818 



-42- 



policy effectively prevents such allocation except under difficult, clumsy 

 (sometimes sub-rosa ), and almost always ad hoc arrangements. 



The problem, aside from its legal aspects which are capable of being 

 changed by the Congress as has been done for some agencies, is largely one of 

 efficient budgetary management. 0MB argues, with considerable justification, 

 that it is difficult, at best, to naintain reasonable discipline in a budget 

 if fuzzy arguments of "foreign policy interest" have to be given weight in 

 ranking proposed programs, or if budgets to serve development assistance 

 objectives crop up in a score of federal agencies. 



Yet, the answer must surely be more creative than simply to rule out such 

 programs. One possibility, for example, would be to create a "development 

 budget" that crosses departmental lines and forces a degree of budgetary 

 discipline that cuts across agencies and agency budgets. 



Departments and agencies would be allowed, with Congressional concurrence, 

 to budget some of their own funds for development-related R&D, but those 

 projects would have to be compared not only with proposals within the 

 Department, but also with development-related proposals of other agencies. 

 Similarly, for those proposed programs that have mixed foreign policy (other 

 than development) and scientific objectives, a cross-agency evaluation on 

 criteria of foreign policy could be attempted as a way of exerting necessary 

 budget discipline. Though this would obviously be difficult to administer and 

 has its own bureaucratic pitfalls (the opportunity for playing budgetary games 

 would be large, to say nothing of the difficulty of ranking according to 

 foreign policy criteria), something like it requires experimentation. 



