4 ms·

The money will probably be directed to another department.

• marcoperaza 8y ago
  That's one of the options in the parent post. My point is that the budgeting process is in fact mostly zero-sum. It's only not totally zero-sum because of the use of debt (which considered by itself is zero-sum over the long run) and the possible effect of particular spending on the broader economy (which makes it not perfectly zero-sum as a repeated process)