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Wessel - Red ink : inside the high-stakes politics of the federal budget

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In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget, Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the money was actually spent, and why the budget process has grown wildly out of control.

In a narrative about the people and politics behind the federal budget, Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel, author of the New York TImes bestseller In Fed We Trust, looks at where the money comes from, how the government spends taxpayers money, and why the budget is on an unsustainable trajectory. Few topics are more contentious or more consequential than the federal budget. For on thing, the numbers boggle the mind. The U.S. government spent $3.6 trillion in fiscal 2011--$400 million an hour--more than $30,000 per household. That is as much as all the goods and services produced by the entire economy of Germany, the fifth-largest economy in the world. In an account written for those who live outside the Beltway, Wessel explains the vast scope of the budget and puts its growth in historical context. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, federal spending stood at 4.3 percent of the GDP; today it is almost six times that, accounting for one dollar out of every four int he overall economy. He tells us, fro example: The U.S. defense budget is greater than the combined defense budgets of the next seventeen highest defense spenders; The federal government gives up almost as much money for tax loopholes, deductions, credits, and other tax breaks as it collects in individual and corporate income taxes; Firing every federal government employee wouldnt save enough even to cut the budget deficit in half. Next. he pulls back the curtain to show us where all that money goes, introducing us along the way to some of the key figures who help to shape the budget and guide policy over taxes and spending, from Jack Lew, former director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Presidents Clinton and Obama and current White House chief of staff, and Representative Paul Ryan to Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, and Leon Panetta, director of the OMB from 1993 to 1994 and current secretary of defense. Finally, Wessel walks us through the nuts and bolts of why current budget trends are unsustainable. As he makes painfully clear, Americas twentieth-century tax code cant support a twenty-first-century budget. Read more...
Abstract: In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget, Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the money was actually spent, and why the budget process has grown wildly out of control.

In a narrative about the people and politics behind the federal budget, Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel, author of the New York TImes bestseller In Fed We Trust, looks at where the money comes from, how the government spends taxpayers money, and why the budget is on an unsustainable trajectory. Few topics are more contentious or more consequential than the federal budget. For on thing, the numbers boggle the mind. The U.S. government spent $3.6 trillion in fiscal 2011--$400 million an hour--more than $30,000 per household. That is as much as all the goods and services produced by the entire economy of Germany, the fifth-largest economy in the world. In an account written for those who live outside the Beltway, Wessel explains the vast scope of the budget and puts its growth in historical context. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, federal spending stood at 4.3 percent of the GDP; today it is almost six times that, accounting for one dollar out of every four int he overall economy. He tells us, fro example: The U.S. defense budget is greater than the combined defense budgets of the next seventeen highest defense spenders; The federal government gives up almost as much money for tax loopholes, deductions, credits, and other tax breaks as it collects in individual and corporate income taxes; Firing every federal government employee wouldnt save enough even to cut the budget deficit in half. Next. he pulls back the curtain to show us where all that money goes, introducing us along the way to some of the key figures who help to shape the budget and guide policy over taxes and spending, from Jack Lew, former director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Presidents Clinton and Obama and current White House chief of staff, and Representative Paul Ryan to Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, and Leon Panetta, director of the OMB from 1993 to 1994 and current secretary of defense. Finally, Wessel walks us through the nuts and bolts of why current budget trends are unsustainable. As he makes painfully clear, Americas twentieth-century tax code cant support a twenty-first-century budget

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ALSO BY DAVID WESSEL In Fed We Trust Prosperity with Bob Davis - photo 1

ALSO BY DAVID WESSEL

In Fed We Trust

Prosperity (with Bob Davis)

Copyright 2012 by David Wessel All rights reserved Published in the United - photo 2

Copyright 2012 by David Wessel

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and crown and the Rising Sun colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wessel, David.
Red ink: inside the high-stakes politics of the federal budget / David Wessel.
p. cm.
1.BudgetUnited States. 2. Budget deficitsUnited States. 3. Deficit financingUnited States. 4. Debts, PublicUnited States. I. Title.
HJ2051.W427 2012
336.73dc23 2012011819

eISBN: 978-0-7704-3615-5

Illustrations by Nelson Hsu

Jacket design by Laura Duffy

Jacket photographs: Getty Images:

(corn) Burazin; (jet) Tim Ridley; (flag) C Squared Studios;

(stethoscope) Jules Frazier; (cart) James Worrell;

(food stamps) Brand X Pictures; (Capitol) Imagemore Co., Ltd.;

(prescription bottle) Don Farrall; (ship) Stocktrek Images

v3.1

FOR JULIA AND BEN

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 SPENDING 400 MILLION AN HOUR CHAPTER 2 HOW WE GOT HERE CHAPTER 3 - photo 3

