Product Description

The federal budget impacts American policies both at home and abroad, and recent concern over the exploding budgetary deficit has experts calling our nation's policies "unsustainable" and "system-dooming." As the deficit continues to grow, will America be fully able to fund its priorities, such as an effective military and looking after its aging population?

In this third edition of his classic book The Federal Budget, Allen Schick examines how surpluses projected during the final years of the Clinton presidency turned into oversized deficits under George W. Bush. In his detailed analysis of the politics and practices surrounding the federal budget, Schick addresses issues such as the collapse of the congressional budgetary process and the threat posed by the termination of discretionary spending caps. This edition updates and expands his assessment of the long-term budgetary outlook, and it concludes with a look at how the nation s deficit will affect America now and in the future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110378 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 345 pages

About the Author
Allen Schick is a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland.

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview - also get the poster!
Dr. Schick's book is outstanding. If you use this book in the classroom or teach the congressional or federal budget process, you should also look at the Congressional Operations Poster.

One side of the poster covers the federal budget process, with a flowchart that is very useful when teaching about the federal or congressional budget process. (But don't take my word that the poster is useful - I have seen it hanging in federal agency offices in Washington, DC.) The publisher, TheCapitol.Net, has more information about the poster, and many useful links, on their web site: congressposter.com

Best bet is to buy Dr. Shick's book and the Congressional Operations Poster.

Solid but dull book on important but mind-numbing subject
The federal budget is both extremely important and very dull. This book is like its subject. Viewed in a positive way, it is a good, solid technical discussion of the budget process, with a focus upon the procedures by which the budget is created and revised by the President, Congress, the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office. This really is important stuff, and Schick really does know his stuff.

But oh my goodness, the book is dull. It is a very hard slog to actually read through all of this stuff.

A very important insight that the book gave me is that the budget process is extraordinarily complex. At every stage of the way, there is conflict, and at every stage of the way there are extremely complex procedures, that have been in place for years, whose primary purpose is to make it very hard for an outsider to understand what is going on or to influence the process. The federal budget is the ultimate insider's game.