An End to Spending Excess?

An End to Spending Excess?

Steve Chapman
Chicago Tribune
Sunday, June 20, 2010

One of the reasons the federal budget is chronically in the red is that most people, historically, couldn't care less. The national debt is an unfathomable abstraction that doesn't show up on your 1040 or your monthly bills. Over the last few decades, very few people lost sleep worrying if the budget would ever be in balance.

Keynesian economics, as well as political incentives, argued for ignoring the issue. When times were good, we could afford to indulge. When times were bad, deficit spending was the accepted formula to stimulate the economy.

The voters' lack of concern enabled both parties to indulge their natural instincts. Democrats contributed by enacting costly new programs. Republicans did their part by cutting taxes. Fussbudgets who called for fiscal responsibility were treated like the adult chaperone on the college kids' trip to Cancun.

There was rarely a moment when it seemed imperative to live within our means. That's how the publicly held government debt rose tenfold from 1977 to 2008.

It's hard to believe now that during the 1990s, a Democratic president and a Republican Congress worked together to not only wipe out deficits but produce surpluses -- for four consecutive years.

That ended after 2001, with war and recession providing the Bush administration all the excuses it needed. Today, the Clinton-era discipline seems like an inexplicable fit of sobriety in a long-running bender.

But even incorrigible drunks sometimes hit bottom and realize they can't go on partying forever. They see that if they continue, they will throw away everything else they value. It can be enough to make them change their ways.

Maybe Americans are reaching that point when it comes to federal spending and taxes. After years of paying no attention to the national account books, they have had a glimpse of just how bad things are, and they've reacted with horror.

In a Gallup poll conducted last month, 79 percent of Americans said federal debt is an "extremely serious" or "very serious" problem -- more than any other issue except terrorism, with which it tied. A survey by the Pew Research Center found "the highest percentage volunteering the deficit as a top national problem in nearly two decades."

What brought this was the spending surge that began in 2008 under President George W. Bush and continued under President Barack Obama. After years of comparatively moderate irresponsibility, the government began spraying money with a fire hose -- on bank bailouts, insurance company bailouts, automaker bailouts and stimulus packages.

Between fiscal year 2007 and fiscal year 2008, the deficit nearly tripled, and the following year it tripled again. Citizens got the sense that we were no longer sliding toward bankruptcy; we were tumbling off a cliff.

As polling expert Karlyn Bowman of the conservative American Enterprise Institute puts it, "Cumulative sticker shock has set in." In March 2009, 52 percent of Americans endorsed Obama's handling of the deficit. Today, only 36 percent approve.

The consequence is growing resistance to spending initiatives. Even the Obama stimulus package was smaller than most liberal economists wanted. The president has been induced to propose a three-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending -- and congressional leaders in both parties have bought in.

His budget director has asked every federal agency to come up with cuts amounting to 5 percent of their outlays. Democrats had to cut back a proposed jobs bill, and even in shrunken form it got voted down Wednesday by the Senate. For the first time in quite a while, politicians are forced to trim their plans to match a public mood of frugality.

Does that signal a lasting skepticism about the expansion of government programs? Maybe not. Bowman tells me the historical pattern is that "when we think we and our families are doing OK, we seem to be more comfortable letting government do a bit more."

But the past is not always a guide to the future. The fiscal events of the last two years have been seared into the national consciousness in a way no previous spending binge has. For the foreseeable future, at least, there will be a heavy burden on those who favor more expenditures to justify them.

We have not reached a new era of consistent budgetary restraint. But it looks like the age of excess is over.

You know, that article could just as easily have been written about the economy of the UK and you'd need not change more than a few words here and there. In the early part of the Labour's government, we had a boom period the likes of which had never been seen before. This Thursday, George Osborne will deliver his first budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer with the largest deficit ever and having had already cancelled hundreds of millions of pounds of government spending commitments as enacted by Labour in the last few weeks of their government.

The excesses of the 90's and 2000's is catching up to us (and you).

The writer was correct... people just didn't give a flying fuck until everything went into the shitter here in the last two years. That's what's driving the Tea Party people. Getting rid of politicians of both parties that are hell bent on spending. Their are still who want to keep spending. We're looking at not many bills getting passed by election time because of those morns.

The one thing that really riled me about our election is the sheer volume of people that were going to vote Labour because they thought that the Tories would cut their benefits. And these are working people. It sickens me that people are just out for what they can get. The country and the economy can go down the pan so long as they still get their government handouts for having children.

Too many people have got used to getting too many benefits that they shouldn't have been dependent on and shouldn't really have needed in the first place. I'm all for benefits for people who genuinely need them though.

Damn, you sound like a right winger.

