Government Disdain for Taxpayers Should Stop and Truth Telling has to Start

When it comes to politicians and their disdain for taxpayers, the manner in which they conduct themselves pretty much says it all.

Our "public servants" do as they please and say whatever they choose to say. And they intend for what they say to mean whatever they say it means, regardless of how their words would be interpreted by reasonable and normal citizen taxpayers.

In other words, our elected officials frequently bend the truth, if not outright lie, and always try to make themselves look good, even when what they are saying is untrue and when what they are doing is harmful to our nation. And they've acted this way for a long time.

Finally, two prominent legislators have stepped forward in an effort to restore integrity to our political process. Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Jeff Sessions have proposed legislation called the "Honest Budget Act."

Refreshingly, the underlying reason for their efforts is also straightforward. But let's allow them to speak for themselves, as they do so eloquently in An End to Budgetary Trickery:

"Washington has produced three consecutive years of deficits in excess of a trillion dollars. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. In order to restore public confidence, create long-term job growth, and prevent a European-style debt crisis, we must rein in the explosive growth of the federal government. No more gimmicks, tricks or shell games. "

Sounding much like a U.S. congressman, Humpty Dumpty had this to say about words and their meaning, "When I use a word, ..... it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less." (Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll)

Snowe and Sessions are trying to put an end to our Humpty Dumpty ways in Washington. Concerning the need for truth telling, they say the following:

"'The whole art of government,' Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1774, 'consists in the art of being honest.' Yet Washington today relies on budget gimmicks to enable and conceal countless billions in federal deficit spending—skirting the rules and misleading the public.

That is why we have introduced the Honest Budget Act. It will strip away many of the most blatant and dishonest gimmicks—making it harder to spend money we don't have, and helping to confront the larger culture of fiscal corruption that is bankrupting the country and eroding public confidence in government.

The place to start is with the budget itself. For two years in a row, the Democratic-led Senate has failed to adopt a budget as required by law. Meanwhile, our gross national debt has climbed to almost $15 trillion—as large as our entire economy."

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the editorial is its candor. The senators say what many citizens intuitively know; that just like Humpty Dumpty, Washington politicians often don't mean what they say and don't say what they mean.

The senators cite four specific examples.

Emergencies.

(1) "• Emergency Spending. In recent years, Congress has added billions to the deficit by labeling routine expenditures as "emergency" spending, allowing lawmakers to skirt normal budgetary rules. For example, Congress included $210 million in "emergency" spending for the 2010 Census even though, since its ratification in 1788, the Constitution has required a census every 10 years. Under current Senate procedure, attaching the "emergency" designation to a measure is easy—it's simply tucked into the bill text by a single senator before the bill ever comes to the floor."

Pay Freezes?

(2) "• Fake Federal Pay Freezes. In November 2010, the president promised to institute a "two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers." He explained that "getting this deficit under control is going to require broad sacrifice." But 70% of civilian federal workers have continued to receive 2%–3% automatic "step" increases just for showing up—costing taxpayers an extra billion dollars every year."

Savings?

(3) "• Phony Rescissions. One of Congress's favorite gimmicks is to rescind, or cut, money that was unspent—or never going to be spent in the first place—and then use those "savings" to claim that increased spending elsewhere has been paid for. For instance, suppose $10 million has been appropriated to renovate a federal building that turns out to cost only $8 million. Instead of reducing the debt, Congress can rescind the $2 million difference (that never left the Treasury), and use it to increase spending by $2 million elsewhere. Thus, Congress can claim a bill that spends two million taxpayer dollars has no impact on the debt. Since 2005, Congress has used this gimmick on 12 occasions to increase spending by $29.5 billion by rescinding unused highway money previously authorized."

Cheating Budget Rules.

(4) "• Timing Shifts. The drafters of bills use this device to cheat the budget rules prohibiting legislation from increasing the deficit. By shifting expenditures or tax due dates from one period to another, legislation can appear to be deficit-neutral in the near-term when it really isn't. Since 2009, Congress has used timing shifts to claim $42 billion in bogus "offsets" that don't actually save money in order to increase spending and claim budget neutrality."

It's time that our politicians are held to a standard of leadership where saying what they mean and meaning what they say in plain and simple language is the norm. It's certainly not the way things work now.

Thanks. Bob.