Josh Clayborn at In The Agora has a post discussing tricks that create the illusion of balancing the federal budget without actually doing it. The thrust of his post is to chide Taking Down Words for grilling Mitch Daniels, formerly Bush’s budget director, over his budgetary shenanigans but not, apparently reacting in kind to budgetary gimmicks Congressional Democrats are apparently proposing to use, according to a Washington Post article from Tuesday.
The intrablogospheric (yeah, I made that word up) food fight is not terribly interesting. But the discussion about balancing the budget is. Back when we were trying to decide whether to dive into the Iraqi bog, Mitch Daniels characterized the proposed war as “an affordable endeavour” and opined that an estimate that the war would cost between $100 and $200 billion as “very, very high.” The cost of the war is already north of the $200 billion mark and climbing. (Though, my favorite gross underestimation of the Iraq War was the Bush administration’s insistence that Iraq could be reconstructed at a maximum expense of $1.7 billion.)
The Washington Post article says that the Democrats are using tricks similar to those used by the Bush administration to create an illusory plan to balance the budget — chiefly ignoring the long-term costs of the war in Iraq and ignoring the need to fix the AMT tax. Bush’s proposed budget has $50 billion for Iraq in 2009 and nothing after that. The Democrats’ plan does the same thing.
At the moment, however, I don’t know that we can conclude that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans with respect to fiscal responsibility. Time will tell. We do know how the budget looked when Clinton and the Republican Congress became Bush and the Republican Congress in January 2001. The budget looked orders of magnitude better than it does now. We weren’t talking about taking 5 years to balance the budget. We were talking about actually reducing the national debt. There were some financial tricks involved with that as well — mostly involving how Social Security was accounted for — but nothing like the financial mess we’re in now, after 6 years of Bush and his enablers exploding the deficit.
As I wrote to Josh in response to his post, “Can’t we just balance the [expletive] budget already? Cut until it hurts. Raise taxes until it hurts. Let’s just right the ship. (Easier said than done. Politicians who followed this strategy would probably be run out on a rail — we get the government we deserve.) “
“Intrablogospheric”, well, it is ok by me for you to coin your own words, but I dare you to define it.
If the Democratic Party wants to truly embrace populism then they should immediately fix the AMT. This ridiculous tax is going to kill the middle class…
Republicans, “conservatives” (or whatever they are now improperly calling themselves as their team grows the government, runs up the debt, and erodes personal liberties), etc., may feel free to comment on balanced budgets AFTER the asshole of a budget-wrecker they last elected leaves office. In the meantime, they should sit in the corner and beg the nation’s forgiveness.
Thanks for letting me know Josh attacked me. I find it hard to believe that he could defend the Guv’s “balanced” budget. All you have to do is ask local folks how they feel about it, and you’ll find out pretty fast that it’s balanced in name only.
I thought TDW was just bashing Daniels for being wrong.
I’d rather hear about the budget being balanced in Indiana – either it is, or how it isn’t. TDW would be more valuable if they focused on that. I mean, they are the Indiana Democratic Party.
I know, I know. Politics.
Joe,
I’m not sure I understand your question. First of all, there’s just me over at TDW.
Second, I do focus pretty much solely on the Guv and state politics, with the occasional foray into NCAA brackets and my goofy family.
The Guv’s budget isn’t balanced. He shoved off a bunch of costs onto local governments, and there’s been little to no talk of property tax reform, just the Band-Aid approach passed by House Republicans last session, which won’t help beyond this year.
Mitch Daniels is one of those guys who thinks that if he says it’s so — really, we’re adding jobs! — then it’s so. He’s not much of a fan of facts and figures; talking points suit his tastes much better.
I do work for the Indiana Democratic Party. And I ran TDW before I worked there. What’s your point?
Jeff Pruitt said:
If the Democratic Party wants to truly embrace populism then they should immediately fix the AMT. This ridiculous tax is going to kill the middle class…
What is your definition of middle class? The majority of savings for any reform of the AMT will go to the top 10% of taxpayers. How is that populism?
Let me try to explain myself. Let’s leave Iraq out of this because I don’t think it applies (I suspect you’ll disagree, but I hope my response below explains where I’m coming from.)
