ABSTRACT
Government requires resources, labor, materials, supplies, equipment, information, to perform its assigned roles. These resources are not free, and the money to obtain them must be provided in the form of taxes and fees by the people, who are collectively the presumptive beneficiaries of government services. The government budget provides the bridge between intentions and realizations, between policy and implementation. The bedrock principle of public financial governance is therefore that the executive branch of government may take no moneys from the people, nor make any expenditure from those moneys, except by explicit approval of the people through the legislature as their representative. Thus, when properly understood, the government budget should be the financial mirror of society's economic and social choices. The basic choices involved in budgeting have a time dimension, and affect the intergenerational distribution of costs and benefits as well.
