18 quotes
That’s another problem with budgeting: the public makes woefully wrong assumptions about virtually every aspect of it.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
Eliminating the federal workforce entirely would have pared the federal budget deficit in 2011 by only one-third.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
In classical tragedy, this is known as the denouement. In Washington, it could be just farce.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
The overarching lesson: Bringing the deficit down to sustainable levels takes big changes. Little ones won’t do it.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
Today, the idea that a president could appeal to a mixed-party center to win approval of any measure seems as quaint is a typewriter.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
Adjusted for inflation, the federal government spent more on Medicare and Medicaid in 2011 than it spent on everything in 1960.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
“Everyone thinks there’s a lot, but there’s nothing that a majority wants to cut. The average person doesn’t want less government. They just want the government to cost less.”
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
No one really knows how much the U.S. government can borrow before global investors get uneasy and begin to demand higher interest rates.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
“Tax reform”—the always popular, always politically treacherous goal of making the tax code simpler and smarter—“is really difficult when you can’t throw money at it. Losers always squeak louder than winners cheer.”
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
Panetta summed up Reaganomics in a single sentence: “A significant tax cut was enacted at the same time that defense spending went up and…entitlement programs were also expanding.”
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
The share of income most American families pay in federal taxes has been falling for more than thirty years. Today, Americans pay less of their income in taxes than citizens of nearly every other developed country.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
In all, $1 of every $5 the federal government spent in 2011 went to defense, and about 20 cents of that $1 was spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
Bush was elected in 1988 with one memorable promise: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Republican poster Richard Wirthlin once called them “the six most destructive words in the history of presidential politics.”
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
In a city riddled with dysfunctional institutions, the CBO has become one of the few organs of Congress that actually work. It is the arbiter of facts, a call-it-as-we-see-it outfit that is viewed as largely immune to political pressure.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
In the high-volume debate over taxes, facts about basic issues—who pays? how much? who doesn’t?—often get lost, twisted, or distorted. Perhaps the most salient and overlooked fact is this one: for most Americans, federal taxes have not risen over the past couple of decades.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
“From the mid-1930s to the 1970s, the government made a set of commitments that led to expectations on the part of the American people about what their government owes them,” says Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “And they are totally unprepared to go back to a different world.”
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
The 1980s broke a pattern in which the federal government ran big deficits only in wartime. The deficit topped $200 billion a year from 1983 through 1992. They would have been even bigger if Reagan hadn’t flinched on taxes, accepting significant tax increases in 1982 and 1984.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)
Except for four unusual years at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the federal government has spent more than it took in every year for the past four decades. It borrows the difference, essentially promising that taxpayers in the future will pick up the tab for government spending today.
Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)