CHAPTER 1
SPENDING $400 MILLION AN HOUR
CHAPTER 2
HOW WE GOT HERE
CHAPTER 3
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
CHAPTER 4
WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM
CHAPTER 5
WHY THIS CANT GO ON FOREVER
CHAPTER 1

SPENDING 400 MILLION AN HOUR I n the cold predawn darkness of Monday - photo 4

SPENDING $400 MILLION AN HOUR

I n the cold predawn darkness of Monday, February 13, 2012, Robert Friedlander walked into a Starbucks three blocks from the White House. As they had been instructed by email the night before, a half dozen reporters were waiting for himone each from Dow Jones, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, Politico, and the Washington Post. With no ceremony and not much conversation, the young White House budget office aide slipped each of them a CD in a plain, square white envelope. The contents: President Barack Obamas budget for the coming fiscal year. Its embargoed until 11:15, he said. Friedlanders inside-the-Beltway shorthand meant the reporters had about five hours to scour the documents before publishing stories on newswires and websites. At 11:15 a.m., the president was to begin speaking about the budget at a northern Virginia community college.

Every president since Warren Harding has been required by law to send an annual budget to Congress. Its the only time that the chief executive of the United States has to make his promises add up. The modern version comes in three formats: free online, $27 for the CD, or $218 for the printed four-volume paperback set. The budget is one part rhetoric by the party in power that highlightsdepending on the timesthe governments largesse or its tightfistedness. A second part details how the president would, if Congress went along, spend a sum equal to the value of all the goods and services produced by the 82 million people of Germany, the worlds fifth-largest economy. And in its modern form, a third part is dire prediction, a collection of uncomfortable, indisputable facts showing the unsustainable fiscal course the U.S. government is on.

The budget doesnt record what might have been. The document Obama released in February did not, for instance, acknowledge intense summertime talks the president had with Republican House Speaker John Boehner that failed to end a stalemate over spending and taxes. And for all its excruciating detail, the presidents budget doesnt ultimately settle anything; the Constitution gives Congress the power to tax and spend. But neither is presbudas its known to insiders on the congressional committees that decide how to spend taxpayers moneyirrelevant. The budget is the starting point for an annual round of maneuvering that ranges from high-minded debate about national priorities and hard choices to big-money lobbying and small favors for home-state constituents. The details buried in itwhich programs should live and which should die, which should get more and which should get lessoften become law.

Ultimately, the federal governments power comes in three forms: its physical force, both foreign and domestic; its ability to make and enforce rules that govern our lives; and its power to tax and spend. The budgetand this bookis about the third form. With far more precision than thirty-second sound bites or campaign stump speeches, the presidents budget and alternatives crafted by the opposition in Congress reflect contrasting visions for the size of government in America and the role it plays in the economy. How strong and generous a safety net should government provide to the poor? How much should taxpayers invest in medical research? How hard should government lean against market forces that are widening the gap between winners and losers in the economy? How much should spending be cut to rein in the deficit, and how much should taxes be raised, if at all?

Anyone in Washington who is serious about trying to steer the government to the right or to the left understands the power and import of decisions on taxes and spending embodied in the budget. Among them are Jack Lew and Paul Ryan, both steeped in fiscal details big and small. The two illustrate the competing visions for government and the use of the budget as an important, perhaps the only important, way to achieve them. As director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Lew, fifty-six, put the finishing touches on Obamas February plan just as the president named him White House chief of staff. Ryan, forty-two, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, promptly criticized the Obama budgetbroken promises, failed leadership and a diminished future, he saidand set to work on an alternative.

Jacob Jack Lew got his start in politics in 1968, at age twelve, as a volunteer for antiVietnam War presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. Lew has never run for office, but he has been at the elbow of influential Democrats from the late House Speaker Tip ONeill and New York congresswoman Bella Abzug to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. An Orthodox Jew who avoids working on Friday nights and Saturdays except when duty calls, Lew is truly convinced of the governments power to do good. When he took over the budget office, he replaced the portrait of Alexander Hamilton that had been hung by his predecessor, Peter Orszag, with paintings of his native New York City done by artists working for the governments Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.

Lew is tall and lanky, his thick black hair just beginning to gray and his oval wire-rim glasses exactly what one would expect of a budget wonk. But Lew, who also was budget director for Bill Clinton, is the sort of wonk who can say sincerely: I have a soft spot for Medicaidthe government health insurance program for the poor funded jointly by state and federal governmentsbecause its the thing thats easy for the political system to mischaracterize.

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