Bookmark for later.
When you get back here don’t miss this part:
“To facilitate this proposition, Washington created its own form of fantasy accounting: “baseline budgeting,” under which growth-in-government is factored in to federal bookkeeping as a permanent feature of life. As Arthur Herman of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out this week, under present rules, if the government were to announce a spending freeze – that’s to say, no increases, no cuts, everything just stays exactly the same – the Congressional Budget Office would score it as a $9 trillion savings. In real-world terms, there are no “savings,” and there’s certainly no $9 trillion. In fact, there isn’t one thin dime. But nevertheless that’s how it would be measured at the CBO.”
Baseline budgeting allows every program to automatically increase 3%, 5%, 10% EVERY YEAR regardless of population increase, inflation, “clients” served (or lack thereof of these items), etc. Just bigger - every year. Sigh.
Under Dubya we had everything - Executive, Senate, Representatives and even a favorable SCOTUS and they failed to knock out baseline budgeting, earmarks, useless programs including Ed, DOE, NPR, NEA, etc. Double sigh.