This informative book examines the process of the appropriations committees and their evolution from the Ways and Means Committee in 1789, to the current Appropriations Committee. The first Appropriations Committee was not created until financial problems during Civil War caused the House to remove the jurisdiction over appropriations bills from the Ways and Means to place that responsibility in a newly created Appropriations Committee. Two years later, Senate followed suit. Throughout the next 100 years, an eventual centralising of the appropriations authority into an effective single committee took place.