The book sees the politics of budget as the defining characteristic or culmination of executive-legislative powers and is also valuable for its historical treatment of the budget process. It describes the history of budgetary conflict, and the battle for control of administrative apparatus, from the days of Jefferson and Hamilton to the Nixon White House, through to the present. Other topics include: reorganization and reaction, budgeting and reform, the administrative state and the crisis of constitutional government, and reorganization and reform.