Throw The Bums Out!

Its been three and a half years since any federal budget was signed into law.

That's "any budget."

How is this acceptable to anyone? 

It must be because we hear so little about it.  Apparently no one cares about our lack of any budget.  If I had any public voice, I would spend every minute that I could pointing out that we don't have a budget!  No one else seems to care.

There are a great many issues that I would like to see our federal government address (I'd like them to repeal nearly every law).  But I've forgotten most of them because of the marvel that is no budget.

Having a balanced budget is the most basic of basic, the most important of important issues.  And we haven't had any sort of balanced budget in, seemingly, forever.  With either democrats or republicans all we get is more and more government spending.

According to the government's numbers (table 1) we have had 8 years with a budget surplus since 1950.   We've gotten along on borrowing, inflating our currency, and adding to our deficit. 

If your personal spending was more than your income, would that be good?  How long could you keep it up?  Why is it different for the government?

We cannot continue to spend more than we take in.  And putting a 100% income tax on the rich would not balance this years numbers.  We need to cut spending or we will head to bankruptcy.

Even Paul Ryan's proposed budget will not balance it:

The new Paul Ryan/congressional GOP budget has been released. As a starting point, consider this: The Ryan plan says that we will spend $3.6 trillion this year while bringing in $2.4 trillion in FY2012. In contrast, President Obama's budget says that we will shell out $3.8 trillion in FY2012 and bring in $2.5 trillion.

In brief, the Ryan plan is not as bad as President's Obama budget, which wants to spend $3.8 trillion in FY2013 and envisions spending $5.8 trillion in FY2022. Over the next 10 years, Obama assumes that federal spending would amount to 22.5 percent of GDP while revenues would average just 19.2 percent of GDP. That ain't no way to run a country.

In this sense, Ryan's plan is slightly better but still doesn't pass the laugh test. He would spend $3.5 trillion in 2013 and $4.9 trillion in 2022 (all figures in the post are in current dollars unless otherwise noted). Spending as an average of GDP would average 20 percent of GDP and revenue would amount to just 18.3 percent. Go here to read the whole plan; figures on outlays and revenue are in Table S-1.

Since our federal politicians of the last three and a half years did not deem it important enough to pass any budget, I suggest that they are all incompetent.  If they cannot do their most basic task, then they should all be thrown out of office.  Even the ones that I like, like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and ... uh .... um ... others.

Throw all of the bums out and let's try again with some people who may create a balanced budget.

(And I haven't even mentioned the "off budget" stuff our government spends on.)