Founding Principles Chapter 11: Lawmaking from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.

With the federal government’s new fiscal year due to begin October 1, now is an especially relevant time to examine the issue of congressional spending, wrote Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government Andrew Rudalevige.

In a recent contribution to the Monkey Cage, a political science blog published by The Washington Post, he explained how budgetary constraints factor into the complex lawmaking process. With the annual federal budget approaching $4 trillion, Rudalevige described Congress’s control over that budget as “a big weapon.”

Over the summer The Monkey Cage has been regularly publishing an episode per week of Founding Principles, a series of short videos presented by Rudalevige explaining how American government works. In this episode—the eleventh of fifteen—he examines the process by which a bill becomes a fully funded piece of legislation.