You know, the Republican position reminds me of some asshole men I’ve heard of, who quit good jobs so as not to have the money to pay alimony to their ex-wives and kids.
No, my point is that there is no magic and appropriate ratio of changes to spending and revenue that will produce an optimal deficit reduction path. I’m trying to illustrate why your proposal makes it much more difficult to get anything passed, as opposed to making it easier.
Here are some critiques of balanced budget amendments:
As an all-round summary of the arguments:
- The government will always respond to a crisis, rules be damned
- The government is at the mercy of the populace and the populace wants services but does not want to pay for them
- As such, balanced budget laws do not change government behavior, they just cause creative accounting and quasi-governmental organizations that are outside the scope of the budget laws, overall making it harder to survey government accounting and adding financial overhead of its own
My criticism is simple. Your proposal means that the current situation stays the same. But we have a deficit, meaning we are already spending more than we have. Your proposal would just continue that.
For this sort of thing to work, you have to start with a balanced budget. It would be like a person trying to lose weight by exercising, and then eating the exact number of calories they burned. Nothing would happen.
Just like you must lose the weight first, you must also balance the budget first. You can’t maintain something you don’t already have. Do you really think that all of these proposed cuts are because everything is balanced?
In fairness to the OP, I think you aren’t following the proposal correctly. I thought the same thing the first time I read it, but the main thrust of the proposal is attempting to maximize deficit reduction by forcing liberals and conservatives to agree to both tax increases and spending cuts, which if it were successful would maximize deficit reduction.
The problem is that is cannot be successful because it would encourage gridlock. But it is most definitely not a plan that would simply offset revenue and expenditures in a budget neutral way.
Let me rewrite your rules as two symbolic expressions; I think that will clarify a problem. S is spending, R revenue, “–>” denotes a permitted change.
- (S, R) → (S-d, R+d)
- (S, R) → (S-d, R-d)
Applying first rule 2, then 1, we get
1+2. (S, R) → (S-2d, R)
Great if reducing spending is your goal, but proof, IMHO, that your proposal makes little sense.
What’s my solution? First step is to understand the problem(s). There’s a thread titled “Latest Republican stupidity” or some such in BBQ Pit with 2000+ posts. Browse through there, remembering that the people being quoted are not stand-up comics but elected Congressmen, then come back to GD with better insight.
septimus, see post 10.
Actually it’s pretty much the balanced budget concept. The real problem is that congress is just as willing to break their own rules as they are to make them. But I think it’s better than the two competing political concepts now, cutting taxes until we go broke vs. spending until we go broke, and of course the compromise position, cut taxes and spend until we go broke.
No, it’s not, and the difference is key.
Balanced budget says:
1a) raise spending? Then 1b) raise revenue.
2a) Lower revenue? Then 2b) lower spending.
Liberals AS A TENDENCY like 1a and don’t especially mind 1b in certain forms; conservatives tend to hate both 1a and 1b. Liberals AS A TENDENCY hate both 2a and 2b; conservatives tend to like 2a and not mind 2b.
Liberals therefore push for 1 and against 2; conservatives therefore push for 2 and against 1.
This says:
1a) lower spending? Then 1b) raise revenue.
Liberals AS A TENDENCY don’t mind 1b as a way of balancing the budget, but they dislike 1a. Conservatives tend not to mind 1a, but they dislike 1b.
In this proposal, interests would be much more balanced: given a particular proposal, that (for example) raises taxes on the rich by 20 billion, simultaneously cutting spending by 20 billion, where do you think the parties would land? It’d do more for the budget than the current proposal in Congress, and be less offensive to Democrats.
Everyone would be opposed.
Ok, I gotcha. Actually a pretty good proposal.
Has to step away and missed the edit window:
The politicians may not like this, but maybe decent people will. It might be difficult to explain, but it makes it clear what direction spending/revenue is going.
Oops! I guess I should study the whole thread before responding. :dubious:
Still, you didn’t consider this part of my correct response:
Well, sure–but I know there are some decent, rational Republicans, having met them in real life and on this messageboard. And I also know from firsthand experience about some real idiot Democrats. My proposal obviously isn’t geared toward the insincere or the idiots in either party.
And in case there’s any doubt, it’s more of a thought-experiment than anything else, because there’s no way of getting it passed, much as I might like it if it did.
Sounds like PAYGO
A lot of our deficits are due to health care and the recession though. Before this recession hit our deficits were $300-400 billion a year, then they jumped to 1.5 trillion a year.
If we weren’t in a recession, they’d be back to about 2-3% of GDP. Not a small number but if you eliminated the war in Iraq and Bush tax cuts (ie, if Al Gore had obtained the election in 2000) then the deficits would be a fraction of their size up until the recession, probably $100 billion a year or less. A couple of painless policy changes would’ve balanced the budget. However I have no idea how much revenue the tax cuts created to compensate for their costs, so I didn’t factor that in. But suffice it to say, if we weren’t in a severe recession then balancing the budget wouldn’t be too hard. If not those 2 policies, I’m sure other policy changes could bring the deficits down.
Aside from that, our health care costs about 17% of GDP, vs the 11% or so Canada spends. So if our publicly funded health care were as efficient as Canada, we’d save about 1 trillion a year, of which about 600 billion would come from the public sector (and about 300-400 billion of that from the federal government).
But reforming health care in the US is near impossible.
Err–see post 29.
I don’t think it would be impossible if the political messaging were done right. Really tough since it’s not in the interests of the people financing politicians, but the Tea Party has had a surprising effect on the current political environment. Passing it is one thing though, having it followed is another.
OK, so suppose I want to increase spending by 200 billion dollars but don’t want to change revenues. It looks like, under your rules, all I have to do is pass one bill that increases spending by 100 billion and decreases revenues by 100 billion, and then immediately pass another bill that increases both spending and revenues by 100 billion.
That’s a fair point. I think I need to modify the proposal again: remove the contrariwise.