An Analysis of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974

The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 is, in the words of former Speaker of the House Carl Albert, the most significant congressional initiative in the last 75 years. Under it the Congress is now required by law to consider the Federal budget as a whole and to act upon it before the commencement of the fiscal year

The $100 Billion Budget Threshold: It\u27s Implications Upon the Future of the Department of Defense

Budgetary constraints, the level of Federal spending, and the rate of inflation are familiar political topics to all informed Americans, but their impact on the defense budget over the next 8 years must be a cause for the military professional\u27s particular concern

Defense Policy Making: Constraints and Opportunities

The most important thing that military and civilian policy makers bring to the Defense policy arena is their experiences. It is invaluable! [t is something one cannot get out of a textbook and it is something one cannot buy or manufacture. At the same time, these leaders and managers must rise above that experience and look objectively at the major issues confronting their services, their agencies and their country

The FY 1981-85 Defense Program is Trillion Dollars Enough?

On 12 December 1979 the President startled a great many people by announcing in a speech to the Business Council that his FY 1981 defense budget would be $157 billion. This is$20 billion or 15 percent more than the FY 1980 budget that he had sent to the Congress only 11 months previously, Moreover, the President told the business leaders that his FY 1981 budget would lay the foundation for a defense program that would provide for real funding increases of 5 percent per year through FY 1985

The Secretary of Defense and the Joing Chiefs of Staff: Conflict in the Budgetary Process. 1947-1971

The quality and character of policy and the preservation of certain values in the American political system largely depend upon the relationships that exist between and within the branches of Government

Congressional Impact of Defense Spending, 1962-1973

Since the !ate 1960\u27s, Congress has played a more vigorous role in examining the defense budget. It is not unusual for the authorization and appropriation committee hearings on the major programs in the defense budget to last more than 6 months. With increasing frequency \u271floor fights over particular items have extended the legislative phase of the defense budgeting cycle midway into the fiscal year. It would appear that the days when Con­gress rubberstamps a $70 billion defense budget in less than an hour are a thing of the past

Review Essay

From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the collapse of the twin towers in 2001 to the present, after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States has not had a consistent national security policy that enjoyed the support of the American people and its allies. This situation is markedly different from the Cold War era, when our nation had a clear, coherent, widely supported strategy that focused on containing and deterring Soviet Communist expansion