Since 1981, federal hiring has been covered by the Luévano consent decree. Under the decree, the government ended use of PACE (its written civil service exam at the time) and established new hiring programs. Last week, the Trump administration moved to terminate the decree.

Given recent news, I’m happy to share a working paper quantifying presidential deviations from enacted budgets from 1958-2018. Analyzing agency/bureau level data on spending and presidential requests, I find that presidents spend less than appropriated when they desire to.