programs. Aberbach chronicles the growth in

congressional oversight activity to levels exceeding

that forecast by those who would predict little political

payoff to members of Congress from this seemingly

less glamorous activity. Oversight came to have greater

political payoff , partly because of the growing stakes

associated with existing government programs, the

disillusionment with government in general, and the

presence of signifi cant information resources from

staff and support agencies to support committee

reviews.

Th ough in recent years, unifi ed party control of both

Congress and the presidency may have diminished

congressional interest in overseeing the administra-

tion’s major policy initiatives, such as the war in Iraq,

committees nevertheless have pursued active hearings

on a wide range of other issues. Congress has contin-

ued to assert other forms of ex ante control over agen-

cies resources and managerial discretion. Th e GAO’s

data show that the agency’s testimony activity

remained relatively constant over the past ten years

during periods of both unifi ed and divided govern-

ment. 4 Th e rapid growth of earmarks in congressional

appropriations and authorizations and the rejection of

the OMB targets for contracting out positions in

executive agencies by even Republican-controlled

committees suggest that reports of the demise of

congressional interest in executive management are

premature, to say the least.

What has changed is the growing role played by Con-

gress in the enactment of government-wide manage-

ment reforms. Going beyond specifi c interventions in

agency structures and budgets, these reforms off er the

prospect of more systematic congressional infl uence

over the management of agencies, often across the

entire government. Th us, when examining the imple-

mentation of the Brownlow Committee’s public

fi nance reforms, one is impressed by the critical role

often played by Congress as an active partner in ac-

complishing change. Far from a passive and indiff er-

ent actor, Congress has shown itself to be proactive in

enacting a fl ood of management reforms over the

years that have been widely acknowledged as essential

in stimulating and sustaining progress. In his study of

the history of management reform in the postwar

period, Paul Light (187) shows that there has been a

marked shift in the relative infl uence of the president

and Congress over the years. Before 1978, the presi-

dent was responsible for most of the reforms initiated

at the federal level, while Congress was the dominate

source of ideas after this time. Over the past 15 years

alone, in areas ranging from performance manage-

ment, fi nancial management, information technology,

and acquisition reform, Congress has passed wide-

ranging reforms institutionalizing the development of

new information and reporting in federal agencies for

these critical areas. Although relatively unheralded,

Congress often took the lead in these areas, sometimes

facing active resistance from the president. When

compared to other performance reforms of the past,

the Government Performance and Results Act, the

Chief Financial Offi cers Act, and the Clinger-Cohen

Act ushered in reforms that have been sustained for

more than a decade. Moreover, Congress at times

followed up by conducting oversight hearings that

focused on the agencies’ progress, at times engaging in

scorecard exercises rating agencies’ progress long

before the OMB developed its own management

scorecard in the current Bush administration.

1026 Public Administration Review • November | December 2007

Th e enactment of management

reforms benefi ts Congress by

reaching agencies through

government-wide policies,

thereby providing the opportu-

nity to infl uence agencies on a

wholesale rather than a retail,

agency-by-agency basis. In

pursuing these policies, Con-

gress often gains access to

agencies in the Executive

Offi ce of the President. For

instance, in the OMB alone, Congress has created a

deputy director for management and has either stood

up or provided statutory underpinnings for many

specifi c offi ces, such as the Offi ce of Federal Financial

Management, the Offi ce of Information and Regula-

tory Aff airs, and the Offi ce of Procurement Policy.

Th e OMB’s performance plan acknowledges that,

although the agency overall works for the president,

the offi ce has acquired a fi duciary responsibility to

carry out congressional policies in these and other

discrete areas ( Tomkins 1998 , 309).

When compared to traditional oversight and ex ante

controls, government-wide management reforms

constitute an inexpensive form of congressional infl u-

ence whereby the costs are incurred principally by

agencies. Congress need not use the information in the

near term to gain value. Rather, these policies often

institutionalize new information that will be useful at

some future time for subsequent oversight when and

where Congress chooses to use it. In some respects,

these reforms could be viewed as a quintessential ex-

ample of “fi re alarm” oversight, whereby Congress sets

in motion information requirements that could be

used by its committees and support agencies to high-

light trends and spotlight problems in future years

( McCubbins and Schwartz 1984 ). Th e establishment

of performance reporting, fi nancial statement audits,

and information systems reviews guarantees more

systematic information, as well as periodic placement

of these issues on the public agenda.

