For more than three decades — since enactment of the Budget Act of 1974 by a Democrat-controlled Congress — the federal government has operated within a rigged system notable for its lack of transparency. The earlier approach — annual passage of the appropriation bills, amended and voted up or down, with the numbers there for all to see — had its flaws and generated much red ink. But its replacement, the current budget process, only worsened the money flow and came to rely on monstrous omnibus spending bills. The results are adverse to all seeking to limit government’s growth. For example:
- The budget process assumes every spending project will be on the books forever, even if the law says the spending will expire — but it assumes tax relief will be temporary.
- It treats well-deserved tax cuts as a kind of spending, so that letting Americans keep
- more of their earnings is considered the same as more spending on pork projects.
- It fails to recognize the positive impact that lowering tax rates has on economic growth.
- In its deceptive and irresponsible accounting, an increase in a program’s funding is actually a decrease if it is less than the rate of inflation.
- Once a budget is produced under that system, the budget law itself limits the time Congress can consider it before voting.
Moreover, the budget’s review process is a sham. Of the $3 trillion spent annually, only one third is reviewed each year during the budget and appropriations process. The remaining $2 trillion automatically goes to interest on the national debt or entitlements. And because the budget process assumes an automatic increase in spending, the debate on the remaining one-third is only over how much more spending to approve.
Finally, while government requires corporations to budget for future pension and health care costs, our government ignores those requirements. No family or private sector business could keep its books the way Washington keeps ours.
via Matthew Yglesias
No comments:
Post a Comment