U.S. debt grows with no budget in sight
WASHINGTON — In America, budgeting is a blood sport.
The idea is to tie a noose around your opponent’s neck and at the next election hang him on the end of a 15-second TV clip that accuses him of jeopardizing your children’s future by voting for a $1.2 trillion deficit. So get rid of him.
In a congress that is more polarized than it has been since the Civil War, it’s almost impossible to agree on a budget. No congressman will commit to a budget that farmers back in the home district in Kentucky will claim is ruinous.
Better to depend on socalled “continuing resolutions” that quietly fund the government program by program in a sort of sweeping but piecemeal fashion without committing to an overpowering global vision that can sink a politician’s career. These CRs have to be renewed every six months or so, sometimes quietly, sometimes in crisis. It all depends on political needs. Congress just renewed them again until September.
Four years have passed since the U.S congress passed a budget and that was back when the Democrats controlled both houses. Unless there is what political scientists call a “punctuated equilibrium,” or big, boom event that suddenly unites the country, it’s doubtful Americans will see a budget any time soon, Jim Thurber, a professor of government and founder of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, said.
“The status quo will win,” he said. “I see us struggling slowly.”
It is fertile ground for politicians like Paul Ryan. As chairman of the House budget committee, Ryan is a blunt-edged Republican champion at the political budgeting game.
Earlier this month the Tea Party star announced a new budget that would cut $4.6 trillion in spending and essentially gut programs that give free health care to the poor and to seniors and defunded U.S. President Barack Obama’s treasured health-care law of 2010 that is designed to lower health costs for the middle class.
Ryan’s budget re-introduces his voucher program for medicare rejected at the polls last November when he ran on the presidential ticket with Mitt Romney. Yet that vote has not altered Ryan’s vision.
“Did we win these arguments on the campaign, some of us think so,” he told reporters. Asked if his budget wouldn’t kill Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act, he replied: “It should.”
Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio told reporters the budget also approves construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which is odd given that final approval is in Obama’s hands and the project doesn’t rely on public financing.
The Republican-controlled house this week approved the Ryan budget in a vote that ran straight along party lines.
Meanwhile the Democratcontrolled senate came out with a budget that would strengthen these programs while slowly reducing the deficit through increased tax revenue and reduced medical delivery costs by forcing companies to reduce profit margins. The U.S. has the highest medical costs in the industrialized world.