The President and the Distribution of Federal Spending
Empirical research on distributive politics emphasizes party and committee leaders in Congress. This paper highlights the president, who most credibly fills the role of the proposer in Baron and Ferejohn’s (1989) seminal model, and who has further opportunities to influence the distribution of federal outlays both later in the appropriations process and after a final bill is enacted. We analyze a large database that tracks the geographic spending of nearly every domestic program over a 21-year period. Using a district fixed-effects estimation strategy, we find only sporadic evidence that committee chairs, party leaders, and majority party members receive larger shares of federal outlays. Instead, we find consistent and robust evidence that districts receive systematically more spending when they are represented by legislators in the president’s party.
