¹ Proxmire, Senator William, Report From Wasteland: America's Military Industrial Complex. (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 122 Google Scholar.

² The literature is surprisingly silent on this aspect of Congressional behavior during the 1960s, although it is a fairly common description of Congress during the preceding decade. See, for example, Dawson, Raymon H., “Congressional Innovation and Intervention in Defense Policy,” American Political Science Review, 56 (03, 1962), 44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dexter, Lewis Anthony, “Congressmen and the Making of Military Policy,” in Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W., editors, New Perspectives on the House of Representatives (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), p. 306 Google Scholar. For a contrary view of the same period, see Huntington, Samuel P., The Soldier and the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 409 Google Scholar; “… Congress … gives considered and effective attention to the major issues of military policy involved in the budget.”

³ Wildavsky, Aaron, The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), p. 136 Google Scholar. Cf. Shick, Allen, “Systems Politics and Systems Budgeting,” Public Administration Review, 29 (03–04, 1969), 139 Google Scholar.

⁴ Cf. Janowitz, Morris, The Professional Soldier (New York: The Free Press, 1960), p. 354 Google Scholar. “Fiscal” motivations, as the term is used here, combines Goss's categories of “procedural” and “fiscal” Congressional influence. See Goss, Carol F., “Congress and Weapons Procurement,” paper prepared for delivery at the Sixty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, 09 8–12, 1970 Google Scholar. It should be noted that another source of Congressional activity—the desire to advance a political career—is not addressed in this paper.

⁵ For a more general discussion of shortcomings of aggregate data, see La Palombara, Joseph, “Macro theories and Micropolitics in Comparative Politics: A Widening Chasm,” Comparative Politics, 1 (10, 1968), 52–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ The exclusion from this study of defense authorizations seemed permissible primarily because, for the vast majority of the cases considered, neither language nor dollar amounts of authorization acts limited the appropriations actions. Cf. Fleer, Jack D., “Congressional Committees and the Making of Foreign Policy: Authorizations and Appropriations for Major Weapons Systems in the Legislative Process,” unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1964 Google Scholar; and Stephens, Herbert W.. “The Role of a Legislative Committee in the Appropriations Process: A Study Focused on the House Armed Services Committee,” unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University, 1967 Google Scholar.

⁷ Although the data in this study are based on floor action, appropriations bills reported out of committee very rarely are changed on the floor. Neither the relationship between the appropriations committees and their parent bodies nor the opportunity for influence inherent in that relationship is addressed in this study.

⁸ See Appendix for a list of these line items.

⁹ Fenno, Richard F. Jr., The Power of the Purse: Appropriations Politics in Congress (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), p. 353 Google Scholar. Cf. Russett, Bruce M., What Price Vigilance? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 26, 187 Google Scholar; and Proxmire, , Report from Wasteland … pp. 91, 110–11Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Since each appropriation title includes a different number of line-items, a measure of relative concentration of “No Change” outcomes (Table 4) is obtained by taking (1) the incidence of “No Changes” in Personnel as a percentage of the total number of “No Change” outcomes, (2) the number of Personnel budget decisions as a percentage of the total number of budget decisions, and (3) dividing the former by the latter. If the incidence of “No Change” outcomes were distributed in the same proportion as the total line-items, the relative concentration would equal 1.00. Index values greater than 1.00 indicate a greater than expected incidence of “NoChange,” and values less than 1.00 indicate a fewer than expected number of cases. Thus, 13 per cent of “No Change” outcomes occurred in Procurement and only 6 per cent in RDT&E but, owing to the greater number of line-items included under Procurement, the relative concentration of “No Change” indicated in Table 4 is about equal for both categories (.45 vs. .43).

¹¹ If “No Change” is an indication of minimal Congressional interest, “Compromise” suggests the reverse case in which both the House and the Senate were sufficiently attentive to make changes in the President's request, and were sufficiently committed to their respective positions so that neither house yielded completely to the other in the conference.

¹² See, for example, Fenno, , Power of thePurse, p. 332 Google Scholar.

¹³ Wildavsky, , Politics of the Budgetary Process, p. 60 Google Scholar, Fenno, p. 316.

¹⁴ Cf. Congressional Quarterly Almanac,20, 1964, 154–55Google Scholar.

¹⁵ This is supported by the experience of Projects 693 and 703, Pentagon budget drills to hold expenditures within Congressional and Presidential budget ceilings. In both cases, the largest reductions occurred in Personnel and O&M. I am indebted to Charles Shirkey and Arnold Kuzmack for this information as well as other assistance.

¹⁶ Fenno, , Power of the Purse, pp. 318, 333 Google Scholar; and Wildavsky, , Politics of the Budgetary Process, p. 59 Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Cf. Davis, David H., “The Price of Power,” Public Policy, 18 (Spring, 1970), 377 Google Scholar. Jernberg has found that certain committees' line of questioning indicates a programmatic orientation. See Jernberg, James E., “Information Change and Congressional Behavior,” Journal of Politics, 31 (1969), 722–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Wildavsky, pp. 15, 59; and Davis, Otto A.,Dempster, M. A. H., and Wildavsky, Aaron, “A Theory of the Budgetary Process,” American Political Science Review, 60 (09, 1966), 529–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should benoted that the “simple incrementalism” model, although related to the models evaluated by the latter authors, is not explicitly tested by them.

¹⁹ Hitch, Charles J., Decision-Making for Defense (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), p. 2 Google Scholar.

²⁰ Congress's interest in influencing the content of national security policy by means of its control of the pursestrings explains in part the reassertion by the Armed Services Committees of their right to authorize on an annual basis the major portions of the Procurement and RDT&E budgets. See: Dawson, , “Congressional Innovation …,” p. 43 Google Scholar. For similar motivations influencing legislation regarding Pentagon reorganization plans, see Ries, John C., The Management of Defense (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), pp. 95–96, 104, and 141–142 Google Scholar.

