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Review of Budgeting Entitlements: The Politics of Food Stamps

James W. Crowson

This paper will offer an explanation of Budgeting Entitlements’ significance, budget making as a political process, three different types of budgetary rules, tensions between welfare benefits and expenditures, reversion points in political budgeting, and King’s models of institution and ideology.

This is a book about food stamps and how the political machine in

Congress and in the White House has affected this program. Welfare and

politics manifests itself as tension between helping the poor eat and the

fiscal problems and responsibility that brings to bear. The models King uses

to explain this story include an institutional view and ideological view, which

I develop extensively in this paper to highlight the differences in the main

forms of budgetary rules.

Budgeting Entitlements is significant is because King has used the food

stamp program to discuss the political process of the US federal budget

making process on a level which is understandable to the common person.

Just about anyone can use the research to generalize for understanding of

other federal budget process studies. The book is also significant because of

the problem that welfare and budgeting represents as a dichotomy. King’s

message about the difficulties that Americans have with the food stamp

program is also about whether Americans want to see themselves as

treating the less fortunate and/or poor humanely (King R. , 2000, p. 31), but

that comes with a price tag many are not willing to continue paying.

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The budget making process as King explains it tends to be very

political. The food stamp program ran smoothly during the 1960s and

through the 1970s. However, from FY 1974 to FY 1977, expenditures rose

by roughly 90%, from $2.8 billion to $5.4 billion. By FY 1981, expenditures

had risen nearly 110% up to $11.3 billion. Much of this increase is accounted

for because of the external factors such as inflation during the Carter

administration (King R. , 2000, p. 63). The response from lawmakers was to

create spending caps legislation as part of an across the board measure to

contain federal entitlement spending, decrease the national debt and treat

the ever-increasing spending deficit.

King lays out his case by explaining three different types of budgetary

rules Congress instituted to try to manage food stamp program spending,

which are discretionary spending, entitlement spending, and spending caps.

Discretionary means that Congress decides every year during the annual

budget process how much in outlays the food stamp program will receive.

This means that there are no guarantees to how much the program will

receive in appropriations. It can be an especially challenging situation for

Americans who are verifiably needy for food stamps, and it is hardly

equitable because once the money runs out, there is no more until next year

or an emergency appropriation. (King R. , 2000, p. 2).

Unlike discretionary spending which has the potential to be

inequitable, the food stamp program as an entitlement means that no one is

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left out that is eligible to receive these benefits. Again, contrary to

discretionary budgeting, entitlement means that if the money runs out, then

Congress will appropriate more money thereby circumventing the normal

budgeting process (King R. , 2000, p. 2).

Capped spending for entitlements involves taking a hard look at the

benefits society receives against the costs. Caps permit the government to

spend for welfare up to a certain point, and if that point is reached, then

either benefits or enrollments must be reduced until new legislation can be

enacted (King R. , 2000, p. 2).

King also draws out the tensions between secure welfare benefits and

constrained expenditure growth that has not been held in check but instead

in abeyance (King R. , 2000, p. 154). He says that this tension is

fundamental and thus cannot simply be as a result of greater attention. King

compares and contrasts spending caps effectiveness to welfare protections.

First, he says that caps perhaps function effectively when they can restrict

entitlement spending during times of cost explosions (King R. , 2000, p. 8).

Next, welfare functions effectively only to the extent that the

entitlement spending can be guaranteed in spite of budget constraints.

Entitlements and budgeting are excellent examples of the inherent tensions

between social responsibility and fiscal restraint. Last, no legislative

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procedure will dissolve these tensions nor will it require care and reason to

prevent them (King R. , 2000).

King uses the concept of a reversion point to explain situations of

noncooperation, such as when no agreements can be reached. A reversion

point can be understood as a statistical and/or symbolic measure to show

where spending limits are reached. King discusses reversion points in the

context of the three budget rules, discretion, entitlement, and spending caps

(King R. , 2000).

In the matter of discretionary spending, the reversion point would be

restarting the authorization and appropriation process over each year with

new funding. Under this rule, when lawmakers cannot agree on

appropriations, it will tend to have the most negative consequences upon

program operations (King R. , 2000, pp. 10, 31-34, 72).

With entitlement status, the reversion point always varies directly with

the number of program participants. If agreements between lawmakers

cannot be reached, the impact is virtually nil or zero. Therefore, “aggressive

play” is permitted to occur by the president and members of Congress

because there is no incentive otherwise (King R. , 2000, pp. 31-34, 72).

With spending caps, the reversion point is the ceiling or highest

amount of outlays authorized for that year. In terms of behavior, King says

one would hope this type of rule is in between discretion and entitlement,

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but does not necessarily produce restraint of unnecessary costs or efficiency

(King R. , 2000, pp. 31-34, 72).

