The author describes a political process vital to congressional power–the power of the purse–and does so with liveliness, realism and compelling authority. He conceives of the House and Senate appropriations committees as political systems engaging in external and internal activities. The external relationships include those between the committee and the House or Senate, between committee and Executive branch, and between the two appropriations committees themselves. Internal relationships involve the desires and perceptions of committee members, the methods of organization, the manner of making decisions, and the informal processes by which the committees hold themselves together.
The most comprehensive treatment of the subject ever written, the book covers every aspect of appropriations politics in Congress. Professor Fenno relies heavily on six years of extensive interviews which he conducted and on public records of appropriations debates and hearings. His analysis of appropriations decisions in the committees, in the two chambers, and in conference committee is based on the dollars-and-cents performance of 36 consecutive agencies over a 16-year period. The combination of internal data with more than 576 separate appropriations case histories has resulted in a work unusually important to the study and understanding of the American political process.
