[]
Abstract
Public transparency is important in that there is increase in the level of trust from the public. There are various ways of understanding and demonstrating public transparency one of which is the ability of the public to know who is responsible for what act within the government. In this research paper, the learner takes a closer look at budgeting in the office of the president. Specifically, there will be focus on four select departments within the national budget. This will include the U. S. Coast Guard, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, U. S. Secret Service and U. S. Corps of Engineers – Civil Works. This research paper is aimed at disclosing how easy it is to get information concerning these departments from the national budget while addressing the main issues as pertains to outlays and other budgetary authorities among other things to be discussed.
Budgeting and Public Administration
Introduction
The main reason for writing this research paper is to try to find out the administrative structure where the four agencies in question fall in, which include the U. S. Coast Guard, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, U. S. Secret Service and U. S. Corps of Engineers – Civil Works. In addition to this there will be an understanding as to the different functional classifications of these agencies as accorded by the budgetary committees and the subcommittees that address each agency’s budgetary issues. The organization of the paper is such that there will be address of individual agency in question through the aforementioned lines of discussion.
a) United States Coast Guard
According to Farrow (2007) on the new classification of various departments in line with the budgetary allocation, United States Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security is an independent agency but U. S. Coast Guard is an executive department since it falls under the Department of Homeland Security.
The appropriate subcommittee under which the U. S. Coast Guard falls under is the Subcommittee on Federal Financial management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security (Farrow, 2007).
The functional classification according to the budgetary classification categories for U. S. Coast Guard indicate that it falls under the (050) National Defense under the subcategory (054) Defense – related activities (Farrow, 2007).
b) United States Corps of Engineers – Civil Works
The United States Corps of Engineers – Civil Works is a department that has both interactions in the military construction and in public constructions. This department is an independent agency since it does not fall under any other department within the classification of the Federal government budgetary allocation committee (Holmes, 2010). This is also visible in the National budgetary allocations since the agency is present in the budget unlike those that fall under the category of executive departments that have their details under their individual agencies under which they fall.
The appropriate agency that has the mandate on budgetary issues for U. S. Corps of Engineers – Civil Works is the Subcommittee on oversight which also deals with future developments and innovations (Holmes, 2010). Being a construction industry, whatever construction undertaking that is done has to consider future possibilities of expansion due to various factors some of them being increase in population.
The most appropriate functional classification that the agency can fall into is the (999) multifunctional accounts that are accorded to accounts that deal with more than two major functions (Holmes, 2010). The reason for this would be that this department has three major categories that they deal with. To start with there is address of military related facilities, secondly, construction of public-related facilities and lastly, in times of war, they can be called upon to take arms and go to war.
c) United States Secret Service
During the recent reclassification of the departmental structures, the U. S. Secret Service was classified together with the U. S. Coast Guard under the Department of Homeland Security (Thornton, 2007). This means that the U. S. Secret Service is an executive department and not an independent agency. This means that during national budgetary allocations, whatever was previously given directly to these department and accounted for these departments has been combined due to the likelihood and similarity in functionality in their fields such that they are addressed as one entity. This makes it easier to reduce the likelihood of having double allocation to these departments to do the same thing.
According to Thornton (2007), the most likely appropriate agency that is mandated to address budgetary issues for U. S. Secret Service is the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations. The main reason for this derivative is the fact that the secret service is mainly mandated to ensure security is up-to-date for top government officials at all times whether on transit or otherwise.
As far as the functional classification of U. S. Secret Service is concerned, the most appropriate classification would be similar to that of U. S. Coast Guard, which is (050) for National Defense under subcategory (054) on Defense-related activities (Thornton, 2007).
d) United States Environmental Protection Agency
All departments are important in their various fields and thus they are given equal treatments in terms of budgetary jurisdiction is concerned. This does not means that they are given equal amount of money but rather they are allocated funds as per their demands and activities. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency is an independent agency that does not have another body that rules over its funds except the budgetary committee (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010).
The most appropriate subcommittee that is responsible for the allocation and address of different issues on U. S. Environmental Protection Agency is the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). The reason for this is clear since the agency deals with the environment and means of conserving energy to reduce pollution both in the air and on other natural resources.
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency falls under two categories as far as functional classification based on the budgetary allocation committee classification is concerned. First, the agency falls under the (270) Energy, (272) Energy Conservation and (276) Energy Information, Policy and Regulation (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). Secondly, the same U. S. Environmental Protection Agency falls under the (300) Natural Resources and Environment under subcategory (304) Pollution Control and Abatement and (302) Conservation and Land Management.
The following is a breakdown of the excerpt from the budget that indicates the outlays, both from budgeted authority and actual outlays. For personnel compensation and Benefits, $ 2,258 million was the actual outlay while the budget authority was $ 2,241 million (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). Contractual services and Supplies had actual outlays being $ 2,656 million while the budgeted authority was $ 2,590 million (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). Acquisition of Capital Assets had actual outlays as $ 80 million while the budgeted authority was $ 77 million (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). For Grants and Fixed Charges, the actual outlays were $ 4,929 million and the coinciding budgeted authority outlays were $ 5,560 million (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). Others were $ 1,284 million as actual outlays while $ 1,182 million were the budgeted authority outlays (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). Reimbursable Obligations accounted for $ 744 million in the actual outlays while in the budgeted authority outlays it accounted for $ 767 million (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). This leads to the Total Gross Obligations for Actual outlays to be $ 11,951 million while that of the budgeted authority outlays being $ 12, 417 million (Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011, 2010). All these figures are derived from fiscal year 2010. Based on this figures it is clear that the total gross obligations / outlays for the budgeted authority outlays was higher than that of the actual outlays. The most comprehensible reason for this difference would be that during this period, there was a lot of retrenchment that was done both in public and private sectors and thus what was to be spent was not. The figures are also not as high as would be expected due to the inflation rate within the same period.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear that U. S. Coast Guard and U. S. Secret Service fall under the Department of Homeland Security that makes these two departments to be executive departments as their budgetary allocation is passed on to another agency before being allocated to them. For the U. S. Corps of Engineers – Civil Works and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, it is clear that these two are independent in their categorization according to the budgetary committee’s classification criteria. It is also evident that there is a slight disparity as far as the total gross obligation is concerned for actual outlays and budgeted authority outlays with actual outlays being slightly lower.
Reference List:
Agencies request increased funding for safety in FY 2011. (2010). Professional Safety 55(3), 25-26. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/200328075?accountid=45049
Farrow, S. (2007). The economics of homeland security expenditures: foundational expected cost-effectiveness approaches, contemporary Economic Policy 25(1), 14-26. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/274176625?accountid=45049
Holmes, M. H. (2010). Translating goals to practice: An analysis of U. S. Army Corps of Engineers public participation practices, Public Administration and Management 15(1), 177-220. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/236489934?accountid=45049
Thornton, D. W. (2007). Consolidating the defense-industrial base in the post-cold war era: Budgetary priorities & procurement policies in the U. S. & Western Europe, Public finance and Management 7(3), 295-339. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/236989441?accountid=45049
