Nowhere is the budget process totally satisfactory. Something about it unsettles both practitioners and analysts. For some, it is the untidiness of the process; for others it is the perception that outcomes do not accurately reflect the desires of the community that the budget process serves. They may perceive budget spending as being too high or too low, or misdirected and inefficient or ineffective. Some may fear the budget process gives unfair advantage to certain skilled players; others may be frustated by the suspicion of unfair advantage gained through a preemptively open and accessible process. In any case, the quest for a good budget process continues, notwithstanding that budget reform has been aggressively pursued since the late 1800's in the United States.
Certain factors complicate this search. First, budgeting is not a science; what students learn about it does not seem to be sequentially collectable and usable as is research in most sciences. For example, the search for a balanced budget has roots which go back to the founding of the republic. Aaron Wildavsky, (1988: ch. 2) suggests that a balanced budget norm was born out of the deliberations of the founding fathers and governed much of subsequent American budgetary practice, notwithstanding that the federal government budget was rarely balanced and states often achieved balance by separating operating from investment accounts. The cyclical nature of this budget debate can be seen in the movements for a balanced budget in the 1980's and 1990's. Whether science or art, progress toward a good budget process clearly is not linear.
Budgeting in modern democratic states is simply not very old. It is still evolving. Aaron Wildavsky (1975: p. 272) suggested that the appearance of a formal budgeting power may date from the reforms of William Pitt the Younger. As Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1783 to 1801, Pitt was faced with a heavy debt load as a result of the American Revolution and continuing struggles with France. Pitt consolidated a maze of customs and excise duties into one general fund from which all the government's creditors would be paid. He reduced fraud in revenue collection by introducing new auditing measures and instituted double-entry bookkeeping procedures to track both debits and credits in one system. Pitt established a sinking fund schedule for debt repayment and altered the basic schedule of taxes and customs to reduce the allure of smuggling. These reforms focused on clarity and comprehensiveness, auditing for propriety, scheduled repayment of debt, and diminution of incentives to avoid taxes and cheat the system.
Until the Revolution, the American colonies generally followed English