period 1963-1969, Forest Service estimates of 

 needed funds for its "Development Program" 

 were actually funded at the following levels 

 (Vaux 1971, p. 5-6): 72 



Timber sale administration and 



management 94.2% 



Reforestation and stand 



improvement 41.8% 



Recreation-public use 46.7% 



Soil and water management 53.7% 



Vaux comments, 



Thus, the Forest Service problem seems to be 

 how to get interest groups and the Appropria- 

 tions Committee to go along with its particular 

 assessments of value trade-offs [i.e., weights]. 

 The problem is not that the foresters can't 

 make up their minds which bale of hay to chew 

 on, but that some members of the public and 

 Congress don't agree with them, and therefore 

 take action appropriate to frustrate execution 

 of the Forest Service's determinations. One pos- 

 sible way of dealing with this problem is for 

 Congress to withdraw its delegation of author- 

 ity to fix trade-offs administratively and local- 

 ly, and to itself play a primary role in their 

 determination .... What this suggests ... is 

 that the key problem underlying this issue is, 

 not how to define multiple use criteria more 

 sharply, but how to validate in the eyes of the 

 public and of the Congress the trade-offs that 

 are used in practice to determine land use. 



Politics and Policies 



An explanation of what motivates the con- 

 gressional policymakers is needed. Theories of 

 government behavior are numerous and 

 varied. Recently, however, a number of politi- 

 cal theorists have come to accept as a close 

 approximation what, for lack of a better 

 name, can be referred to as the "Self- 

 Interested Policymaker" model. 73 



Data are available in U.S. Congress, Department 

 of Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations for 

 1970, 91st Congr., 1st Sess., Part 3, p. 92. These esti- 

 mates were not used in the final budget requests 

 shown in the Appendix. 



73 The following discussion is largely based on the 

 treatment found in Haveman, The economics of the 

 public sector (1970) p. 140-147. See also Buchanan 

 and Tullock (1962), Downs (1957), and McKean 

 (1965). Lowi (1969) argues against the theory. 



This theory suggests that the bargaining 

 that takes place in Congress is similar to that 

 in a competitive market situation. That is, 

 Congressmen, Presidents, bureaucrats, and 

 other public policymakers maximize the at- 

 tainment of each one's personal objectives. 

 Correspondences with the competitive market 

 include behavior such as "touching all bases" 

 prior to making a decision (being highly con- 

 sultative) and exerting strong effort only 

 when there is a high probability of success; a 

 further correspondence is the operation of a 

 kind of law of demand as it applies to the 

 "costs" associated with any given action. The 

 theory also touches on Adam Smith's "in- 

 visible hand" by arguing that this self- 

 interested policymaking somehow achieves 

 simultaneously maximum "social benefits." 



Although it can be seen that the bargaining 

 mechanism implied in this theory could, 

 under ideal conditions, lead to policy and 

 spending decisions that truly represent the 

 public interest, the model has the same inher- 

 ent problems of the purely competitive mar- 

 ket. These problems, generally offered as ex- 

 planations of market failure, include "ex- 

 ternalities, lack of knowledge and informa- 

 tion, monopoly power, cartelization, public 

 goods, immobilities, and so on" (Haveman 

 1970, p. 145; see also d'Arge and Hunt 1971). 

 Their existence in public-sector bargaining im- 

 plies the strong probability that imperfections 

 and misalloeations of resources can be ex- 

 pected. Here, as in the economists' model of 

 the competitive system, failure or subopti- 

 mization occurs because all of the costs and 

 benefits are not taken into account. 



This brief reference to the problems of 

 policymaking and budgeting decisions in the 

 political arena serves merely to emphasize two 

 important considerations necessary to under- 

 standing of the Forest Service position. First, 

 the agency can be and is in fact influenced by 

 bureaucratic tendencies in government that 

 undermine the goals of scientific manage- 

 ment. Second, the Congress does not neces- 

 sarily have a firm hand on what is called the 

 "public interest." On the basis of these facts, 

 and the results of a review of past policy on 

 budgeting, we will discover in the following 

 discussion that there is no easily identifiable 



57 



