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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Lexington
Fun on a budget
Congress is incapable1 of restraining spending. It should let the president try
AT THE end of Barack Obama's budget, which was published on February 2nd, the administration thanks 614 people by name for putting the thing together. It adds that “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of nameless others also helped. There is something depressing about the effort that went into producing the document. The budget is an admirable piece of work which contains many good ideas, from cuts in farm subsidies2 to an increase in tax credits for childless workers. There is, however, a grammatical mistake repeated throughout it. “The budget will”, the president writes, when what he means is that his budget would, in the unlikely event that Congress were ever to pass it.
As a guide to what the federal government might look like if America were a monarchy3, or as a compendium4 of interesting policies, the president's budget is a good read—but not much more. A similar criticism applies to most proposals that come out of the budget committees in Congress. This is because no group or individual is responsible for the 4 trillion federal budget, a fact that helps explain how it manages to be both profligate5 and stingy, and is forever in the red.
The president's budget would not change that. He has declared an end to “mindless austerity”, but does not seem to care much for the thoughtful sort either. In previous budgets he offered to trim entitlements a bit in return for tax increases. Republicans in Congress rejected this, and Democrats6 who supported the president's budget were rewarded with attack adverts7 in the mid-terms claiming that they wanted to raise the retirement8 age and slash9 Medicare. He now proposes higher taxes, more spending and continued deficits11. Public debt would stay at its current level, around 75% of GDP, for the next decade. By 2025, according to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, annual interest payments would rise from 1.3% to 2.8% of GDP (nearly 800 billion, or enough to pay a year's tuition at Harvard, at current prices and with no financial aid, for 18m students).
Mr Obama's tax-and-spend priorities may be regrettable but they matter little in practice, because no president really controls how much his administration spends. The president's budget was an innovation of the 1920s. Before then, Congress set the budget as the Founders12, ever suspicious of a strong central authority, intended. This worked well until the civil war, when the federal government's principal peacetime duties were to run customs houses and post offices and to give away land. By the beginning of the 20th century the federal government had become much more complicated. The first world war increased federal spending from 726m to 18.5 billion in five years (17.2 billion and 253 billion in today's money.) In 1921 an overwhelmed Congress asked the president to submit a budget for the first time.
Since then every president has done so, but the exercise has become drained of meaning since Congress took power over the budget back. This evil can be traced to Watergate. Richard Nixon, worried about inflation and the deficit10, decided13 not to spend all the money Congress had appropriated. At one point he vetoed nine spending bills in one go. Congress took advantage of the scandal that was enveloping14 the president to reduce his control over federal spending in the 1974 Budget Act. Nixon duly signed the law in July and resigned the following month.
One of the new law's stated aims was to control the deficit, but it has had the opposite effect. From 1950 to 1974 the deficit averaged 0.7% of GDP; since Congress retook control it has averaged 3.2%. Part of the problem is that the budget Congress comes up with only covers a fraction of what the federal government actually spends. Over 1 trillion of tax expenditures—rebates on anything from mortgage-interest payments to health-insurance plans provided by companies for employees—are excluded. Another 2 trillion is off-limits because it is classified as mandatory15 spending. The staggering sums pumped into entitlement programmes (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) increase every year on the accounting16 equivalent of cruise control, with no need for a vote. Since the youngest of the baby-boomers are now in their early 50s, and since no politician would dare touch the benefits of those close to retirement, America's biggest generation has now protected itself from cuts to Social Security.
Bring back Dick
As entitlement spending has risen, it has squeezed the other bits of the budget. What remains17 is just over 1 trillion in discretionary spending: 6.5% of GDP, or less than a third of the total spent by the federal government. This is up for discussion every year. The resulting compromise is known as the budget, but that gives an inflated18 sense of what it really is.
According to textbooks the budget is a thing jointly19 agreed by both houses of Congress and then signed by the president by the end of September each year. This is how the budget has worked six times in the past 40 years. The rest of the time it has often consisted of last-minute negotiations20 to avoid a government shutdown or a breach21 of the debt ceiling. Agreement is reached only by putting off difficult decisions indefinitely. Attempts by well-intentioned super-committees and gangs of congressmen to get to something more thoughtful have come to nothing. This failure to steer22 the budget has been bipartisan. Since 1974 the federal government has run a deficit in all but four years, 1998-2001. Now that both the House and the Senate are controlled by Republicans the budget should be more orderly, but the process must be made to work when Congress is divided.
One solution would be to forgive Nixon and hand back some authority to the executive. Another would be to make the president's budget the default one unless Congress can agree, by a simple majority, on something else. That would stop the proliferation of no-compromise budgets, and would make a president content with a budget forever in deficit a figure from the past.
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1
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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2
subsidies
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| n.补贴，津贴，补助金( subsidy的名词复数 ) | |
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3
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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compendium
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| n.简要，概略 | |
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profligate
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| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
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democrats
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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7
adverts
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| advertisements 广告，做广告 | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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slash
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| vi.大幅度削减；vt.猛砍，尖锐抨击，大幅减少；n.猛砍，斜线，长切口，衣衩 | |
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deficit
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| n.亏空，亏损；赤字，逆差 | |
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deficits
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| n.不足额( deficit的名词复数 )；赤字；亏空；亏损 | |
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founders
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| n.创始人( founder的名词复数 ) | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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mandatory
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| adj.命令的；强制的；义务的；n.受托者 | |
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accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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inflated
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| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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jointly
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| ad.联合地，共同地 | |
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negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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