Posts Tagged ‘Budget’

The 10-Year Number

April 1st, 2011 by John Feehery

It is easy to be fairly nonchalant about the current budget battle that has consumed the Congress.

Pundits (myself included) have pointed out that the tens of billions of dollars being discussed is chump change, especially if you consider the trillions of dollars that we owe to the Chinese.

And that may be true.

But that doesn’t mean that these cuts being considered by both the House and Senate are not significant. Because they are. And it doesn’t mean that they won’t be painful. Because for many folks, they will be.

In fact, should the House and the Senate cut $36 billion from the rest of this year’s budget, it will be the largest one year spending cut in our nation’s history. By far.

That is historically significant. Kind of like when Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a few years ago by a dozen strokes (or whatever the final number was). It is a big deal.

And if you consider that this $36 billion dollar number applies for only slightly more than a half year of the budget, that spending cut is astounding.  Read more...

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Economy, Government, Politics, Theory, spending | 1 Comment »

Shared Sacrifice

February 9th, 2011 by John Feehery

Now comes the not-so-fun part.

It is awfully easy to talk about cutting spending. It is awfully easy to talk about shrinking government. It is awfully hard to actually do it.

Over the next several months, Congress is going to take on three big challenges that have implications for the future fiscal health of the country.

First, they have to decide how to fund the government this year. Second, they have to figure out if and when they are going to allow the government to go deeper in debt. Third, they are going to produce a budget for the next year.

Last year, the Democrats basically punted on two out of the three decisions. They didn’t pass the spending bills for this year, so the government has been functioning under a continuing resolution. They also didn’t bother to pass a budget, because they didn’t want to make any tough decisions that may have angered the voters.

They did extend the debt limit, though, because if they didn’t, the troops wouldn’t have been paid and Social Security checks wouldn’t have gone out.

The new Republican/Tea Party class, full of vim and vinegar, isn’t going to punt this time around. They are going to confront the budget and all of its implications.  Read more...

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | No Comments »

We Don’t Need No Stinking Budget

June 22nd, 2010 by John Feehery

The President’s top budget guy announced today that he’s leaving.

That should come as no surprise.  After all, Congressional Democrats announced that they weren’t going to do a budget this year anyway.

Who needs a budget?

Our country is doing fine financially.

Sure, we’ve got historically high debt to deal with.  Sure, we have tax policy that is about to get a lot more interesting at the end of the year, when a bunch of tax provisions expire.  Sure, we have Social Security starting to go broke quicker than anybody anticipated.  Sure, we have a huge problem with chronic unemployment in the private sector and bursting employment in the public sector.  Sure, almost every state seems like it is ready to go belly-up financially.

Sure, we have all of those problems, problems that are all budget-related.  But that doesn’t mean we should do a budget.

We don’t need no stinking budget.

Budgets require tough choices.  Budgets require (at least notionally) that the numbers all add up.  Budgets require leadership.

We aren’t going to get much leadership from the guys running the country these days.  Read more...

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics | 2 Comments »

The Budget

May 14th, 2010 by John Feehery

In 1921, the Congress first started thinking about doing a budget.  It passed the Budget and Accounting Act legislation that first directed the President to submit a budget.  It also created the General Accounting Office (which a couple of years ago changed its name to the General Accountability Office), an agency tasked with making certain that federal dollars were spent wisely.

When in the 1970’s, Richard Nixon decided he had the power to impound funds that he didn’t want to spend (his version of the line-item veto), Congress reacted by passing the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, legislation that created the Congressional Budget Office and created the modern budget process, if you can call it a process.

Under this law that passed more than three decades ago, the Congress is supposed to pass a budget resolution, to outline how it is going to spend money and raise revenue for the next half decade or so.  The budget resolution is not a law because it is not signed by the President, but the purpose of it is law-like.  The budget is not just a set of suggestions.  Sure it can be waived in emergencies, but they have to be big ones (like war, pestilence or natural disasters, that kind of thing).  Read more...

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial Crisis, Politics, Theory, election, spending | 1 Comment »