If “on budget” means having spending = revenues, it’s because of the oxen.
Congress sets the budget. Congress is in charge of borrowing.
If Congress wants spending = revenues, they can do that during the time they set the budget. There is a problem with this, they have to identify which ox gets gored. They have to choose, put it down in writing, vote “Yes” and get a metric ton worth of shit from everyone whose ox has just gotten it.
Congress can also put a halt to borrowing, which is convenient because they don’t have to choose any ox. They just put on their blinders, speak in broad meaningless platitudes and deflect any complaints. They can always suggest that they never REALLY wanted YOUR ox to get gored, they fought for you, they wanted it to be the other guy, but it was out of their pretty little hands.
It’s the same reason Romney’s fiscal plan had no details, so they could put up the disclaimer “No oxen were gored in the production of this plan”
Now, this doesn’t really have anything to do with the current debate, because the Republicans don’t really want spending = revenue. Their own budget doesn’t close that particular gap. What they want is to use this crappy budgetary footnote to leverage Obama into doing something else that they want.
A. I don’t believe for a moment that any politicians are trying to ruin the country. I doubt that any politicians really believe it of their peers, either.
B. The refusal to raise the debt ceiling has had a demonstrably more negative effect (in terms of the nation’s credit rating) than any amount of spending or borrowing has.
C. Political compromise has always involved giving something the other side wants, and getting something your side wants. Now there is a new tactic; one side will not continue middle-class tax cuts (something they claim to want) unless they get to continue the upper-class tax cut (which they must want more). I find this troubling.
D. The time to hash this all out is during the regular budgetary process, not to re-fight the same battle over money that’s already been agreed to be spent.
Actually, it should be planned spending < projected revenue. That makes it much easier to avoid having to get things on credit.
And they don’t have to gore any oxen, just start making small cuts until eventually we get to the point where we have slightly more income than outgo and can start paying off our debts. You know, like regular folk!
Of course, that means that some special interests will hate them, and since most if not all politicians are more concerned with that than holding to a budget we may never see fiscal responsibility again. Unless there is some way to legislate it.
I wasn’t addressing Congress on that, I was speaking to the people here who think budget means you just charge things when you go over.
Since you can’t seem to stay on one track, I’m probably done with you.
You need to pay attention to what I am actually saying and quit looking for whatever it is you seem to think you’ll find between the lines. My sole question is and has been - why can’t we expect the country to stay on budget?
Because the people who make the budget and control the income for the country, especially those with R’s after they names, are incapable of compromise.
Well, if the country stayed on budget, we wouldn’t have to keep raising the debt limit. But I am responding to whoever it was upthread who said the country isn’t expected to stay on budget - I guess I should have quoted it but since everyone seemed to agree I didn’t think I needed to go back to do that.
Don’t be silly. A one time big purchase isn’t the same thing as the country having to continue to raise the debt limit because it cannot live within it’s means. OTOH, we do live within our budget, which includes our mortgage payment, and we haven’t had a raise in “debt limit” in several years.
Probably not. What happens is I express an opinion on something and everyone assumes I must be a Dem or Rep based on that. However, I have opinions from both sides, don’t vote and don’t care who is in power, so…
Not that there would be no need for it, but that we wouldn’t need to keep raising it simply because we can’t pay our bills.
Exactly. The country is doing the same thing as people who get a bunch of credit cards and run them up to max, then redo their mortgage to pay them off, then run them up again, etc.
luci - bite me. If people weren’t interested in the subject, they wouldn’t post. If you want a thread to go in a different direction, post that way. Blaming others for your problems is juvenile.
I’ve got two links for you, curlcoat. It amounts to kind of a long answer, but I think it does amount to the answer. TL/DNR: it is swine, not oxen.
First, read Lapham’s Feast of Fools (the link may ask for your e-mail- if you click ‘sign up’ without entering anything, the window will go away and you can read the article. Since I’ve found this issue of Lapham’s to be an even smarter read than a good 'dope thread, maybe you should just buy their goddamn magazine though. The 'dope still wins for being interactive of course.) One interesting thing to note is that, generally speaking, bullshit like this is nothing new and hasn’t been for millenia. A professional politician (which excludes dipshit teabaggers of course) often wields a staggering amount of knowledge, which reveals that they are either personally corrupt or corrupted out of political necessity by the system. Teabaggers are just dumb.
The second link is starve the beast. If it is (balanced) budgets you’re worried about then it appears Republicans are the main 'tards in this mess. Here’s a Reagan quote:
Which of course implies that this is some kind of nanny state, we’re all children and Reagan is the chief nanny.
Anyway, Christians who make a saint out of Reagan are double-'tards.
All right, that seems like a perfectly sensible answer. But Bricker said this:
That guy has enough critics so don’t take it the wrong way, but even if that statement is technically true, in what practical way is it not meaningless? Or is it simply false?
So, “we cannot expect the government to stay on budget” means that we’ve given up on them doing so, rather than it would be impossible for them to do it?
