Federal budget cuts: Bureaucrats trim the meat, not the fat: Comment

Conclusion

After substituting actual and real changes for proposed and nominal changes in budgetary and employment levels, it is clear that the size and scope of the federal Leviathon had not been reduced over 1982–83. It is also clear that the agencies which witnessed real budget cuts over this period were of minor importance in terms of the total U.S. budget. Future research on why only small agencies receive real budget cuts will provide us with a better understanding of the budgetary process.

There exists a strong distinction to be made between intended (proposed) and actual changes in government activity over time. On the one hand, research in the public choice area must recognize this distinction before deriving public policy implications from empirical data. On the other hand, research on how these differences between proposed and actual changes come about and their effect on voting patterns remains a useful issue in the public choice literature.