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The Public Policy
Washington’s Budget Onion
Peel away its layers — and be prepared to cry a river.
(Page 2 of 2)
These are the four layers of the budget onion… so far. Already there’s talk of more, specifically: efforts to pursue broad reforms to entitlements or taxes.
Washington’s budget process is overlaid with policy, process, and political peril. Its overlapping layers further complicate and extend an already difficult job — to the extent it has become almost impossible and unending.
Washington is enmeshed in the budget for the foreseeable future. The more it seeks solutions, the more it has to peel away… yet the more it winds up layering on. And like peeling an onion, the further you go, the more it makes you want to cry.
About the Author
J.T. Young served in the Department of Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a Congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (24) | Leave a comment
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VonMisesJr| 12.19.11 @ 8:07AM
Excellent synopsis from a OMB insider. But the ousider should not miss the forest for the trees.
The last few years have been an obfuscation to undo the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The first and foremost priority of the Congress is to create a budget. It has been over 900 days, meaning we are operating in budget anarchy.
The "Super Committee" is another obfuscation of our Constitution. We have 535 elected Legislators that are responsible to their constituents and voted for every two years in the House and six in the Senate. But I cannot vote for McConnell, Coburn or Ryan; and neither can 434 of the 435 Congressional Districts or 49 of the fifty states. This is anarchy of the elective process.
All great if you are a dictatorship, but totally unacceptable for a Representative Republic with a Constitution of Enumerated Powers!
markenoff| 12.21.11 @ 2:45AM
The Senate has failed to pass a budget for almost three years. They voted 97-0 to reject Obama's proposed budget.
chuck| 12.19.11 @ 8:40AM
I'm with Ron Paul on the budget, cut $1trillion right away, next year.
Too bad he's a nutcase on foreign policy.
PCC| 12.19.11 @ 8:45AM
I'm reminded of the remark that "Washington is Hollywood for ugly people."
Don't these arseholes, every last one of them, realize that what they say and do is of no interest whatsoever to normal people, accept the damage they can do to our everyday lives?
If the media stopped covering them for a day, or a week, or a month, or even a year, no one but the pundits, the lobbyists, and the solons themselves, would even notice.
PolishKnight| 12.19.11 @ 9:55AM
Brilliant! It's a wonderful quote that I haven't been able to find the source of via google, sigh.
Although that isn't really true. Most politicians are more attractive than the common citizen and voters respond to good looking guys, at least. They just age and get unattractive because incumbents are so hard to get out.
By the same token, Hollywood is full of ugly people who put up ugly actresses such as Rosie ODonnell to connect with DC. I rarely go to a movie nowadays because it's full of boring leftist propaganda and ugly leftists...
Justin| 12.20.11 @ 7:22AM
The quote is attributed to Christopher Hitchens and was "politics is show business for ugly people."
bill| 12.19.11 @ 8:58AM
Embrace the Paul Ryan entitlement reform plan, or Rick Perry's "cut, balance, and grow," or Dr. Ron Paul's reform plan on bureacracy and currency, and that will fix the fiscal crisis we are in right now.
The House GOP must take a bold approach on spending, and they must repudiate the Dems effort to sabotage any measure.
GOP must never surrender to those liberals, who caused the massive fiscal mess we have now.
Here's GOP must do:
1. De-fund Dept. of Education, Energy, Commerce, EPA, HUD,Planned Parenthood
2. Pass the legislation making all 50 states to be a "Right to Work State."
3. Cut $1 trillion from the 2011 federal budget
4. Give those bureaucrats "pink slips."
PolishKnight| 12.19.11 @ 9:50AM
Bill, we already largely have surrendered. You left out:
5. End racist and anti-male affirmative action policies.
That ought to be number 1. Race and gender entitlements are the reason why non-white unwed mothers vote Democrat by >90% (or is that 95%?) and why it's a joke for McCain and Gingrich to think that if they grant amnesty to illegals and they'll get the "Hispanic" vote. It worked great for McCain, didn't it? Gingrich will most likely repeat history.
russel| 12.19.11 @ 10:04AM
A huge number of issues would dissolve if anyone on welfare were restricted from voting . The howls coming from them and their socialist handlers would be heard by our Founders , so deafening . I do so hope LBJ is roasting , the cursed ' Bane ' of our predicament .
PolishKnight| 12.19.11 @ 1:19PM
I heard a story that women were included in the preferential hiring bill of 1964 by Republicans looking to scuttle in the hopes that the Dixiecrats would vote against it. It backfired. At the time, a senator supporting the bill said that if reverse-discrimination happened, he'd eat his hat.
The welfare system includes child-support enforcement legislation also wildly supported by "pro family/anti-abortion" Republicans hoping that women would get fewer abortions if "irresponsible" men were required to pay up. What happened was that unwed motherhood blossemed as they blamed "deadbeat dads" for all their woes (what different does it make for them whether deadbeat dads footed the bill or the taxpayer?) When women are able to gain the benefits of marriage via "child" support, why bother getting married or working? Just vote Democrat!
