Coda: A Budget Is Many Things and One of Them Is a Performance

The budget is many different policies. It is fiscal policy, designed to stimulate or restrain the economy, to fight unemployment or inflation. The budget summarizes the balance of public and private sectors of the economy—the proportion of GNP taken by taxes or consisting of federal government spending—in short, "how much" federal government we have. The distribution of spending in very broad categories describes the kind of government we want: one that emphasizes military might or protects the middle class or helps the poor. The assumptions in budget resolutions, and action on appropriations or entitlements or tax expenditures, make the budget also a package of thousands of specific program policies: how much to invest in airport safety; which people, if any, should receive special nutrition benefits; how many F-16s the Air Force needs.

For partisans, particularly leaders, of the Democratic and Republican parties, the aggregates in the budget resolutions represent their party's influence on the course of American government; short of the actual organization of the two houses (election of the Speaker, committee assignments), no other action is potentially of as great import to the party leadership. The battle of the budget tests their generalship. The ability of the parties to stay together in the final encounter, apart from the vote to organize the houses along partisan lines, is now their ultimate test of cohesion.

To those members of Congress who identify with the institution—which, depending upon the issue and challenge, ranges from a few to all—budgeting tests Congress: Can Congress choose? Can it enforce its will? In short, can Congress govern? The president asks the same questions, slightly changed: Can I govern the agencies? Can I govern Congress? Can I govern responsibly and maintain public support? Finally, both president and Congress must ask: Do we control policy, or do the policies control us? Can any of us control events?

Republicans and Democrats alike had agreed that the great issues should be faced directly and without obfuscation. How the people they represent would fare under a budgetary process that compels great choices without agreement on what those choices should be is an integral part of the deficit problem, for it is one thing to agree that the deficit is too large and another to agree on how to reduce it.