GOTV

1
GOTV

• Last time
• the politics of appointments
• presidential role in budgeting
• Today Get Out the Vote campaigning

2
Appointment politics

• singleton administrators and senate confirmation
  if senators and presidents choices are driven
  only by policy preferences, they should always
  approve the presidents nominee and the president
  always chooses a nominee at his own ideal point
• reversionary policy implementation is some mix of
  office stays vacant and president makes recess
  appointment. If we assume that office stays
  vacant implies a spatially extreme outcome,
  senators will always prefer the presidents ideal
  appointee. Recess appointment implies presidents
  ideal appointee, so resistance is futile, to
  quote the Borg

3
Appointments to panels

• majority-rule panels odd numbers imply unique
  median even numbers imply median interval
• if exiting member is not the s.q. median, the new
  median will be shifted in opposite direction of
  the exiting member. Median interval outlines the
  limits of how far a new prez. appointment can
  move policy
• If pivotal senator and prez are on opposite sides
  of the new median, prez appointment is strongly
  constrained
• If key senator and prez are favored by the median
  shift, prez is either partially constrained or
  unconstrained (and gets to move policy to his
  ideal pt)
• if key senator and prez are hurt by the median
  shift, prez should be in a strategically strong
  position.

4
Models of budgeting

• Possible roles for prez include
• gate-keeper (negative agenda power)
• proposer (positive agenda power) and
• oversight agent (can affect the efficiency of
  policy implementation)
• Gatekeeper (veto threats)
• asymmetric effects
• Proposer (positive agenda power)
• Niskanen exec. branch has hidden info about
  costs of policies, makes take-it-or-leave-it
  offers to Congress Risk aversion and bias
• Limitations on bias sources of information
• first-mover advantage and distributive policies

5
Presidential budgeting

• Evolution of budgetary structures
• pre-Budget Act
• post-Civil War establishment, then breakup of
  Appropriations
• progressive movement scientific government and
  professionalization of government
• 1921 Budget Act
• post-WWI retrenchment recentralization of
  Appropriations
• 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control
  Act
• Controlling deficits the 1980s and omnibus
  legislation