Public Budgeting With the Talk Essay

The problems with the budget are said to arise from politicians who are unable to make difficult decisions. The problem with these laws is that they do not explicitly force politicians to make those decision. GRH provides targets for the politicians to work towards, creating motivation, and the BEA provides a framework for penalizing inaction, but neither truly forces politicians to make the tough choices.

Real political solutions involve actually making those tough choices. This is not to discount the value of having these frameworks to guide the negotiations and hold Congress to the outcomes of those negotiations, but the negotiations themselves are the critical component to the budget problem. For example, if the sequester is initiated, Congress can follow it up with laws to build back some of those spending cuts, and it would likely do so quickly. There are no provisions in the BEA, for example, that call for Congressmen to be thrown from office if they fail to meet their negotiated actions. The incentives, therefore, while not worthless are not a solution unto themselves. These acts improve the political climate for making tough decisions, but since they do not make the tough decisions themselves, cannot truly be seen as a political solution to a political problem.

Perhaps most important to understand is that neither of these addresses the root problems of the budget deficit problem.The root problems reflect how spending priorities in the political system develop -- interest groups ranging from the American people to specific industries want specific government spending and government has failed to show restraint in managing these claims. These laws do not truly provide a solution to the problem of how spending decisions are made, instead applying frameworks and punishments ex post facto. Even if the problems are addressed one year, they can re-emerge the next year when politicians give in to lack of restraint once again. So these acts are not truly political solutions, but band-aids to help create a better climate for political solutions to emerge.

Works Cited:

Bancroft Library. (2011). 1985 Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act. University of California at Berkeley. Retrieved November 28, 2012 from http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/projects/debt/1985grammrudmanhollings.html

Mitchell, D. (1989). Sequestration Gramm-Rudman's potent weapon for spending restraint. Cato Institute. Retrieved November 28, 2012 from http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/sequestration-grammrudmans-potent-weapon-spending-restraint

Reischauer, R. (1993). CBO Testimony. Congressional Budget Office. Retrieved November 28, 2012 from http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/103xx/doc10382/1993_05_13reischauertestimony.pdf

Sahadi, J. (2012). What's in the fiscal cliff? CNN. Retrieved November 28, 2012 from http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/08/news/economy/fiscal-cliff/index.html.....