142 Congressional politics
appropriated for different purposes, and these differences have to be recon-
ciled in conference committees. The legislative committees of Congress, each
with their pet programmes, may come into conflict with the appropriations
committees, which have the primary responsibility for ensuring an economic
use of public funds. Finally, the appropriations committees are themselves
divided up into a large number of subcommittees, each of which has its own
views on the appropriations for the government departments for which it is
responsible.
The House of Representatives has always claimed a pre-eminence in the
financial field, and all money bills originate in the House, although in fact the
Constitution insists on this point only in respect of bills for raising revenue.
Furthermore, the House usually tends to take a more restrictive view of the
needs of the government for funds. The normal pattern is for the House to
reduce the total requested by the president by a substantial amount, for the
Senate to propose an appropriation considerably in excess of that suggested
by the House, although still lower than the presidential request, and then
for the conference committee to approve finally an amount about half-way
between the House and Senate figures. Of course, the administration is well
aware of this general tendency, and no doubt it adjusts its requests to the
expected behaviour of Congress – some observers rather cynically suggest
that after all the effort expended by Congress the administration usually
gets just about the amount it had originally aimed at.
However, although this is the broad pattern of the financial operations
of Congress, it would be a mistake to think that the outcome of the battle
over particular appropriations can always be forecast in this way. Sometimes
Congress appropriates more money than the president has requested for a
particular programme, either in an attempt to force a particular policy upon
the administration or as a result of the desire to benefit constituents. One
of the most consistent examples of the appropriation by Congress of more
money than requested has been the way in which, over a period of ten years
or so, Congress appropriated more for the maintenance and development of
the manned bomber force than the president wished. This action reflected
a dispute within the administration between air force generals, who wished
to prevent cuts in the bomber programme, and the officials of the Defense
Department, who wished to rely to a greater extent upon missiles. At times
this dispute was painfully open. In 1956 General Curtis LeMay, Chief of the
Strategic Air Command, was successful in getting Congress to add $800 mil-
lion to the defence appropriation for the production of B-52 bombers against
the opposition of President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, Charles Wil-
son. In 1964 General LeMay, then Air Force Chief of Staff, again persuaded
Congress, against the opposition of another president and another Secretary
of Defense, to appropriate $52 million for research into a ‘follow-up’ bomber
to replace the ageing B-52s. There are many more recent examples; in 2006
the House of Representatives voted to increase President Bush’s request for
money for the purchase of vehicles for the army by $1,330 million.