Even if Russia's elastic state budgeting practices do manage to conceal the bill, the money must still be found somewhere.

ECONOMIST: Russia��s economy

Theoretically, budgeting would mean that adopting a new nanny-state regulation that may offer a minuscule improvement in safety would be directly weighed against the much greater and more cheaply achieved benefits of (just for example, there are loads of them) painting white lines down the middle of unmarked public country roads.

FORBES: How About a Budget for Regulations?

In the early 1970s, then-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter used zero-based budgeting as a way to focus on justifying every dollar that was being spent in the state government.

FORBES: We can do better than 0-58