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cides to impound funds (Fisher, 1969). As Miller (1965: 533) observed, the president "can and may withhold expenditure of funds to the extent that the political milieu in which he operates permits him to do so." Unfortunately, there is little in the literature on his political aspect. Williams (1955) wrote an excellent study on the interplay between politics and impounded funds from 1941 to 1943. Ramsey (1968) and Jackson (1967) discussed impoundment disputes of the postwar period, but neither attempted a political evaluation. The attempt here is to trace the subject of impounded funds from 1921 to 1970, searching for historical and political factors that help explain why a president resorts to impoundment, and under what conditions his will is likely to prevail over that of Congress.

SOURCE OF AUTHORITY TO IMPOUND FUNDS

Part of the President's responsibility for controlling the level of expenditures can be traced back to the years following the Civil War, when congressional control over the spending power declined as a result of fragmentation of committees. The House Ways and Means Committee split apart in 1865, retaining jurisdiction over revenue but surrendering responsibilities over appropriations and banking and currency to two newly formed committees. Within a few years the jurisdiction of the House Appropriations Committee splintered, with autonomous, spending powers parceled out to separate committees. In the wake of legislative extravagances in the late 1800s, the President, not Congress, played the role of guardian of the public purse (Fisher, 1971).

ANTIDEFICIENCY ACTS

At the turn of the century, outlays for pension bills, river and harbor projects, the Spanish-American War, and the Panama Canal all converged to produce a series of budget defiicits. The Antideficiency Act of 1905 introduced the technique of monthly or other allotments to prevent "undue expenditures in one portion of the year that may require deficiency or additional appropriations to complete the service of the fiscal year . . ." (33 Stat. 1257, sec. 4). In the Antideficiency Act of 1906, Congress stipulated that apportionments could be waived or modified in the event of "some extraordinary emergency or unusual circumstances which could not be anticipated at the time of making such apportionment" (34 Stat. 49, sec. 3). This constituted an admission by Congress that regardless of spending patterns anticipated when passing appropriation bills, or even after apportioning funds, conditions might change and necessitate a different course for actual expenditures.

President Taft received funds in 1910 to investigate into more efficient and economical ways of transacting public business (36 Stat. 703), but when his Commission on Economy and Efficiency recommended the adoption of an executive budget two years later, Congress ignored the proposal. The magnitude of Federal spending during World War I, coupled with the pressing need for managing the huge debt after the war, finally made budget reform unavoidable. The main thrust of recommendations after 1918 centered on two principles: an increase in executive responsibility, and a decrease in legislative opportunities for extravagance. For instance, Senator Medill McCormick proposed that a budget committee be established with power to reduce presidential estimates by simple majority vote: but for increases in budget estimates, he suggested that the committee either approve them by a two-thirds majority or obtain approval from the Secretary of the Treasury, upon presidental authority. Furthermore, after the budget committee had released the appropriation bill for floor action, legislators would not be allowed to offer any amendment increasing the budget "except that it be to restore an item or items in the estimates as they were originally submitted by the President" (U.S. Congress, 1918:6). Congressman John J. Fitzgerald, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, also argued that "much better results" would be obtained by prohibiting individual legislators from exceeding presidential estimates. Although Fitzgerald would not absolutely forbid such increases, he wanted to "make it so difficult, and loading [the legislator] down, that it would only be done under the most peculiar or extraordinary circumstances" (Willoughby, 1918: 148-149).

Source: Administrative Science Quarterly. September 1970. pp. 361-377. Reproduced with permission by the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, July 21, 1971.

Carter Glass, member of Congress for 17 years before becoming secretary of the treasury, told Congress in 1919 that it should limit the right to increase any item "either in committee or on the floor unless recommended by the Secretary of the Treasury, or, in the absence of such recommendation, unless approved by twothirds of the membership of Congress" (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1919: 123). Increases, he said, should be made on the floor only when restoring an item previously recommended by the secretary. To protect Congress' constitutional right to initiate expenditures. Glass recommended that spending proposals in excess of the president's request be handled by separate bills. David F. Houston, the next secretary of the treasury, made the same proposal (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1920: 51).

These constraints on legislative additions were not incorporated into the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which set forth procedures for the new national budget. Nor was the president protected from insubordination within his own ranks. While section 206 of the act prohibited agency officials from seeking additional funds unless requested to do so by Congress, agencies and bureausdenied a portion of their request by the president-could make informal overtures to Congress to have their funds restored. Without item-veto authority, presidents developed the art of impoundment in order to maintain control over legislative increases and their own executive officials.

