Competition in Extravagance

August 10, 1953

Immediately after the House voted to slash $1,115,050,000 from the $5,157,232,000 President Eisenhower had asked for foreign aid, he appealed to the Senate to restore the cut. The Senate Appropriations Committee—and the Senate—promptly restored approximately half of it.

The House rightly decided that, above all in an inflation and in the midst of a private-housing boom, there was no excuse for continuing a public-housing program. It voted to eliminate it. The Senate restored the program to 35,000 houses, whereupon the House was compelled to compromise on 20,000.

The House voted for only some $60,000,000 for the Overseas Information Service. The Senate increased the amount to $80,000,000.

And so it goes. There is nothing unusual in this record. In every session of Congress the Senate pretty regularly outbids the House in its vicarious generosity with the taxpayers’ money. The Senate’s record in this session, in fact, is much better than usual; there are even cases in which it made a smaller appropriation than the House.

The main reason for this superior extravagance of the Senate is simple. The House usually acts first on appropriation bills. A senator has little to gain politically merely by me-tooing the liberality of the House. The way to political credit for generosity is to vote for an increase above the House appropriation. Thus we have a system which creates a three-way competition among the President, the House, and the Senate to outbid the others in the amount of money each recommends or offers for special purposes or to special groups at the expense of the American taxpayer.

It may be seriously doubted whether this corresponds with the intent of the framers of the Constitution. Article I, Section 7, provides: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” In practice this has been strictly interpreted to apply solely to tax bills; but the framers probably also had appropriation bills in mind. They seem to have thought of appropriations and the taxes to pay for them as inseparable parts of a single legislative process. This is indicated by the odd fact that the Constitution nowhere directly and explicitly, but only by implication, confers power on either house to make appropriations.

There are three ways in which the present triangular competition in extravagance among the President, the House, and the Senate could be ended:

1—The Constitution could be amended so that the Senate would have to wait until the House had acted first, not only on tax bills, but on appropriation bills; and the Senate would be given power to eliminate or reduce, but not to increase, any appropriation made by the House.

2—Better (corresponding to British practice), Congress as a whole would have power to reduce, but not to increase, any appropriation asked for by the President.

3—Still better, the House would have power to reduce, but not to increase, any appropriation asked for by the President, and the Senate would have power to reduce, but not to increase, any appropriation made by the House.

This last arrangement would substitute a three-way competition in economy for the present three-way competition in extravagance. It would change the entire atmosphere of budgetary discussion. With no power to increase appropriations or to outbid the Executive or the Congressional majority, the minority in opposition would devote its zeal and ingenuity to suggesting economies. This would tend to eliminate from Federal public life the worst type of politician, who gets into office by out-promising his rivals concerning handouts from the public till.

It may be objected that this whole proposal is Utopian because neither the Senate, nor Congress as a whole, would ever consent to give up its present prerogatives. But on the other hand, we are rapidly reaching the point where the country can no longer afford the present system.