Political deals (lies) 101 lesson 1. A balanced package of revenue enhancements and spending cuts. real world meaning - immediate tax increase. Why? Each Congress exists for only two years. While many of the faces withing each Congress remain the same and SEEM eternal, they are, in fact, Different Congresses. Each Congress can ONLY pass new legislation within that two year window. If they dont, the bill dies before the new Congress comes in. The new Congress might take it up again, or not. They have NO obligation to the old dead no longer extant Congress. No past Congress can bind a present or future Congress. And no present Congress can bind a future Congress. They talk about ten year budgets only because it gives them political cove to hide what they are really doing NOW - TODAY. Anything beyond the present two year Congress is a goal, a weak promise, a velleity, but is NOT real. However, because decades ago Congress adopted the swindle of base line budgeting, anything the present Congress adds to the baseline budget on a permanent basis will not only persist in perpetuity, spending allocations for favored bureaucracies get increases by a certain percentage each and every year, forever. This is how agencies get larger and more bureaucrats get jobs every darn year. When Congress wants to add a tax increase it gets added to the baseline immediately. Even if it is called a temporary tax, it gets renewed. Very few taxes are ever ended. There are temporary taxes in place that were put in place to fund World War I still being collected. But when a spending decrease is put in place it is a lie almost EVERY time. Why? Because of the phony ten year budgeting cycle. The budgets are scored for the ten year period as if they really happen as stated. But they never do. Ever. Why? Because each Congress is only two year long (see above) and no current Congress can bind a future Congress. True, much of what happens goes forward by inertia, but just because a present Congress says that eight years (four Congresses) from now, we will CUT spending by $xyz billion in no way means it will happen. All it means is that it will be SCORED for political purposes as if it will. And that is how the packages are balanced. Tax increases IMMEDIATELY against the promise of spending cuts many years from now. And the cuts NEVER happen. Also, we need to spend a minute on the illusion of the spending cut. It is a lie. Because baseline budgeting builds in an increase in spending each and every year (even when the economy is in recession and the nations tax collections shrink). They way Congress cuts or slashes or recklessly cuts the budget to the bone (never happens) is that they trim ever so slightly the increase the baseline budget automatically builds in. That baseline budget increase is treated as if it were not an increase. So, trimming it even by .01% is a vicious cut in spending. The overall spending has increased over last year. But someones budget was not increased as much as she expected and some lobbyist wont deliver quite as much as he promised his cronies, so it is a vicious and mindless cut! Thus endeth lesson one. Any questions?
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 19:24:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015