How Much is Wasted?

This year the federal government will spend just under four trillion dollars. This is an almost unimaginable sum, but next year, unless something gets cuts, spending will rise by something like another 200 billion dollars. This increase is the result of the automatic spending increases that Congress adopted decades ago when it switched to "baseline" budgeting. Indeed, were Congress to modify the spending for next year so that it would only rise by 100 billion dollars, the Democrats would scream loudly about all the terrible cuts in spending. In Washington, a smaller increase is called a "cut".

Right now, the debates in Washington all center on whether or not the federal government needs to increase revenue through tax increases (the Democrat position) or reduce spending through smaller increases (the Republican position). No one speaks about particular expenditures very much. How much does the Department of Interior spend and are those expenditures worthwhile? No one discusses this since the Democrats in the Senate have blocked this from happening.

My last statement may sound unbelievable. How could the Senate Democrats block discussion about particular spending items? Few would believe this, but it is true. Let me explain: three years ago, the Democrats decided that going into the 2010 election they did not want to adopt a budget since to do so would make clear to the public the enormous spending increases that Obama and the Obamacrats had pushed through. As a result, the Senate just ignored the law that requires the passage of a budget. Instead, all spending was authorized by a continuing resolution also called a CR. The public gets told that a CR is just an authorization to continue spending at the same level as last year; this is "Washington talk" or, more simply, a lie. A CR continues spending in accordance with the baseline budget. This means that a CR for this year would contain spending of about $200 billion more than last year just to cover the automatic increases. No one looks at the particular expenditures; they all just go up in accordance with the baseline budget. This also means that no one in Congress looks at particular expenditures and tries to either eliminate waste or strengthen weak programs.

The terms of the fiscal debate have to be changed so that the people of the USA understand the game that the Democrats are playing. We have now gone three years and the Senate Democrats are still blocking passage of a budget. Everything is proceeding by CR. Bloated and wasteful spending continues unabated, but the arguments on the one side is that the GOP is heartless since it wants to make cuts and on the other side that we are spending too much. Americans deserve to hear some of the details.

Think of it this way: if the GOP talks about the need to cut spending by 5%, no one knows what that means. When the Democrats talk about how the cuts will mean the end of Medicare or starvation for the poor, no one know enough to understand that this is not true. Were the Republicans instead to talk about specific programs to reorganize or cut, they could then explain the specifics of a few choice programs to the average American. Most folks do not want cuts that leave the poor to starve, but those same folks would have no problem with cutting job training programs that principally serve the federal employees working in those programs while achieving no results for those who are supposed to be helped. Who would object to combining twenty failing programs into one smaller, less expensive program that still gave the same benefit to the person needing training?

The political consultants would probably discourage the use of specifics during the campaign. "It goes too far into the weeds," they would say. But they are wrong. Remember Ronald Reagan who used to talk about the waste in government programs. Reagan did not talk in generalities; he spoke of "welfare queens" who had many illegitimate children and then waited for the government checks. This was something people understood; it was not a generalize cut in welfare but an attack on folks who abused the system.

We need to change the discussion, and we need to do that now!