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1 Performance Budgeting: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

There are serious weaknesses in the internal operations of the Federal Government in the fiscal field. These weaknesses penetrate into the heart of every governmental transaction. (T)he Government’s accounting system, outmoded and cumbersome, does not indicate what was accomplished with the money spent in the year past.

Only by making the head of each activity financially responsible for all the costs of his program, can he be held to account. Only by modernizing the Federal system of budgeting and accounting will it be possible to tell exactly how much any single program or project is costing. The Federal Government must be able to assess results intelligently.

One could easily assume these quotes are from a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report or from Congressional testimony. In truth, these rather astounding statements are from the Hoover Commission report of 1949. President Herbert Hoover, The Hoover Commission Report on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (Washington, D.C.: United States Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, 1949), 33–34. What’s more astounding is that they still ring true today.