A Diet for Congress

As Congress contemplates the budget, I offer a not very humble suggestion.

I constantly fight my weight.  How about you?  I live an active life, but I am nowhere near my fighting weight (and I’ve got a fight or two left in me) so I work at my diet constantly.  The rules are simple: calories in minus calories burned equal weight gained or lost.  Science and practice both tell me that the key is actually the calories “in” part.  Successful diets (the ones you can stay with for a lifetime) involve changing our eating habits so that we are (1) mindful of how many calories we are taking in and (2) disciplined enough to do something about it. 

There is also an element of reality here.  I know that I like a drink in the evening.  If that means sticking to fruit and salad during the day I don’t whine about it.  If I want fettuccini Alfredo, fine, but the rest of my caloric intake that day is going to be mighty skinny. 

I am making choices.  The pounds are receding by ounces.  It is slow and irritating and I blame myself.  But, this is MY weight and my health and, in the end, my choice.

This government, which is also mine (and yours, and ours) is also in need of a diet.  It got to its bloated, unhealthy, stagnating size the same way I did.  It got fat a little at a time, never with obesity as its goal and always with the best intentions. 

I have such a diet, but first, a dose of reality.  Our US budget involves much that we cannot control.  Just as I need a certain number of calories to keep above ground, so does the country.  Of every dollar you give the government, about 60 cents is headed for mandatory spending (Medicare, Social Security, entitlement programs to which you are “entitled” simply by meeting the criteria); about 8 cents is needed to pay the interest on money we owe.  That leaves 32 cents in discretionary spending. 

For the year 2015 the United States budget was $3.4 Trillion dollars.  How do you diet away numbers that big?  First you admit you have a problem.  Then you decide not to gain any more weight, which is a huge step toward actually losing those excess pounds.

Try this on for size.  If we take the 2015 budget ($3,400,000,000,000) and divide it up among the 435 voting members of the House of Representative it gives each member $7,816,091,954 to spend any way they like.  Granted, of that almost $8 Billion dollars, $4.6 Billion has to go to mandatory spending (and if they don’t like that they can start working on those formulas!) and $625 Million have to go to interest, but that still leaves $2.5 Billion per Representative to be spent any way they wish. It can all go into one pot, or be divided any way he/she wants.  But when it is gone, it’s gone.

This plan starts imposing discipline and choice making on the legislature.  It does not cut anything, it simply keeps the budget from growing.  [Keep in mind that when a legislator says they are “cutting” a budget, they really mean they are cutting the growth in that budget, not the base amount.]  The Senate will argue the points in reconciliation, but they do that anyway.  The sum dollars debated stays the same.

Count those calories; make those choices; lose that weight.  Be a lean, mean fighting machine and keep the faith.