Slashdot Mirror
Online Budget Database Planned by White House
prostoalex writes "The President of the United States feels Americans should be able 'to Google their tax dollars', and has signed a law that will create an online database to track federal spending. According to the Associated Press, the 'law is aimed preventing wasteful spending by opening the federal budget to greater scrutiny. The information is already available, but the Web site would make it easier for those who aren't experts on the process to see how taxpayer dollars are being spent.'"
Bush didn't push this, it was a broad, bipartisan coalition of Senators that pushed this through over the "secret holds" of pork-lovin' Senators from AK and VA, aided by bloggers of all stripes. Maybe he's into it too, but to give credit for this to the President when Sens. Coburn and Obama are its parents and originals is disingenuous to say the least.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
...thousands of Slashdot readers with severe cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) go into shock as the president does something they can't somehow link with the end of the world and everyone's freedoms.
GB2 has only ever vetoed one bill. He's a rubber-stamping president. (The one bill he did veto was about stem-cells and that had to do more with religion than anything else.) He doesn't deserve credit for any bill coming across his desk.
"The law calls for the Web site to go online by Jan. 1, 2008. It will list federal grants and contracts greater than $25,000, except for those classified for national security reasons."
So it doesn't contain all the budget details, but it is a good start.
For more information on the Federal budget, Google turns up this site.
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
Why do you think Senator Ted "The internet is a series of tubes" Stevens put a hold on the bill to create this website? (I only WISH I was kiding.)
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
The problem with the line-item veto is it makes it so that the President can approve laws that are different than the ones Congress approved. A bill usually represents a set of compromises between the parties, so if the President line-item vetoes parts of it, he's going to end up enacting a bill that violates the compromise that was struck in Congress, and some of the people in Congress would not have voted for had they known parts of it were going to be struck out by the President. In this way, the line-item veto violates the separation of powers and vastly increases the power of the Executive. Personally, I think the Executive is way too powerful already.
On the other hand, the practice of last-minute riders and amendments on bills stinks as well. Ideally, Congress people would be prohibited from attaching amendments to bills that are not directly related to the main subject matter of that bill, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
WHat marraige penalty? You file jointly, you get a bigger deduction. I don't see a penalty there. Oh, you want an even bigger deduction than you would have gotten alone? And why do you deserve that? Typical conservative spin- not getting a bonus deduction is now a penalty.
The actual penalty was more along these lines: A TWO income family, fileing jointly, got a smaller deduction than two independant people filing singly. About $600 less, on the standard deduction. All the "elimination of the marriage penalty" did was make the standard deduction for filing jointly exactly 2x the standard deduction for filing singly.
Of course, good luck if you're a bigamist with two wives....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Which view you choose to take is semantics. Personally, I define "Federal spending" as "how do they spend the money they take from me and my employer." So I would include SS and medical programs in my view of the Federal budget. Some people like to argue that SS and medical programs give money directly back to citizens. But then you open up all sorts of arguments about direct economic effects and indirect economic effects. It's really not worth arguing about since it's highly unlikely said argument will change anyone's minds. The numbers are all there once you add the SS, medicare, and medicaid figures. Just interpret them as you please.
No, 64% of the discretionary Federal budget is for military spending. Overall, it's closer to only about 17%, although I'm not sure that amount includes the "emergency" spending for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars or not.
Note that nowhere on that "graph" will you find monies allocated toward Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment/welfare, and paying the national debt. That alone accounts for the vast majority of government spending -- pretty much 1.8B of the 2.8B Federal budget (or nearly 2/3 if you prefer it that way).
That said, between "discretionary" and "non-discretionary", Defense is still #2 overall. So it's still big, but it's not 64% kind of big.
If you really want shocking, compare US Defense spending to other countries, or even the rest of the world's. Although raw numbers are somewhat misleading due to conversion rates, et. al. But even if you level it out with "parity purchasing power" kinds of numbers, it's still interesting.