Budgetary Politics in American Governments


Book Description

This comprehensive book describes and analyzes the substance and politics of public budgeting at the national, state, and local levels of government. In doing so, it takes a comparative approach, illustrating the distinctiveness of budgeting at each level, as well as highlighting the features common to all three. A unifying focus is the extent to which budgetary decision makers use the budget as a central vehicle to advance their policy preferences. This fully updated sixth edition provides an extensive and thorough analysis of the causes of the Great Recession, its economic consequences, and the policy responses which pushed the boundaries of conventional monetary and fiscal policy. Also new to this edition is a chapter on the intergovernmental dimensions of public budgeting, along with boxed features highlighting hands-on vignettes of contemporary practical challenges facing budget makers at the different levels of government.




Budgetary Politics in American Governments


Book Description

Budgetary Politics in American Governments, unlike most public budgeting texts, takes a comparative approach to the subject of public budgeting, examining budgetary politics at the federal, state, and local government levels. Students are introduced to the budgetary decision making process, taxation, spending, budget execution and financial management as well as the budget process at each level of government. Thoroughly updated but preserving much of the third edition's structure and approach, this fourth edition contains a new chapter that will introduce students to the interrelationship of economics and politics in budgeting.




A People's Guide to the Federal Budget


Book Description

From history of the budget process to detail about the ongoing conflict in Washington, from charts explaining where every federal dollar goes to simple explanations of budget terminology, this book covers it all. A People’s Guide to the Federal Budget is for every American who wants to understand and participate in a process that affects all of us. It serves as a foundation for the novice reader, a reference tool for a more advanced audience, and is perfect for high school and college classroom use. Released to coincide with the fiscal year 2013 budget process and the 2012 presidential election, this guide includes up-to-the-minute numbers and explanation of President Obama’s 2013 budget request.




Red Ink


Book Description

Presents a narrative analysis of the federal budget that reveals how funds were actually spent in 2011, evaluating the roles of such contributors as Jacob Lew, Douglas Elmendorf, and Pete Peterson.




The Congressional Budget Office


Book Description

Created in 1974, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has become one of the most influential forces in national policymaking. A critical component of our system of checks and balances, the CBO has given Congress the analytical capacity to challenge the president on budget issues while it protects the public interest, providing honest numbers about Congress's own budget proposals. The book discusses the CBO’s role in larger budget policy and the more narrow "scoring" of individual legislation, such as its role in the 2009–2010 Obama health care reform. It also describes how the first director, Alice Rivlin, and seven successors managed to create and sustain a nonpartisan, highly credible agency in the middle of one of the most partisan institutions imaginable. The Congressional Budget Office: Honest Numbers, Power, and Policy draws on interviews with high-level participants in the budget debates of the last 35 years to tell the story of the CBO. A combination of political history, economic history, and organizational development, The Congressional Budget Office offers an important, first book-length history of this influential agency.




Recommended Budget Practices


Book Description




American Government 3e


Book Description

Black & white print. American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens. In order to help students understand the ways that government, society, and individuals interconnect, the revision includes more examples and details regarding the lived experiences of diverse groups and communities within the United States. The authors and reviewers sought to strike a balance between confronting the negative and harmful elements of American government, history, and current events, while demonstrating progress in overcoming them. In doing so, the approach seeks to provide instructors with ample opportunities to open discussions, extend and update concepts, and drive deeper engagement.




The Pig Book


Book Description

The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of: - $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa - $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil - $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri - $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!) - $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California - $1 million for ornamental fish research Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!




Rules and Restraint


Book Description

Publisher description




Budgeting


Book Description

In this completely revised edition of his classic work, Aaron Wildavsky collects in one place the existing knowledge on budgeting. Realistic budgets are an expression of practical politics. Budgeting is so basic it reveals the norms by which men live in a particular political culture. In dealing directly with the universe of governmental activity, Wildavsky uses reliable accounts of how budgeting is carried on to capture a great deal of national political life. The focus is explicitly comparative. After developing a general theory of budgeting; he analyzes four rich countries - Britain, France, Japan, and the United States, followed by poor countries, American cities, and American states. Wildavsky uses this analysis to develop and apply a cultural theory of budgeting, explaining the degree of balance between revenue and expenditure; why government grows in all industrial democracies, and why there are still different rates of growth in spending. He offers a critical evaluation of the first edition, linking the ability of nations to make history and the various strategies of change they adopt to explain a wider range of budgetary processes.