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Congressional Budgeting

In his book, Making Ends Meet: Congressional Budgeting in the Age of Deficits, Daniel P. Franklin addresses questions about the nature of the American economy today and its relationship to the budgeting process undertaken in Congress. To do this, Franklin examines the budget process for a single cycle, ending in 1992. Franklin holds that the process has changed and that the changes instituted in 1990 in particular altered the process and called many common practices into question in an era in which the deficit has become so large and so important. A balanced budget has been suggested as the means to bring the problem of the budget under control and to reduce the deficit, but Franklin suggests that a better method would be a form of line-item veto rather than a balanced-budget amendment. Even then, he is not suggesting that this is the complete "solution" to the problem, but what he says about the balanced budget approach is interesting.

At the present time, Americans are faced with the possibility of having both the line-item veto, passed since Franklin wrote his book, and a balanced-budget amendment as is being suggested by the current Republican leadership in Congress. Franklin makes a good argument for preferring the line-item veto over the balanced-budget amendment. The line-item veto, he says, "is wielded by political institutions subject to political control." For Franklin, this means it is a democratic process governed by political forces. The president must answer to voters for what he deletes or includes in the budget, and members of Congress will be subject to political pressure for what they decide on the same issues. A balanced-budget amendment, however, takes the pressure off everyone by forcing what they could all do anyway if they had the political will to do it. Franklin would hold that the political process should run its course and that these issues should be debated and voted on by Congress. There is...

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Congressional Budgeting. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:47, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1681862.html