The Federal Budget Process

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In America at least three attempts have been made to reform the federal budget process. Three presidents, namely; Nixon, Carter and George W. Bush introduced their reforms. Nixon administration attempted a strategy called Management by objective (MBO), Carter administration brought the Zero-base budgeting (ZBB), and lastly the George W. Bush administration instituted Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART). All these strategies were introduced to secure larger control over budget preparation.
During President Nixon’s administration the OMB introduced a different technique MBO whose purpose was to strengthen the managers’ ability to manage. George Odiorne (1965) in Wood and Wood (2005) defines management by objective as “a process whereby …show more content…
Zero-base budgeting (ZBB) is “an approach to budgeting that continually questions both the need for existing programs and their level of funding as well as the need for new programs” (Zelman et al, 2009). It asks: “why does this program or department exists in the first place?” and “what will happen by changing (increasing or decreasing) its level of funding?” It is sometimes defined as “a method of budgeting in which all expenditures are justified each new budget term, as opposed to simply requesting and describing amounts in excess of the previous term’s budget” (Poston, 2010). ZBB starts with an assumption that zero dollars are available (Fay, 2010). ZBB begins at zero in preparation and in which the writer must justify every expense line (Ojugo, 2009). According to Kettl (2015) this strategy seemed attractive at first, but the budgeters misused it. Its paperwork burden and its easy manipulation shortened its life with the federal government. However, at both state and local government it continued to be used. It tends to fix poorly figured, previously budgeted amounts (Nelson, …show more content…
Bush administration and sought to integrate measures of agency performance with budgetary decisions (Kettl, 2015). The PART is “a program run through the United States Office of Management and Budget started in 2002 to rate all federal programs on their effectiveness” (Cram101 Textbook Review, 2012). It was introduced for use as a performance budgeting tool starting in FY 2004 federal budget (Brown and Garson, 2013). OMB developed the PART to assess and improve program performance through a formal review process which was meant to identify a program’s strengths and weaknesses. PART was abandoned when the Obama administration took office in 2008 (Kettl,
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