144 Congressional politics
have to impose cuts upon the appropriate committees who were dealing with
the various branches of expenditure. The process was completed successfully
and the final legislation, when signed by President Reagan, reduced govern-
ment expenditure by $35 billion below the levels projected by the previous
administration.
By far the most dramatic intervention by Congress in the field of financial
control came, however, in 1985 with the passage of the Balanced Budget and
Emergency Deficit Control Act, known as the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings
Act. When President Reagan was elected in 1980, he promised to balance the
federal budget, but in succeeding years the budget deficit rose to gargantuan
proportions, reaching $207 billion in 1983. The failure of the president and
Congress to agree on ways of removing this massive deficit led Congress in
1985 to adopt a legislative solution which, if effective, would have extraor-
dinary results on the working of the government of the United States. The
Act set yearly targets for the elimination of the deficit, which would result in
achieving a balanced budget in 1990. The president was required to submit
annual budgets not exceeding these targets; but, if president and Congress
could not agree upon the financial measures needed to meet the targets, a
sequence of automatic cuts in expenditure were required by the Act to reduce
government spending to the required level. The Congressional Budget Of-
fice and the Office of Management and Budget were jointly to provide the
estimates upon which these cuts were to be based and then they were to
be automatically enforced. Such a revolutionary method of determining the
level of government spending would virtually remove control over individual
programmes from both president and Congress alike, placing it effectively in
the hands of non-elected officials. Soon after its passage, the Supreme Court
invalidated essential parts of the Act, and it proved to be unworkable, but it
well illustrates the determination of Congress to maintain its influence over
financial policy, and not simply to bow to the wishes of the executive branch
of government.
Other control functions
Congress conducts many investigations of the activities of the federal govern-
ment in an attempt to keep control of this vast machine. Each year the ap-
propriations committees and subcommittees investigate departmental oper-
ations, and standing committees conduct inquiries relevant to their sphere of
legislative responsibility. The most notorious committee investigations were
those of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the investigatory
subcommittee of the Senate Government Operations Committee, chaired in
the early 1950s by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Senate committees and some
House committees have the power to subpoena witnesses and documents,
and if witnesses refuse to answer questions put to them they may find them-
selves in jail, convicted of contempt of Congress. The House Un-American