Budget Dreams, Budget Nightmares
The GOP alternative budget should be seen more as a manifesto than a blueprint for spending.
If you are reading this, I have two things to say to you. First, congratulations on being among the tiny portion of Americans that care enough to learn what politicians are doing with our national budget. Second, get a life and do something constructive with your time.
The federal budget is a subject guaranteed to elicit the snooze reflex in anyone not afflicted with a wonkishness gene that, when activated, causes the possessor to obsess over details ordinary folk would find torture to read. This is especially true since when you add all those details together, you get a document that usually has as much to do with reality as a Boomer LSD flashback.
The truth is, the federal budget is not really a “budget” in the same way you think of your household budget. Most of us have a good idea how much we will have available every month to spend on food and other necessities as well as pay the bills and, if we’re very lucky and frugal, put some aside for retirement. What’s left over is usually spent on a family outing to the movie theater or Goofy Golf.
The federal budget is a little different. Firstly, it is guaranteed there will be nothing left over. No Goofy Golf for our congressmen. Secondly, we really have no idea of the exact amount that will be coming in to pay the bills. For example, back in 2006, the feds were just a little off in their calculations on revenue. About $130 billion more was collected than the projections indicated. While this may be something to celebrate, it highlights the guessing game played on both sides of the ledger by Congress when trying to figure a budget.
Theodore H. White referred to the budget not as a blueprint but as an untidily wrapped package that contained the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations, and the competing, clashing interests of a large and diverse nation. It is the most political document published by Congress. It can hardly be anything else given the fact that the federal budget is crafted, debated, and passed in a most dishonest fashion with accounting tricks galore and hocus-pocus performed with Social Security in order to hide the actual deficits we are running.
There is simply no way for the ordinary mind to grasp what President Obama or the congressional Republicans want to spend to fund next year’s government functions. The difference between the $3.5 trillion that Obama and the Democrats want and the $3.2 trillion the GOP says we can live with is a pittance, a drop in the bucket when we are looking at trillion dollar deficits every year as far as the eye can see under the Democrats’ spending regime. While it is true the Republican numbers are slightly better when taken as a whole over the next decade (they would spend $3.4 trillion less), their deficits are in excess of $500 billion for the foreseeable future and depend on growth in the economy that shows more optimism than a fan of the Chicago Cubs believing his sorry excuse for a team will make it to the World Series this year.
This might be a good time to mention that funding for the Treasury’s Financial Stabilization Act to deal with the bad assets of banks is not included in either budget. Add $500-$1 trillion to those brain-numbing numbers above for a truer picture of what we’re in for.
The budget currently being crafted in the House and Senate by Democrats, when laid alongside the Republican alternative unveiled yesterday, offers a sharp difference in the size of Mr. White’s untidily wrapped package as well as what both parties think the American people want from government. The Democrats are loading up their budget with goodies for education, the environment, transportation, and their crown jewel — a huge health care reform package that will cost more than the defense budget.
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Rick Moran is PJM Chicago editor; his own blog is Right Wing Nut House.
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7 Comments
1. ashok:This was a great read – even though I’m sure all of us would like to see even more cutting of gov’t spending, esp. in a document that is more about taking a stance than actually creating law, it’s good to hear someone see this as a good starting point.
I should say my own opinion is that given how awfully slanted the MSM is, and the fact that President Obama and the Democrats can still use Bush-bashing effectively, the GOP is in an awful situation. It could be exactly right on any number of issues, but like the tea parties, one wonders if the message is getting through to anyone.
Apr 3, 2009 - 12:07 am 2. Susan P:To say that the Republican/conservative philosophy has no hope is to surrender to popular media myth and prematurely acknowledge the success of a Left/progressive agenda that hasn’t even begun to be implemented as envisioned. When that happens, the GOP needs to be there with empathy and a sensible alternative, reminding responsible working Americans and taxpayers of what it used to be like and can be again (because Republicans have come back from the wilderness again and again.) There is no time like the present for laying out the strategy, and Paul Ryan is as bright and articulate as spokesperson for the conservatives as Barack Obama is a cheerleader for Socialism and the Left.
Apr 3, 2009 - 5:53 am 3. wancow:I’m optimistic that America will, once again, see the light and sweep the Left and its failures back to Europe and into the dustbin of history.
I AM doing something constructive with my time!
Geeze…
If the GOP is going to play at being the Junior Fascist Party, then I’ll continue to vote for the Real Fascist Party… The GOP is filled with liars that pretend to be conservatives and RINOs that walk across the isle on their kneepads to give a Lewinski to any democrat that whips it out (like, oh, John McCain!).
At least the “Progressives” are recognizable as the fascists they are, and don’t appologize for it (even though they try to change the language).
I will Continue to Punish the GOP for lying and the American People for being idiots, so long as they continue to drive this nation into the ground.
When the people actually wake up, and use either political force or real bullets, I’ll get back on board. Till then, I’ll keep voting for the punisher, the guy Quin Hillyer calls “Il Duce!”
Apr 3, 2009 - 10:49 am 4. Steve Bourg:What do you mean, “Congrats for caring about…….., but get a life and do something constructive!” Get a life yourself. It was hard to read your article after being insulted, so I didn’t! BTFW (by the f’king way) I might have a helluva lot better life than you, AND I’m informed as well. I have a 6 hdcp for my golf game, go to my golf course 5x/week after work, I run marathons every two years, I have a job I like that’s lucrative as well, 2 kids still at home, and………….well you get the picture. How’s your golf game and running game?
