Budgeting and The American Bureacracy

A Budget is a management tool that is an expression of planned expenditures and revenues. "Budgets serve many important functions in government. In one sense, budgets are contracts annually agreed on by the executive and legislative branches that allow executive agencies and departments to raise and spend public funds in specified ways for the coming fiscal year, as stated by Stillman in "The American Bureaucracy" He also says that budgets impose a mutual set of …

…the budget, and the degree of centralization of decision making. "Environment in the sense of the results of prior decisions may also influence process." "Changes in process take place in response to individuals, committees, and branches of government jockeying for power; in response to changes in the environment from rich to lean, or vice versa; in response to changes in the power of interest groups; and in response to scandals or excesses of various kinds."