Budgeting reading for sexytimes
All the talk recently of passing health reform via reconciliation, and of the corresponding Byrd Rule, has made me want to read more about the arcana of budgeting. This stuff is important, and it’s worthwhile to understand how the gears turn. (I first got turned on to the possibility that Senate procedure is both vital and chronically overlooked when I read Master of the Senate. I strongly encourage everyone to read all of Robert Caro’s books, but at the very least check out MotS and The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.)
What luck, then, that the book I just finished — Competing Solutions: American Health Care Proposals and International Experience — cites an earlier book by the same author entitled The Deficit and the Public Interest: The Search for Responsible Budgeting in the 1980s which seems to cover all of this territory. Neither the Senate procedure, nor in fact the budget battles themselves, is something I know a thing about, so Joseph White’s book seems like just the place to go.
Fortunately it’s also a penny, used on Amazon, plus $4 for standard shipping. I hereby invite anyone who’s interested to read it along with me. I should be receiving my copy in a few days.