Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE ADMINISTRATION OF A BUDGET SYSTEM The dominating principle of a budget, as outlined in the preceding chapter, is that it is at once a comprehensive report and a complete financial and work program covering all the operations of a government. It is the means through which the authority responsible for the actual conduct of affairs lays before the legislative branch of the government its report of the manner in which it has discharged its duties and, on the basis of this report, its financial and work program for the future. It is, therefore, of the essence of a budget that it shall be formulated by the executive and by the executive alone. If it is the function of the executive to propose expenditures, that function should not be participated in by any other branch of the government. This means that the legislative branch should be debarred from, or, if it possesses the constitutional authority, should refrain from, using the right to initiate proposals for the expenditure of money. No appropriation of money. should be made except upon the direct request of the executive. The reason for this is twofold. In the first place, it is a canon of administration that accountability can be enforced and efficiency secured only when responsibility is definitely located in a single authority. Secondly, the executive alone is in a position to determinein detail the administrative needs of the government and intelligently to formulate an annual work program. It alone is in immediate charge of governmental operations. It is directly familiar with governmental needs. It can be held to a strict accountability for the manner in which it carries out all of its proposals. Members of a legislative body have no such advantages and responsibilities. What information they have is …