²¹ Fenno, , Power of the Purse, p. 318 Google Scholar. For material on the Appropriations Committee's interest in policy see: Goss, , “Congress and Weapons Procurement,” p. 7 Google Scholar; Dexter, , “Congressmen and the Making of Military Policy,” pp. 316–17Google Scholar; and Gordon, Bernard K., “The Military Budget: Congressional Phase,” Journal of Politics, 23 (11, 1961), 693–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² Dexter, p. 306.

²³ U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations. Report on Department of Defense Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 1960. 86th Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 408, p. 7.

²⁴ U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations. Report on Department of Defense Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 1960. 86th Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 408, p. 7.

²⁵ Quoted in Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 17 (1961), 146 Google Scholar.

²⁶ U.S. Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings on Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1968, Part 1. 90th Congress, 1st Session, 5 (1968) 7, 359–60Google Scholar.

²⁷ Goss, , “Congress and Weapons Procurement,” p. 13 Google Scholar.

²⁸ Quoted in Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 20 (1964), 156 Google Scholar.

²⁹ For a similar procedure, applied to nondefense spending, see Fenno, , Power of the Purse, pp. 661–670 Google Scholar.

³⁰ This is somewhat greater Senate dominance than Fenno observed for nondefense spending (p. 663).

³¹ Cf. Vogler, David J., “Patterns of One House Dominance on Congressional Conference Committees,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 14 (05, 1970), 303–320 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² Fenno, p. 663.

³³ There is another problem involved with the casual comparison of conference outcomes with House and Senate dollar amounts. Consider the following hypothetical example: (1) the House makes four individual cuts in a particular line-item; (2) the Senate makes no changes in any of the four decisions taken by the House, i.e., accepts the House's four cuts, but it reduces the President's request for another individual component of the same line-item; and (3) only the Senate's change is considered in conference (since that is the only difference between the bills of the two houses), and the House yields to the Senate. The result would be that the Senate appropriated less money than the House, and the appropriation to emerge from the conference would be exactly equal to the Senate's, i.e., it would be scored as a “straight Senate victory.” It seems inappropriate, however, to talk about a Senate “victory” when there seems to have been little if any conflict between the two houses. The Senate accepted all of the changes proposed by the House, and the House, in turn, accepted the change proposed by the Senate. While, strictly speaking, the Senate did dominate the conference—the House did yield to the Senate—it cannot be said that the Senate dominated the Congressional appropriations process.

³⁴ Each of the 28 line-items considered is in reality a composite of several individual decisions. Thus, Congressional changes in budget requests for new destroyers, aircraft carriers, and attack submarines, appear, in aggregate, as a Congressional change in the line-item “Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy,” which in turn appears under the Procurement Appropriations title.

³⁵ Fenno, p. 534.

³⁶ Fenno, p. 569.

³⁷ One reader of an earlier version suggested that the House Committee decides on the dollar amount of the contemplated reduction and then informally negotiates with the military services about which parts of the budget will absorb the cuts. Once an agreement has been reached, appeals to the Senateto restore the cuts would represent a default on the bargain; hence the low incidence of reclamas. Implicit in this line of argument is the hypothesis that Congress has no independent policy preferences but merely acts as a conduit for another's priorities, in this case the military services. The strong version of the hypothesis, viz., services distribute budget reductions among themselves in proportions equal to their shares of the defense budget, was not supported by the record of the past eighteen years. The general notion, however, is consistent with the data and certainly warrants further investigation.

³⁸ If this is true, then the data subset for the period FY 1966-FY 1970 may be unrepresentative of the total time period. A less rigorous analysis of individual budget decisions for the earlier period, however, yields the same general picture.

³⁹ Comparing dollar amounts is a crude and may be a misleading indicator of a victory in the conference committee: “If, for example, one group is willing to give up an item costing $50 million to get some especially valued item costing $10 million, then dollars and cents measures will be inadequate to define winning” (Fenno, p. 661).

⁴⁰ “It seems reasonable to credit to the House those of the outcomes labeled “same” which were accepted by the Senate, even though the Defense Department appealed them. If this is done, House “victories” are concentrated in the two most “important” budget categories. Moreover, the gap between Senate victories and House victories is substantially narrowed both in Procurement and RDT&E.

⁴¹ In thirteen cases, the Senate accepted a House change and then added to it, the sum of the two actions being the appropriation reported by the conference. Thus, the House may have cut $100 million from the President's request and the Senate an additional $50 million from the House bill. The final appropriation would represent a decrease of $150 million from the President's budget request. Although the case could be made that such outcomes ought to count as Senate victories, they were classified separately in this analysisin the “both” category.

⁴² See Wildavsky, , Politics of the Budgetary Process, p. 61 Google Scholar: “One way to secure agreement is to swap items in dispute.”

⁴³ Fenno. 625.

⁴⁴ Cf. Pressman, Jeffrey L., House vs. Senate: Conflict in the Appropriations Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 61 Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ It would be inaccurate to posit any direct causal links between the presence or absence of a Defense Department reclama and the probability of a Senate victory in conference. The existence of a reclama is more likely to indicate that the matter under consideration is relatively important to the Pentagon; it probably is relatively important to the House as well. The presence of House victories and compromises probably indicates a greater intensity of commitment to its position and less willingness to yield to the Senate.

⁴⁶ Goss, p. 12.

⁴⁷ As the Congressional Quarterly Almanac observed in 1961: “The Senate Appropriations Committee's actions on long-range bombers matched almost exactly recommendations made to the Committee by Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis E. LeMay …” p. 146.