As far as one of your points I read probably too quickly……..actually it’s easy to describe how much $.3T is. It’s about 1/4th of the income taxes paid to the fed govt for a year. So there, use that. It’s not difficult — although no one ever mentions that. A trillion is almost a year’s worth of U.S. taxes! Not complicated! And since only about 50M workers pay the taxes, that’s $20k apiece. And I pay several times that amount to the fed, in JUST ordinary income taxes. So it’s not hard to explain it in a way every federal income-taxpayer can understand. And in a few more years I’ll be going “John Galt” and Obama or his leftist successor can kiss my big taxes goodbye. We’ll be in massive meltdown by then anyway……..and I’ll be in a low-tax state, drawing out just enough from my IRA to stay under the “high-tax federal radar”.
Apr 3, 2009 - 7:03 pm 5. Gene Lalor:A Melange: President TDB, Sexting, Oprah
These stories currently on the wires are unrelated, unless you consider that they all reflect some form of human frailty and/or idiocy.
Gimme an S, gimme a T, gimme an I, gimme an M, gimme a U, gimme an L, gimme another U, gimme an S! S-T-I-M-U-L-U-S! YAAA!
Hold onto your shoes! You’re all, or most of you, are about to be stimulated! Yee-hah!
President TDB, for Trillion Dollar Baby, made sure in all his generosity dispensing billions to banks, insurance companies, auto makers, credit card issuers, and other well-deserving recipients of his boundless largesse, that the wee people, not the leprechauns, weren’t forgotten.
Whether they voted for him or not, most working taxpayers will be receiving–good thing you’re sitting down for this news!–a grand total of about $10-$15 a week! There are some qualifiers, of course, but legally married couples could get up to $20! (http://www.walletpop.com/taxes/article/_a/bbdp/here-comes-your-stimulus-bonus/406933?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Ftaxes%2Farticle%2F_a%2Fbbdp%2Fhere-comes-your-stimulus-bonus%2F406933)
Before you dash out to Burger King and blow that windfall, just be advised that everything you eat, drink, consume in any way, such as everything in BK or Mickey D’s, supermarkets, department stores, gas stations, as well as the heating oil and electricity you use, the cigs you smoke and the booze you drink, will soon reflect the price of President TDB’s war on carbon emissions.
Translation: You will be paying more for those everythings, in some cases a lot more, but TDB will still be able to say he didn’t raise your taxes. Those dastardly oil companies, utility companies, and everyone else are just charging more, for some inexplicable reason, probably for a greedy, insatiable, capitalistic reason.
In any event, it’s all former president Bush’s fault. If you haven’t already noticed, that’s the mantra for the TDB regime and will be for the next four years. Even Bush’s tax cuts will be the cause of all working people paying more in taxes.
How’s that? Pay attention, now!
When the much-reviled President GWB’s tax cuts are allowed to expire in 2010, American workers will be paying even more money to the government, through the nose or through some other body aperture. But, again, TDB won’t be raising your taxes. He and his Democratic congressional cohorts will just not be renewing Bush’s tax cuts. See why Bush is responsible, now? If he had pushed for no sunset on his cuts or a twenty year window you would still have them next year and beyond to 2020.
Suggestion: Hold off on Burger King and instead use coupons and skip the temptation to superzize. Bank that ten or twenty dollar weekly gift from Obama. You’ll need it to pay your future taxes. Better still, since your bank may go belly-up, stuff it under a mattress. At least then it will afford you some, temporary, cushioning.
Any Obama voters ready to repent? If not, just remember he’s only been in office for 70 days. Imagine the havoc he will wreak over the rest of his term!
Oh, yeah. If you’re among the 38% of Americans who don’t pay any federal income taxes anyway or if you don’t bother to work at all, no worries, you’re immune from the hikes in payroll taxes. You will be coughing up more for everything else but take solace in the fact they’re not direct taxes. Indirect taxes are easier on the wallet, right?
Sexting and Parenting, Or How Dumb Parents Don’t Teach Their Children Well: On different but no less disturbing news, some teenies are fighting back over their constitutional and God-given right to be junior amateur porn stars by disseminating child pornography without being charged with disseminating child pornography.
The topic of “sexting” by teenies, the super fun extra-curricular and co-curricular activity of posting pictures of themselves partially clad or in their birthday suits by cell phone has been the subject of recent articles here, notably, “Teen Sexting, Texting, and Suicide,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=924. There are always little quirks that distinguish the stories, however.
For example, a federal judge in a Pennsylvania case, “temporarily blocked a prosecutor from filing child pornography…
Apr 3, 2009 - 9:20 pm 6. sbourg55:(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)
Good post, and I like the Trillion Dollar Baby meme for Obama. Hey, the Obama “tax cut” is worse than you described. It’s $400 = $8/week for worker, double for hus/wife, but it phases out for most people smart enough to read pajamasmedia (with higher incomes)……..thus, we get zero.
Apr 4, 2009 - 5:42 am 7. DennisR:Another thing, Bush’s 1st summer, ‘01 passing terrific tax cuts, actually was only passed because the Democrats in the Senate required it to expire after 10 years. So, that wasn’t Bush’s fault. And the Dems in the Senate didn’t want the Alternative Min Tax (AMT) to be repealed. BTW, Clinton vetoed the repeal in ‘99. His lack of signature cost me $20,000 last year. Thanks BILL !! We are certainly entering a new level of tax hell with Obama/Pelosi…….at a tipping point in our economic history when our private sector can least afford it. It seems everything Obama wants to do and is doing, is damaging to our private sector vitality. We’re in BIG trouble.
Our response: http://pushbackuntil.com
If we do not do something to rescue our country, no one else will. Certainly not an irresponsible, uncontrolled, and undisciplined Congress. Because they are the ones pushing us closer and closer to bankruptcy. So will we stand around and watch? Or will we do something about it? I, for one, choose to do something about it.
Push Back Until!
Apr 11, 2009 - 12:33 pm