Has Congress, in recent years, repeatedly transferred its budgetary powers to the president in response to huge deficits and other fiscal challenges? Jasmine Farrier argues forcefully that it has. Looking at a number of case studies of congressional budget reform since 1974, she claims that Congress has delegated significant constitutional authority to the executive branch. In particular, she examines the legislative histories of the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act, the 1985 Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act (Gramm-Rudman-Hollings), the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act, and the 1996 Line-Item Veto Act to make her case. Torn between constituent demands for federal funds and their obligation to make responsible national budget policy, Farrier concludes, members have attacked their own branch, giving away power, begging to “stop us before we spend again.”

Farrier chooses a conceptual framework based on delegation of authority to guide her analysis, rather than other alternatives found in the congressional literature. She considers delegation as electoral and policy strategy using principle-agent and transaction cost models, but concludes that “a new look at the delegation question is needed because recent rational choice–based explanations do not deeply question the significance of this institutional trend” (p. 216). Judgments about congressional delegations are based on her normative balancing test: “achieving policy results along the lines of its objectives while retaining as much debate and oversight as possible for Congress in the reforms' provision and use” (p. 24). Part I of the book also provides a brief history of congressional budgeting, including recent unsuccessful structural budget reforms, such as the balanced budget amendment.

The main part of the analysis is contained in Part II, which includes the four detailed case studies. The 1974 Budget Act, the author argues, reflected strategic delegation to internal agents and the regulation of external agents. It increased majority party spending power through the creation of new budget committees and the Congressional Budget Office, and it reduced the president's impoundment powers. Reformers rejected spending caps and ceilings that would have reduced their prerogatives in favor of softer targets.

Ten years later, however, Congress began its pattern of attacking deficits and itself. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) mandatory deficit reduction plan and its revised version two years later (GRH II) were launched in a chorus of anti-Congress rhetoric. By eventually handing over power to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to score congressional actions, Farrier believes, Congress delegated away valuable congressional powers and adopted deficit ceilings and rules that “further mitigated majority party power” (p. 126). The Budget Enforcement Act (BEA) of 1990 was not much better. Although it essentially scrapped the unworkable GRH targets and process, the BEA was a set of self-imposed restrictions on what Congress could and could not do with the budget. The 1996 Line-Item Veto Act culminates the analysis: A partisan Republican Congress passes a bill that would give the Democratic president historic powers to selectively rescind spending items and tax breaks in their legislation. The author believes this provides convincing evidence of the pervasive trend of a self-loathing Congress delegating budget authority to the presidency in order to curb members' uncontrollable prolifigacy.

While the line-item veto case supports Farrier's thesis better than the other cases, it was largely a symbolic, partisan exercise of little import in shaping or reducing a $2 trillion budget and was immediately overturned by the courts. The more critical story of 1995–96 was the budget battle with Bill Clinton and government shutdowns. The main problem with the book is the misleading impression of congressional weakness that it leaves. The reality is that budget reforms, even if adopted in an orgy of institutional self-criticism, have empowered majority party leaders in both House and Senate with new budget tools and institutions. Reconciliation, omnibus bills, restrictive rules, limitations on amendments and debate, and disciplined voting have all contributed to giving Congress unprecedented capacity to formulate and enact a budget at the macrolevel. Majorities can challenge and go to a summit with a president of the opposite party, or ensure the success of the program of a president of the same party.

The framework of delegation of authority is insufficient, as applied here, to explain congressional budgeting. Perhaps the more important delegation in budgeting has been from the rank and file to party leaders, suggesting that partisan models might be essential to consider. Although Farrier has the poles correct on her delegation continuum (the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act, briefly mentioned, as the most significant delegation to the executive, and the 1974 Budget Act as most significant in protecting and restoring congressional prerogatives), I believe she has miscast both GRH and the BEA within that continuum. Enhancing enforcement provisions constrains both executive and legislature. Such enforcement rules enhance congressional power in high-level negotiations with the presidency. As silly as GRH may have been, “delegation to a device” is not the same as delegation to the executive. If anything, GRH represented a greater threat to Ronald Reagan's defense buildup than congressional policy priorities, inasmuch as Democrats managed to exempt some 75% of domestic spending (including entitlements) from sequestration. The quotation included from OMB Director Jim Miller (p. 104) says as much.

In the author's defense, her thorough research of the historical record often includes excerpts and quotations that support an alternative explanation, and she does discuss the counterview that BEA did not reduce congressional authority. Unfortunately, the book tries too hard to sell its case, using language such as “abdication” or “extreme delegation” or “extraordinary new limits” in describing actions that look very different through another theoretical lens. It is important to recognize the difference between members' rhetorical attacks on the institution and real actions that weaken the institution.

Despite these major concerns about its explanation and interpretation of congressional budgeting, Passing the Buck is worth reading and will contribute to scholarly discourse. It is well written and researched and raises interesting questions about delegation of authority in congressional research, as well as the history of congressional budgeting. The conclusion is more balanced, expressing concern with excessive delegation of budgetary authority, but more realistically characterizing Congress as “ambivalent” in its record of budget reforms. Although greater congressional “self-confidence” may not be the answer, Jasmine Farrier's wish for members of Congress to be more honest in explaining the tension between excessive constituent demands and scarce resources rings true.