Budget Follies

Nobody I know likes taxes, really, although I do know people who understand paying taxes is something we need to do to pay our countries bills.

It sees that a lot of people aren't aware of that so they simply want the taxes cut and the bills paid, well magically I guess.

If I sit down to discuss my household budget there is a general understanding that the amount of money coming in has to equal the money going out in most instances.

Sometimes of course you might have to borrow to pay for something big, like a house or a car so this becomes the household debt which results in monthly payments I have to make.

So my budget includes all the things I have to pay, including debt payments and things I would like to have which I don't have to buy.

At the end of the day I want these numbers to be less than the cash I bring in.

This results in a nest egg that I can use for retirement or special things.

However if I was to find out that I was going to get less cash each month, I would have to adjust, either by taking money our of that "nest egg", borrowing or reducing spending.  If I was to decide to just go ahead and spend more it would be a reckless maneuver.

The Government isn't very different, it has income, mostly taxes, it has mandatory payments, mostly what are called entitlements and debt and it has discretionary spending.

We tend to view defense spending as required spending but while veterans benefits are, defense spending is actually discretionary.  We could spend less and in fact the last time we had a budget surplus it was to some extent related to the reduction in defense spending after the cold war ended.

Now we spend more than we take in and the situation isn't likely to get better.  Some of this is driven by our aging population and the benefits we owe them and some of it goes back to the early days of the last republican administration.

When it started the country was running a surplus and two things happened.  A tax cut was passed and then the war on terror broke out and we started spending increased amounts in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots.

We quickly went back to deficits and have been there ever since.  luckily for us the Fed has suppressed interest rates to make the debt a bit more affordable, but it still consumes more and more of the budget each year.

Sane people would look at this and conclude we need more revenue, or less spending.

That's what sane people would do, but our representatives have decided its time to increase defense spending, increase infrastructure spending and cut revenue, taxes.

Since that is the opposite of what sane people would do, I guess the only real conclusion we can draw is that the people doing it are insane.

This is our friendly deficit loving republican party.

Wait they are increasing usage fees at the national parks, that's the ticket.