Thursday, February 26, 2009

A Sensible Process

With much fanfare President Obama recently introduced an outline for the federal budget . While I don’t like the numbers he presented, I do appreciate his improvement on the process. Two things in particular caught my attention. First, he’s returning to the tradition of providing a ten-year outline rather than the five years the previous administration used. That gives a better look at the long-range effects of current spending decisions.

Secondly, he has returned to putting all of the expenses in the budget rather than leaving the cost of the war outside the budget. This gives a more realistic view of what our total expenditures are projected to be. Under the previous administration, the costs of the war which were substantial were left out of the budget. We only fooled ourselves into thinking we were in better shape than we actually were.

Now, if we just get the numbers down so that the budget can be brought into balance within the next four or five years I’d be much happier about the process.

2 comments:

Bramblyspam said...

It's easy to cut the deficit in half after you've quadrupled it.

I do like that the war costs are no longer off budget, but it's hard for me to get enthusiastic about our new administration's spending habits.

Bramblyspam said...

Another article, for good measure:
There is very little to be happy about in Obama's first budget