despite the fact that, at least in federal terms, Americans pay less tax than most
citizens of Western democracies. At the same time efforts to reduce the deficit
from the mid-1980s trimmed most avoidable expenditure off the budget, and
left very few fully-funded programmes which could be cut without major
political repercussions. The end of the cold warseemed to present an
opportunity to reduce the deficit by cutting military expenditure, but even
apart from right-wing political pressure to preserve such budget items, there
was less to cut than the liberals in Congress had always assumed.
Part of the expenditure problem is that several extremely expensive social
welfare programmes, including Medicare, pensions and unemployment ben-
efit, were badly designed from the outset and have huge actuarial cost overruns.
However, they are regarded as entitlement programmes which cannot be cut
more than marginally. Budgetary deficits are a major constraint on national
economic development, because they have to be financed through borrowing,
forcing interest rates up both for business and for the general population. For
the USA it has been made even worse because, at the same time, the balance of
external trade has also been seriously in deficit. Until a president can be elected
on an increased taxation policy, which would run against the whole tradition of
US politics, there is not likely to be a fundamental solution. Attempts to solve
the problem such as the Gramm-Rudman legislation can make only a minor
impression. Ironically the deficit could be cleared in a few years if the burden to
the US taxpayer was increased by bringing taxes on petrol and luxury goods up
to the European average. The US deficit is likely to grow again in the early 21st
century with the election of President George W. Bush who has many of the
same policies as Reagan. As his presidency is also particularly needful of
defence expenditure following the 2001 terrorist attacks, deficit reduction is
extremely unlikely.
Delegation
Delegation of power in political discourse has two rather different usages. The
first is the idea that a body, a parliament most typically, with constitutional
authority to make law may delegate some part of this power to others. Usually
this involves the parliament passing a law which sets the major aims and outline
shape of a legislative programme. Rather than try to deal with the details,
which themselves may have to be altered frequently to accord with changing
circumstances, they may delegate responsibility to make regulations under the
act to acivil servicebody, a minister, or even an independent agency (in this
context, seelegislative veto). The body to which power is thus delegated
usually has to pass only rather formal tests of the validity of the subsequent rules
and regulations, though these may be more easily challenged in courts or
elsewhere than originating legislation. In the United Kingdom it is not unusual
Delegation