The reversion point in the context of the three different budgetary

rules is important to understand because each rule shows that actors’

incentives to politicize vary according to the budget rule in effect at the time.

For example, the political risks and benefits are greater when food stamps

are budgeted with discretionary spending. While that may be true, it is the

complete opposite case with entitlements. With entitlements, all actors know

that the appropriation continues until acted upon by statute to change that

automatic appropriation process (King R. , 2000, p. 30).

Institutional rules play an important role in the development of King’s

argument. He says that the food stamp program is an outcome of the

strategies that actors employ to arrive at their collective decisions. For

example, King says that institutional rules can modify bargaining relations

among interested actors, thereby changing the way they approach and

negotiate with rivals and the outcomes they achieve in the legislative game

playing (King R. , 2000, p. 25).

Under the institutional model, King argues that it is important to

understand why the actors involved make budget decisions the way they do

under discretionary spending. We can understand this better by asking if the

actors are really honest about their budget proposals. For example, the

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budget actors include the president, Congress, and the top bureaucratic

agencies and heads, and others, but these are the main actors. The agencies

can be honest or not honest about how much funding they require. King

argues that under discretionary spending the agencies do not have an

incentive to underestimate costs; however, they may try to overestimate the

costs for contingencies or program expansion (King R. , 2000, p. 230).

Under entitlement spending, Congress tends to underestimate future

obligations as a means to make sure they have active participation in

coming fiscal years (King R. , 2000, pp. 100-101). This may produce a

frenzied rush to make sure that enough money is authorized and

appropriated when under discretionary spending and spending caps, but this

is not the case with food stamps as an entitlement program.

Under spending caps, institutional rules constrain actors from creating

and implementing substantive budgetary reform. King says that optimists

may hope that legislators would create new institutional rules for reform, but

instead in the real world of politics, they lack responsible policymaking (King

R. , 2000, pp. 29-31).

Whereas one can understand how institutional politics has affected the

food stamp program, now let’s look at how political ideology affects it. This

is where partisan politics factors into the budget making process. King goes

to great lengths to explain this and provides a one-dimensional linear map,

which is helpful imagery to an otherwise abstract budget process. Again let’s

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unpack these budget rules from the context of the three budget rules. Under

discretionary spending constraints, a liberal Congress will tend to prefer

more appropriation the left, while a conservative president will fall to the

right of King’s map, thus wanting to reduce welfare outlays (King R. , 2000,

pp. 31-39).

Under entitlements, spending is set by statute and varies directly with

the number of people who receive transfer payments. In this case, the

president does not have any negotiating power because of the statutory or

mandatory spending requirement of entitlements. The reversion point is set

by default and produces the effect of Congress being non-participatory with

the president. The only situation where this would not be the case is if the

president possessed the line-item veto (King R. , 2000, pp. 31-39).

However, he cannot have the line-item veto because that act was invalidated

by the US Supreme Court in Clinton v. New York City.

Under spending caps, again it is a situation of a liberal Congress

versus the conservative president. But in this case, the reversion point is to

the far right. This can work to the benefit of the president when bargaining.

The “sweet spot” for the president is “P” on King’s map. The president will

negotiate for spending to the right of “x” while Congress will reject it. The

realm between “x” and “P” is probably acceptable for the president, while

the space away from “Qc” to the left is desirable for Congress (King, 2000,

pp. 32-39).

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In conclusion, King’s study of the politics of food stamps can also be

called the fiscalization of welfare. It is also a study much like trying to

understand the tax code, very difficult to understand as a whole, but easier

when approaching it piece by piece or by specific types of program. The food

stamp program is one piece of legislation, and so discussing the federal

budget process with such a familiar example as food stamps makes

generalizing King’s central message of politics in the food stamp budget

process easier to understand and applicable to studying other areas of the

federal budget, not just social welfare programs.

From Roosevelt’s New Deal administration and the creation of

entitlements to Johnson’s Great Society, America has had unprecedented

increases in entitlement spending in large part due to the fiscalization of

welfare. The issue with King is not that so much money is being spent, but

instead the processes by which the money is appropriated and the ethical

argument that can be made if that money is not spent.

The food stamp program is an argument for better treatment of the

poor, less fortunate, and those who need it for any other reason life

presents. An important question to ask is can Americans really be the city on

a hill for others, if it cannot take care of its own? Maybe or maybe not, but in

either case, what is the cost, or who will pay?

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Works Cited King, R. (2000). Budget Entitlements: The Politics of Food Stamps. Washington, DC: Georgetown

University Press.