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A Comment on “The Great Unraveling: Federal Budgeting, 1998–2006”
Author(s) -
Hoagland G. William
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2007.00747.x
Subject(s) - presidential system , politics , administration (probate law) , balance (ability) , federal budget , point (geometry) , political science , public administration , budget process , process (computing) , economics , law and economics , law , psychology , computer science , geometry , mathematics , fiscal year , neuroscience , operating system
To declare that the federal budgetary process is in utter shambles based principally on an analysis of a six‐year interval during a single presidential administration, as Professor Irene Rubin does in the preceding article, is unfair to history and misleading. Drawing on significant budgetary experience as a U.S. Senate staff member, the author of this essay argues that (1) the contributions of emergency appropriations and earmarks to the federal budgetary imbalance are overstated, (2) the goal of perpetual budgetary balance is unsound policy, and (3) budgets—inevitably the result of a political process—are artifacts reflecting societal priorities at a given point in time.