How Does OMB Influence Presidential Policy Making?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

This roundtable will provide an inside look at the functions and effectiveness of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over time, as the agency approaches its 100th anniversary. The existing scholarly literature on OMB’s significance for presidential policy making is remarkably sparse, with just three book-length treatments since 1970. In examining OMB’s evolution in agenda setting and policy making, this roundtable will focus on several key questions, including the following: Can, and should, OMB resist “politicization”? Relatedly, how important is interagency clearance to successful policymaking? (The 2017 “travel ban” executive order, which received no such clearance, is an instructive example.)

OMB is often termed the “most powerful agency that no one has ever heard of.” Since 1921--and especially since 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it into the Executive Office of the President (EOP)--OMB has housed the staff that makes it possible for presidents to do their jobs. Responsible for producing the president’s budget each year; for overseeing the development and implementation of management initiatives across the agencies; for conducting interagency clearance and review of proposed legislation and executive orders; and for analyzing the costs and benefits of major regulations, OMB has a crucial role at the nexus of the chief executive and the executive branch.

How the president gets and uses information; how the president can serve as “chief executive” in fact as well as in name; how the permanent government can work better with shorter-term political dynamics--all of these are crucial to the success of presidents and the U.S. polity. This roundtable discussion will advance scholarly research on OMB’s significance for presidential leadership and American politics.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 23: Presidents and Executive Politics

Chair

• Rachel Augustine Potter University of Virginia

Presenters

• James P. Pfiffner

• Eloise Pasachoff Georgetown University Law School

• Jeffrey A. Weinberg

• Andrew C. Rudalevige Bowdoin College

• Meena Bose Hofstra University