Bureaucratic Politics and Reaganomics: The Role of the Office of Management and Budget

This article looks at the changed role of the OMB in American budget making. It argues for the re-establishment ofa powerful but comparatively non partisan office. During its first fifty years the Bureau of the Budget set and maintained an enviable reputation as a bastion of 'neutral competence ' in managing the executive budget and legislative clearance processes, and in undertaking certain programme develop-ment, coordination and management functions for the president. This reputation was derived from the recruitment of budget directors and career staffs who were accomplished professionals, people who were respected as experts in analysing the work of the many departments and agencies of the executive branch. Throughout Washington's governing community the budget agency was widely perceived as a special institution, one that attracted the best and the brightest and loyally served the president by providing objective advice. The budget agency's prestige changed dramatically when its name, role and style of leadership were altered by President Nixon. He turned more to his White House domestic affairs office rather than to the renamed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in making his budget policies. President Nixon used OMB more as a personal staff agency, providing support information for his policy preferences. In line with this, Nixon appointed Republican partisans to head OMB who were loyal to his policy goals, but who were budgetary amateurs. This increase in political control over the budget agency was supplemented by the addition of two layers of politically-appointed Associate Directors to oversee the work of the career staffs. These moves transformed the OMB into a partisan, politicised, and personal agency of the president at the expense of its reputation for neutral competence. The process continued under the administrations of Presidents Ford and Carter (Berman