Yeah, that's what it's going to take here. The Democrats always say that the Republicans are going to take away Social Security. They even showed a commercial back when Bush ran for president showing an old lady in a wheel chair being pushed down a flight of stairs. That was below the pale.

But this is my whole point and argument and always has been. There's going to come a time where benefits have to be eradicated or decreased because you can't keep taxing people more and more to pay for the shit. California is a damn good example. City workers (union members even) make more money than many in the private sector that do similar jobs. And i mean they clean up. Their retirement is so huge that it's sickening. The unions broke California.

Now, i'm not saying unions shouldn't exist. Not at all. But they don't get to decide what they're going to get either.

The entitlement culture is alive and well in this country. I understand it, too. When you keep promising and giving away things, people are quick to jump on board.

It's the one thing i hate about the Democrat Party. They feel the need to keep creating more bureaucracy, more taxes, more spending and more entitlements. There's many things they believe in that i could get on board with but the things i just stated that i hate keeps me from ever being a member of that party. I've voted for them (individuals) but never in lock-step.

Well I don't actually have a problem with benefits generally whereas I think right wingers tend to. Hell, I needed them while I was unemployed and had student debts to pay back all the while applying for 20 jobs a week only to be told they wouldn't interview me because I was overqualified. I just resent people taking the piss. Going to the job centre, I could see that some people there had never had a job and had no intention of doing so. That pissed me off after the hard work I put in for five years at university and was being expected to justify myself to the people who worked at the job centre.

I just hate the blinkered attitude of some people that so long as they are okay, everyone else can go to hell. People who are working and earning good money do not need government benefits and if it means that they have to forego an occasional night out then tough.

While at University, I rented a room with a family. Both parents were professional, highly qualified and earning a lot of money. The father, though retired, still gave the occasional lecture at the university and because he was past retirement age he was entitled to a benefit called "Winter Fuel Allowance". It was supposed to be for people on the state pension who couldn't cope with fuel bills. He didn't need it, didn't want it, and when he phoned up to say so, he found there was no option to refuse "Winter Fuel Allowance". It is ridiculous just how much money is wasted on such needless benefits.

That's another thing; govt bureaucracy. The red tape is so thick that people who don't need benefits still get them whether they want them or not.

It's how i feel when i read articles in the Minneapolis paper about unemployment extensions. People are there saying that we unemployed are just riding the gov't coat tails which is furthest from the truth. Take the bennies away and there's still no jobs... how are these people going to survive? It's usually those who have secure jobs or probably retired and have their bennies coming anyway.

Believe me, I know that most people on unemployment benefits would rather not be on them. But unfortunately there are people who just want a free ride at everybody else's expense. This government will be cracking down on that and not before time.

I'd rather have a $500 check than a $163 check. I'm sick of it. It's been almost 18 months for me now. I'm really sick of it.

9 months for me, drove me mad in the end. I got that job at the right time.

You guys seem to have a light at the end of your tunnel. Not here.

Only if the coalition can hold it together. I think if they can survive the flak from this first budget, then they might just make it.

That will be the test. But what happens if it doesn't hold?

At this stage, one of two things. The Tories will go it alone in a minority government or they will call another election. But as this budget is the result of two parties working together, I can't see that the government is going to implode over it.

Naw, they'll both want to make it work out. It'll be beneficial to them also.

More so to the Lib-Dems who wouldn't be quick to dissolve the coalition. If this works out, they have a very real chance of replacing Labour as the major second party (or I should say, reclaim it from Labour).

That will be interesting to see if that happens. And if it does, i wonder if they'll drift more to the center. As they are now, i se them as further to the left than Labour.

Yes they are, but that is Labour's doing, not the Lib-Dem. Under Blair, Labour moved more toward the centre because their Socialist background had become completely unelectable. In the 1980s, traditional old Labour leadership in Michael Foote (now there's a Socialist! Compare him to Obama and tell me your President is a Marxist!) and Neil Kinnock were never going to win again.

The steady traditional liberalism of the Lib-Dem only became our furthest left party by virtue of the fact that Labour swung back too much the other way!

I've never said Obama was a Marxist anywhere or anytime. Just clarifying.

But yeah, i can see how that can change the situation over there. Hopefully, Democrats will reign in what they used to stand for instead of big gov't liberals. As it looks now, that isn't going to happen.

Yes, I know but it was aimed at certain other people who might consider him a Marxist.

I'm the only one in here who's conservative (not to be confused with a Republican). Who's gonna read what you said?

Look at the member list. There are certain people who have registered, yet not posted, who have called him a Marxist and certain other people who do not know the difference and do not want to know the difference.

Some of those haven't been here since though. Your one buddy registered back in May and that was the last time he was here.