AIP FYI #144: OMB Director Looks Ahead to FY 2003 Budget: Priorities and Performance

“When a budget goes to war, what should it look like?” This
was one of the questions raised by Mitchell Daniels, Director
of the White House Office of Management and Budget last week at
the National Press Club. In answering these questions Daniels
offered important insights into the Bush Administration’s
approach to the FY 2003 budget. In offering his views, Daniels
lauded the National Science Foundation for its performance,
stating it was an example of a government program that deserved
to be fortified and strengthened.

The Administration is now working on the budget request it will
send to Congress early next year. Conditions have changed
dramatically in the last three months: the nation is at war,
the economy is in a recession, and projected federal budget
surpluses have disappeared. “On September 11,” Daniels said,
“the two World Trade towers were not the only structures which
were brought down, and one could say that the twin towers of
America’s fiscal health and strength were leveled at
essentially that same time.” He then stated, “it is
regrettably my conclusion that we are unlikely to return to
balance in the federal accounts before possibly fiscal [year]
’05.”

Daniels described the “work on the new priorities of winning
the war against terror and defending Americans, whatever it
takes here at home, and we will make all necessary adjustments
in able to fund those new imperatives.” In outlining how this
would affect OMB’s approach to the FY 2003 budget, he said “the
conquest of evil and the protection of Americans in their homes
and in their homeland requires no mandate. And we will err on
the side of being thorough. It may be an unfamiliar sensation
to my colleagues at OMB, but the guidance I gave them as we
began to put next year’s budget together was anything touching
those two goals, we will err on the side of action, and we will
break ties in the direction of yes. This is not our typical
MO.” He continued, “The real question is not will we
adequately, thoroughly fund these imperative priorities. The
real question is will we be able, collectively, to scrutinize
the secondary?”

OMB officials have repeatedly stressed the Administration’s
intention to measure the effectiveness of government programs,
and Daniels discussed this plan in his remarks: “long before
September 11 we were at work in the Bush administration hoping
to do better about that; hoping that very seriously, even with
the inaccuracy and imprecision that may attend this, to
identify those programs and those aspects of government that
work well and reinforce them. And as your [luncheon] guest
today, I was offered very generously the chance to bring three
guests with me to the head table, and I have taken that
opportunity to invite three managers of excellent federal
programs, who I hope you will welcome and salute.” Daniels’
guests were senior administrators from the National Science
Foundation, National Weather Service, and Food and Nutrition
Service.

Daniels introduced his guest from NSF: “representing another of
the . . . true centers of excellence in this government, the
National Science Foundation, where more than 95 percent of the
funds you provide as taxpayers go out on a competitive basis
directly to researchers pursuing the frontiers of science, a
very low overhead cost. It has supported eight of the 12 most
recent Nobel Prize awards earned by Americans at some point in
their careers. I was to have, as our guest today, Dr. Margaret
Leinen, who helps runs that program, but she is in Antarctica,
studying very carefully, I’m sure, one of the grantees, and in
her stead, Dr. Robert Eisenstein, who you met earlier,
Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
Thank you and the foundation for all you do.

“Programs like these, and there are many, many others, that
perform well, that are accountable to you as taxpayers for
reaching for real results and measuring and attaining those
results, deserve to be singled out, deserve to be fortified
and strengthened.”

OMB’s plan to measure program performance was discussed by
another OMB official last week at the DOE/NSF Nuclear Science
Advisory Committee meeting. These remarks will be the subject
of a forthcoming FYI.

###############

Richard M .Jones

Public Information Division

The American Institute of Physics

fyi@aip.org

(301) 209-3095

http://www.aip.org/gov

##END##########