For instance, how many of you realize that we have more than doubled the debt ceiling in just five years? In 2006 the debt ceiling was $8.2 trillion. Now with what's gonna end up happening here, the debt ceiling will be raised to $16.7 trillion. It's at 14.3 now. You would think that would qualify as news. And, of course, we're still not spending enough money for Obama. We're really being played for a bunch of saps, folks. We left the program talking about this yesterday in the context of the baseline, the way the budget is working. I have an even more shocking bit of news today to illustrate the baseline. For those of you that don't know what the baseline is and how baseline budgeting works, let me give you the real quick explanation of it. When you put together your budget, if you do one, you take last year's spending and income and you take a look at it and you figure out if you spent more than you had, or if you didn't spend more than you had, what did you do with what you had left over, where did it get spent.
If the next budget you prepare has to be smaller because your income's dropped, you start going through items, figuring out where you're going to cut. Your baseline is reality. Your baseline every year is reality. Your baseline is the amount of money you have to start with. That is not how it works in Washington. Baseline budgeting is based on the presumption that every item in the budget will automatically increase between three and 10% depending on what the item is, every year, regardless what happened in the previous year. This is why, for example, at the end of the year the agriculture department starts advertising for food stamp applicants because they want their budget to increase. So they don't look at the reality, and say, "You know what, we don't need this much money in this department. We have more money than we need. We don't have as many people needing food stamps as we have food stamps." They don't look at it and then cut back and tell the government, "You know what, you can cut us here." They will go out and give away food stamps in order to make sure they get that three to 10% increase. But that three to 10% increase every year becomes the starting point for every budget negotiation.
So, for example, when Obama passes the stimulus bill, another trillion dollars effectively is added to the baseline. No consideration is given to whether or not the money was spent wisely, wasted effectively or whatever. It was just spent. And because it was spent, there must be an increase in that line item every year. The way this manifests itself in Washington, the best way I have ever found to illustrate this is to put yourself in the situation where you're going to go buy a new car. You've looked at your budget, and you have decided that you can afford the monthly payment on a $40,000 car. So you go to the showrooms or you go to the Internet or you go wherever you look to buy a car, and you find a car you really love for $70,000 that the dealer tells you is on sale, that you can get it for 60.
So you and the family discuss it, and if you're like Washington, what you do is you tell yourself, "You know what? Let's get that $70,000 car that only costs 60, and we will save ourselves $10,000." But you haven't. You have spent $20,000 more than you originally allocated. You originally said you're gonna buy a $40,000 car, then you find one you really like for 70, on sale for 60, you plop down the 60, which is 20 more than you wanted to spend, and tell yourself you saved ten. That's how it works. That's baseline budgeting. That is how a cut or a saving is actually an increase.
Now, the best, most accurate illustration of where we are with the current baseline in the United States federal budget, I was sent a note from a legislative director of a member of the House of Representatives. I'm not gonna mention the name nor am I gonna mention the state. But trust me, it is a real person and of course it's a real state and it's a real legislative director. And here's the note: "One final thought to illustrate the absurdity of our baseline, and I'll leave you alone. If Speaker Boehner --" now, listen to me very carefully, folks "-- if Speaker Boehner were to propose that we simply freeze all government spending immediately, including mandatory and discretionary, meaning including the entitlements, if we just freeze everything and spend no more this year than we spent last year, the Congressional Budget Office would score that as a nine and a half trillion-dollar cut."
That's how out of whack the baseline is: A $9.5 trillion cut. Remember the $9 trillion figure we used at the end of the program yesterday. That is the cumulative total of automatic baseline increases for the next ten years. But if there's a simple budget freeze -- and of course there's not going to be. This is just an educational exercise. Again, now, this is not what is. It is how it is scored. If the Boehner plan were a simple freeze -- we're not going to spend another dime next year beyond what we spent this year -- it would equal a nine and a $9.5 trillion cut because the baseline in our budget obviously includes $9.5 trillion of new spending, minimum, over the next ten years.
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My Schedule of Regular Posts:
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day
*Monday through Friday throughout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.
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