RESEARCH PAPER. Presidential Leadership in Domestic/Budget Policy-Making

Presidential Leadership in Budget Policy Making
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Introduction
The president has a significant role in budget policy making. The last four decades have seen this significance remain a seminal statement of spending legislative and preference agenda through negotiations among the executive branch and Congress over federal expenditure. Budget proposal is a primary instrument for the president to have influence on the congressional budgeting process via different political and persuasive means. This implies the president has an important influence on the appropriation levels that Congress in the end integrates. Also, the president in an effective way leverages the budget proposal as a starting point and the threat of the veto of the proposed appropriation legislation later in budgeting as a mechanism to make sure that the policy preferences are shown in expenditure levels. Therefore, this paper presents the presidential role in budget policy making.
Presidential Leadership in Budget Policy Making
Although the President’s official role in the budgetary process is in a clear manner delineated as well as lacking in direct control of integrated expenditure levels, the president puts significant impact on the appropriation levels that come out. Firstly, at the starting of the Congressional budgetary process, the president establishes the tone of discussions with the budget proposal, offering an effective beginning point for negotiations with Congress that forms proposals and figures on which interest groups, media, and public may anchor. These beginning points challenge Congress politically into different spending degree that the president may find acceptable, coercing the legislature to accept the president’s preferences, specifically on local expenditure areas. Involving funding request in the president’s budget proposal is effective at making Congress integrate appropriations. This happens especially when the appropriations are unified with other politically persuasive instruments like appeals to the public specifically when the president’s party cannot control Congress.
As budgetary negotiations go on, the president may not directly establish funding levels since the final budget needs approval or override of veto by majority of the two congressional houses. Since the latter is very challenging to realize compared to the former, the Congress requires to get the president’s signature on the budget, and this forms an effective need for Congress to have an enough number of the president’s demands. Consequently, a president’s threat to veto a spending bill result in concessions from the Congress. Although veto threats are most impactful when the president looks to challenge federal expenditure, instead of increasing it, the president can utilize veto threats that have significant effects to achieve goals.
When the Congress budgetary process ends, the president can impact the distribution of federal expenditure in and between programs utilizing their importance as the executive branch leader. The president utilizes this power to pursue electoral goals and distribute more finances to regions that are politically loyal or electorally signific...