Capacity to Budget

Budgeting has become a conflict-ridden process in which politicians frequently resort to ad hoc procedures in order to make it through that year's required actions. Allen Schick provides evidence of the recent breakdown in both the budget process (missed deadlines, omnibus legislation, and improvised procedures) and policies (summed up in massive and seemingly chronic deficits) as testaments of political failure. He sets forth a theory that links growth in the economy to growth in federal expenditures and shows how budgeting was transformed in the post-war period into a growth-oriented process through changes in procedures as well as in the composition of federal expenditures.