Budgeting Entitlements

Focusing on the history of the food stamp program, this book examines how the growing integration of welfare and budgeting has affected both political strategies and resulting policies.

Ronald F. King looks at the effects on welfare transfers of the different kinds of budgetary rules adopted by Congress: discretion, entitlement, and expenditure caps. King analyzes tensions in the program between budgetary concerns and entitlement, revealing that budget mechanisms which seek to cap the growth of entitlement spending have perverse but predictable effects. He also explores the broader conflict between procedural and substantive justice, which pits inclusive democratic decision-making against special protections for the needy and vulnerable in society.

In an era when budgetary anxieties coexist with continuing poverty, King's book sheds new light on the increasing fistulization of welfare in America.