Posted by Tina
It’s difficult for the average citizen to get a handle on how our tax dollars are spent and how our debt keeps skyrocketing year after year. Yet we should know. In fact our government should be held to the same fiscal standards that we expect of companies. The past eight years have not been easy to track but Sundance over at The Conservative Treehouse has done a fabulous job of unpacking the irresponsible and unpatriotic Obama years. He begins by reminding us that the last time a budget was passed by Congress and the president was in September of 2007 by President George W Bush for fiscal year 2008. We have not had a budget passed since then even though the law requires it. Our money has been poorly managed through continuing resolutions, raises in the debt ceiling, and “unfettered” spending. This is how it went down:
Absent of an actual federal budget, all spending falls under a process called base-line budgeting to determine allocation. Federal distribution of the money within the continuing resolution, is essentially a year-over-year expenditure with a statutory increase based on inflation. Essentially, whatever was spent in 2009 was respent in 2010 along with a little bit more. What was spent in 2011 was a little more than ’10, and so forth.
In February 2009 congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, commonly referred to as Obama’s stimulus plan. The stimulus was just shy of one trillion ($986 billion +/-).
At the time of passage this single stimulus expenditure reflected a growth of approximately 20% in total federal spending. The spending went directly into the deficit.
Approximately 30% of that “one time” trillion dollar stimulus was spent in 2009, the remaining 70% was spent in 2010. (*note fiscal years run from October 1st to September 3oth annually).
However, absent a federal budget -and because of baseline budgeting- it became a repeated expenditure in each of the following fiscal years.
The $1 Trillion Stimulus was spent eight more times.
Remember the the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was supposed to be a one time stimulus to jump start the economy. Shovel ready jobs (Infrastructure) were the promised good idea to get the job done but it was a cheap trick as many of Obama’s policies turned out to be. A big chunk went to education to shore up teachers salaries and pensions. The Department of Energy and EPA got a chunk for corporatist projects like Solyndra. In the later years money was spent propping up Obamacare, which would have collapsed earlier if not for the extra trillion at Obama’s disposal. Money was spent also to fool the people…how about that stock market…when in actuality we’ve had “structural financial collapse.”
Republicans in Congress are responsible for this egregious spending. Unfortunately they didnlt have the stomach to shut down the government, nor the platform or ability to explain to the American people what was going on. So where do we go from here? Sundance has the answer:
When President Trump takes office on January 20th, 2017, he will have to present a budget proposal to congress by March 31st. However, assuming congress goes through the budgetary process, that Trump budget proposal doesn’t kick into action until October 1st of 2017, the first day of 2018 fiscal year.
Congress will need a plan to fund government between April 1st and September 3oth…keep your eyes peeled, it’s our job now to hold them accountable.
The Trump transition team is faced with filling and estimated 4000 positions. He would do well to eliminate 2000 of those positions in his first year in office.
I’d rather he have the 4,000 to work on eliminating 70,000+ workers at the IRS, EPA, Dept. of Education, VA, etc., etc……
Tears, angst as workforce braces for Trump takeover:
“U.S. EPA employees were in tears. Worried Energy Department staffers were offered counseling. Some federal employees were so depressed, they took time off. Others might retire early.
And some employees are in downright panic mode in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory.
“People are upset. Some people took the day off because they were depressed,” said John O’Grady, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents thousands of EPA employees. After Election Day, “people were crying,” added O’Grady, who works in EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago. “They were recommending that people take sick leave and go home.”
Trump has even suggested abolishing the agency entirely, although that would be an uphill political climb. Trump has picked a top climate change skeptic to lead his EPA transition team — Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute — and has promised sweeping reforms in the agency that’s long been a target for industry groups and Republicans who say its rules overreach.
Some DOE employees are feeling glum, too.
“I think it’s a sadness and a worry about just how far someone will go, especially when you never believe anything he says,” said one longtime Energy Department employee. “Many of us have worked in both the Bush and the Obama administrations, and I don’t think that we feel like it will be like just going back to Bush again.”
The DOE employee added, “We know that now more than ever, it is important to do whatever we can to do a good job in the areas that we care about. … What we can do is not lose sight of whatever ideals brought us to this work in the first place.”
One Fish and Wildlife Service employee witnessed “business as usual” after the election, although, “obviously, there was some surprise.”
Most federal employees “will work for whomever is elected,” that person said. “That’s just part of what I’ve always believed, that we should not be extremely emotional about it, certainly not in our public life.”
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060045642
Really good article Tina. It did a great job of explaining. in part, the fiscal mess we’re in. I wish they hadn’t used some of the pictures so I could share it with my liberal friends. But, the one of Obama “shooting up” is over the top and even offensive to me.