Editor's Notebook

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

Dear Readers:

The last year has dramatically displayed some of the principles central to the constitutional regime the founding fathers devised more than two centuries ago.

The primacy of the legislature is one. Although politics and the media have conspired in recent times to emphasize the presidency as the center of power in the United States, that picture is at odds with the Constitution. Reporters like to focus on the White House-it's more glamorous, it's easier to cover, it's not as fractious as Congress. But only Congress can pass a law. Only Congress can approve an appropriation to keep an agency going. And while the President can propose and plead for action, he can do nothing to force it.

The primacy of Congress has been evident particularly in the appropriations process. Congress can simply reject presidential budget requests out of hand, and the President can do nothing about it. The Republican majorities of the 104th Congress have found this power of the purse to be their most effective weapon for cutting government. Disapprove of federal arts subsidies or the national service program? Simply defund them.

While the founding fathers concentrated power in Congress' hands, they also took care to guard against its abuse-in part by giving the President the power to veto. President Clinton, who never used that power during the Democrat-controlled 103d Congress, has been using it liberally of late. The goal has not been to stop Congress from adding objectionable laws to the books, but rather to prevent deletion or reduction of programs already enacted. Thus Clinton is cast as guardian of the status quo-even as he proclaims the "era of big government is over."

Lacking the votes to override Clinton's vetoes, Congress is unable to refashion authorization laws and must be content to withhold money in discretionary accounts. So, this has been Congress' main point of attack on big government-what Anne Laurent, in our cover story, calls "a strategy of death by a thousand short-term spending bills." Her article details the resulting "chaos of furloughs and layoffs, hasty termination of programs and projects, and constant refiguring of spending plans."

These troubles have afflicted the government's domestic departments. In the meantime, despite the perception that the Defense Department fared well in the appropriations process for 1996, more deep reductions lie ahead for DoD's civilian workforce, as Katherine McIntire Peters reports this month.

All in all, not a cheerful period for government. But those who need their spirits lifted may get a boost from reading about the adventures of reformers working in the so-called reinvention laboratories formed under the auspices of the National Performance Review. Their experiences are chronicled in a special supplement this month.

--Timothy B. Clark
Editor and Publisher, Government Executive