In this timely book Irene Rubin focuses on how government tried and eventually succeeded in balancing the U.S. federal budget in 1998. With characteristic insight and a lively narrative, Rubin describes the successive efforts of Congress and the administration over seventeen years to shape a process that would encourage balance, as well as the reactions of federal agencies to the pressure.

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1. 1981–1998: Balancing the Budget: What Have We Learned?
2. What Happened and What was Learned?

Part One. Eating the Seed Corn?

3. Information Agencies: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of the Census
4. Budget Offices
5. General Accounting Office

Part Two. Trimming the Herds?

6. Department of Agriculture
7. Department of Commerce
8. Department of Housing and Urban Development
9. Office of Personnel Management
10. Eating the Seed Corn and Trimming the Herds

Irene S. Rubin is professor emeritus of political science in the division of public administration at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of a number of other books on public budgeting, including Balancing the Federal Budget: Trimming the Herds or Eating the Seed Corn?, Class, Tax and Power: Municipal Budgeting in the United States, and Shrinking the Federal Government. She edited the journal Public Budgeting and Finance for two years and Public Administration Review for three, and was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington in 1996.