Innovation in the budget? Try keeping it simple.

It’s not easy to snore and shriek at the same time. But government budgets tend to have that effect on me. The latest federal one certainly did.

The snoring effect arises because these documents are so boringly predictable. Everything from the selfcongratulatory rhetoric to the sickeningly slick and ingratiating title (“Building a Strong Middle Class” this year) to the irresponsible decisions is so routine that if you wrote a satirical version ahead of time and gave half the journalists in the lockup the real one and half the satire they would have enormous difficulty telling them apart. The shriek arises for the same reason.

The boredom is wrapped around the irresponsibility. I’m not suggesting it’s entirely deliberate though to some extent it is.

For instance the key table is on page 253 of 280, which is predictable and infuriating at the same time. It’s the “Summary Statement of Transactions” which tells you how much the government took in and spent in the last year for which the figures are in, and what it claims to believe it will take in and spend this year and in the future.

As I’ve noted before, most people would consider this, the infamous “bottom line,” to be the most important information in the budget. And it is, since it tells you the Liberals are perkily hiking the national debt from $616 billion (which they don’t think is a lot) in 2015-16 to $692.9 billion by 2018-19 and $756.9 billion by 2021-22.

It’s not as bad as the Alberta budget doubling the debt- to- GDP ratio in three years. But that’s a pretty low bar to clear and they don’t clear it very comfortably.

Remember those small, transient deficits? Neither do they. Those deficits are now doing the Mazankowski thing where they grow ominously for about three years then the fiscal responsibility fairy shows up and Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo they go down, as spending restraint kicks in and revenues surge due to the brilliance of the hard decisions being taken today.

OK, not hard. Nobody’s telling voters or special interests “No, get away from me.” Instead they’re gutting defence to fund vote-buying.

So why are these numbers buried so deep? It’s not as though journalists won’t find them and report on them. But before they give us the actuarial stuff they need hundreds of pages of bafflegab about how great they are and how much they know about what the economy will or should or must do, because they really don’t think budgets are about coming clean about spending and taxing behaviour. They think they’re about social engineering, about “Building a Strong Middle Class” rather than building a strong balance sheet.

As my colleagues have noted, the budget uses the term “innovation” over 200 times. Which ironically isn’t even slightly original. I remember years ago I used to mock John Manley as minister of industry for his geewhiz attitude toward the government causing Canadians to produce more things with chips in them and flashing lights on them. Well, I guess Beaker is back. Or rather, he never went away.

People in government have this unquenchable, condescending belief that we ordinary shlubs just sit around doing unoriginal things in a sluggish manner unless they prod us and go: Hey everybody, wake up, it’s the computer age, you need a website and some automation and “future-preneurs” and so forth and suddenly we’ll be caught up in a creative frenzy. But they also have this unquenchable notion that they’re the first ones to have this tediously patronizing idea.

You know what would be real innovation? A budget that was frank, frugal and filled with genuine insight. Because the most unoriginal thing about these budgets is that their authors don’t have a clue what’s going on, especially about their being caught on the treadmill described by Anthony de Jasay, in which the state has become such a perfect votebuying machine that it is impossible to tweak the mix to improve it.

Sure, adding a few billion for more innovation programs will keep the political class happy with more parastatal jobs at high pay. But we already have over a hundred such programs. And look what happens if you try, say, to tax health and dental benefits. It doesn’t matter what a good idea it is or how carefully you design it. You can’t take back the goodies.

Politicians have been trying for decades to craft the ideal vote- buying platform and bureaucrats to deliver programs in a way t hat doesn’t cause worried politicians to come and bother them. And by and l arge they’ve succeeded. But the competitive auction for voters’ favour goes on. So the promises keep getting more extravagant with no way to deliver. And they don’t even know it.

Zzzzzz. Aaaaaah! Zzzzzz Aaaaaah! Zzzzzz Aaaaah!

PROMISES GETTING MORE EXTRAVAGANT WITH NO WAY TO DELIVER. — ROBSON