Presidents, Responsiveness, and Competence: Revisiting the “Golden Age” at the Bureau of the Budget

Abstract

Scholars generally agree that since at least the 1970 reorganization of the Bureau of the Budget (BoB) into the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), that agency has been significantly politicized. During the ensuing three decades, the number and influence of the presidents' appointees at the OMB's upper levels have increased and the agency has generally been viewed as more responsive to individual presidents' political interests.1 There is much less con sensus, however, regarding the merits of this development. Critics argue that politicization has forced the OMB to abandon its long-standing commitment to an ethos of neutral competence dating back to its golden age under Pres idents Franklin D. Roosevelt and, especially, Harry S. Truman, and continuing to some degree through the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency. In its pre-OMB period, the career-dominated BoB provided presidents with continuity, institu