Post #243,250
2/2/06 10:32:56 AM
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Unfortunately, there are ways around it.
E.g. [link|http://www.rules.house.gov/archives/96-996.htm|State Techniques to Blunt the Governor's Item-Veto Power] (from 1996): Legislators and legislative committees at the state level have used various tactics to counteract, blunt, or neutralize the governor's item-veto power. There's always ways around such things - especially when it's in the interests of the powerful members of appropriations committees to have the ability to specify funding for pet projects. Probably the best solution to the earmarks problem is a requirement for a balanced budget. But we know how popular that is... Cheers, Scott.
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Post #243,253
2/2/06 10:47:11 AM
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A balanced budget is bad fiscal policy
You really do want a government to run a deficit in bad years.
Think about it. In bad years it is the safety net for a lot of people. And tax revenues are going to be down because it is a bad year. That means that you lose money.
However you also want to run a surplus in good years so that it isn't a problem to run a deficit from time to time. (Which is the half that politicians like to ignore.)
So in the long run you want government's budget to balance. But it is a really, really bad idea to make it balance every year.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #243,260
2/2/06 11:03:53 AM
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As an absolute, yes.
I agree that the government needs to have tools to even out the business cycle, especially when a crash appears imminent.
However, one needs to have some mechanism to control spending. In other words, we need to have some definition of "bad years" and "good years". Or we need something like the EU's policy of having member countries [link|http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4119282.stm|commit to having budget deficits of < 3% of GDP]. Yes, it's fuzzy (Germany has gone over that limit, as have France, Italy, Portugal...), so it's no silver bullet either.
As it stands now, there's almost no constraint on spending by the federal government. The opposition party doesn't have the votes to impact the budget in Congress, and the president has never vetoed anything. Some sort of statutory requirement, with teeth, is needed. Even the Clinton-era [link|http://www.reason.com/rauch/021305.shtml|offsets] would help greatly.
Not that I expect it to happen any time soon.... :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #243,308
2/2/06 7:02:36 PM
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"Balanced over every 7 year period" could work.
Number randomly chosen to be fairly short but longer than most business cycles.
Ramping up by staying balanced from the start to the present. So the first year is balanced. The first + second are balanced and so on until the 8'th year.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #243,412
2/4/06 11:07:54 AM
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I like it.
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Post #243,263
2/2/06 11:22:11 AM
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Not an item veto
thats a different setup. WV and other states allow only 1 appropriation per bill. No need to line item veto...since there is only one line item.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #243,265
2/2/06 11:32:16 AM
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It mentions, in passing, cases like that. :-)
There are ways around that too: Some states take details out of public laws and place them in unofficial and informal documents, such as committee or subcommittee reports. The purpose of these documents is to give guidance to agencies on how a lump sum should be spent. Although the documents are advisory and legally non-binding, agencies normally comply. In Michigan, after the governor threatened to veto a provision granting a waiver for college tuition to Native Americans, the legislature rolled the funds into another account and reached an understanding with the agency head, by letter, that it use the funds to waive the tuition. There was no legislative language for the governor to veto. I'm sure there are similar things that can happen in WV. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #243,273
2/2/06 1:12:08 PM
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Sure. It does make it harder to do, though
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #243,421
2/4/06 11:50:28 AM
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Not really
Seems like the budgetory version of security through obscurity.
Those that know about the loopholes can abuse them, those that don't are abused.
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