Technically speaking, a government budget is a document that sets out how a government in power in a particular country proposes to collect and spend money. The proposals contained in a government’s budget reflect its policy priorities and fiscal targets. In this way, the budget expresses the objectives and aspirations of a government in power. In a democratic society, these objectives and aspirations should, in theory at least, reflect those of the majority of the electorate. Governments really have no money of their own. In the budget, in outlining its plans for spending money, a government is explaining how it intends spending money that belongs to the public. In a democratic society, citizens give the government a mandate via their votes. Politicians are obliged to translate that mandate into policies and plans that are, in part, reflected in the budget.

No government in the world has infinite public resources at its disposal. At the same time, there is a boundless array of needs to be met through public expenditure. The budget thus always incorporates trade-offs between different spending priorities. It includes value judgements about which services, and whose interests, are most important. A government budget is therefore not simply a technical document: it is also an important political instrument. 

 “Public budgets are the instruments by which governments raise and allocate the financial resources of the state. They are also the means by which governments provide for basic necessities that relate to human rights. Public budgets are more than a collection of numbers, they are a declaration of a community’s or nations priorities”.
J. Shultz (2002) Promises to Keep: Using public budgets as a tool to advance economic, social and cultural rights. Conference report. Mexico City: Ford Foundation/Fundar.

Text above adapted from Idasa publication: Monitoring government budgets to advance child rights, compiled by Judith Streak (2003)