The Coalition’s invasion and occupation left the Iraqis with new budgetary institutions, the mandate to boost investment spending, an effort to build budgeting capacity, and donor requirements to develop budgetary processes consistent with international best practices. The Coalition Provisional Authority imposed rudimentary budgetary templates in the form of the 2003 and 2004 budgets, followed by a set of CPA-issued orders that defined the budgetary process, empowered the Ministry of Finance, and provided an initial framework for the central government’s fiscal relations with provincial and local governments. The Coalition layered these changes in budgetary rules and organizations on Saddam Hussein’s institutional arrangements, which Saddam, in turn, had layered on British and Ottoman budgetary practices. Then the June 2004 transfer of power raised critical questions about the success of the Coalition’s budgetary state-building efforts in Iraq. Would the Iraqis accept, take ownership, and invest in the CPA’s budgetary institutions, or abandon them? Would these rules and procedures be sustainable and serve the Iraqis in their efforts to make budgetary decisions in politically and economically difficult times? What budgetary decisions would they make? What political and economic obstacles confronted the Iraqis in their efforts to budget effectively? The answers to these questions and the practical successes and long-term sustainability of these freshly imposed institutions would be tested in day-to-day budgeting. This chapter provides a detailed examination of how the Iraqis’ buy-in, ownership, and investment in the budgetary process occurred as they faced harsh fiscal challenges, ongoing security threats, and political instability. In this way, Iraq’s ownership and continued use of these new budgetary rules, procedures, and organizations served as important tests of the Coalition’s capacity to transform Iraqi institutions.