Abstract
This study analyzes an important and overlooked aspect of cutback budgeting affecting US federal agencies − reductions to existing US federal grant awards. Because presidents face incentives for both executive accountability and effective administration, we predict that public agencies which are more responsive to presidential goals, as well as those led by more capable agency heads, shall experience less severe grant retrenchments. Statistical analysis of approximately 745,000 grant retrenchments for the 1988–2008 period reveals that the distribution of these programmatic cutbacks is consistent with enhancing executive accountability, while also favoring policy effectiveness. Agencies led by chief executives with considerable managerial‐specific expertise are associated with only increased reductions in grant retrenchments for small programmatic cuts to existing grants. These findings illustrate how presidents’ strategy of executive administration seeks to limit programmatic cutbacks for more responsive federal agencies, and also for public organizations whose leaders exhibit higher levels of policy‐specific expertise.