The Congressional Budget Office: Honest Numbers, Power, and Policymaking (American Governance and Public Policy series)
"Joyce's book is more than an institutional history; it is an analysis of the Congressional Budget Office in the context of two critical issues that have broad applicability. The first is the role of nonpartisan, objective information and analysis in passing legislation, and the second is how an agency manages to develop and maintain a culture to support nonpartisan analysis in a highly partisan environment. Though now an academic, Joyce was an employee of CBO for years, and thus has been able to combine an insider's contacts and knowledge with the critical distance of an academic. The book is well written, touching on many of the key legislative debates over the years. The image of CBO that emerges from this book is the 'little agency that could.'" --Irene Rubin, Northern Illinois University