GOTV

1. GOTV Last time: the politics of appointments presidential role in budgeting Today: Get Out the Vote campaigning

2. Appointment politics • singleton administrators and senate confirmation: if senators’ and presidents’ choices are driven only by policy preferences, they should always approve the president’s nominee and the president always chooses a nominee at his own ideal point • reversionary policy implementation is some mix of office stays vacant and president makes recess appointment. If we assume that office stays vacant implies a spatially extreme outcome, senators will always prefer the president’s ideal appointee. Recess appointment implies president’s ideal appointee, “so resistance is futile”, to quote the Borg

3. Appointments to panels • majority-rule panels: odd numbers imply unique median; even numbers imply median interval • if exiting member is not the s.q. median, the new median will be shifted in opposite direction of the exiting member. Median interval outlines the limits of how far a new prez. appointment can move policy • If pivotal senator and prez are on opposite sides of the new median, prez appointment is strongly constrained • If key senator and prez are favored by the median shift, prez is either partially constrained or unconstrained (and gets to move policy to his ideal pt) • if key senator and prez are hurt by the median shift, prez should be in a strategically strong position.

4. Models of budgeting • Possible roles for prez include: • gate-keeper (negative agenda power); • proposer (positive agenda power); and • oversight agent (can affect the efficiency of policy implementation) • Gatekeeper: (veto threats) • asymmetric effects • Proposer: (positive agenda power) • Niskanen: exec. branch has hidden info about costs of policies, makes take-it-or-leave-it offers to Congress; Risk aversion and bias • Limitations on bias; sources of information • first-mover advantage and distributive policies

5. Presidential budgeting • Evolution of budgetary structures • pre-Budget Act • post-Civil War: establishment, then breakup of Appropriations • progressive movement: “scientific government” and professionalization of government • 1921 Budget Act • post-WWI “retrenchment”; recentralization of Appropriations • 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act • Controlling deficits: the 1980s and omnibus legislation;