Reagan’s Spendthrift Congress

January used to be the appropriate time of year to consider the federal budget, but since the inauguration of the “budget process” in 1974 there is no longer any particular season when it makes sense .to examine the figures. The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) January numbers, which are now little more than formal ledger entries to be changed at will by Congress over the ensuing 12 months, merely mislead people today. The whole muddled array of numbers changes confusingly from month to month. Did last week’s supplemental appropriation apply to the current fiscal year? Did yesterday’s conference agreement amend the out-years, or merely the fiscal year beginning next October? The “budget process” is now so confused that a degree in accounting would be useful to those deciphering it.

The news media don’t help at all. Reporting on the budget has degenerated into exclamations of dismay about budget deficits, a puzzling consensus that the new “budget process” is altogether admirable, and ventriloquized editorials on behalf of tax increases to “eliminate the massive deficit.” On the Op-Ed pages George Will is there to tell us that we are undertaxed. M. Stanton Evans points out that it has become hard to find dollar outlay and revenue totals in news reporting about the federal budget; usually we are told little more than the deficit ($200 billion last month, $170 billion this). Since spending totals have risen dramatically in the Reagan years, despite lower than expected inflation, there is no little deception in omitting discussion of the actual numbers. They might undermine the argument that our meager tax-rate reductions are to blame for the budget deficit.

TB

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Tom Bethell

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January used to be the appropriate time of year to consider the federal budget, but since the inauguration of the “budget process” in 1974 there is no longer any particular season when it makes sense .to examine the figures. The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) January numbers, which are now little more than formal ledger entries to be changed at will by Congress over the ensuing 12 months, merely mislead people today. The whole muddled array of numbers changes confusingly from month to month. Did last week’s supplemental appropriation apply to the current fiscal year? Did yesterday’s conference agreement amend the out-years, or merely the fiscal year beginning next October? The “budget process” is now so confused that a degree in accounting would be useful to those deciphering it.

The news media don’t help at all. Reporting on the budget has degenerated into exclamations of dismay about budget deficits, a puzzling consensus that the new “budget process” is altogether admirable, and ventriloquized editorials on behalf of tax increases to “eliminate the massive deficit.” On the Op-Ed pages George Will is there to tell us that we are undertaxed. M. Stanton Evans points out that it has become hard to find dollar outlay and revenue totals in news reporting about the federal budget; usually we are told little more than the deficit ($200 billion last month, $170 billion this). Since spending totals have risen dramatically in the Reagan years, despite lower than expected inflation, there is no little deception in omitting discussion of the actual numbers. They might undermine the argument that our meager tax-rate reductions are to blame for the budget deficit.