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The goal of this course is to introduce students to the law and practice of government budgeting in the United States. Students will be introduced to the basic structure of the federal budget process, including the President's Budget and Congressional budget procedures.  We will explore the roles of all three branches of federal government in setting budget policy in the United States, covering government shut-downs, debt ceiling crises, continuing resolutions, and ongoing debates over budget reforms and fiscal challenges.  Based on student interest, we may also take up entitlement reform, defense spending, budgeting for infrastructure as well as topics related to state budgeting practices and federal-state relations in budget policy.

Readings will be from Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy (2007) (Howell Jackson, et al., eds.) and additional distributed materials.

Also offered by the Law School as 2566. This course runs on the HLS schedule. Please note, this is a jointly offered course hosted by another Harvard school and, accordingly, students must adhere to the academic and attendance policies of that school.