budget process

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.



House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) apparently thinks the root cause of all our budget problems is changing the budget process. My column from today's Roll Call explains why, even though changes are needed, what he's proposing and when he's proposing it is an attempt to do something without actually doing anything.

Change the Budget Process? Give Us All a Break

You would think that the deficit and national debt that many in Congress keep telling us are way too big would prompt a serious discussion about what should be done that has at least some prospect of actually succeeding.

But what instead is being proposed as salvation from our devil-sent combination of fiscal afflictions and budget transgressions? Apparently, all we have to do to be delivered is to change the Congressional budget process.

This would be funny if it weren't so sad in so many ways: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has proposed a series of changes in the congressional budget process.

Don't get me wrong; the existing budget process not only is not perfect but is close to a disaster.

But after a full year when it has completely and utterly failed to do anything substantive on the budget itself and every end-run around the existing process restrictions hasn't worked, Ryan is now saying in effect that it's the process' fault and everything would be okay if it were changed...even though the standard process wasn't really used.

To a certain extent this is one of the traditional congressional budget dodges. As any experienced federal budget watcher will tell you, Congress almost always proposes to do something about the budget process when it can't or won't do something about the budget itself. This is the fiscal equivalent of a member of the House or Senate saying "Stop me before I kill again."

One of the ways we used to judge the success of the congressional budget process was by the number of appropriations that were enacted when the fiscal year began.

Now we determine success by whether Congress has avoided a government shutdown.

Does anyone else find this as totally ludicrous as I do?