Federal budget cuts: Bureaucrats trim the meat, not the fat

Abstract

13 in 1978 set off heated charges that vital services were being cut back instead of looked-for reductions in the size of the state bureaucracy. A bureaucratic response of this type to budget cuts is entirely foreseeable given the conception of bureaucrats as utility-maximizing individuals. Focus on the behavior of individual agents in the governmental process commenced formally in 1962 with Buchanan and Tullock's The Calculus of Consent. Since then, the ability of legislators and bureaucrats to engage in self-interested (as opposed to public-interest) behavior, has been investigated by numerous scholars. The general concensus which has emerged from these studies, among public choice economists at any rate, is that producers of public goods, acting in their own interest, are not led by Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' to act in the more general public interest. This paper provides additional support for the public choice view of public servant behavior. A comparison of proposed budget cuts by federal agency with proposed reductions in agency personnel reveals that, in the face of