Evening star., 1936-04-14
The Scapegoats.


The people of the District must
content themselves with secondhand
accounts of the matter developed at
yesterdays examination of Budget Bu-
reau officials by the Senate Subcommit-
tee on District Appropriations, The
proceedings were behind closed doors.
But, from the Senators accounts, the
most important thing shown was the
= inappropriateness of Budget Bureau
control over District estimates.
If the bureau refuses requested esti-
mates, for instance, budget officials
suggest that it is because the Commis-
sioners were not insistent enough. Well,
what does one mean by insistence? The
Commissioners are allotted a certain
time for presentation of their estimates.
They do not always know the fate of
their requests until weeks later. When
Budget Bureau decision becomes known,
rule of the bureau itself prevents
anything approaching agitation to
change that decision. Are the Commis-
sioners to select certain items for ex-
traordinary insistence, and in the case
Of such items raise the roof and shake
their fists at the Budget Bureau by way
of emphasis? Is that the procedure the
bureau wants to adopt? Are needs or
fist shaking to govern the amounts rec
commended for expenditure?
The Budget Bureau indicates that all
positions permitted under past appro-
priations at Gallinger Hospital have not
been filed that there are vacancies
still existing for which funds are avail
able. Yet this assertion brings fiat denial
from DR.. Bocock, the superintendent,
who says that all positions have been
filled that available funds will permit
him to fill. That is not a nice difference
of opinion. Somewhere the facts have
been misstated.
The Budget Bureau says the lump
sum is established by the action of the
preceding Congress. Yet it was the
Budget Bureau which recommended the
decrease of the lump sum to the low
figure of S5,700,00O in 1898. The reduc-
ton then was based on the theory that
the entire District bill was being re-
duced. Yet, when the entire bill is in
creased, which by the bureaus own
formula would mean a proportionate
increase in the lump sum, the Budget
Bureau adopts the policy of fixing the
lump sum on the amount last appropri-
ated by Congress.
The truth of the matter is that the
interposition of Budget Bureau control
between the Commissioners and Con-
gress leads to confusion, misunderstand-
ing and an illogical and unnecessary
budget procedure. More than eighty
five per cent of the money to be appro-
priated is produced from local taxation.
Its expenditure, or saving in proposed
expenditure, has no effect on the ma
tional budget, with which the bureau is
chiefly concerned. Applying rules de-
signed for the national budget to the
funds in the local budget transfers the
authority which should rest with the
Commissioners to an alien, Federal
bureau, unequipped for the specialized
business of governing municipality. 1t
removes responsibility from the Com
missioners, leaving them with just
enough of it to get the blame for not
being inSiStent when they should be
insistent or for being too insistent when
they should not be insistent--a wholly
ridiculous position.
When Congress returns to the definite,
Axed ratio system of appropriating for
the District, under which every local tax
dollar is matched by specified national
appropriation, there is some reason for
partial Budget Bureau control over local
appropriations.
Under the present lump-sum system
there is no reason on earth for Budget
Bureau examination of the District
budget.