The “Deficit” Is A Fraud
By Mitch Berg
I’ve been fiddling about with trying to find more oblique, writer-y ways to say it – but sometimes the direct approach is best.
Talk of a $6.2 Billion deficit is a fraud. People who refer to is are mistaken at best, lying at worst.
What we have is not a $6.2 billion deficit. It’s a little more like this:
Imagine you take your kids to McDonald’s once a week. Your son, a budding DFLer, demands that you add a weekly trip to Murray’s for the family once a week. You refuse. Your idiot child goes to the media and tells them that you are “cutting the budget by $300 a week“.
What do you do?
Give the kids the trip to Murray’s and quit complaining?
You must be a DFLer.
The Budget Deficit Is Based On A Wish List: The “deficit” that the DFL and media – and even a few Republicans – are talking about is exactly the same thing. It’s assessed against the “2012-2013 Budget Forecast“.
Which, you may note, is a forecast. Not a “budget”; a forecast. The “budget” is something the legislature hashes out on odd-numbered years for the following even-and-odd-numbered pair of years (called a “biennium”); in 2009, the Legislature passted the budget for 2010 and 2011.
That, and only that, is the “budget”.
The “forecast”, on the other hand, is what the budget will be in the following biennium, assuming that the budget increases according to current assumptions, legal mandates, and legislative wishes.
So the forecast comes partly from “baseline budgeting” – starting with the current budget for a deparment and guesstimating how much more of that department’s “services” will be “needed”. In some cases, there are legal mandates involved, And in most of them, there’s the DFL’s urge to leave a huge budgetary turd the GOP’ doorstep. Because whatever the cause, the DFL legislature that just got sent packing “forecast” the budget jumping from $30.266 billion to $38.591 billion – a 27.51% jump.
Did you increase your family budget 27.51%?
No. And either did the government – yet. Because the budget process – the one that leads us to the actual budget – just started, really, last week.
The “Structural Deficit” Is A Cop-Out: It is true that there are legal mandates to increase parts of the budget. The answer is deceptively simple; if you have a structural problem, the best – albeit not necessarily easiest – way to fix it is to fix the structure. Put another way, these mandates need to be reassessed, and most likely abolished. House File 2, sponsored by Rep. Banaian, will be a good start; it’ll start to chip away at the current practice of increasing spending for programs on autopilot; every government department will have to justify its spending and, in its most gratifyingly Scandinavian feature, sic the Legislative Auditor on state agencies with an aim toward sunsetting them when their usefulness has passed.
The most important thing to remember, though – and tell your co-workers and family members and neighbors, if the topic comes up – is, once again, this:
The “Budget Deficit” is a fraud.
January 17th, 2011 at 8:19 am
Apparently our DFL (and some Republican) legislators (and PTR media) have come to believe that they have no control over the budget process. Time to outsource the legislature to IBM or HP or Oracle. Who needs to waste all those human resource dollars on legislators and staff when all we need is a DeVry graduate who can ask the computer what it wants us, er, what it REQUIRES us to do.
January 17th, 2011 at 8:25 am
I’ve tried to quietly but firmly make this point in my travels, but it appears not to sink in. As you say, it’s just a forecast – one forecast of many, in fact. We could forgive our family and friends but certainly not the media. They only ask clarification, like “billons, right?” They willing repeat the mantra offered them by the DFL. That they are now the minority with no real say does not prompt them to ask the majority GOP. And we remember how the media repeatedly pursued Dayton to explain the remaining gaps in his unbalanced proposals, right? No, they hounded Emmer over his balanced plan and worshiped Horner’s “balanced” approach also short on specifics.
Would that we had a truly fair and balanced local media like Fox, WSJ. Until then, you’re it Mitch!
January 17th, 2011 at 8:35 am
WE INTERRUPT THIS THREAD FOR A FACTCHECK HIJACKING:
Last week, Kermie pooped out the following commenturd:
“I will bear witness to Learned Foot eating crow, smothered with Velveeta on Monday. That should give him time to recover from the hangover.”
Link: http://www.shotinthedark.info/wp/?p=17387#comment-88467
Now, this is farm from the only stupid thing Kerm has said, but please indulge me while I single it out with this rejoinder:
Suck it Kerm!
(Phony, bravo-drenched, melodramatic declarations of superiority for their team by degenerate Bears fans, is hereby publicly acknowledged in advance with an eye roll.)
So in conclusion: suck it Kerm.
We now return you to whatever this thread is about.
January 17th, 2011 at 9:06 am
If Learned Foot wasn’t a typical, classless, uncouth Cheeshead, he could have returned to aforementioned thread and seen:
# Kermit Says:
January 16th, 2011 at 2:51 pm
For the record, falcon smothered in Velveeta tastes awful.
But that is too much to ask for. We bear it (pun intended) with grace.
January 17th, 2011 at 9:06 am
As to the actual topic, I have one question. How much is $6.2 Billion in Yuan?
January 17th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Phony, bravo-drenched, melodramatic declarations of superiority
Nope. We are clearly the underdogs. Indeed, if the Pack don’t win by at least three douchdowns – excuse me, touchdowns (it *was* an honest typo, honest!), it’ll be as good as a defeat.
January 17th, 2011 at 9:26 am
Back, somewhat, to the topic:
That Banaian dude is teh crazee!
January 17th, 2011 at 9:31 am
Check out this doc:
http://www.mmb.state.mn.us/doc/budget/report-spend/nov10.pdf
Minnesota state spending has nearly doubled in the last decade.
January 17th, 2011 at 12:53 pm
As to the actual topic, I have one question. How much is $6.2 Billion in Yuan?
Depends on when you ask.
January 17th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Time for MBerg to rip-off his radio stable mate ‘Captain’ Ed to deal with these threadjackers…
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/01/16/nfl-open-thread-sunday-divisional-playoffs/
This Threadjackers Prediction: If the Pack doesn’t beat daBears by 15 points (computed by multiplying the average Blood Alcohol Content of the Packer fans (0.15) by 100), even a win will be a loss. One wonders if the long gone ‘Obnoxious Packer Guy’ will make his triumphant return to a M.O.B. blog near you.
January 17th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
‘Obnoxious Packer Guy’
Learned Foot is a MOB member in good standing. For what that’s worth. At least he hasn’t denigrated native Americans and gloated over the death of Mike Hatch’s daughter. So far as we know.
January 17th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Ahem.
Threadjack terminated.
January 17th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
FACT CHECK on aisle 9!
BTW, How much is $6.2 Billion in Yuan? We may need to know in the very near future.
January 17th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
BTW, How much is $6.2 Billion in Yuan? We may need to know in the very near future.
Today, that’s about 40,565,980,000 Yuan. ($1=6.5924 Yuan). Coincidentally, that’s also the bet that Hu Jiantao put down on the Bears in Vegas this week.
January 17th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
“Douchdown”
What is Jay Cutler immediately after being sacked? I’ll take “hanging curves” for $800, Alex.
January 17th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
I’ll take “Threadjack terminated” for $200, Alex.
Ahem.
January 17th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
back on topic. If we had a flip of 8700 votes Governor Emmer would be explaining this to us. I think that the 27.5% raise doesn’t mean jack to a trust fund baby like Dayton. What are the odds of a government shutdown this year? Even money? 9:5? 11:7?
January 18th, 2011 at 12:57 am
What are the odds of a government shutdown this year? Even money? 9:5? 11:7?
Be careful, Ben. That could be considered immoral gambling! 😉
January 18th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
Disco, come on man you should know I’m a social libertarian 🙂