Revenue in United States

Revenue Definition

(L. Fr. and Eng.) That which returns, or is returned; a rent. Income; annual profit received from lands or other property. Cowell.

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(L. Fr. and Eng.) That which returns, or is returned; a rent. Income; annual profit received from lands or other property. Cowell.

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This definition of Revenue is based on The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary. This entry needs to be proofread.

Revenue in 1899 (United States)

The following information about Revenue is from the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States by the Best American and European Writers.

REVENUE, Public. Finance is declared by Bentham to be an append and inseparable accompaniment of political economy.

Economists are, however, divided in their opinions regarding the closeness and the legitimacy of this connection. Joseph Garnier remarks, that certain writers of general treatises on political economy have not even touched the subject: Malthus, Skarbek, Senior, and James Mill. Others have only dealt with it in a highly summary manner: Sismondi, Rossi, Storch, Cherbuliez, Courcelle-Seneuil and Stuart Mill, while treating the subject very briefly, have yet pointed out and discussed the fundamental questions of finance. Adam Smith, continues M. Garnier, devoted to this subject a fourth of his Wealth of Nations.

J. B. Say has given a like proportion of his Treatise and of his Course in political economy to the causes and effects of the public consumption of wealth. He did not, however, examine, as Smith had done, the different kinds of taxes. Ricardo has entitled his chief work, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation; but that which relates to finance, proper, occupies no more than a fourth of his work. McCulloch has not treated of financial questions in his political economy, but has discussed them in a separate treatise, giving to them a very full consideration. Rau has, likewise, treated separately that which M. Garnier calls this important branch of political economy.

-The causes which have thus led to the exclusion of finance from formal treatises on political economy, or to its very slight and partial recognition therein, may be stated as follows: First, According to the most frequent classification of the subject, the revenue of the state falls into that one of the old-fashioned departments of political economy, which is known as consumption.

The tendency of the writers of the present and of the last generation has been to omit all consideration of the consumption of wealth, whether as to its objects or as to its effects. Secondly, The revenue of the state falls outside the sphere of contract, which would be a sufficient reason for omitting to take note of it, in the case of the school of writers who make political economy to be purely the science of exchanges.

As Dr. Sturtevant remarks, The wages of government are not determined by economic laws; it receives whatever it demands. In some cases it takes the position of a partner, and accepts for its compensation a certain percentage of the profits; but that share is not determined by an agreement between the partners, but by the will of this one partner.

Thirdly, and chiefly, considerations purely political always enter in a great degree, and often in a controlling degree, into the decision of questions relating to the collection of public revenue. The statesman, as financier, may legitimately ask, not which is the best tax, or the most economical mode of assessment, but which is the most politic. He not only may, he must, consult the temper and habits of his people. He must consider the times and the circumstances, [619] quite as heedfully as he does the normal operation of economic laws. Even the special race-quality imparted by descent must be respected in the collection of public revenue.

A land tax, wrote Sir James Steuart, in the last century, excites the indignation of a Frenchman; an excise that of an Englishman.

Thomas Jefferson observed a corresponding difference in the susceptibilities of the northern and the southern portions of this country, in his day.

In most of the middle and southern states, he says, some land tax is now paid into the state treasury; and, for this purpose, the lands have been classed and valued, and the tax is assessed according to that valuation. In these, an excise is most odious. In the eastern states land taxes are odious; excises, less unpopular.

-M. de Parieu, in his monumental work on Taxation, thus expresses a striking characteristic difference between the Teutonic and the Latin nations in enduring taxes on property and income:

While countries inhabited by the pure Germanic race, or by its principal branches, Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain and North America, support almost universally taxes of this kind, the financial history of the Neo-Latin peoples has made us acquainted with but a small number of isolated applications, temporary or abortive, of such a rule of contribution. Even in Switzerland, a country of mixed race, the field of general taxes upon property and income appears, with the exception of Geneva, to be confined within the frontiers which circumscribe the German race and language. This difference of moral aptitude in relation to the taxes under discussion, which appears in comparison of the Germanic and the Latin races, whether from history or from contemporary statistics, long since attracted the attention of certain Italian publicists. Machiavelli, Botero and Braggia have mentioned German customs in this regard as exceptional. * * That which characterizes the methods of applying general taxes to property and income, is the necessity of a certain degree of loyalty,74 patience, and even of spontaneity,75 among the tax payers.