Following the 1921 act, administrative regulations extended the Budget Bureau's control over spending levels. The first budget director, Charles G. Dawes, issued a circular setting forth procedures for establishing reserves and effecting savings. Appropriations from Congress were to be treated as a mere ceiling on expenditures, rather than as a directive to spend the full amount. He ordered each executive department and bureau to determine the portion of appropriations considred indispensable for carrying out activities. The estimated savings would be carried as a General Reserve, with the amount approved by the president for expenditure under an appropriation title representing the "maximum available for obligation during the fiscal year" (U.S. Bureau of the Bureau of the Budget, 1921). Since further savings would be attempted during the course of the fiscal year, each bureau was to withhold additional sums from obligation so that these amounts could be added to the General Reserve. As a result of this circular, the allotment technique now had two objectives: to prevent deficiencies, and to effect savings.

DEPRESSION POLICIES

Economic collapse in 1929 led to broader presidential authority for reducing expenditures. When deficits appeared in 1931 for the first time in a decade, President Hoover asked for authority to effect savings through reorganization of the executive departments. Earlier efforts by Congress to reduce spending had been thwarted by such influential lobbyists as veterans' groups. "The only way by which we will get results," Senator Reed told his colleagues, "is by putting the power into the hands of somebody who will assume the responsibility and use it .. if we are to get economies made they have to be made by some one who has the power to make the order and stand by it. Leave it to Congress and we will fiddle around here all summer trying to satisfy every lobbyists, and we will get nowhere" (U.S. Congress, 1932: 9644).

President Hoover received authority to make partial layoffs, reduce compensation for public officials, and consolidate executive agencies in order to effect savings. Funds impounded by this economy act were to be returned to the Treasury Department (47 Stat. 382, Part II, Titles I and IV). Hoover subsequently issued executive orders to regroup and consolidate a total of 58 agencies, but the House disapproved the orders on January 19, 1933, preferring to leave reorganization changes to the new president. In his last two days in office, Hoover signed two more economy measures, authorizing his successor to effect further reorganization and to reduce military spending in accordance with an economy survey ordered by the president (47 Stat. 1519, sec. 16; 47 Stat. 1602, Title II, sec. 4).

In 1932, the Democratic platforms had called for "an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagances, to accomplish a saving of not less than 25 percent in the cost of the Federal Government." Although promising to spend more for the hungry and the unemployed, Franklin D. Roosevelt committed himself to his party's economy goal

during the campaign (Rosenman, 1938a: 808). Once in office, he requested authority to reduce veterans' benefits and salaries of federal employees. Despite oppositon from some members of his own party, he obtained this authority in the economy act of March 20, 1933 (48 Stat. 8). Senator Tydings, hearing legislators complain that the president asked for dictatorial powers, replied, "Of course he did. Why? Because Congress itself refused to do its duty, to protect the integrity of the national credit" (U.S. Congress, 1933a: 270). After Roosevelt had reduced veterans' payments by an estimated $460 million, a White House statement soon admitted that cuts had gone deeper than intended. Funds totaling $117 million were restored by a series of liberalizing executive orders issued in June and July, and by the Independent offices Appropriations Act signed June 16 (Rosenman, 1938b).

Acting under authority of the March 20 act, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6166 to reorganize, transfer, and abolish certain executive agencies and functions. This order transferred the functions of "making, waiving, and modifying apportionments of appropriations" from departmental heads and bureau chiefs to the budget director (U.S. Congress, 1933b: 5708). Unexpended balances for abolished agencies or functions would be transferred to the successor agency as the director considered necessary. Any unexpended balances not disposed of would be impounded and returned to the Treasury. Thus, instead of letting individual bureau chiefs adjust apportionment schedules to satisfy their constituencies, this decision was centered in the Budget Bureau and the president. The inability of Congress to control expenditures when faced with lobbying pressures was illustrated again in the late 1930s. On the basis of recommendations by the Committee on Administrative Management (the Brownlow committee), Roosevelt proposed in 1937 that Congress establish general principles by which the president could reorganize the executive branch on a continuing basis. He emphasized that although reorganization could improve efficiency and morale, it was not intended as an instrument for major spending reductions (Rosenman, 1938c: 668, 1941a: 498). Nevertheless, the reorganization proposal gradually acquired a cost-saving reputation. In January 1938, Congressman Woodrum recommended that the president be authorized to reduce any appropriation whenever he determined, by investigation, that such action would help balance the budget or reduce the public debt, and would serve the public interest. One could interpret this either as a generous extension of impoundment authority under the economy acts of 1932 and 1933, or else as item-veto authority. Woodrum explained that his proposal would protect the president from extraneous items attached to appropriation bills, a legislative practice which put the president in a position of “having to swallow things he does not want or approve items he does not want in order to get an appropriation bill passed" (U.S. Congress, 1938a: 355).

