Policy Disputes as a Source of Administrative Controls: Congressional Micromanagement of the Department of Defense

Abstract

Is congressional micromanagement an unwarranted and inappropriate intrusion into the operations of the federal bureaucracy? Focusing on congressional oversight of the Defense Department, Kenneth R. Mayer shows that budgetary and administrative micromanagement are legislative tools for achieving policy preferences within DoD. He argues that calls for reform of micromanagement must take the policy making prerogatives of Congress into account. Congressional activity on the defense budget-line-item changes, programmatic restrictions, requests for reports and information-is often criticized as micromanagement. Micromanagement is viewed as an inappropriate intrusion by Congress into executive branch affairs, and is said to result in inefficiency. Critics of micromanagement urge Congress to return to a policy-focused view of the defense budget, in which reviews of national security strategy and requirements would replace program-level and management instructions. In doing so, Congress would return to its proper role of overseer of national policy and would vastly increase the efficiency with which the defense budget could be managed.