Is it not, continues M. de Parieu, easy to understand that, following the analogy of individuals, some nations may present, relatively to others, the character of greater sincerity, of a greater disposition spontaneously to burden themselves, and of a greater patience when in contemplation of a right object? Is it inconsistent with our observation of manners and morals to acknowledge that certain populations possess, with a temperament more cold, a stronger infusion of that natural sense of justice, so necessary in th
e application of an income tax equally among the contributors summoned to declare their fortunes, and among the assessors charged with supervising and correcting these declarations? I could not, he concludes, assert that there is among the Germanic peoples more of authority or of liberty than among the Neo-Latin peoples. What seems certain is, that authority and liberty are there distributed and understood in a different manner. The Germanic peoples appear to accept more easily than do the Neo-Latins, authority coming close to the individual, at the hearth of the family, in the town or near at hand.

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-It will readily appear that differences in race aptitudes for taxation, such as those indicated by M. de Parieu, may not only control the forms of assessment or contribution, as between one community and another, but may have power to appreciably affect the proportion of the aggregate income of a community which the treasury can command, whether for ordinary public purposes or in the great exigencies of state. Of two nations of equal wealth, one may, through the stronger sense of justice native in its people, through an excess of loyalty and spontaneity in the support of the government, possess a fiscal force twice or thrice that of the other.

-It is not, however, alone differences of a moral nature which affect the relative fiscal force of communities. Differences in the prevailing occupations of the people, in the rapidity of circulation, and in the distribution of wealth, irrespective of its aggregate amount, may have important effects upon the power of the treasury to secure contributions to public uses. In a commercial or manufacturing nation, where capitals are concentrated, and where nearly the whole body of the annual product becomes the subject of exchange, perhaps is even exchanged several successive times between the hands of the producer and those of the consumer, the government can command a far higher proportion of the aggregate income of the people than can be done in a purely agricultural state.

-But while considerations like the foregoing may properly enter to influence the views of the financier, in matters which can hardly be termed matters of detail, the essential subjection of the fiscal interests of the treasury to the economic interests of the community,76 can never safely be disregarded. Mr. R. H. Patterson, in his Science of Finance, justly says, paraphrasing in his final sentence Burke’s remark about justice as the great standing policy of nations, that the statesman may, for reasons such as have been intimated, deal with the collection and disbursement of revenue on methods somewhat different from those which the strict application of economical principles would require; but it must always be as a conscious deviation from a right rule. He must never go very [620] far from principles, or remain long away. Else, his policy will prove no policy at all.

Mr. Patterson adds, as justly as piquantly, there are many things in the world which have the knack of being as broad as they are long; and this is peculiarly the case with state finance.

-Taxes and public revenue are commonly used as interconvertible terms, and in popular speech, or for the purposes of approximate statement, this is well enough. Yet for scientific purposes, or in any careful survey of the fiscal history of a country, or in a comparative statement of the fiscal resources of two or more nations, the public revenue may include something more than, perhaps something very far in excess of, the aggregate of all sums received into the treasury as the result of official assessment and of compulsory collection. Among these may be named the sums received by gift or voluntary contribution of citizens, the value, known or estimated, of all prerogatives or privileges of requisition or of purveyance, respecting services or supplies, together with a fair rental of all domains, buildings or other property occupied or used for public purposes.

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-The revenue of France, for instance, during the present year, when properly stated, will include, in addition to the actual receipts into the treasury, the market value of the services rendered by some hundreds of thousands of citizens of the republic, as soldiers under the conscription act, over and above that which the state actually pays as wages to these involuntary servants. This last item is of enormous consequence in all countries having a compulsory military system. Indeed, this, which by some has been called the blood tax, is by far the greatest of all the taxes of modern times. Were it necessary for France, Germany or Russia to go into the market for labor, and pay wages sufficient to induce men, to the number of its present soldiery, to enter its service voluntarily, the expenses of the government would be enormously increased, probably to the result of early fiscal bankruptcy. It is fairly matter of question whether any one of the countries named could, by the utmost exertion of the power of taxation, short of producing universal revolt, raise money enough to hire the services of its existing army. Yet the market value of these services clearly belongs to the revenue of the state, whether those services are obtained by payments out of the treasury, or through an exertion of legal authority in the form of conscription; while it is certain that the cost of those services to the people, obtained as they are by abruptly and violently withdrawing from industry and trade that number of workers, many of them of the higher grades of intelligence, and occupying positions of responsibility, is vastly greater than would be involved in obtaining an equal number of equally good soldiers through solicitation and voluntary enlistment. In like manner, if the government of France exercises rights of requisition or purveyance through officials, high or low, as to supplies, whether for peace or war, the amount saved to the treasury thereby, through avoiding purchase in an open market, is properly to be included in an account of the public revenue. In a word, the revenue of any state, for any given year, is constituted of each and every valuable thing which is, in that year, applied to governmental purposes.

