Budget As Policy And Strategy

The United States from the Cold War and into the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) continues to face challenges in translating military might into political desires due to its obsession with raising an army, electing politicians and assembling a diplomatic corp that continue to gravitate towards State-to-State engagements that if not rectified could lead to substantial delays in fighting terrorism and non-terrorist adversaries or worse total failure of the United States Military’s ability to properly carry out it’s politicians objectives due to being blindsided.

“The struggle against international terrorism is different from any other war in our history. We will not triumph solely or even primarily through military might.” (National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, 2003) And so to combat this in the post 9/11 time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was born. And as we have seen in the past event, DHS is needed more today than ever. But DHS was born out of not only necessity but also function.

Bellavita Christopher is the Director of Programs for the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Also, from 1998 to 2002, he was the planning coordinator for the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command. The author focuses on the fact that homeland security faces a variety of threats. Many factors such as the economy, weapons of mass destruction and a lack of moral compass pose potential challenges to homeland security (Bellavita, 2009). The terrorist attacks such as the one in Mumbai, the economic meltdown, the disaster on the borders remain potential malefactors to the U. S. homeland. And to no surprise, the threats are gradually transforming into a more complex tactics. Bellavita takes aim towards a realistic assessment

Careful planning is required to guide all parts of the organization towards its strategic long-term and short-term objectives. Anthony & Govindarajan (2000) saw strategic planning as being focused on several years, contrasted to budgeting that focuses on a single year and so a budget is a one-year slice of the organization’s strategic plan. The budget prepared for planning purposes, as part of the strategic planning process, is the quantitative plan of management’s belief of what the business’s costs and revenues will be over a specific future period (Davies & Boczko, 2005). According to Atrill & McLaney (2002), a budget’s role is

Homeland and counter-terrorism programs outlines the policies needed to improve U.S. and global security in the 21st century. The policies analyze how the U.S. and foreign allies will work together toward goals by combating terrorism and their organizations. According to Joint Publication 3-26 (2014), joining with other key partners and allies to develop strategies and theater campaigns plans, helps protect U.S. interest in a common security agenda. This approach not only strengthens the U.S. but it also expands the international multilateral counter-terrorism agenda. For instance, U.S. policies heighten conversation on homeland security and counter-terrorism because it aims to serve globally and nationally. After the twin towns were attack, the department of Homeland Security created a policy called Homeland Security ACT 2002. This act covers multiple areas that needed improvement but it also gave an understand what is expected for security and the future of the country going forward. Science & technology, immigration, emergency response, and bioterrorism, are some of the policies that were created under the Homeland

The government’s response to the September 11, 2001 events was quick and decisive. Government officials attributed responsibility for the attack to Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization. One result was an announced policy shift from deterrence to preemption, generally referred to as the “Bush Doctrine.” (National Security Strategy, [http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html].) Given the potential consequences of terrorist attacks employing weapons of mass destruction, government decision makers felt that the nation could not afford to sit back, wait for attacks to occur, and then respond. The nation was mobilized; combating terrorism and crippling Al Qaeda became top national priorities. The use of military force against different terrorist groups and infrastructure gained increasing acceptance in Government policy circles. In addition, a February 14, 2003, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030214-7.html] gave more emphasis to the role of international cooperation, law enforcement and economic development in countering terrorism.

After U.S. had an isolationist foreign policy for a long time, U.S. has shifted its power from isolationism to the internationalism. In international relations, united states is the dominate force, which has the biggest military arsenal in the world. However, the position on how the United States should deal with terror is not only relay on the preeminent power that American security has. It also depends on the policymaker. According to James N. Rosenau, the foreign policy can be influenced by five potential resources(Michael Cox &Doug Stokes p6). There are external government, social environments, government structure, bureaucratic roles and personalities of individuals. The directions in U.S. foreign policy moves differently because

There is a raging debate on where exactly the homeland security should be placed in the US structure, and whether it should be under the Department of Defense, the criminal justice, or it should be a joint effort of every American citizen. To answer this question, it is important to consider the scope of the activities carried out under homeland security.

