Budget Math

Do you remember the movie Dave? Simple premise. The president of the U.S. has a heart attack while have sex with a women not his wife. Not an unusual theme ... that is a U.S. president having sex with a women not his wife. A historian friend of mine told me that not limited to the former president Clinton, every president since Calvin Coolidge with the exception of only Truman and maybe Carter each has had at least one extra marital affair while in office. With great power comes great benefits. So, Dave is hired to impersonate the president. Being a nice guy, Dave wants the money going to Washington to actually help some people without power. So, he brings in his friend the accountant and they make that happen. The conversations are great ... so rather than rewrite them ... just rent the movie. But, they make it happen because there is so much fat and excess it is easy. But that is Hollywood and we live in Reality Land.

Does anyone do the budget math or question the logic presented by people to elected office? Consider some of these questions.

The Federal budget includes over $532.8 billion dollars for the military. Yet, if you want that military to do anything it costs extra. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (which is in the Department of Energy budget), Veterans Affairs or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements, e.g. $120 billion in 2007). It costs extra to go to Afghanistan! It now costs over two billion ($2,000,000,000) dollars a week extra to bring democracy to Iran and Afghanistan and we can certainly see that it is money well spent!! What do we get for $532.8billion dollars and why does it cost an extra two billion a week to use the people and equipment that we are already paying for?

Second question, the Federal and state governments plus various individuals have sued the tobacco companies for selling their cancer-producing product. The suing parties have won billions of dollars. The only way the tobacco companies can pay the billions of dollars is to sell more cigarettes. The money being received by state governments is being used primarily to balance their strapped budgets. We are punishing the tobacco companies for producing their cancer producing product and the way the pay for their mistake is to sell more of that product to pay the billions to balance budgets. How does this reduce the numbers dying from cigarette smoke? Does this make any sense?

Third question, the state of California has a $38 billion dollar deficit. Their elected officials are going to balance that budget in part by borrowing $10 billion dollars. Did anyone take Budgeting 101? Borrowed money is not income. Therefore, the budget is not balanced. So why can’t the legislators and press say … “California legislation fails to balance its budget and will borrow $10 billion to cover the cash shortfall”?

Last question, the drug companies sell the exact same drugs in Canada that they sell in the U.S. Where is the Congressional hearing asking why that same exact drug costs five times higher in the U.S.? And, why did the same non working Congress pass a law that makes it illegal for the Federal government or any of its agencies to negotiate with those drug companies to get a lower price for the Feds since it buys billions of drugs?

Please contact me when you see these headlines or the buried article answering any of these questions.