-A classification of the several principal sources of public revenue has long been a desideratum. No such scheme could be free from objection, and many a scheme may, in some one respect, possess an advantage over that scheme which is, as a whole, the best. The following classification will be observed in this article: Sources of Public Revenue. I. Voluntary contributions. II. Public property, lucrative prerogatives and state enterprise. 1, rent charges in favor of the state, as the proprietor of all lands; 2, escheat; 3, fines and forfeitures for criminality and delinquency; 4, tributes from colonies, dependencies and conquered nations, including war fines, requisitions and indemnities; 5, sale of offices, honors and titles; 6, domains (L’état capitaliste); 7, state enterprise (L’état entrepreneur). III. Quasi taxes. 1, monopolies; 2, lotteries; 3, purveyance of supplies, and requisition of services; 4, fees; 5, seigniorage on coin; 6, paper money. IV. Taxation, in its various forms. Taxes may be assessed, 1, on the basis of realized wealth, commonly spoken of as capital; 2, on the basis of annual income or revenue; 3, on the basis of faculty, or native and acquired power of production; 4, on the basis of expenditure, or the individual consumption of wealth. Exemption from taxation may be claimed, 1, for noble and privileged classes; 2, for clerical persons and religious orders; 3, for charitable and educational institutions; 4, for the poorer classes of the community, either through the omission from assessment of a certain minimum income, or through an ascending scale of taxation upon higher incomes (progressivity in taxation). Taxes may be collected, 1, in services, 2, in products; 3, in money.
Taxes are commonly, in discussion, divided as, 1, direct; 2, indirect. This distinction, however, is of only very general use, it being impossible to distribute the taxes actually levied in any state, under these two heads, without great confusion and much manifest error. The French writers further divide direct taxes into, 1, taxes de répartition, of which the produce is certain and known in advance; 2, taxes de quotité, of which the produce can not be known in advance, and varies with external conditions.

-The following classification of taxes, made by M. De Parieu, according to the objects they reach, or at least upon which they are assessed, is believed to be the most convenient and useful: 1. Les impóts sur les personnes, ou capitations-Taxes upon persons, or poll taxes; 2. Les impóts sur la richesse, ou sur la possession des capitaux et revenues-Taxes upon wealth, or upon the possession of capital or income; 3. Les impóts sur les jouissances-Taxes upon use or occupation [corresponding very closely to the English assessed taxes on carriages, horses, windows, lodgings, etc.]; 4. Les impóts sur les consommations-Taxes upon consumption; 5. Les impóts sur les actes [621] -Taxes upon transactions [sales, etc.] Of these five classes, M. de Parieu remarks, that the first three approximately conform to the general definition of direct taxes, the last two being indirect. Of the first group, taxes upon wealth, and of the second group, taxes upon consumption, are at once most characteristic and the most important. These constitute the two poles of the general system of taxation.

-Having offered the foregoing classification of the sources of public revenue, we will proceed to speak briefly of each.

-I. Voluntary Contributions. It is difficult for the man of the present age to conceive of the state as supported by voluntary contributions; yet not only were these once, in theory, almost the sole resource of the ruler, except through personal services; but they, in fact, survive to this day, in a few isolated communities, in the form of the self-assessment of the citizen. To go no farther back than the feudal days, in England, while the chief military support of the kingdom was afforded by the muster of the vassals, it was the fiction of the law, that, so far as aids and subsidies were concerned, the tax payer made a voluntary offering to relieve the wants of the prince; and that the promise of a tax bound only the individual who made it. It was the practice of bringing personal property and income under contribution, which gave rise to the idea that taxation and representation must go together, and caused the formal grant of money. At the beginning of the system of poor relief, in the early years of Elizabeth, collections were taken in churches, and each person was left to be the judge of what for him constituted a reasonable contribution.