Opponents of the Woodrum motion charged that the president could use the authority to dominate Congress and intimidate opposition. Congressman Mavercik argued that legislators would hesitate to challenge the president since he “could single out any district or portion of America to have appropriations or not to have appropriations, as he pleased." Congressman Ditter charged that the reorganization bill put the public purse at the dispostal of the president and made the civil service the "ready tool of the Executive for political appointments." With Roosevelt's Court-packing proposa! cited as an effort to destroy the independence of the judiciary, the reorganization plan was characterized as a companion move to deprive Congress of its vital spending perogatives (U.S. Congress, 1938b: 387; 1938c: 4630; cf. Wann, 1968: 72–98).

A different version of the reorganization bill finally passed in 1939, stating that continuing deficits made cutbacks desirable and directing the president to effect savings by consolidating or abolishing agencies for more efficient operation. Reorganization would take effect after 60 days unless voted down by concurrent resolution. Of the five purposes identified in the act, spending reduction was listed first. Any appropriation unexpended as a result of this act would be impounded and returned to the Treasury (53 Stat. 561). Roosevelt strengthened his control over the budget by using the reorganization authority to transfer the Budget Bureau from the Treasury to the newly formed Executive Office of the President (53 Stat. 1423).

WAR PRIORITIES

With war imminent, the leverage for presidential impoundment increased. In his January 1941 budget message, Roosevelt announced that the government had

"embarked on a program for the total defense of our democracy." It therefore seemed appropriate, he told Congress, to "defer construction projects that interfere with the defense program by diverting manpower and materials. Further, it is very wise for us to establish a reservoir of post-defense projects to help absorb labor that later will be released by defense industry." He recommended reductions for rivers and harbors and flood-control work, but funds for power and other projects considered essential to national defense should continue (Rosenman, 1941b: 656).

On May 27, 1941, the president declared a state of unlimited national emergency. When the House passed a rivers and harbors bill which he felt might jeopardize the defense effort, he appealed to the Senate to amend the bill "so as to restrict new construction work to projects having important defense values" (U.S. Congress, 1941a: 5807, 5817). Congress refused to delegate to the president the sole right to decide which projects should go forward, but did acknowledge the gravity of the emergency period by following Budget Bureau recommendations on flood control funds and by including in the appropriation bill the provision that flood control projects "shall be prosecuted as speedily as may be consistent with budgetary requirements" (U.S. Congress, 1941b: 6767-68; 55 Stat. 638, sec. 3).

After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt carried out his policy of withholding allocations from projects which did not have important value for national defense, but the line between national defense and domestic projects was not always clear. When funds totaling $513,000 for a flood control project in Oklahoma were impounded. congressmen and local business groups from the area assailed the decision. The Budget Bureau maintained that the building of levees near Tulsa would divert funds, machinery, and skilled labor from essential war activities. Nature intervened at this point to upset the Bureau's rationale. Heavy rains caused the Arkansas River to overflow its banks in June 1942, flooding an area near Tulsa. The War Production Board (WPB) received notice that a steel mill handling war contracts had to be closed because of the flooding. When the WPB later certified that the Tulsa levees were essential for the war effort, the Budget Bureau released the funds; but scores of other projects were curtailed because of the defense effort. By the end of 1943, impounding of funds for scheduled public works had reached a half billion dollars (Williams, 1955: 12-20, 28).

Some members of Congress tried to reassert legislative authority over spending. In the summer of 1943, the Senate included a section in the Rural Post Roads Act to prohibit the impounding of funds by any agency or official other than the commissioner of public roads. The object of this section, Senator Hayden said, was to bypass the budget director, who had previously impounded large sums of highway funds. Senator McKellar noted that the section would determine "whether the will of the Congress shall be supreme, or whether the will of the Bureau of the Budget shall be supreme" (U.S. Congress, 1943a: 6313). House conferees found the section "wholly objectionable" and recommended that the impounding authority be placed in the hands of the WPB. The Senate receded on this point and Section 9 of the statute authorized the WPB to withhold funds after certifying that the "use of critical material for additional highway construction would impede the conduct of the war" (U.S. Congress, 1943b: 4; 1943c: 7385-86, 7345-46; 57 Stat. 563).

