The President's determination to balance the budget-a determination that Congress shares-will continue to place a spotlight on every Federal agency and program, forcing each to justify its existence. As part of these efforts, the President will continue his practice of the past four years and work with Congress to eliminate or scale back unnecessary and lower-priority programs.

Balancing the budget goes hand-in-hand with another of the President's major effortsimproving Government's performance. In an era of limited resources, the President wants to make sure that the programs the Government funds do, in fact, accomplish the goals set out for them.

Led by Vice President Gore's National Performance Review (NPR), the Administration has made real progress in creating a Government that, in the words of the NPR, "works better and costs less." We have eliminated layers of bureaucracy, cut paperwork burdens, scrapped thousands of pages of regulations and, most important, improved service to Government's customers-the American peo

ple.

These efforts will continue. Federal departments and agencies are implementing the landmark 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, which will hold them more accountable for what their programs achieve.

The Administration also will continue to look for ways to provide better service. (For a detailed discussion of the Administration's effort to improve performance, see Section IV.)

All too often, however, the focus of political debate revolves almost exclusively around proposals for incremental change: How much more does the President want to spend on program X? How much less on program Y? How do his proposals compare to what Congress proposes to do?

Such proposals capture only a portion of what the Federal Government does from year to year. The base of Federal activity— from Social Security to defense to interest on the Federal debt-does not change much, if at all. Nor does the base of activity include just the estimated $1.7 trillion that the Federal Government will spend in 1998. The Government provides hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits through the tax code, and it seeks to accomplish other goals through regulation.

If we want to continue improving performance, to ensure that taxpayers get the highquality Government they deserve, we have to understand the full range of Federal Government activities. This section provides a broad overview, categorizing the activities according to their budget "function."