One committee or subcommittee has supervision of building the barracks at a given army post while another committee or subcommittee has supervision of building the hospital at the same post.  One committee has jurisdiction of the guns, another committee has jurisdiction of the emplacement of the guns.  All committees are jealous of their own prerogatives and sometimes more or less jealous of other committees. [Footnote:  Will Payne, “Your Budget,” Saturday evening post, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 166.]

APPROPRIATIONS MADE MORE OR LESS BLINDLY

Each year the executive departments submit to the Secretary of the Treasury an estimate of the amount of money they think they will need.  The Secretary of the Treasury puts these estimates together without revision and without criticism and submits them to Congress, together with an estimate of the probable revenues available.  While there is a committee on appropriations in each house of Congress,

... one class of appropriations after another has been taken away from this committee and intrusted to other committees until, as a result, the work of preparing appropriations in the House of Representatives is broken up so that there are now no less than fourteen general appropriation bills prepared by seven different committees ...  In the preparation of their bills the committee on appropriations and the other committees in charge of appropriations are really compelled to work more or less blindly.  Sometimes they hold extensive hearings endeavoring to get a complete grasp of the multitudinous detailed expenditures for which they must provide.  But, of course, it is impossible for the several committees, in the time at their disposal, to give even minor matters the amount of attention demanded by sound public economy. [Footnote:  C. A. Beard, American government and politics, pp. 366, 367.]

THE PRINCIPLES OF A BUDGET SYSTEM

The first principles of a budget, according to students of government, are that it should be prepared by the executive branch of the government, which is responsible for spending the money; that it should be prepared by an agency responsible directly to the President, and with authority to revise and adjust the estimates of the several departments in the light of the needs and resources of the government as a whole; and that it should be based upon an accounting system that will show clearly how efficiently each department and minor subdivision is doing its work.  As this chapter is being written, a bill is before Congress which, if passed, will more or less completely accomplish these results.

THE NEED FOR CENTRALIZING APPROPRIATIONS

It remains for Congress, however, to make the appropriations requested in the budget, with such modifications as may be shown to be wise.  It is generally accepted that appropriations cannot be wisely made under the present system, and that responsibility for them must be centered in one committee in each house.