When did earmarks become a central issue, PC?
Are you actually pretending that you don't understand the connection between deficits, that lead to debt, and how pork and earmarks are what increases deficits???
mmmm....earmarks amount to
one-fifth of 1 percent of federal spending....
Interestingly....since they originated with the practice of actual marks farmers put on their pigs ears to identify them at market...there is something delightfully pignacious in the use of that designation along with the whole idea of political pork and boss hogs
Does that mmmmmm thing work for you?
Like so many things in life, Wiley, we never really get the full story....
from your link "In most cases, earmarks dont add ..."
Now what could that mean?
It could mean that whether you call it pork or earmarks or gimmicks or 'accounting procedures,' you will never get a true picture of what the pols are doing.
Consider the following:
1. It should be enlightening, here, to explore
accounting procedures
one of which is known as the
Unified Cash Basis Budgeting. Just as with any one of us who writes a check, it is recorded as an expense, and when we receive a check, it is listed as income. Generally, government treats budgets in the same way.
U.S. GAO - Search :: "Cash basis accounting"
a. So, a deficit means that the government spent more than it received during a specific fiscal year.
b. Now, think about this: using the cash basis method, you plan for a vacation in January by taking a $2,000 loan in December. This will appear as an asset in your bookkeeping- even though you will be obligated to repay this loan: it is actually a liability! This is exactly the situation that allowed Clinton to raid the Social Security Trust Fund, and claim this as revenue, even though it is an obligation to pay in the future. Beck, Balke, Broke, p. 172.
c. Now, watch the
sleight-of-hand: using the money received now as revenue, even though it is supposed to be for paying future benefits!
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05958sp.pdf
It is the Social Security surplus that helps offset the huge deficits!
d. So, by this method we can pencil it in when cash is paid: it gives a picture of finances at a given moment
but fails to account for resources used but not yet paid for. Retirement costs of employees? No! This is the method used by the CBO for budgeting purposes.
The federal budget: politics, policy ... - Google Books
e. This is the preferred method to use
if you wish to convince folks that things arent as bad as they really are.
2.
The Modified Accrual Basis Budget is more accurate, in that it measures inciome and expenses when they are actually earned or incurred, when the transaction is actually agreed to: buy two steaks, and pay on the spot. This method gives a longer-term view of all obligations, as well as resources used that year. But
it
doesnt show how much has to be borrowed for that years activities.
a. This method takes into consideration the cost of retirement benefits of federal employees; the method is generally used by private-sector corporations and businesses, as well as
the federal government, for reporting- but not for budgeting.
b. This method does not include expected tax revenues, since it is difficult to estimate same
so it is not accounted for until it is officially collected.
3. The federal government uses both methods, as well as
several other financial statements. But even this totality
makes it difficult to account for long term commitments that include Social Security and Medicare. (Thus, some of those other statements).
No. 282: Federal Government 2009 GAAP-Accounting
4. In addition to the above methods of calculation, there are other factors that allow
the flim-flam: the influence on the annual deficit of three major
off budget items: Social Security payroll taxes, Social Security benefit payments, and the net balance of the US Postal Service. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05958sp.pdf
a. And, if you dont think that the reporting is made
purposely confusing, the costs of running the Social Security Administration (SSA) are on budget, making it
almost impossible to match the costs of administration with the revenues taken in.
b. The
total federal deficit is the sum of on-budget deficit and off-budget deficit. But, get this, the surplus of Social Security payroll taxes is called an off-budget surplus, is put in the Social Security
Trust Fund, which is then lent to the government
which uses it as revenue!
c. Imagine you put away $5,000 every year for forty years, for retirement, but every year you lent yourself $5,000 to go on vacation- what would you have at retirement? Forty I.O.U.s.
d. So, one of the usual accounting
tricks is what we call double counting: they treat it as income and use it while pretending it is there for future benefits.
5. By designating legislation
emergency, the legislation can avoid many of the normal budget rules, and, instead, enter the supplemental appropriations process. Realize, the process is designed for events like wars and natural disasters
but each year over the last tw-and-a-half decades, Congress and the President have enacted between one and eight supplemental bills, rnging form $1.3 billion in FY 1988 to $120 billion in FY 2007.
http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/Budget_Gimmick_WP1030.pdf
a. And, of course,
pork projects always get added. For instance, the War Supplemental Appropriations Act (2003) appropriated $348 million
for 29 projects unrelated to the war, such as $110 million for the National Animal
Disease Center in Ames, Iowa. The Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for
Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief (2005) contained $1.13 billion
for projects that had nothing to do with defense or tsunami relief, including $55 million
for wastewater treatment in De Soto County, Mississippi and $25 million for the For Peck Fish Hatchery in Montana. Ibid.
6. And the pols use the calendar, If the payout is due toward the end of a fiscal year, cutting the checks a few days later, in
the next fiscal year, makes the bottom line look better.
7. Check this one out: David Stockman, Reagans budget director, invented
the magic asterisk which he added when he couldnt justify expenditures: it included the phrase Future saving to be identified. An asterisk that made billions of expenditure disappear!
More David Stockman Magic Asterisk Blogging - Grasping Reality with Both Hands
8. And
if a new program is far too expensive to reveal, use the Healthcare gambit: get OMB to calculate the costs over 10 years, but dont set the program to begin for two or three years, essentially costing for seven years. They did this Medicare Part D, 2003, which didnt fully phase in until 2006. This gave it the expense of only $395 for ten years
but it is now estimated to be $952 billion for the next ten years, or an unfunded $7.2 trillion over seventy-five years.
These are some of the reasons that folks can obfuscate with 'when did earmarks become an issue,' or 'earmarks are only 1%' of spending....
They do not want you to know what is being spent, and once you figure out the above, they will institute new names and categories...
Look at the national debt: see if you can figure out why it never goes down.
Now, if you want to say "But not all of that is earmarks"...then this post is not for you.
