ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on public budgeting at the national level and illustrates how planners and, by implication, planning education can become more sensitive to the realities of influencing perhaps the most complex and least understood decision-making process in our society. Numerous accounts of the budgetary process at the national level conclude quite persuasively that the formulation and enactment of the budget are inherently political. The budget involves mainly the struggle over who gets the benefits and who pays the costs. The chapter argues that a realistic perspective on the budget is one that accepts the budget first and foremost as a political document produced by a political process. It also argues that planners who hope to be influential in public budgeting must not only reorient themselves toward the political realities of budgeting, but they must be more cognizant of what roles they can play in the budget process.