While the press often highlights presidential –

congressional confl ict, in fact many of these reforms

often constitute gains for both branches. Executive

reforms have a greater chance of being sustainable

with congressional buy-in and support. For example,

the performance plans and reports under the Govern-

ment Performance and Results Act of 1993 could be

viewed as having enhanced agency capacity and power

to set goals, but they also provided Congress with new

information and opportunities to oversee and second-

guess agency decisions that had heretofore been only

implicit, not explicit. Similarly, the passage of the

Congressional Budget Act clearly enhanced the capac-

ity of Congress to infl uence the budget debate, but it

also gave the OMB new infl uence over Congress by

creating a central process with a

set of budget committees shar-

ing the central budget

perspective.

When discussing the interest of

Congress in management re-

form, we must be mindful that

generalizations can be hazard-

ous when discussing a pluralis-

tic institution such as the

Congress. Th ough the congres-

sional pursuit of management reforms is a relatively

new development, executive – congressional relation-

ships on management issues range from collaborative

to adversarial, while congressional management inter-

ventions range from broad government-wide policy

initiatives to specifi c interventions no behalf of local-

ized constituencies.

Using these two dimensions — the breadth of congres-

sional management focus and the nature of the

executive – congressional relationship — we can develop

the following table, which suggests four categories of

congressional management interventions.

Each of these categories can be found simultaneously

in the same Congress, perhaps on the same day. Each

warrants brief discussion.

Broad delegation . Th is approach comes closest to that

articulated by the Brownlow Committee, especially

Buck and Mansfi eld, and other management reform-

ers. In this role, Congress acts like a board of direc-

tors, providing very broad, overall policy criteria to be

implemented by the agencies and other actors in the

system. Th ere are many examples, but one of the most

celebrated was the passage of sections 503 and 504 of

the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which provided access

for the disabled to federally funded facilities and jobs.

Th is legislation was developed as an amendment on

the fl oor with no hearings, gaining unanimous adop-

tion in both the House and Senate. Th e latent politi-

cal confl icts that were submerged when Congress

passed this broad delegation became manifest when

the agencies promulgated the regulations, which came

out four years later and only following a sit-in by the

members of the disabled community at the doorstep

of the secretary of health, education, and welfare,

Joseph Califano ( Conlan and Abrams 1981 ).

Collaboration . As noted, many management reform

statutes are both developed and implemented with

Th e enactment of management reforms benefi ts Congress by

reaching agencies through government-wide policies, thereby

providing the opportunity to infl uence agencies on a wholesale rather than a retail, agency-by-

agency basis.

Table 1 Congressional Management Profi le

Broad Narrow

Cooperative Delegation Collaboration Adversarial Competition Micromanagement

Public Budgeting and Finance Reforms over 70 Years 1027

strong collaboration and coordination on the part of

executive and legislative actors. Collaboration charac-

terized the development of the Government Performance

and Results Act of 1993, as the OMB, GAO, and

congressional committee staff engaged in negotiations,

which led to the adoption of legislation that gained

broad approval in the Congress and ready signature by

the president. Agencies engaged Congress in consulta-

tions on draft strategic plans, as was contemplated by

the legislation. Executive – congressional collaboration

was partly responsible for the act’s longevity, which far

surpassed the relatively short life spans of prior perfor-

mance budgeting reforms initiated by executive action

( GAO 1997 ).

Competition . Broad management policies can be-

come venues in which Congress and the administra-

tion disagree in substance or vie with one another to

claim credit or assign blame for the outcomes of these

policies. Th e Government Performance and Results

Act, though developed collaboratively, became a con-

tested competition when the House majority leader

summoned his committees to score the agencies’

strategic and performance plans ( Rosenbloom 2000,

85 ). When the score received by many agencies

proved to be quite low, it became apparent that the

Republican leadership was using the act’s plans as a

way to compete with the Democratic administration

for the performance high ground.

Micromanagement. Congress engages in specifi c

interventions that are viewed by agencies as intrusive,

constraining their budget authority and managerial

fl exibility. Examples of this include earmarks in ap-

propriations and authorizing legislation, specifi c ap-

propriation riders providing detailed instructions to

agencies, and limits on agency

fl exibility in using inputs,

such as full-time equivalent

ceilings and caps on the num-

ber of contractors that can be

hired. Often, congressional

actors will argue that such

specifi c constraints become

necessary when Congress no

longer trusts agencies to share

its goals and priorities.

