Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T12:30:08.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Upsetting National Priorities: The Reagan Administration's Budgetary Strategy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Mark S. Kamlet ,
David C. Mowery  and
Tsai-Tsu Su
Mark S. Kamlet
Affiliation:
Carnegie-Mellon University
David C. Mowery
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Tsai-Tsu Su
Affiliation:
Carnegie-Mellon University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We use simulations based on a multiequation model of federal budgetary outcomes to assess the Reagan administrations impact on the federal budget during fiscal years 1982–86. Reagan's aggregate budget priorities represent a significant departure from the priorities of prior postwar administrations. The bulk of this shift in priorities had occurred by fiscal 1984. Defense spending and uncontrollable domestic spending were higher, and spending on domestic controllable programs lower under Reagan than they would otherwise have been. The distinctiveness of Reagan's budgetary priorities can be attributed to his tax cuts and—far from a strategy of “starving the budget by reducing revenues”—to a failure to allow fiscal pressures to restrain spending. The model projects that without tax cuts Reagan's predecessors would have spent no less on defense than Reagan. Cutting taxes increased the deficit by about $400 billion cumulatively during fiscal years 1982–86 and reduced expenditures by roughly $30 billion.

Type
Research Notes
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 82 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 1293 - 1307
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, William, Wallace, Myles S., and Warner, John T.. 1986. “Spending and Taxation: What Causes What?” Southern Economic Journal 52: 630–39.Google Scholar
Auten, Gerald, Bozeman, Barry, and Cline, Robert. 1984. “A Sequential Model of Congressional Appropriations.” American Journal of Political Science 28: 503–24.Google Scholar
Blackley, Paul R. 1986. “Causality between Revenues and Expenditures and the Size of the Federal Budget.” Public Finance Quarterly 14: 139–56.Google Scholar
Boskin, Michael J. 1987. Reagan and the Economy. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies.Google Scholar
Bozeman, Barry, and Straussman, Jeffrey D.. 1982. “Shrinking Budgets and the Shrinkage of Budgeting Theory.” Public Administration Review 42: 509–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butler, Stuart M. 1985. Privatizing Federal Spending: A Strategy to Eliminate the Deficit. New York: Universal Books.Google Scholar
Congressional Budget Office. 1985. The Economic and Budget Outlook, Fiscal Years 1986–1990. Washington: GPO.Google Scholar
Congressional Budget Office. 1987. “The Relationship between Federal Taxes and Spending: An Examination of Recent Research.” Staff Working Paper.Google Scholar
Fischer, Gregory W., and Crecine, John P.. 1981. “Defense Spending, Nondefense Spending, and the Need for Fiscal Restraint: Two Models of the Presidential Budgetary Process.” Arms Control 2: 65–106.Google Scholar
Fischer, Gregory W., and Kamlet, Mark S.. 1984. “Explaining Presidential Priorities: The Competing Aspirations Model of Macrobudgetary Decision Making.” American Political Science Review 78: 356–71.Google Scholar
Furstenberg, George M. von, Jeffrey Green, R., and Jeong, Jin-ho. 1985. “Have Taxes Led Government Expenditures? The United States As a Test Case.” Journal of Public Policy 5: 321–47.Google Scholar
Furstenberg, George M. von, Green, R. Jeffrey, and Jeong, Jin-ho. 1986. “Tax and Spend, or Spend and Tax?” Review of Economics and Statistics 68: 179–88.Google Scholar
Galbraith, James K. 1986. “Reaganomics and Keynesianism in the Conduct of Fiscal Policy under Reagan.” University of Texas, Austin. Typescript.Google Scholar
Glazer, Nathan. 1984. “The Social Policy of the Reagan Administration: A Review.” The Public Interest 75: 76–98.Google Scholar
Henry, David K., and Oliver, Richard P.. 1987. “The Defense Build-up, 1977–85: Effects on Production and Employment.” Monthly Labor Review 110: 3–11.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1983. “The Defense Policy of the Reagan Administration 1981–82.” In The Reagan Presidency: An Early Assessment, ed. Greenstein, Fred I.. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Kamlet, Mark S., and Mowery, David C.. 1980. “The Budgetary Base in Federal Resource Allocation.” American Journal of Political Science 4: 804–21.Google Scholar
Kamlet, Mark S., and Mowery, David C.. 1987. “Influences on Executive and Congressional Budgetary Priorities, 1953–1981.” American Political Science Review 81: 155–78.Google Scholar
Kamlet, Mark S., Mowery, David C., and Su, Tsai-tsu. 1988. “Does the Tax Tail Wag the Spending Dog?” Carnegie-Mellon University. Typescript.Google Scholar
LeLoup, Lance T. 1978. “Discretion in National Budgeting: Controlling the Uncontrollables.” Policy Analysis 4: 455–75.Google Scholar
Manage, Neela, and Marlow, Michael. 1986. “The Causal Relation between Federal Expenditures and Receipts.” Southern Economic Journal 52: 617–29.Google Scholar
Meyer, Jack A. 1986. “Social Programs and Social Policy.” In Perspectives on the Reagan Years, ed. Palmer, John L.. Washington: Urban Institute Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Gregory B. 1984. “The Budget: A Failure of Discipline.” In The Reagan Record, ed. Palmer, John L. and Sawhill, Isabel V.. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.Google Scholar
Mowery, David C., Kamlet, Mark S., and Crecine, John P.. 1980. “Presidential Management of Budgetary and Fiscal Policymaking.” Political Science Quarterly 95: 395–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moynihan, Daniel P. 1988. Came the Revolution: Argument in the Reagan Era. Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Nathan, Richard P. 1983. “The Reagan Presidency in Domestic Affairs.” In The Reagan Presidency: An Early Assessment, ed. Greenstein, Fred I.. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Office of Management and Budget. 1981a. Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1982. Washington: GPO.Google Scholar
Office of Management and Budget. 1981b. Fiscal Year 1982 Budget Revisions. Washington: GPO.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Charles W., and Marra, Robin F.. 1986. “U.S. Defense Spending and the Soviet Estimates.” American Political Science Review 80: 819–42.Google Scholar
Pindyck, Robert S., and Rubinfeld, Daniel L.. 1981. Econometric Models and Economic Forecasts. 2d ed.New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Russett, Bruce. 1982. “Defense Expenditures and National Well-Being.” American Political Science Review 76: 767–77.Google Scholar
Sawhill, Isabel V. 1986. “Reaganomics in Retrospect.” In Perspectives on the Reagan Years, ed. Palmer, John L.. Washington: Urban Institute Press.Google Scholar
Schick, Allen. 1980. Congress and Money. Washington: Urban Institute Press.Google Scholar
Schick, Allen. 1983. “The Distributive Congress.” In Making Economic Policy in Congress, ed. Schick, Allen. Washington: American Enterprise Institute.Google Scholar
Schier, Steven E. 1986. Thinking about the Macroeconomy: The House and Senate Budget Committees in the 1980s. American Academy of Higher Education Monograph Series 1986–12.Google Scholar
Stockman, David A. 1986. The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Vedder, Richard, Gallaway, Lowell, and Frenze, Christopher. 1987. Federal Tax Increases and the Budget Deficit, 1947–86: Some Empirical Evidence. Prepared for the Joint Economic Committee. Washington: Joint Economic Committee.Google Scholar
Weicher, John C. 1986. “The Reagan Domestic Budget Cuts: Proposals, Outcomes, and Effects.” In Essays in Contemporary Economic Problems, 1986: The Impact of the Reagan Program, ed. Cagan, Phillip. Washington: American Enterprise Institute.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.