From: tom@ssd.csd.harris.com (Tom Horsley)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Balancing the budget
Date: 6 Apr 92 16:07:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: amber.TOM.92Apr6110736
Followup-To: talk.politics.theory
Distribution: usa
Organization: Harris Computer Systems Division

Here is my plan for a balanced budget process - I am interested in knowing
what is wrong with it. Please ignore the fact that the Congress would never
adopt it, I already know that, I am just wondering what is technically wrong
with it...

Step 1 - Generate a computer model of the organization and budget of the
         government (This is not strictly required, but it simplifies many
         of the following steps and provides an excellent resource the
         people could draw on to find out where their money goes).

         This would essentially be an interactive computer org chart with
         attached information about how much money each node and its
         children suck out of the budget.

         The budget presented to Congress would essentially be this chart
         with the Administration's annotations for spending requirements
         being the initial values attached to the chart.

Step 2 - The first phase of the budgeting process would prioritize spending
         requirements. Each member of Congress would be able to annotate
         each node in the computer chart with the percentage of the budget
         he feels that part of government should get. Any Congressman could
         go as far down the org chart as he felt like going. He could
         allocate money just to top level nodes and leave it up to the
         bureaucrats running that section to divide up the pie below that
         level, or he could micro manage all the way down the tree. It would
         be up to the individual Congressman to decide how much detail he
         wanted to get into.

         Clearly, simple percentages are a bad idea. Some programs will need
         a minimum amount of funding to be worth doing at all, and every
         program should have a cap on funding representing the maximum
         amount of money the program could use. These numbers would also be
         noted in the chart and each Congressman could give his idea of what
         the number should be.

         Congressmen can spend as much or as little time on this as they
         like (up to a point). They can tweak and twiddle their numbers to
         their hearts content.

         (Clearly not all specific programs are known ahead of time, but
         money should be allocated for general areas of spending, and
         programs which come up during the year would be allocated money out
         of that area of the budget).

Step 3 - In this step, some specific date and time is chosen as "Budget
         Resoultion Day". A snapshot is made of the current state of the
         budget allocations made by all the Congressmen in Step 2 above.

         The individual allocations are all averaged. The median values
         for min and max spending are all selected. The resulting chart
         is now an inflexible guide for how the money will be allocated.
         Any changes have to wait for next year and emergency changes
         required due to some unforseen circumstance must be approved
         by a supermajority of the Congress (say 60 or 70%).

Step 4 - Finally - the step everyone has been waiting for. The total amount
         of money available is estimated. This consists of tax revenues,
         plus any borrowing which another supermajority will authorize.
         At this time, Congress may consider raising taxes (if they think
         they can get away with it).

         This money is then allocated according to the percentages fixed in
         Step 3. Any program which fails to get its minimum required funding
         is simply canceled, and the increased revenue allocated according
         to the percentages again (you probably program a computer to do
         this iteratively - you want to cancel just one program at a time so
         the increased revenue has a chance to salvage a more important
         program).  Any program which gets more than its max also returns
         money to the pot to be spread out over the other programs.

         (Should a miracle occur, and Congress actually adopt a plan like
         this, it should probably be phased in over several years with
         initial plans for deficits dropping to zero after 5 or 10 years).

I like this idea because it seems like it would be simple to sell to the
voters. Anyone should be able to understand the concept of not being able to
spend money you don't have. Individual Congressmen could point to their
choices for allocating funds and show their constituents they did the best
job they could for the programs important to them. Special interest groups
might argue over priorities, but if they agreed (however reluctantly) with
the priorities, they couldn't hope to stick a different Congressman in next
year and get more money, because the whole system prevents any individual
from spending money that isn't available to spend.

It might even be easy to seel to the Congress. They no longer have to agree
on individual spending, they only have to agree on the process.

Some spending would still be inflexible. We couldn't put interest on the
debt on the budget and if revenues didn't come up to snuff, I would like to
see any excess deficit (in other words - any deficit bigger than that which
was planned) from last year always required to be paid off this year as the
highest priority item.

I would move most "entitlements" into the budget and eliminate cost of
living increases. I don't see any reason why social security recipients
should get an automatic cost of living increase when the working people (who
are, after all, paying for social security) don't get automatic cost of
living increases in their salary. Working people get salary increases when
their company can afford to give them one. Social security should work the
same way - you get an increase when the country can afford it (Yep - this is
also absolutely impossible to implement).
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