TrueBlue| 12.19.11 @ 4:42PM
Sadly both sides of the aisle are responsible for this debt problem, not just the liberals. Everyone on the Hill that has been there for more than one term needs to be voted out; be they Republican, Democrat, or Independent.
PolishKnight| 12.19.11 @ 9:45AM
Gentlemen, we're "back in the USSR!" as the old song goes. They're running out of money to keep Moskva going. Back in the good ol' USSR days, it was nice for some people: If you were a "middle class" bureaucrat or party member and ran a Gulag, the pay was great, you got long vacations, a great pension. Sound familiar? For the working class whites (irony) in the USSR, there were long lines for stores with inferior products or out of stock and sometimes, people would just starve to death. The compassionate party members always chose people to die whom wouldn't be missed, by them. FDR would be proud (well, he was, when he met with the monster Stalin in Yalta.)
It all worked great as long as the central treasury of the Soviet Republic was flush with Rubles...
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.19.11 @ 9:55AM
First of all, you have to start with the premise that: They don't want to FIX anything. They like things just the way they are. the WORSE it gets, the better for them.
How long have they been calling for EDUCATION? Every Election Cycle, they're crying the blues about Education. But, what do they propose to do about it?
They want MORE MONEY. More money for their Union Pals. It's not for New Computers or New Schools or Paper and Pencils and Books. They want it for their Buddies.
What about Social Security? Every Election Cycle, there they are, standing before a Masterbatory Press, decrying Republicans for WANTING to Kill everbody's Grandparents, by starving them out, with CUTS to Medicare and Social Security.
What's the TRUTH?
Obamacare takes $500 BILLION away from Medicare. Yeah. That's right. Obama just took out Billion$ more from Medicare, because the Super Committee would not make a decision. (I don't remember the actual number, if you'd like to lend a hand?)
They just finished with a Payroll Tax Cut, of $20 a week. a lot, right? Big Tax Break. HOWEVER. If that $20 a week, from EVERY WORKER is the only way that Soc. Sec. gets financed? Than that's a LOT OF MONEY that Social Security could use. And, now, the Democrats want Social Security to go UNFUNDED, for another year, because they think it will give them a Short term Political Advantage, and, besides, what do they care about Social Security? They'll all be dead by the time it goes Belly Up, and they're all Insider Trading Millionaires, anyway.
cicero| 12.19.11 @ 10:57AM
So shut it down already! If the beaurocracy were shut down for weeks or months, and the press was shut down at the same time, most people would not even know. All entitlement checks (Soc. Sec, etc) would go out automatically. The defense of the country would not be affected. Only the annoying beaurocrats, who, for the most part, don't do anything that any sane taxpayer would voluntarily pay them to do, would be affected.
Our congress if filled with empty suits. This nonsense of not being able to do their fundamental job - passing a budget - is rediculous. To think that they cannot find anything to cut, after increassing the spendding from 2007 by $1.4 trillion per year is an outrage. The easy answer is to go back to the budget of 2007, and freeze it at that point. I do not think we were underspending at that point. Of course, that would require that the exra 410,000 federal workers go; and that the trillions thrown at the states to fund their unfundable pension plans cease; and that tee 10% wage increases for government workers each of the past two years be rolled back; etc. But other than that, we groundlings should be all right.
PolishKnight| 12.19.11 @ 3:05PM
Obama's Kenyan style tactic is to then shut down the Washington Monument (even though its funding is entirely private) and the passport offices claiming that the Evil Republican budget cuts are responsible. Then when people howl for blood that they can't go on their vacations overseas Obama replies: "See? This is what government does. Now give me money for the 400,000 office workers who were working throughout that break that don't do anything for you."
That's their "game."
GLENNY| 12.19.11 @ 12:01PM
Solutions: Freeze federal hiring RIGHT NOW. Cut federal payrolls by 10% RIGHT NOW (both staffing and salaries, including Congress). Don't like your pay cut? Go find work somewhere else, you know, like the private sector!
It's amazing to me that ALL of Congress thinks saving $1.2 trillion over 10 years is a big deal. That's an average of $120 Billion/year when our budget deficit is $1,200 Billion/year.
Sometimes, I just wish the Chinese would STOP buying US Govt debt.
glenny
merlin| 12.19.11 @ 9:53PM
ditto.
Pat| 12.19.11 @ 5:33PM
Since our elected employees all work off commission, we’re quite naïve to assume that annual budgeting would be a straight forward process. Each spending bill, each inflated pork outlay supports several of our elected under-privileged within the halls of Congress and inside the White House - but the unwritten rule in Washington clearly and unequivocally states: “Don’t flaunt your wealth in front of the taxpayers”. And if our elected employees have to struggle to get by on annual salaries only slightly greater than 85% of Americans will earn, it can be assumed the road to wealth isn’t through a weekly paycheck, it needs to be supplemented with modest commissions skimmed off the annual budget line items.
And before some naïve soul suggests we raise their annual salaries so they don’t have to steal from us taxpayers, we must remember Congress has worked long and hard creating a budgeting process which is well-nigh impenetrable to anyone outside our government and those few individuals within the mainstream media who have to know a little of the truth in order to lie more effectively.