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-The papal revenues, also, may perhaps be brought under this head. The pope was by far the greatest capitalist of the middle ages. The British parliament at one time declared that the contributions made by their people to the pope were five times as great as those made to the sovereign.

-Adam Smith cites Hamburgh, Basle, Zurich, Unterwald and Holland, among the communities where the self-valuation of the citizen was still, in his day, accepted. Riesbeck, in his Travels in Germany, says of the first named city, some taxes are voluntary, and the burghers have the right to put what they think their quota into the purse, which is shut, and the deputies dare not open it in their presence.

Even within a few years there have remained free cities in Germany and cantons in Switzerland, where the rule of voluntary contribution still subsisted in all its purity.

-II. Public Property, Lucrative Prerogatives and State Enterprise. 1. Rent charges in favor of the state, as the proprietor of all lands. Throughout considerable portions of Asia and in Turkey in Europe, the rent of land, paid to the state, furnishes by far the greater part of the public revenues. That the soil originally belonged to the community or nation, private property in land being, indeed, a comparatively modern institution, and finding its justification only in political expediency, is admitted by nearly all publicists of authority. By vesting the title to the soil in individuals, the state sacrifices that large revenue resulting from the progressive enhancement of the value of land, which would otherwise have accrued to the treasury. It is equally beyond question that all the advantages of the private ownership of land might have been obtained, while yet the state imposed fiscal charges and military or political obligations which would have secured for the community a considerable share of that progressive enhancement of values.

-The proposition to reassert the right and interest of the state in all the land which has become the subject of individual ownership, was made by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the later days of his life, and the programme for this substitution of rent for taxation, with the arguments in its favor, will be found in his later speeches and essays. Mr. Mill pointed to the commutation of the feudal obligations of the English landowners, for the altogether insufficient consideration of a tax of four shillings in the pound upon the valuation of 1692, and also to the sacrifice of the interests of the crown in the lands of a portion of British India, by which the unearned increment was allowed to pass into the hands of individual proprietors, instead of being reserved to the public treasury. Mr. Mill’s practical proposition was to appraise all estates according to their present market value, and thereafter to assess them to the full amount of all enhanced value which could not be shown to be due to applications of labor and capital. To this he looked as a fiscal resource which should relieve the community from the greater part if not all of the burden of taxation. More recently Mr. Henry George has proposed, in his Progress and Poverty, to assert the right of the state, not only to all future increase of value in the land, but to its present value, asserting that all grants of exclusive property in land are and have always been void, and that the proprietors of land are not even entitled to reserve the value of their improvements.

-2. Escheat, the principle, viz., that the state is the proprietor of all estates, real or personal, to which individual titles or claims are lost. It will at once appear that the scope of this principle, from the point of view of revenue, will widen or contract in correspondence with the laws which regulate the descent and bequest of property, and prescribe the times and modes of proving claims, in which respect some countries are far more liberal than others. Under the feudal system, escheat constituted a most important source of revenue. In England the right of devising real property did not exist, after the conquest, until the time of Henry VIII.; and no small proportion of the lands of the kingdom passed to the crown under the operation of this principle. Modern society, however, whether out of sympathy with the instincts of property right,77 or from a politic desire to promote the spirit of accumulation, has given continually wider and wider extension to the [622] power of bequest and to the principle of inheritance, until escheat, as a source of revenue, has ceased to be of much importance.

-In 1795 Jeremy Bentham published a notable tract entitled Escheat vs. Taxation, in which that daring reformer proposed an extension of the existing law of escheat, a law coeval with the very first elements of the constitution, with a corresponding limitation of the power of bequest. The intended effect was the appropriating to the use of the public all vacant successions, property of every denomination included, on the failure of near relatives, will or no will, subject only to the power of bequest, as hereinafter limited.

By
near relatives Bentham intends such relatives as stand within the degrees termed prohibited, with reference to marriage.

Furthermore, in the case of such relatives within the pale as are not only childless, but without prospect of children, he proposes that, instead of taking their share in ready money, they should take only the interest of it, in the shape of an annuity for life. As to the latitude to be left to the power of bequest, he says, I should propose that it be continued in respect to the half of whatsoever property would be at present subject to that power.

