Assignment:
Overview
As with all political matters, public budgeting reflects the foundational ideas, values and goals of the political leaders and other actors that shape the public budgeting process and influence outcomes. Public budgeting debates often arise from the most fundamental ideas about the role and limits of government in the lives of citizens and from disagreements about the most moral, acceptable, wise and productive financial practices available to government. These debates raise important questions such as, should we, as a nation, work to maximize freedom and liberty by reducing government intrusion, or should we be willing to sacrifice some amount of liberty for the security of government provision?
Should we seek to reduce government involvement in the lives of citizens or encourage greater government regulation of the lives activities of the American people? And, should we accept perpetual deficit spending as a sound financial practice, or is perpetual deficit spending a path to financial self-destruction for current and future generations? Chapters 1 through 3 of the Lee text will provide you with an introduction to the influence of the idea of Constitutionally Limited Government on many of these issues.
All public budget policies and ideas ultimately arise from presumptive and foundational ideas related to the proper role and limits of government. After carefully reading this module/week's reading assignments, you will conduct your own research and write a concise but thorough research paper examining the Constitutional limits on the federal government and the rationale employed by proponents of a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution. For this assignment you should 1) fully explain what is meant by "constitutionally limited government," 2) provide an analysis of the general limits on government that should influence government spending/budgeting, 3) explain the relationship between constitutionally limited government and the rationale employed by proponents of a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution and 4) evaluate these issues in light of a Judeo-Christian worldview.
This is a graduate-level research assignment designed to test your ability to carefully research, effectively organize, and concisely communicate a nuanced understanding of the concepts and issues raised in the assignment. While the minimum page limit is short (as is often the case in public policy/public administration briefings), students are expected to craft efficient, highly substantive papers.
You are expected to comport with the highest writing, research, and ethical standards. Additionally, to do well on this assignment, you must conduct high-quality research and offer rich, well-supported analysis; mere opinion or conjecture will not suffice.
There must be no careless or simple grammatical errors such as misspellings, incomplete sentences, comma splices, instances of faulty noun/verb agreement, etc. Such errors will result in significantpoint deductions.
Plagiarism in any form is strictly prohibited and may result in failure of the assignment, failure of the course, and/or removal from the program. It is your responsibility to ensure that you fully understand what constitutes the various forms of plagiarism and that you avoid all forms of plagiarism.
The text of this research paper must be 5 to 7 pages (not including title page, reference page, and any appendices). This paper must be in current APAformatwith 1-inch margins and 12-pt Times New Roman font. You must alsoinclude a title page and reference page. You must include citations to a sufficient number of appropriate professional, scholarly, or other appropriate sources to fully support your assertions and conclusions (which will likely require more than the minimum number of citations); each paper must contain citations to the course texts book, assigned readings, and a minimum of 5 additional sources not including the course textbooks, assigned readings, and the Bible.