Budgetary Boondoggle: Round 6

         In an article posted here at CDN on Feb. 14th titled, “Upcoming Budget: Nowhere to Run*,  I explained how I could see that our current Congress would not be able to even come close to passing a responsible budget for 2011 fiscal year. Looking at today’s news headlines, this budget boondoggle is following along exactly as I stated it would. Today the House passed the sixth Continuing Resolution budget in a row to temporarily fund our government. Here we are approaching the half way point in fiscal year 2011, and we are still basically running our government on a blank check drawn on the taxpayers account!  No accountability will ever come out of the last four and a half years of trillion dollar deficits within our government, all because the people are letting this farce of a budget battle continue to play out like a cheap failed soap opera of the 60’s. No budget basically means no way to keep spending in check and hold these tyrants in D.C. accountable for their actions.

       We recently saw the complete overthrow of the government of Egypt because the people were damned tired of tyrannical rulers sitting on gold toilets while 3/4 of the country went hungry, to sum it up in a nutshell. Meanwhile here in America the exact same thing is being done on a much grander scale, yet the people are pretty much silent. Congress is paid to do a job, and that job is to basically run the Federal Government, to produce leglislation to protect the people and businesses fairly, and last but not least, is to ensure that the taxpayer’s money is spent fairly and wisely. Ask yourself one simple question, “Is Congress doing their job as it is laid out by our Constitution today?”  Then why isn’t there a national calling to shut down the government and hold Congress accountable? The self-serving tyrants in D C will just keep on spending us into bankruptcy until the people stop giving them the money to do so. It is that simple.  

 No taxation without proper representation, period.

      In 1974, Congress passed what was then called The Congressional Budget Act.*  This also spawned what we now know as The Congressional Budget Office. The CBO was created as an unbiased accounting office to supply Congress with economic data to help them draw up budget resolutions, and compile economic data projections for other proposed legislation to be based upon. The original Congressional Budget Act of 1974 has been amended several times, including in 1985, 1990, and 1997. The basic budget process can be seen here from wordiq.com* which summarizes the process nicely: (emphasis mine)

The President’s Budget

The budget process begins in February with the submission of the President’s budget. According to the act, the budget is due on the first Monday in February. At this stage, the budget is not binding but merely constitutes an extensive proposal of the administration’s intended spending for the following fiscal year. In addition to the actual proposal, the President submits volumes of supporting the information intended to persuade Congress of the necessity and value of the budget provisions. In addition to the President, each independent agency also submits its own budget proposal which will be incorporated into the final version of the budget.

Budget Resolution

The next step is the drafting of a budget resolution. The resolution is drafted concurrently by the House and the Senate budget committees. Following the traditional calendar, by early April both committees finalize their drafts and submit it to the respective floors for consideration and adoption. ( today is march 16th 2011, right around the corner)

Once both houses pass the resolution, a conference report is drafted by members of the Senate and the House. The purpose of the conference report is to reconcile any differences that may exist between the House and the Senate versions. Usually, the conference report is adopted finalizing the budget resolution.

In contrast to most legislation passed by Congress, the budget resolution is a concurrent resolution and thus does not become law and does not require the signature of the President. As a result, no money has actually been appropriated at that point. The budget resolution then serves as a blue print for the actual appropriation process.

   Fast forward to today, where the House GOP leadership  has proposed their budget resolution with the very necessary cuts in government spending that will be needed to avoid raising our debt ceiling to over $15 trillion dollars.  The house Democrats  say no, we will not approve anyserious spending cuts, and threaten to let the government shut down if they are not allowed to keep on spending us into financial Armageddon. Meanwhile, the game goes on, with the basically illegal Continuing Resolutions being passed again and again to avoid any semblance of accountability in how our tax dollars are being spent. When do the people say enough is enough here? April 15th is tax day, when millions of Americans go to write out that big fat tax payment check to the IRS, they should stop for one second and ask themselves one simple question: ” Is this taxation without proper representation? ” 

                           Our dysfunctional Congress just passed the sixth continuing budget resolution in a row, with no firm budget resolution in sight! I normally recommend that people call their representatives and demand some sanity at this point in my articles. The people spoke up loud and clear against big government, Egyption-style self servancy and tyrannical spending in the 2010 elections, and have been speaking up ever since. In reading the above information, does it look like our representatives are listening ?  Think about that come April 15th, when you write that IRS payment check out soon. The way this is going, it will be double that amount next year and probably more.

*https://conservativedailynews.com/2011/02/upcoming-budget-nowhere-to-run/

** https://www.wordiq.com/definition/United_States_budget_process