Quick note: With the president's budget scheduled to be released next Monday, it's unusual at this point for there not to have been at least a few leaks about what's going to be proposed. This especially is the case because the release was delayed by a week and that provided a few extra days (1) for reporters to work their sources and (2) for the White House to work the reporters.
There are three kinds of leaks when it comes to the president's budget:
- Planned by the White House to get some early attention for something positive
- Planned by the White House to take the sting out of something people aren't going to like
- Planned by an department or agency, usually to build opposition to a decision made by the White House that it doesn't like
- Unplanned because reporters are able to find out something
Number 3 is often what comes first and the kind that I had expected to emerge this year given that most departments and agencies were asked to plan for a five percent cut this year.
Several possible explanations for why there have been no leaks as of yet:
Over at Economix, CG&G alum Bruce Bartlett does a very nice job explaining how House Republicans are trying to change the congressional budget process so that cutting taxes is never a problem no matter what damage that would do to the deficit and national debt.
Here's the money quote:
...the Republican effort is just a smokescreen to incorporate phony-baloney factors into revenue estimates to justify unlimited tax cutting. How soon before the C.B.O. is required to incorporate estimates from the right-wing Heritage Foundation in its calculations?
In case you're not up on the number, Real Clear Politics has it's standard good chart showing that, based on the most recent polls, as of this morning the average approval rating for Congress is 13.2 percent and the average disapproval rating is 82.4 percent. That 69.2 gap is not even the most most recent worst, but you can't make it taste like lemonade no matter how you look at those lemons.
Shocked? As my "Fiscal Fitness" column from today's Roll Call explains, when thinking about the budget you shouldn't be even slightly surprised.
This should eliminate all doubts about how little some members of Congress understand about federal finances.
As Dana Milbank explains in his column from today's The Washington Post, eight House Republican freshman made a grandstanding play this week to get public attention and credit for something that makes no financial sense whatsoever.
First, the eight representatives didn't spend all of the amount they got in 2011 from the House of Representatives to pay for staff and other expenses in their Washington and district offices. They correctly claimed that they saved taxpayers money by doing so.
But second, the representatives then said that they wanted to return the unspent money to the Treasury and designate that the funds be used to reduce the national deb. They clearly felt that they should get big props for doing this.
This is wrong on so many levels that it's hard to know where to start.
For some reason the dollar coin keeps coming up.
A press release in my inbox yesterday announced that Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and John McCain (R-AZ) had introduced the "Currency Optimization, Innovation and National Savings (COINS) Act" that would create yet another dollar coin. This is the Senate version of a bill introduced in the House last year.
