Description
In this timely book Irene Rubin focuses on how government tried and eventually succeeded in balancing the U.S. federal budget in 1998. With characteristic insight and a lively narrative, Rubin describes the successive efforts of Congress and the administration over seventeen years to shape a process that would encourage balance, as well as the reactions of federal agencies to the pressure.
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Following up on a previous work that argued that budget cuts during the Reagan presidency threw government agencies into chaos and consumed valuable resources and knowledge bases, Rubin (Northern Illinois U.) investigates whether the U.S. Federal Government is able to learn from processes of budget cuts and succeed in limiting the process to "trimming the herds" of redundant personnel and programs, rather than "eating the seed corn" of required knowledge and human resources. She argues that there is a valuable network of budgeting experts in government that are frequently switched between agencies and facilitate learning processes. The time period examined is 1981 to 1998. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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