The government of any state has the responsibility of providing for the health, safety, welfare, education, and protection of its citizens. To accomplish these goals, states have created elaborate and complex administrative organizations staffed by thousands of bureaucrats. The increased demands of the citizens of each state upon their state governments for better education, highways, and increased protection are reflected both in the expansion of the agencies created to provide these services and, in turn, in requests for funds in ever increasing amounts to expand the scope of the services. The ability of a state to fund each agency's request is definitely limited; no state is sufficiently wealthy to grant every request. Rather, a state must make some judgment in the distribution of its limited resources (money) among competing and demanding sources. This requires planning and is called budgeting, which one writer has defined as "one of the major processes by which the use of public resources is planned and controlled."

To provide a better understanding of civil government as taught in the public senior high schools of Texas, this study investigates the scope of subject matter now included in the course, the method of presentation of the students, and suggests possible improvement toward solution.