More budget baloney
When Congress returns from its summer break, it will face a budget that expires on Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. It has done nothing to prepare a new budget. At any other level of government, from your small-town selectmen arguing over whether to buy a new snowplow, to your largest state legislatures, this would be cause of great concern. In Washington, it is business as usual. President Obama did submit a budget proposal in February. But the Republican-controlled House and Senate showed the same interest in acting on that as the Senate has shown in acting on Obama’s appointment to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, meaning none.
Obama’s $4.15 trillion budget, which equates to about $13,612 for every person in the country, would have boosted spending by 4.9 percent. Mandatory expenses drive most of the increase, such as paying the interest on the national debt and funding Social Security. Discretionary spending increases less than 1 percent under the president’s plan.
The administration projected a deficit of $503 billion, an improvement over the current fiscal year deficit of $600 billion. The president proposed doing this by increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations, particularly those that park their money overseas or move their headquarters to other countries to dodge U.S. taxes.
Republican leaders in the House and Senate did nothing with the proposal, except use criticism of it to score political points back home. Congress didn’t even bother to ask Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan to testify before the Appropriations Committee.
So what happens? Almost certainly, after some last-minute drama, Congress will pass various continuing resolutions to keep the money flowing, and then head back home to campaign. Some fiscal conservatives will get a pass from GOP leadership to vote “no,” keeping their anti-spending reputation intact with gullible voters.
There will be no policy strategy tied to the stop-gap governing. Criticize the Obama budget, if you will, but it has true policy proposals, such as boosting investment in infrastructure and providing a 35 percent increase in spending on cybersecurity, not a bad idea given all that Russian and Chinese hacking.
Of course, Republicans, controlling the purse strings, could pass a budget they really believe in, one that balances, and force the president to veto it. But then they would have to defend all those cuts, rather than complaining about spending in the abstract. Who wants to do that when you’re running for re-election?