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Inflation in the United States – Part 4

By: John Steele Gordon

In 1974, Congress passed the Budget and Impoundment Control Act – as misnamed an act of Congress as it is possible for an act to be. It effectively removed the president as a player in the budget game, by ending his power to impound appropriated funds. With Congress in full control of spending, spending went out of control. In the six years preceding the Act, with the Vietnam War raging, annual deficits had averaged 11.3 billion. In the first six years after the Act, with the war over, they averaged $54 billion.

By 1980, the...