A few months later, Senator McKellar again tried to place restrictions on the impounding of funds. As an amendment to a defense bill, he proposed that the impounding of funds for the departments of war and navy be prohibited except by direction of Congress. Senator Harry Truman countered by saying that good business practice required presidential discretion in the disbursement of funds: "What looks like a good program one day may be completely unnecessary 6 months later." When domestic projects compete with war production for scarce material and manpower, Truman argued that someone had to decide on priorities. Congress could not do it, he said, since it appropriated for activities over a year in advance, and it was better to leave this authority with the president than with the agency itself. "How many agencies," he asked, "will be anxious to show that they overestimate and overstate their needs?" (U.S. Congress, 1943d: 10362-63). Despite these admonitions, the McKellar amendment passed the Senate. Once again, however, after two conference reports, the House was able to delete this restriction on impounding authority from the bill (U.S. Congress, 1943e; 1943f: 10871; 57 Stat. 611).

Subsequent legislation acknowledged the need for presidential discretion on priorities. Congress authorized public works in December 1944 and March 1945

in the "interest of the national security" and for the purpose of providing a reservoir of useful public works in the postwar period, to be initiated "as expeditiously and prosecuted as vigorously as may be consistent with budgetary requirements" (58 Stat. 887, sec. 10; 59 Stat. 11, sec. 2). No project was to be funded or constructed until six months after the end of the war, unless recommended by an authorized defense agency and approved by the president as being “necessary or desirable in the interest of the national defense and security, and the President has notified the Congress to that effect" (59 Stat. 12).

INTERSERVICE RIVALRIES

In the period after World War II, congressional strategy for controlling defense spending shifted from the traditional ceiling on spending levels to the setting of floors or minimums. This reversed the usual legislative-executive relationship. As Huntington (1961: 140) noted, the issue in earlier centuries was "whether the legislature could prevent the executive from maintaining forces which the legislature did not want. The issue in the mid-twentieth century is whether the legislature can urge or compel the executive to maintain forces which the executive does not want."

In this contest for control, the president often faces an alliance of legislators and military leaders. While serving as U.S. Senator during the war, Truman (1955: 88) noticed that generals and admirals would take over the service secretaries and the military committees in Congress, especially in defense procurement. Army and navy professionals, he said, “seldom had any idea of the value of money. They did not seem to care what the cost was . ." Since career men looked upon elected officials as temporary occupants in office, the president had to take special care to see that they did not try to circumvent his policy. Truman (1956: 165) found that it "often happened in the War and Navy Departments that the generals and the admirals, instead of working for and under the Secretaries, succeeded in having the Secretaries act for and under them."

One of Truman's first steps as president was to advocate a single department of national defense under the direction of a single civilian secretary, thereby strengthening presidential control over the military. The National Security Act of 1947 represented a weak compromise, calling for three separately administered departments of the army, the navy, and the air force, subject only to the "general direction" of a secretary of defense (61 Stat. 495; cf. Truman, 1945: 554-558; 1946: 303). The Act was amended in 1949 to provide for a Department of Defense and the removal of service secretaries as statutory members of the National Security Council. At the same time, Congress recognized the right of services secretaries and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to bypass the president and make recommendations to Congress on their own initiative (63 Stat. 580).

The gap between presidential and legislative conceptions of national security became evident in 1948 and 1949. A supplemental appropriation act in 1948 included $822 million more in contract authority for aircraft than President Truman had requested. In this case, the increase did not particularly disturb the Administration, since Defense Secretary Forrestal learned that the House had added a "hooker" extending the time during which the money had to be spent, moving the date from June 30, 1949 to a year later (Millis, 1951: 416-417). Furthermore, the statute also specified that funds were to be released only after the president had determined that the contracts let were necessary for the national defense (62 Stat. 258; cf. Truman, 1948: 272).

AIR FORCE GROUPS

More forceful legislation appeared in 1949 when Congress voted to increase the president's air force request from 48 to 58 groups. Truman signed the measure, but announced that he was directing his defense secretary to place the extra funds in reserve. Impounded funds included $577 million in contract authority for aircraft construction, $130 million for maintenance and operations, and lesser amounts for contingencies, special procurement, and research and development. All told, impounded funds came to $735 million (U.S. Congress, 1950a: 27). Several factors produced this collision between Congress and the president. First, Louis Johnson replaced Forrestal in March 1949 as the new secretary of defense and subjected the military budget to fresh examination. Moreover, even though the Berlin airlift was still in operation, and the Korean war little more

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