Budgets and spending
It irks me when I hear a member of congress complaining that their favorite program is being forced to take a budget cut, but when you crunch the numbers the program got an 8% increase in funding last year, and is scheduled to get a 5% increase this year. If you listen closely you'll hear them whining about such and such program is getting a 3% decrease in funding in the new budget. Now, I'm not sure where these folks went to school, but where I come from, that is not a 3% loss, it's a 5% gain in funding. There is nothing in our constitution that says a program must receive more money year over year. In fact, there is a lot of waste and unnecessary funding being handed out each year, which leads to my next problem:
Less Is Best. As our system is currently set up (or at least currently run) members of congress gain prestige and support from their constituents by packing as much pork as they can onto a spending bill with pet projects for back home. Federal funding bills should be created as lean as possible to provide as much left over money as possible to be sent back to each state. I'm a state's rights kind of guy and I'd rather see my elected officials stripping as much junk off of a proposed bill so that they could provide more money for my state to be used as we see fit.
Basically, I feel that my opinion on government spending can be summed up like this: Who knows how to spend my money better than me? Fund what you have to at the federal level, take anything left over and give it to the states to fund what they have to, and if there is anything left, save it for the next year. I don't really want the money back. All around our country people are encouraged to save money for the future, so why not the government? Saving money now will help us in times of need, such as our current war on terrorism and the Social Security fiasco... But those are topics for another time.
Less Is Best. As our system is currently set up (or at least currently run) members of congress gain prestige and support from their constituents by packing as much pork as they can onto a spending bill with pet projects for back home. Federal funding bills should be created as lean as possible to provide as much left over money as possible to be sent back to each state. I'm a state's rights kind of guy and I'd rather see my elected officials stripping as much junk off of a proposed bill so that they could provide more money for my state to be used as we see fit.
Basically, I feel that my opinion on government spending can be summed up like this: Who knows how to spend my money better than me? Fund what you have to at the federal level, take anything left over and give it to the states to fund what they have to, and if there is anything left, save it for the next year. I don't really want the money back. All around our country people are encouraged to save money for the future, so why not the government? Saving money now will help us in times of need, such as our current war on terrorism and the Social Security fiasco... But those are topics for another time.
posted by Mark at 4:14 PM
5 Comments:
The funding paradox you're talking about is called "baseline spending."
Baseline spending is the assumption that everything we did last year will cost more this year. (And I mean "we" in a flexible way. Businesses, families, governments, whatever. Everything costs more than it did last year.)
Every year the GAO looks at a whole lot of complex shizzle and they figure that this year's baseline is, say, 6%. In real terms that means that anything less than a 6% increase in a program's budget equates to that program doing less than it did last year.
Amazingly, this means that a 4% boost is simultaneously an increase and a decrease, depending on who's behind the microphone.
I'm mostly behind the increase microphone, although I understand it can be considered a decrease when it's below baseline.
Part of that problem is how the GAO goes about setting the baseline. If the annual cost of living raises by 4%, but the GAO says it's takes 6% to break even, it doesn't always make sense.
Still, more dollars given this year is still more than you received last year, a department or project may need to find more innovative ways to spend that buck, just like you and I have to sometimes.
Ah, there you've hit on another issue altogether: government efficiency.
Efficiency is the Holy Grail of American politics. Everybody's heard of it, some people doubt it exists, no one knows how to find it, and if you make too big an issue of it, we'll all assume there's something wrong with you.
I'm viewing this as a separate issue, and not using this as a counter-argument (primarily because it would be the worst counter-argument in history), but making government more efficient is just about a lost cause.
Our microwave oven and remote control culture has an exceedingly short attention span, especially when the subject is politics. Elected officials have only a few years to try to best the world's most resilient bureaucracy. Efficiency is certainly possible, but the only way it will happen is if a large portion of the citizenry make it a top issue. And I frankly don't see that happening.
Whoa this blog is way to deep for me. How ya doing digitalcat! Long time no see. Uhhh...Marq...this is requiring way too much concentration. Going to ur other blog, good topics just too deep for me, especially the abortion topic.....
It's ok if the blog is too deep for ya Karma. You can comment when you want, or never visit again. I know you'll still check out the other blog :)
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