Congressional Support for Performance Budgeting

If performance budgeting is to succeed over time, Congress must completely buy into its use, which has posed a challenge in the past. When Congress passed GPRA, its members likely didn’t envision performance budgeting as the intended result. While Congress intended GPRA to produce results and greater accountability, the annual performance plans were stand-alone documents that were not integrated into budget submissions. OMB’s integration of performance plans and budget submissions created performance budgets.

Congress also might hesitate because GPRA was passed a long time ago—by a previous Congress. Times and personalities change, as do priorities. Today’s Congress may view things differently than the Congress of 1993.

Performance budgeting has its downside from a Congressional perspective. Performance budgets highlight the outcomes of all the programs under consideration for funding, adding a level of accountability to Congress as well. If Congress makes funding decisions based on politics and self-interest, performance budgets can expose these interests and cause public disfavor.

The Hoover Commission made the following statement about Congressional responsibility in the performance budgeting process:

The performance budget does not change or shift legislative responsibility; control by the Congress still lies in the power to limit expenditures by appropriations. Performance budgeting gives more comprehensive and reliable information to the President, the Congress, and the general public, and helps the individual congressman to understand what the Government is doing, how much it is doing, and what the costs are. . . .

One of the primary purposes of the performance budget would be to improve Congressional examination of budgetary requirements.

So far Congressional acceptance has been mixed. Change is always difficult, and agencies are presenting their budget information to Congressional appropriations committees in a new way. Some agencies do a very good job putting together their performance budgets. Others, largely because this process is so new, aren’t giving the committees the relevant and useful information they need to make informed decisions.

A recent report from the House Appropriations Committee on the FY2008 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill gives us hope:

For years, the Committee has directed departments and agencies to improve the budget justification document quality and presentation by including relevant and specific budget information. While the Committee has seen some improvement in a few submissions, most justifications continue to be filled with references to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), drowning in pleonasm, and yet still devoid of useful information. The Committee strongly encourages the administration to use a meaningful system of evaluation to justify proposed program funding levels, as long as the basis for the evaluations will also be shared with the Committee. The Committee finds little use for a budget justification which does not reveal specific details of the measurable indicators and standards used to evaluate a program’s performance, relevance, or adherence to underlying authorization statute.(Emphasis added.)

The last two sentences leave no doubt: The House Appropriations Committee wants to see performance budgets! What the report describes—“a meaningful system of evaluation,” “measurable indicators and standards,” “evaluating a program’s performance”—constitute the basic elements of good performance budgeting.

This same House Appropriations Committee in its FY2007 report lauded the Treasury Department for its excellent budget submission. This Committee knows a good performance budget when it sees one, and it knows when a proposed budget is insufficient for good analysis and decision making.