Balanced Budget

Presidents have long been given the credit, and the blame for the status of the budget they oversee on a year to year basis.

I’ve seen this wikipedia article a number of times for example, as well as many charts which tend to focus on the president, his party, and the resulting budget.

This is what is in the public’s consciousness - and I suppose its understandable.  The president does propose the budget annually, afterall.

But its hardly where people should look when they want to assign credit and blame.  The president may propose the budget, but the purse strings have always lied with Congress.  They can summarily reject the president’s budget, they can roll over and accept it, they can play a chess game and force the president to change his budget priorities - and in the end, they can amend it to their heart’s content to shape it how they wish.  Congress is the true target we should look to for scorn, or praise.

As such, I decided to take a gander at the congressional makeup a the time budgets were approved, and found some rather interesting facts.  For the record, I’m using 1900 to today from the historical charts in the 2009 budget for my facts and figures on this - obviously this is not the complete picture, but gives us a relatively good idea of what’s going on.

 Sister Toldjah has an idea:  Why not stand up for some traditional conservative values, you know, like they mean something.

Republicans have known for several months that they'd be facing Barack Obama as president and a Democratic majority in Congress.  But knowing their opponent hasn't translated into a strategy for dealing with Mr. Obama's enormous - and, in all probability, temporary - popularity.

I understand that taking a fiscally responsible stance will be tough after the Bush years' budgetary irresponsibility.  But I would suggest that Republicans need to play a quick game of pin-the-tail-on-the-designated-scapegoat and get back Phil Gramm-style defending of the federal budget ASAP.

That means before the Democrats' bloated stimulus package, which Michelle Malkin correctly identifies as the Generational Theft Act, is rammed through Congress.  Currently weighing in at a corpulent $1.1T, this one bill would add an estimated 9% onto a massive national debt that is already beyond our ability to pay back while levying any sort of reasonable tax rate on American workers.

Whilst trying to figure out who they are, Republicans would do well to consider that the U.S. debt problem became geometrically worse under the Reagan and Bush administrations.  This is not just a Democratic problem; however, only Republicans have the history and the constituency to make fiscal restraint in Washington a possibility, however remote.

Perhaps the most unpleasant part of the message that needs to be put forth is that the current generation of Americans must reduce their expectations of what the government is going to be able to do for them financially.  It's both craven and irresponsible for Baby Boomers to consume the economic resources of this country to the extent that today's children will toil their entire lives under the weight of the Boomers' self-indulgence.

It is highly unlikely that the federal debt will be paid off or that we will be operating under a balanced federal budget over the next election cycle or two.  Federal fiscal policy promises to continue to be one of the most important issues to voters for some time to come.

In whatever form the "Next Right" eventually manifests itself, formulating and verbalizing a coherent federal fiscal policy in a manner which resonates with the general public will be a necessity for electoral success.

Electoral success is more likely to occur if a wide variety of public policy organziations, polical candidates, office holders, party leaders, think tanks, the "right roots" and other right-leaning media are all singing from the same sheet of music -- as happened with the Contract with America.

Four primary options are available in developing a new fiscal policy proposal:

• Decreasing taxes while increasing spending
• Increasing taxes while increasing spending
• Increasing taxes while decreasing spending
• Decreasing taxes while decreasing spending

Other vital components of such a plan would probably include dealing with Social Security, balancing the budget, deficit spending and coming up with a proposal to pay down the national debt. There are probably additional great ideas out there; this is a great time to think outside of the box to help stimulate even better ones.

What sort of approach to fiscal policy do you think the "Next Right" should take, and why?

I believe limiting the amount of money government can legally spend to an amount no greater than that which it takes in would be one of the greatest, most meaningful achievements of this generation. I also believe that the most effective – and most permanent – way to do this is by amending the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget.

My name is Alan Parks. I live in Texas, where I’ve been a practicing Obstetrician/Gynecologist for 21 years. I care so deeply about this issue, which has the potential to so greatly affect our future and our children’s future, that I recently left my medical practice to launch Americans for a Balanced Budget Amendment, an organization which will fight to help dig our children’s generation out of the hole that year after year of deficit spending has created.

At present, the United States of America, the most prosperous nation in the history of mankind, is borrowing from its children in order to pay its current bills. Our government annually spends 10, 20, even 30 percent more than it takes in – a massive exercise in deficit spending that has left us with a national debt that is currently over $9,500,000,000,000 and growing.