1. Estimates vary because of definitional differences and imprecise data. The number cited here is from Axelrod, Donald, “Off-Budget Budgets: Financing Public Enterprises,” in Axelrod, A Budget Quartet: Critical Policy and Management Issues (New York, 1989), 4Google Scholar . Methodological issues related to determining the exact number are discussed in Walsh, Annmarie Hauck, The Public's Business: The Politics and Practices of Government Corporations (Cambridge, Mass., 1980Google Scholar [originally published 1978]), 5-6, 353-72, 373 n. 1 ; and Mitchell, Jerry, “The Policy Activities of Public Authorities,” Policy Studies Journal 18 (Summer 1990): 928–42Google Scholar.

2. For a relatively complete list, see U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Government Operations, Profiles of Existing Government Corporations, Study prepared by the General Accounting Office, 100th Cong., 2d sess., 1988, Committee PrintGoogle Scholar . An excellent article on the issues related to the contemporary use of the corporate device in the federal bureaucracy is Froomkin, A. Michael, “Reinventing the Government Corporation,” University of Illinois Law Review 543 (1995): 543–634Google Scholar.

3. “Federal Audits Find Rising Risks in Loan Programs,” New York Times, 23 February 1996, 1Google Scholar.

4. Schwarz, Jordan A., The New Dealers: Power Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (New York, 1994), xiGoogle Scholar.

5. Howard, Christopher, “The Hidden Side of the American Welfare State,” Political Science Quarterly 108 (1993): 403Google Scholar.

6. Axelrod, , A Budget Quartet, 3Google Scholar.

7. See, for example , Mansfield, Harvey C. Sr., “Special Government Corporations: A Middle Way,” in Orlans, Harold, ed., Nonprofit Organizations: A Government Management Tool (New York, 1980), 69–70Google Scholar ; or Moe, Ronald C., “Managing the Public's Business: Federal Government Corporations,” report for Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 104th Cong., 1st sess. (1995), 1–2Google Scholar.

8. For forceful statements of this critique, see Axelrod, Donald, Shadow Government: The Hidden World of Public Authorities—and How They Control Over $1 Trillion of Your Money (New York, 1992)Google Scholar ; Walsh, , The Public's BusinessGoogle Scholar ; and Seidman, Harold, “Government-sponsored Enterprise in the United States,”Google Scholar in Smith, Bruce L. R., ed., The New Political Economy: The Public Use of the Private Sector (New York, 1975)Google Scholar.

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