Th is taxonomy highlights the

kinds of management roles

that Congress plays, but it tells us little about the

relationship among these roles or the factors and

circumstances that prompt Congress to embrace par-

ticular roles at particular times. Th e fact that Congress

plays important and more diff erentiated roles in ex-

ecutive branch management than has commonly been

recognized should prompt more systematic research

into the factors that motivate congressional behavior

and the consequences for public management. For

example, what eff ect does trust and agency perfor-

mance have on the congressional proclivity to move

from micromanagement to delegation or collabora-

tion? Do institutional innovations such as informal

congressional approval requirements provide Congress

with suffi cient comfort to permit greater fl exibility for

agencies? Does the recent trend toward stronger con-

gressional actions in government-wide management

reform constitute a more eff ective way for Congress to

place its imprint on agencies without some of the

purported downsides of specifi c congressional man-

agement interventions? Th ese and other related ques-

tions constitute an important and neglected agenda

for public management research. Th e actual roles

played by legislatures in public management have

proceeded well ahead of our conceptual frameworks

and empirical research. Th ose of us in the academic

and research side of public administration need to

catch up with the rapidly evolving world of practice.

Refl ections We can learn a great deal about public administration

today from examining Buck and Mansfi eld’s recom-

mendations, published 70 years ago. Ideas — both old

and new — matter for public administration today.

Just as John Maynard Keynes famously suggested for

economics, public administrators are wittingly or

unwittingly infl uenced by the ideas of previous gen-

erations, both living and dead. Irene Rubin (1990)

has suggested that in the fi eld of public budgeting, we

often greatly underestimate the impact of normative

theory and theorists in guiding contemporary prac-

tices and reforms.

Indeed, the concepts articulated in the Brownlow

Report continue to have infl uence among high-level

offi cials in government. Parts

of the substantive reform

agenda remain works-in-

progress even today, particu-

larly in the realm of fi nancial

management and central

management of the bureau-

cracy. Th e ideas from the

Brownlow Report, as renewed

by subsequent generations,

persist as part of the manage-

ment reform agenda, attesting

to the long lead times and

patience required to complete

complex transformations of governance in our system.

Persistence is an admirable attribute when one agrees

with the ideas that are being supported. However, the

Brownlow Committee’s executive-centered model for

government has remained remarkably persistent as

well, thriving at the highest levels in presidential ad-

ministrations, even though this framework is neither

normatively or empirically congruent with the Ameri-

can system of separation of powers. As we have seen,

Th e ideas from the Brownlow Report, as renewed by subsequent generations, persist as part of the

management reform agenda, attesting to the long lead times and

patience required to complete complex transformations of governance in our system.

1028 Public Administration Review • November | December 2007

both the Clinton and Bush administrations’ manage-

ment reforms were informed by these executive-cen-

tered models, relegating Congress to a marginal role in

managing the executive branch. Models that fail to

recognize the important role that Congress plays as a

co-manager and sometime-partner undermine the

cause of reform. As history suggests, executive-

inspired changes often fail to sustain themselves if

Congress does not support the reform eff orts.

Going forward, the public administration community

has to come to terms with the prominent role that

Congress plays in management reform. Th e struggle

to reconcile representative democracy with the bu-

reaucratic state has been with us at least since the

20th century. Many years ago, Lawrence C. Dodd

and Richard L. Schott (1979) posited the central

question: How can a democratic system hold execu-

tive agencies accountable to Congress while promot-

ing their eff ectiveness in delivering services at the

same time? As this essay has illustrated, the relation-

ship between congressional control and good man-

agement is not necessarily an oxymoronic one. In

fact, in recent years, Congress has taken the lead in

championing management reforms that have served

the interests of both legislative and executive offi cials.

As before, we can expect reform to be a persistent

feature of our system, particularly as government

continues to play an important role in the nation’s

life. As we go forward, reformers will continue to be

ill served by following the executive-centered gover-

nance models articulated in the Brownlow Report

and elsewhere. Instead, they need to be armed with

governance models to guide reform initiatives that are

more appropriate and refl ective of the realities — and

advantages — of a system of separated institutions

sharing powers.

Notes 1. President’s Commission on Economy and

Effi ciency, Th e Need for a National Budget

(Washington, 1912).

2. Off -the-record discussion with the author.

3. Interview with Comptroller General David M.

Walker, June 8, 2007.

4. GAO data, Annual Reports, 1996–2006.

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