Where’s A Budget-Cutter To Turn?

Congress has passed, and President Trump has signed, a $1.3 trillion interim federal spending bill.

That’s $1.3 trillion, with a “t.”  And that’s interim, in that the colossal amount of spending will only fund our out-of-control federal government until September 30, when another spending bill will be needed.

President Trump, who briefly raised the threat of a veto before putting his John Hancock on the bill, says he’ll never sign another bill like this one.  I’m calling BS on that one.  The reality is that, for people like me who think our country has an enormous spending problem that eventually will be our downfall, there’s nowhere to turn.  The Democrats never met a domestic spending program that they didn’t want to increase.  The Republicans, who posture about deficit responsibility, have shown that they are too craven, and too interested in avoiding ruffling any feathers that might interfere with their reelection prospects, to tackle the tough job of actually reducing, and in some instances eliminating, federal programs that really aren’t necessary.  And President Trump is a deal-maker who will gladly rationalize just about anything, just as he did with this latest monstrosity by saying that the increase in military spending makes all of the rest of the irresponsibility palatable.

There are no longer any institutional forces that will restrain federal spending or cause our political class to act like statesmen and take the long-term, good-for-the-country view.  There’s no appetite whatsoever for careful judgment, for systematic review of whether programs are actually working, and for making the thoughtful choices that are a crucial part of living within your means.  Once again, we’re seeing concrete evidence that the current class of political leaders are the worst political leaders in history.

We’re on the cash-paved road to failure, and spending ourselves into oblivion, and nobody seems to really care about doing anything about it.

The Ever-Upward Irresponsible Trend

Am I missing something?  Nobody seems to be paying any attention to federal spending and deficits anymore.

The Republicans, who used to be the preachers of deficit reduction, balanced budgets, and fiscal discipline, are much too busy trying to distance themselves from President Trump to do much of anything about anything, much less something detail-oriented and difficult, like tackling federal spending.  And the Democrats never seemed to have much appetite for actually considering whether legacy federal programs make sense in the current world, or are performing as they were intended, or are actually having a positive impact from a cost-benefit standpoint.  Expecting Congress to actually pass a budget seems to be hopelessly passe, and continuing to spend more, more, more seems to be the default approach.  And, given the kinds of deficits we’re racking up, and the experience of Puerto Rico, and Illinois, and other states that haven’t paid attention to basic economic realities, “default” seems like an apt word.

In case you’re interested, June 2017 was the first month in history where the American federal government spent more than $400 billion.  You can see the number — $428.8 billion — on page 2, in the “outlays” column, of this dry document called the monthly report of revenues and outlays, issued by the Treasury Department.   And here’s an interesting statistic, for comparison’s sake:  according to this report from the Congressional Budget Office, the amount of federal government outlays for the entire year of 1976 did not even reach $400 billion.  But ever since that time, it’s been an ever upward trend, and now we’ve reach the point where the federal government spends more in a single month than it spent in an entire year only 40 years ago.

You’d think that somewhere, someone in Congress would be up in arms about what is obviously an alarming and unsustainable trend.  You’d think someone, somewhere would be waving that dry Treasury report around and asking why the spending by the list of the government agencies set forth in small type later in the report needs to be ever increasing, and demanding that those agencies tighten their belts or justify their existence.  You’d think that someone, somewhere, would be glancing uneasily at Puerto Rico and Illinois, looking at the federal trends, and deciding that we need to do something to curb our profligate ways before we’re irretrievably on the road to economic perdition and financial ruin.

Of course, you’d be wrong on that.  It’s much easier to just react to the latest Trump Administration dust-up and let things slide.  The only worrying seems to be done by those of us out in the real world whose practical experiences with household budgets and controlling family spending makes us grind our teeth at the amazing irresponsibility of our elected representatives.

A federal government that spends more than $400 billion in a single month!  And nobody is talking about it.