The Budget and Policy Decisions
Dente (2013) defines a policy decision as plans and guidelines used in business, economics, and political decision-making. In the political sphere, policy decisions include the decisions made in allocating resources to implement government projects. Therefore, policymakers need a budget for effective expenditure management in policy decision-making. According to the World Bank (2017), prioritization and trade-offs during budget preparation must be considered to ensure that the budget fits government priorities and policies. Choosing the most important variants and looking for ways to support operational efficiency is also important. Therefore, the budget is the most important policy decision elected officials make because it helps establish financial constraints by setting up financial targets and the level of expenditure compatible with the selected targets, formulating expenditure plans, and allocating resources effectively based on fiscal targets and financial policies.
A budget is also important in policy-making because it ensures that resources are available to implement government policies and determine the initiatives and teams that require more resources. For example, the government may allocate more resources to implement healthcare and education policies and fewer resources to construction projects. Policymakers can also use value proposition budgeting to explain and determine every item’s value within the government budget. According to Gibson et al. (2012), government accountability requires a shared framework to interpret basic values that bureaucrats and citizens can develop jointly in the real world. Creativity, an interpretation, begins with understanding the organization’s purpose. For instance, policy-making within government ministries includes creating a specific financial plan for the policies within the ministry to convince the finance department to allocate funds. Therefore, the budget is the backbone of policy formation and implementation based on its role in resource allocation, the justification of the allocation criteria, and prioritization.
References
Dente, B. (2013). Understanding policy decisions. SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02520-9_1
Gibson, P. D., Lacy, D., & Dougherty, M. J. (2012). Improving Performance and Accountability in Local Government with Citizen Participation. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 10(1).
World Bank. (2017). THE BUDGET PREPARATION PROCESS. http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/LearningProgram/PEAM/DorotinskyBackCh4.pdf.
ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE
We’ll write everything from scratch
Question 
The Budget and Policy Decisions
The budget is arguably the most important policy decision elected officials make. Why?