soonercoop1
7/27/2011, 05:18 PM
It's time to end the false and misleading advertising in the budget. Congress should be required to use this year's actual spending total as the baseline for the next year's budget. If Congress spends more next year than it did in the current year, it is increasing the budget; if it spends less, it is cutting it.
"A 4.5 percent increase in spending on the School Lunch Program is a budget increase, not a budget "cut." Baseline budgeting is a fraud. Lee Iacocca once stated that if business used baseline budgeting the way Congress does, "they'd throw us in jail."
-Baseline budgeting is a method of developing a budget which uses existing spending levels as the basis for establishing future funding requirements. The concept assumes that the organization is generally headed in the right direction and only minor changes in spending levels will be required. The baseline is normally enhanced by adding adjustment factors based on issues such as inflation, new programs, and anticipated changes to existing programs.
The genesis of baseline budget projections can be found in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. That act required the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to prepare projections of federal spending for the upcoming fiscal year based on a continuation of the existing level of governmental services. It also required the newly established Congressional Budget Office to prepare five-year projections of budget authority, outlays, revenues, and the surplus or deficit. OMB published its initial current-services budget projections in November 1974, and CBO's five-year projections first appeared in January 1976. Today's baseline budget projections are very much like those prepared more than two decades ago, although they now span 10 years instead of five.
"A 4.5 percent increase in spending on the School Lunch Program is a budget increase, not a budget "cut." Baseline budgeting is a fraud. Lee Iacocca once stated that if business used baseline budgeting the way Congress does, "they'd throw us in jail."
-Baseline budgeting is a method of developing a budget which uses existing spending levels as the basis for establishing future funding requirements. The concept assumes that the organization is generally headed in the right direction and only minor changes in spending levels will be required. The baseline is normally enhanced by adding adjustment factors based on issues such as inflation, new programs, and anticipated changes to existing programs.
The genesis of baseline budget projections can be found in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. That act required the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to prepare projections of federal spending for the upcoming fiscal year based on a continuation of the existing level of governmental services. It also required the newly established Congressional Budget Office to prepare five-year projections of budget authority, outlays, revenues, and the surplus or deficit. OMB published its initial current-services budget projections in November 1974, and CBO's five-year projections first appeared in January 1976. Today's baseline budget projections are very much like those prepared more than two decades ago, although they now span 10 years instead of five.