A MORE RATIONAL APPROACH
(for resolving budgetary woes)

Our Federales, more than half of our States, and many Counties, and Cities, are either broke, or, in such dire financial straits, they can barely afford to provide the basic services they are supposed to provide us.

From Alaska to Florida, Maine to California, and almost everywhere in between, it’s the same story….they have to cut this….they have to eliminate something else. It’s not a situation that just developed yesterday. It’s a reckoning, perhaps long overdue, for years of operating and spending like credit card junkies, spreading a flu-like epidemic of budgetary woes across the entire country.

Frankly, I don’t have much sympathy for any of them, especially for the taxpaying voters who’ve allowed our career politicos to have a free hand that way for all those years. Sorry, folks, but if anyone is really to blame for today’s situation….it’s not the blankety-blank Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, or Republicans….it’s US…the taxpaying voters…who failed to demand fiscal discipline, all because we were just too busy enjoying the supposedly “free lunches” that kind of spending gave us. Of course, there are no “free” lunches, so now we’re getting stiffed with the bill for them. Bitching and moaning about it, yapping about “greedy rich” corporations, etc., just won’t cut it. It’s time to suck it up, roll up our sleeves, and come up with a more rational approach….for resolving our budgetary woes….and fixing the system so that we don’t end up in another bad situation….further years down the road.

As previously suggested in Issue No. 14, I proposed a system that just might do that for us, putting our country back on a right track for solvency instead of bankruptcy, along with a system that might give us better accounting and transparency for our public finances.

To start, we have to consider the fact that the Founders of our republic designed a three-way structure of governance for it. That is, by separating powers between an Executive, a Judiciary, and a Legislative branch for that purpose; and, how that structure flows all the way through from the Federal, to the State, down to local jurisdictions. At every level, it is the same, only scope and size is the difference between them.

That being so commonsense, if not logic, suggests that our budgetary system should parallel the same three-way structure. That is, there can only be three slices made to any revenue pies, at any level. The only question about that being what the proportionate size of each of those slices might generally be. On the basis of function alone that should be…. about 65% or so for the Executive …. about 20% for the Judicial….and more or less 15% for the Legislative. Such a slicing calculation isn’t absolute, but it seems to be a fairly reasonable starting point for consideration.

The attached schematic may better illustrate how such a system might give us a more transparent system; and, a better idea of from where and how tax revenues are being applied. The key to that being to show not just dollar amounts allocated, but their respective percentages of the whole besides. Even more important, it would give us a more effective way to diffuse any deficits throughout the whole structure, rather than on specific items or programs, in any fiscal year. Similarly, any surpluses would be distributed in the same way.

And if, as also previously mentioned, we also insisted on at least semi-annual fiscal year balance sheets and profit and loss reports from every budgetary level, we taxpaying voters soon would have a clearer picture of how our elected officials are handling our tax dollars. That may not completely eliminate their wasting and mismanagement of those tax dollars, but it would certainly put a check-rein on their spendthrift habits It  certainly would be an improvement over what we have right now.

Well, we can only hope that, somewhere in this favored land of ours, there is some kind of political leadership willing and able to consider such ideas.

Meanwhile, I’m still scanning the starry skies for a passing Martian space ship….to ask for political asylum.

CENTURION