Overwhelmed by numerous armed conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, a formidable domestic economic crisis, and a growing challenge of primacy from China, the United States government and public began prioritizing domestic issues. However, persisting transnational concerns, especially illicit drug trafficking, nuclear weapons proliferation, and the threat of terrorism, largely depend on U.S. involvement based on our relatively successful past efforts and President Barack Obama’s promising diplomatic approach towards foreign policy.

Throughout the history of the United States, the military is usually employed to suppress insurrection and rebellion, to enforce the law as well as perform many other duties of the Federation, state and local affairs. While support to the nations is usually overshadowed by the high-profile duty of detracting it, military support is a vital mission which still continues to grow as alluded to by the number of domestic problems to which the Department of Defense (DOD) has responded to in past years (Grange & Johnson 1997, p.108). The U.S has acknowledged and prepared for terrorist attacks for years. The terrorist events in the fall of 2001 put to test the extent to which the local, State, and Federal emergencies had in

Historically, incrementalism has characterized public budgeting because at its core, budgeting has evolved: increased and decreased through gradual stages within the realm of the political arena. The need for this one step at a time type of response, found within incremental budgeting, would have likely been caused by the known fact that prior to the 1900’s public welfare programs, federal, states, and even city spending did not exist in the way in which is more than obviously observable in today’s society simply because America did not employ an actual budgetary system. Therefore, as with any unchartered territory, it was approached in stages, with caution, a little at a time in response to the growing needs of the public. Aaron Wildavsky made this case in his book “The politics of the budgetary process,” when he pointed out “budgeting is incremental, not comprehensive. The beginning of wisdom about an agency budget is that it is almost never actively reviewed as a whole every year in the sense of reconsidering the value of all existing programs as compared to all alternatives. Instead, it is based on last year’s budget with special attention given to a narrow range of increases or decreases.” (Wildavsky 1964, p. 15)

The 20’s century saw the use of budget involve due to a change in the environment. Indeed the control of output used to be obtained by the dissemination of tasks and so traditional budgets were very much highlighted, with a significant top-down influence. As an example of the importance of budget in the 1970’s IBM had about 3,000 people involved in their budgetary process. During the same period, the oil crisis brought concerns about rising in costs and led to the introduction of zero-based budgeting (ZBB), which can lower cost by avoiding blanket increases or decreases to a prior period’s budget. The increase in business uncertainties was in discrepancy with the stifling effect of fixed plans, promoting the use of rolling budgets. The 1990’s saw the growing influence of shareholders and steered the focus on a budget that included a wider view of organisation results, answering the investment community for quarterly updates on results and expectations (Bill Ryan, 2005). Budgets then started being used as a communication tool between the financial community and the organisation, allowing the corporation to be integrated in the capital market. Moreover companies started using flexible budgets rather than static budgets as nowadays various levels of activities can be observed in most organisations. The use of flexible budgets then enables firms to be consistent with their new environment and the market.

The budget is the most important policy tool of government, affecting the ability to implement any given policy successfully. As such, a budget is more than the sum of its balance sheets; it is a statement on the social and economic priorities of a government. Although budgets are perceived to be gender-neutral, they are in reality 'gender-blind '. To address the differential impact of government expenditures and revenue on men and women, gender responsive budgeting (GRB) has developed as a strategy to promote gender equality and create accountability for governments to uphold their national policy commitments to women.

Budgeting is a main instrument of management control for most organizations’ systems. Recently it is a controversial phenomenon, the disappointment with budgeting is occurring. This is because some people find that budgeting processes are time consuming and often lead to dysfunctional behavior. Additionally, they make organization fail to be flexible in such an uncertain financial environment. Many people think traditional budgeting systems should be abolished, but others wish to improve them. Hope and Fraser (2003b) provide a few examples of European companies that have abolished traditional budgeting systems successfully. On the other hand, Eckholm and Wallin (2000) observe approximately

Budget and budgetary control practices though very essential to meeting organizational goals, are mostly hastily and improperly prepared. This eventually leads to unfulfilled budget and budgetary control practices.