Nancy Pelosi, for example, supplemented her modest government salary with $100,000 in additional income by nominating William Hembrecht, her husband’s long time business partner and her son’s boss to be a White House economic advisor tasked with “fairly” allocating Obama’s Stimulus money. That timely nomination took its natural course and some of the funds were “fairly allocated” in Pelosi’s direction. Or, consider Maxine Waters, champion of the downtrodden everywhere, who steered some taxpayer money to the bank where, coincidentally, her husband sits on the board. But this isn’t outrageous thievery on a Bernie Madoff scale, just a little graft here and a little patronage there – modest commissions our elected poor people feel are well deserved given the hard work they put in kissing babies and raising campaign contributions.
This budgeting process, with all its mind boggling complexity, is intended to spare our feelings as taxpayers. Do we really want to know who is raking in the commissions on spending bills or exactly how much within those budget line items are “steered” in unannounced directions? And even if we did know every disgusting detail, what could we do about it? In addition to deciding where the budget money goes, Congress and the White House are also responsible for ferreting out graft and corruption inside our government – what a coincidence.
The Big E| 12.19.11 @ 5:49PM
The purpose of the US budget is money laundering. It's modus operandi is extortion.
The situation will not improve until we accept those facts and prosecute those responsible.
Mike 3/505| 12.19.11 @ 6:37PM
"An impasse on the debt limit threatened government default this summer."
Until we quit stating things like the above, that just aren't so, we cannot have any sort of intelligent discussion on fiscal policy. The only way we could have possibly defaulted is if Obama directed Geitner to NOT pay interest due on the debt. Were were never in any danger of default, whether congress agreed or not.
Regards,
Mike
POST American| 12.19.11 @ 10:33PM
--------------------FINAL WORD------------------------
"The Federal Reserve has pumped so
many BILLIONS into (--NAZI--) Germany
that they dare NOT name the total."
Rep Charles McFadden
1935
---------------Sound familiar?
INTER-national fractional reserve USURY
remains the very source of over a century of
conflict, staged depressions, genocidal
'idea'-ology, global plunder, and
psychopathic EUGENICS mongering.
Join the other 85% of the American public
who are calling for the audit, prosecution and
ABOLITION of the criminally UN-Constitutional
'Federal' Reserve.
general dentist in wasilla | 12.20.11 @ 3:02AM
Truly said that budget of Washington is not remaining as simple as it was supposed to be. The budget should be a very transparent process in any system but it seems that there is a lot of things going behind the scene in the budget of Washington.
nathan| 12.21.11 @ 11:42AM
How many of you are willing to cut defense spending? Raise your hands. Funny I don't see any hands raised. In that case unless you are willing to cut defense spending you are not serious about reducing the federal budget. The discussion ends here. Sorry.
Aviation Week is having ongoing discussions on this subject and you're seeing people talk about well if we cut back on defense spending the first thing we'll lose is A MILLION JOBS! R&D will cut, all sorts of end of the world scenarios.
This of course is the same thing we hear when cities are forced to cut back on spending. The first thing, VERY FIRST THING they talk about is we're going to cut police and fire protection as though that is the only thing in the budget. Scare the taxpayers. Same thing happening here.
Folks we spend more than THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED on defense. Think about that for a moment. Take the combined spending of China, Russia, Europe, and all of that doesn't equal what we spend. You still have a long ways to go to equal what we spend.
Now, we have how many bases overseas? 7-900? How many of those are TRULY necessary to defend the republic? Could we maybe, just maybe cut out half of them and still be secure? How about NATO. The Cold War ended how many years ago? Is it maybe time for Europe to defend itself? Warship International did an interview with the US commander of NATO. He was asked if the countries there were meeting their defense budget goals. Of course they're not. Look at what Great Britain is doing, basically eliminating it's carrier fleet and everything else. If they want to do that fine, but why should that continue to be OUR problem? They have a combined GNP/GDP whatever bigger than our own. Time for them to spend a bit of it.
South Korea is one of the biggest economies in the world. Do we really still need to station troops there? Or in Japan?
Panetta said Al Queda never more than 500-1,000 to begin with, is down to about two major bad guys. Sounds like it's time to declare victory and come home? I mean Abu Sayyef in the Philippines is in a cease fire there. So the war against terror (horribly misnamed right?) if not over is winding down right?
Weapon systems. The litoral combat ship, went from 250 and copy to 625 a copy and won't last 5 minutes close in shore? I think we can probably dispense with it?
And given the less than marvelous results with our last two foreign ventures, Iraq and Afghanistan, we probably won't be doing any more of them any time soon if we really learned anything from them right?
So how much do we need to spend on defense? Probably not as much as we spend now. Nowhere near as much.
And if you again insist on keeping it at the same levels or higher, than you aren't serious about cutting the budget. Sorry.
Allie| 1.27.12 @ 8:52AM
An eye-opening read on current trend of cutting funds for persons with disabilities found at http://www.autismseizureselfin.....rejudicial Attitudes Towards Autistics