Working Paper PDF: Asymmetrical Presidential Influence on Congressional Appropriations

Abstract: Despite the decision of Congress to delegate budgetary proposal power to the president in the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, existing research on appropriations politics remains inconclusive regarding presidential influence. In this paper, we argue that the incomplete information between the president and Congress in appropriations bargaining regarding each other's spending preferences, supported by the presidential veto power, gives presidents an advantage on spending items of great importance to them relative to Congress. We hypothesize that presidents should realize greater success on requests for large spending changes than for small changes, and expect this asymmetry to hold regardless of the partisan regime of government and for both requests for increases and decreases. Analysis of appropriations for defense procurement programs from 2001 to 2018 yields strong evidence for these hypotheses.

Suggested Citation: Liu, Huchen, and Lee Dionne. (Working Paper). "Asymmetrical Presidential Influence on Congressional Appropriations", Presented at MPSA 2019.