Suchergebnisse

Simulation analysis to assess the administration's impact on the federal budget, 1982-86; comparisons with previous administrations; based on conference paper.

This article examines the public sector's role in the provision of mental health care, concentrating on a financial and economic perspective. A brief history of U.S. public policy toward the mentally ill is provided. The political economy of the mental health care system is then discussed. Four key sets of actors are identified: voters, interest groups, legislatures and elected politicians, and bureaus and public providers. Public policy toward the mentally ill in the United States is the result of the interaction of these groups. We discuss each group's objectives and the nature of the constraints each faces in pursuing its objectives. Using this perspective, the empirical literature on resource utilization by public mental hospitals is reviewed. A research agenda is presented for analyzing public sources of mental health care.

A reduced form equation system is used to analyze the influence of economic, political, and institutional influences on the budgetary priorities of the executive branch and Congress during fiscal 1955–81. Three related issues are considered: the extent to which political and macroeconomic factors affect priorities; the degree of interdependence among the components of the federal budget and between spending and revenues; and differences between the executive branch and Congress with respect to these issues. Both types of interdependence are present within both executive branch and congressional budgeting, although this interdependence is stronger within the executive branch. The influence of economic conditions on budgetary outcomes is strong but varies considerably across spending categories. There is no evidence of apolitical business cycle. Political variables exert a modest influence on the budgetary outcomes examined; differences between Democratic and Republican budgetary policies, as well as differences in the budgetary priorities of different presidential administrations, are small by comparison with the differences between executive and congressional policies.

Based on conference paper. Impact of the 1974 act on budgetary priorities and growth, on the process of budgetary decisionmaking, the nature of budgetary debate, and the budgetary strategies employed within the Congress.

This article develops a new statistical model of trade-offs among defense, nondefense, and fiscal policy concerns as they are reflected in the presidential budgetary process. The Competing Aspiration Levels Model (CALM) builds on Crecine's (1971) "Great Identity" argument. Unlike most previous attempts to model presidential budgeting, CALM explicitly represents the interdependence of decisions about defense, nondefense, and total federal expenditures. CALM models this interdependence as the result of the interaction of minimal aspirations for defense and nondefense expenditures with a maximum acceptable level of expenditures from a fiscal policy standpoint. Statistical analyses of presidential budgets for the fiscal years from 1955 through 1980 provide strong support for the CALM formulation. Substantively, the results indicate that fiscal constraints on total expenditures have progressively weakened, that the maximum acceptable expenditure level has generally exceeded the minimal expenditure aspiration level, and that when a potential "fiscal surplus" has existed, the nondefense sector has been more successful in capturing a share of this surplus than the defense sector. In keeping with traditional incrementalist arguments, the results indicate that previous year expenditure levels provide a relatively secure "budgetary base" for both the defense and nondefense sectors. Both sectors tend to receive their minimal aspiration levels plus a share of whatever fiscal surplus exists. The analysis also indicates that the executive branch has not been as strong a direct force for budgetary growth as Congress.