Posted on 03/14/2020 11:55:19 AM PDT by re_tail20
President Trump's 2021 fiscal year budget proposal has created yet another firestorm of controversy.
The proposal calls for a decrease in non-defense discretionary spending of 2 percent annually over the next decade and an increase in defense spending of 1.3 percent per year. This will set off another battle in Congress between Democrats, who support increased non-defense spending, and Republicans, who, generally speaking, want more defense spending.
The likely outcome of this battle in Congress will be a so-called "compromise" similar to this year's budget resolution that boosted non-defense and defense spending above what the president proposed.
What is unique in the 2021 budget proposal is that Trump is the first president to call for a rules-based fiscal policy. This is not just a proposal to restore budget process rules, such as discretionary spending caps and PAYGO — rules that Congress suspended in recent years. Trump proposed new spending rules that are similar to the fiscal rules used in other countries, including Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany. The purpose of these rules is to balance the budget in the near term and reduce debt to sustainable levels in the long run. With the new fiscal rules in place, those countries were able to respond to the financial crisis without a U.S.-like debt blowout.
The president also proposed a wide range of reforms in entitlement programs, as well as discretionary spending programs required to achieve these goals.
Critics argue that Trump's budget proposal is not realistic because it assumes higher rates of economic growth than projected in other long-term forecasts. Even The Wall Street Journal referred to many of the president's proposed fiscal reforms as aspirational goals that will never see the light of day in Congress.
The Trump administration should be given credit for recognizing that the budget process is broken...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I remember seeing Trump suggest something like this 5 to 10 years before running for office.
I’m not a fan of arbitrary cuts. I’m more a fan of zero based budgeting and putting money where it’s needed and removing it from where it’s not.
But I actually think the government uses zero based budgeting, and what happens over time is that agencies get used to it, figure out ways to game it, and ways to make everything seem absolutely necessary.
And then they spend all of their allocated budget whether it’s needed or not, so they can say, see I needed that much last year.
This approach might be necessary to get Congress to go along.
They spend like drunken sailors towards the end of the fiscal period to make sure they get the same amount next time around
It’s insanity.
Veto it.
“I’m not a fan of arbitrary cuts. I’m more a fan of zero based budgeting and putting money where it’s needed and removing it from where it’s not.”
Several times I worked for companies when the CEO imposed mandatory staffing and budget cuts in the 10% range. The seemingly arbitrary slam of the budget hammer actually worked wonders in every instance. Managers reduced staffing by firing the least productive and the constant whiners. Projects were prioritized. Marginal projects, consuming disproportionate resources (people and money) were scrapped and the resources were focused on projects generating a higher return. A year later, in every instance, the company was growing faster and more profitably than before the cuts.
Corporate America went through waves of downsizing in the 1990’s and 2000’s. During the same period government grew staffing and budgets at rates far beyond inflation + population growth. The bureaucracy is staffed with mediocre performers and many extremely expensive programs are failing. The best thing Congress and the president could do is put a strong business executive with restructuring expertise in each cabinet secretary job with a mandate to cut 10-20% immediately out of budgets and headcount. Prioritize programs and chop off the bottom 20%. Defense should not be spared. When there are more admirals in the navy than ships, there is fat in the Defense Department to be cut.
As Citizens Against Government Waste explains:
"Baseline budgeting" is one of those Washington terms that sounds very dry and boring. In reality, baseline budgeting is one of the most sinister ways that politicians claim to cut spending when they are actually increasing spending. The Congressional Budget Office defines the baseline as a benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed changes in federal revenue or spending, with the assumption that current budgetary policies or current services are continued without change. The baseline includes automatic adjustments for inflation and anticipated increases in program participation. Baseline, or current services, budgeting, therefore builds automatic, future spending increases into Congress's budgetary forecasts.
Baseline budgeting tilts the budget process in favor of increased spending and taxes. For example, if an agency's budget is projected to grow by $100 million, but only grows by $75 million, according to baseline budgeting, that agency sustained a $25 million cut. That is analogous to a person who expects to gain 100 pounds only gaining 75 pounds, and taking credit for losing 25 pounds. The federal government is the only place this absurd logic is employed.
Politicians often like to have it both ways. Baseline budgeting gives politicians an opportunity to deceive taxpayers by allowing them to claim that they are holding the line on spending while providing more [on] services.
Baseline budgeting seems like a technicality and should not be such a hotbed of contention, but every round of budget negotiations involves baseline budgeting with both sides of the aisle complaining that the other side is using the process to mask spending increases. Baseline budgeting is an issue that truly separates the deficit hawks from the budget chickens.
Eliminating the inflated budget baseline will force Congress to justify and account for increased spending instead of hiding behind automatic increases. Through commonsense accounting, taxpayers would learn that spending in Washington is not under control.
Sounds a lot like the Rand Paul “Penny-plan.”
And the Democrats will say that Trump is trying to cut the CDC.
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