Some people think government spending is too much, some think it's too little; almost no one thinks it's 'just right'. The core question becomes: Should we decrease spending/services or increase taxes/revenues? Fake Social Science hopes to address this question in a three part poll on the federal budget. [Part 1 here.]

Today we look at how the government does its budgeting.

Currently, the budget is done by a process called Baseline Budgeting.

In a one-sentence description, a baseline government budget involves carrying over the current spending level from year to year and treating it as the floor on which to build additional spending changes. The major assumption in this approach is that the existing spending level of the agency is correct and needs no adjustment. Any new change should be on top of the existing level, not into it.

Baseline budgeting grandfathers in all of the mistakes, waste, fraud and obsolete programs of the preceding decades, while assuring a significant annual budget increase, based partially on those factors. (This method gives members of Congress and Senators incentive to go prospecting for earmarks - $130 Billion in 2011. If the departments really needed funds that are earmarked for programs previously not in their budgets, they would protest the takings by earmarks.

The information on baseline budgeting (enacted into federal law in 1974) is provided so that the poll respondents can understand that under this system, it is not possible to actually cut federal spending. Any 'cuts' discussed by Congress refer to 'cuts' to the automatic annual increase in funding.

The waste and fraud in the federal budget is mind boggling. A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled.

In the area of fraud, the General Services Administration "leads" by example and their clients follow (fox guarding the chickens or monkey see, monkey do - Fake's scientists are pretty sure it is one of those animal analogies.)

Now that we have you in just the right frame of mind, please take the polls below.

~mymymy

Simple Simon met a pieman
Going to the fair;
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
"Let me taste your ware."

Says the pieman to Simple Simon,
"Show me first your penny."
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
"Indeed, I have not any."

A Capital Budget for the Federal Government?

~jfxgillis

Citations:

Bowles-Simpson Commission, Government Waste, Emperors of Earmarks