Bentham argues that the scheme he proposes for dispensing with taxation by limiting the power of bequest and restricting succession to near relatives, would work no wrong. Hardship, in the distribution of property, is in proportion to disappointment: expectation thwarted. If distant relatives were taught by the general provisions of the law that they could not succeed, no expectations would be excited, and such persons would suffer no wrong, being simply put into the case of others who have no rich distant relatives. Bentham’s proposal received no special attention at the time; and, except in the way of taxes upon successions and bequests,78 little progress has since been made in the direction indicated; but it is probable that among the earliest of the measures of a militant and triumphant democracy would be the limitation of the power of bequest and the restriction of succession, each in the interest of the state, as the proprietor of all estates to which individual titles or claims may be lost.

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-3. Fines and forfeitures for criminality and delinquency. It might be supposed, that, since government exists largely for the protection of property and life, and for the punishment of offenses against society, the cost of maintaining government and administering justice might largely be thrown upon delinquents and criminals. In feudal times, fines and forfeitures constituted a very important source of revenue to the crown. This was the result of two causes. First, the relation of the tenant to the lord was a personal one, and failures in personal loyalty, although not rising to what in the present day would be deemed crimes against society, were punished by heavy fines or total forfeiture. Second, the crimes of those days were largely political, and great offenders were likely to be men of wealth and position who would be fat subjects for amercement.79 The wars of the roses, for example, were so fruitful of forfeitures that a large proportion of the land of the realm became the property of the crown. In the present age, political crimes have become comparatively infrequent, and the criminal class are mainly drawn from the poor. Hence, this branch of the public revenue has shrunk to comparative insignificance. Fines and forfeitures still pay a part of the expenses of strictly judicial establishments, especially in the lower or police courts, but they add little to the general revenues of the state. Even the labor of condemned criminals is seldom found to be sufficiently remunerative to pay the cost of their maintenance under ward.

-4. Tributes from colonies, dependencies and conquered nations, including war fines, requisitions and indemnities.

In all ages, says Sir Erskine May, taxes and tribute have been characteristic incidents of a dependency. The subject powers of Asiatic monarchies, in ancient and modern times, were despoiled by the rapacity of satraps and pashas, and the greed of the central government. The Greek colonies, which resembled those of England more than any other dependencies of antiquity, were forced to send contributions to the treasury of the parent state. Carthage exacted tribute from her subject towns and territories.80 The Roman provinces ‘paid tribute to Cæsar.’ In modern times Spain received tribute from her European dependencies, and a revenue from the gold and silver mines of her American colonies. It was also the policy of France, Holland and Portugal to derive a tribute from their settlements.

In our own day, Holland has drawn a net revenue of £3,000,000 from the island of Java, the natives being required to cultivate defined portions of land in specified crops. That compulsory cultivation used to include many crops; subsequently, it was for a long time confined to sugar and coffee; since 1880, as I understand it, coffee has remained the sole crop so cultivated.

-I have quoted a passage from Sir E. May, relative to the forced contributions of colonies and dependencies: let me complete the sentence.

But England, satisfied with its colonial trade, by which her subjects at home were enriched, imposed upon them alone all the burdens of the state.

This sentence expresses the essential characteristic of the English system of [623] dealing with colonies. It must not be supposed, however, that the system was necessarily lighter in the burdens it imposed than would have been a system of taxation. The constraints which the navigation acts of England81 -designed to give to British shippers and British merchants the profits of the colonial trade-placed upon the energies of those young and growing communities, were frequently more galling and depressing than heavy taxation would have been. Another incident of the British colonial system in the past was patronage, affording, as that system did, a wide field for the employment of the friends, connections and political partisans of the home government. Until the reform of the civil service this was of a real and great fiscal value, being worth more to the administration than an addition of millions to the revenue would have been. Even now it is asserted82 that the Indian army is maintained and employed quite as much for the imperial interests of Great Britain as for the preservation of the peace and unity of India; that the salaries of British officials are there vastly greater than necessary or desirable; and that the construction of immense systems of public improvements, railways, canals and irrigating works, at the expense of India, has been controlled largely by the interests of British capitalists or by the demands of British cotton spinners.

