The limit of budgetary control becomes a legal question only where the attempt is made by a written constitution or a statute to distinguish between powers of a policy determining character which are vested in a budget making authority and powers of a policy executing character which are vested in an authority possessed of executive or administrative functions only. The questions to which a discussion of the reciprocal relations of such independent authorities may give rise are in the case of the national congress and of a state legislature, constitutional and therefore legal in character. Nevertheless they are not of a justiciable nature, since neither the congress nor the state legislature is subject from this point of view to the control of the courts (see United States vs. Gratiot, 4 How. 81, where it is said: “A specific appropriation could not be diverted from its object”). The national congress or a state legislature may, therefore, in the absence of specific constitutional limitations grant to the administrative authorities, to which is entrusted the expenditure of public moneys, very great discretion in such expenditure, both from the viewpoint of the period of time during which the expenditure may without further authorization continue to be made and from that of its purpose or of the object for which it may be made. Or on the other hand, the budget making authority may prescribe the period of availability of each appropriation, or the specific purpose or object of expenditure in such detail as to make the function of administration a merely ministerial one.