You mentioned that Daniels’ budget doesn’t balance because it shoves costs down to the local level, but the last time I checked, the budget that came out of the Indiana House this session “balanced” because it didn’t account for Medicare increases. (And even that couldn’t even get out of the House without $2 million to Craig Fry’s district.)
So how, exactly, is that different than passing the costs to local governments? Either result means higher taxes for taxpayers. That it’s county taxes or state taxes doesn’t matter to me – it’s money out of my pocket. Yeah, Daniels isn’t being truthful, but neither are the Indiana Democrats. They’re all being politicians & playing politics.
I don’t disagree that there has been little/no talk of property tax reform, but the property tax bill coming out of the House died – and the Democrats have a majority there! Again, both sides being politicians. I don’t care which side you want to blame, both are to blame in my mind.
Here’s my plea as a voter. I’m not expecting an answer per se, what I’m saying would be the same to a person from the Democratic/Republican/Libertarian party as they get into the 2008 election and they act real sincere about “listening to the voters”:
So what? People want more government services and lower taxes. This is, fundamentally, unsustainable. If taxes have to be raised because people want services, come out & raise taxes. If services have to be cut to avoid raising taxes, cut services. Please make the hard, unpopular, but right decisions. I realize this makes it hard to stay in office, but please think about more than your re-election campaign. Most of you are in gerrymandered districts anyway so it doesn’t matter, and apparently Ivy Tech jobs are available to any displaced legislator.
Mitch Daniels gets whacked for privatization being “bad”, but he at least is trying something that could work when it comes to the taxes/services conflict. I know the current situation (spending more than we bring in) has a lower probability of working than privatization.
If privatization is off the table, fine, then the discussion needs to be about what taxes we’re raising or what services we’re cutting. Be honest with me. I have my own family budget, so I’m familiar with the concept that you can’t spend more than you make. This is what I’m going to be looking to hear from whoever goes against Mitch Daniels in 2008. I’m not against voting out Mitch, but I’m going to vote against him for a better alternative, not an alternative whose campaign is predicated off “I’m not Mitch Daniels!”. That didn’t make me want to vote for John Kerry in 2004 (voted Badnarik), and I doubt it will motivate me in the governor’s race in 2008.
Please, please, PLEASE don’t run the state into debt and make my generation pay for it. It’s bad enough my generation will have to bail out the federal deficit that’s been looming for 30+ years under both parties.
Thanks for listening.
Well said, Joe. I ended up breaking with my Republican roots and voting for Perot back in ’92 just because he was so forthright about the need to balance the budget. I forget the details — probably wasn’t real clear on them at the time, either — but seems like he was entirely willing to do it through unpopular, but necessary means, and without a bunch of gimmicks.
I don’t remember Perot’s details, but it was basically cut everything, endure some pain for 4-7 years, and then reap the benefits in interest savings once the debt is retired. The irony is that he lost, and through smaller spending cuts and increased revenue from the tech boom, we almost had a chance to retire the debt without the pain that Perot had warned us we would have to go through. Instead, Bush sold the idea that the surplus was an “overcharge” by the government, and used it on non-stimulative tax cuts benefitting the rich, plus increased spending. Instead of solving the problem, he made it twice as bad. So now we’re back to the Perot scenario, where we’re going to have to endure some real pain (increased taxes, decreased services) to get back on track. Or have a boom twice as big as the one under Clinton.
The problem is, people don’t want “cut everything”. They want everything provided by the government – but don’t raise my taxes!
Look at the folks who want mass transit over the Commerce Connector. I mean, if you want mass transit over more roads, that’s fine, but where will the money come from to subsidize it? Out of roads? OK, which roads will we let fall apart? I’m going to guess not the ones in front of your house.
I don’t deny that it’s a very tough job to balance all these interests, I just think our politicians ignore that job as much as possible because it might make someone mad, and if they make too many people mad, they’ll be out of office. If they don’t want to deal with such thorny issues, they’re in the wrong business anyway.
Jen, I’m curious – what in my post was a defense of Governor Daniels’ “balanced” budget?