-The Danish Sound dues, the most important transit duties in the world, until 1857, constituted a striking example of this class of contributions. In the year named, these duties were finally abolished, Denmark receiving 30,476,325 rix dollars in final commutation, of which sum Great Britain paid a full third. The United States subsequently joined in this purchase of the rights of Denmark over the navigation of the Baltic, having, at a much earlier period of its national history, made successive contributions to the revenues of the piratical Barbary states, for the privilege of sailing the Mediterranean.

-The principle of making the enemy, as far as possible, pay the cost of war while in progress, and exacting an indemnity subsequently for such expenses as could not be met by requisitions and billeting, is of too wide historical usage to require mention here. The application of that principle is only limited by the power of belligerents. After the treaty of 1842, the Chinese government was compelled to pay England sums approaching thirty millions of dollars on account of opium seized, and for the expenses of the expedition. It was reserved for Germany, after the war with France in 1870-71, to exact the most gigantic war indemnity ever paid in the history of mankind.

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-5. Still another source of revenue is found in the sale of offices, honors and titles. The accounts of such sales under the Roman empire, in the days of its decline; by the popes throughout the middle ages; by the kings of France, especially from Louis XII. to the time of the revolution; and in England, under the Stuarts; form a very interesting chapter in the history of finance;83 but space will not allow us to enter upon it here. At times these sales were mere acts of extortion by the sovereign; at others they amounted to little else than
the sales of annuities under the name of salaries attached to the offices conferred; at times these offices carried privileges and opportunities by which the purchaser might reimburse himself for his outlay, whether through a monopoly, or through the right to collect or disburse the public revenues, which was a very common incident of these sales.

-6. Domains (L’état capitaliste.) Even under the modern European principle of the private ownership of lands, the state is, in all countries, the possessor of larger or smaller domains, from which a revenue, in money or produce, may be derived, or which, while yielding no revenue in form, serve public uses which would otherwise require expenditures out of the treasury. M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the editor of the Economiste Français, author of an excellent work on Finance, expresses the distinction between the property of the state which is left to the enjoyment of individuals, yielding no revenue, and that which is productive: the former he calls domains public, and the latter domaine privé de l’état. The former, he says, is almost everywhere vastly greater than the latter, and tends continually to increase; and he makes this striking statement regarding the extent of the property thus belonging to the state, given up to public uses, without yielding a revenue to the treasury:

In a country like France, it appears to us difficult to appraise at less than 300 millions of francs per annum, that which is so employed by the central government, the departments and the communes.

-The domains of the state from which money or produce is derived, make, of course, a much larger figure in the history of finance, though no mere truly, as we said at the beginning, constituting a part of the public revenue.

-In England the royal domains were, at first, very ample. Even in the time of Edward the Confessor it was said that the crown was possessed of 1,422 manors, besides other lands and quit rents. The Norman conquest largely increased the landed wealth of the sovereign. In the reign of Henry V. this was augmented by the appropriation of

Author of this text: Francis A. Walker.

Revenue in the Federal Budget Process

Meaning of Revenue in the congressional and executive budget processes (GAO source): Either of the following:

(1) As used in the congressional budget process, a synonym for governmental receipts. Revenues result from amounts that result from the government’s exercise of its sovereign power to tax or otherwise compel payment or from gifts to the government. Article I, Section 7, of the U.S. Constitution requires that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives.

(2) As used in federal proprietary accounting, an inflow of resources that the government demands, earns, or receives by donation. Revenue comes from two sources: exchange transactions and nonexchange transactions. Exchange revenues arise when a government entity provides goods and services to the public or to another government entity for a price. Another term for exchange revenue is “earned revenue.” Nonexchange revenues arise primarily from exercise of the government’s power to demand payments from the public (e.g., taxes, duties, fines, and penalties) but also include donations. The term “revenue” does not encompass all financing sources of government reporting entities, such as most of the appropriations they receive. Revenues result from (1) services performed by the federal government and (2) goods and other property delivered to purchasers. (See also Collections.)

Resources

See Also

• Federal Appropriations
• Entries about the United States Budget Process in the Encyclopedia (including Revenue)
• Public Debt

Further Reading

• Legislatures and the budget process: the myth of fiscal control

  (J Wehner, 2010)

• Reconcilable Differences?: Congress, the Budget Process, and the Deficit (JB Gilmour, 1990)
• Fiscal institutions and fiscal performance

  (JM Poterba, J von Hagen, 2008)