BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the Feehery Theory
The president’s top budget guy announced today that he’s leaving.
That should come as no surprise. After all, congressional Democrats announced that they weren’t going to do a budget this year anyway.
Who needs a budget?
Our country is doing fine financially.
Sure, we’ve got historically high debt to deal with. Sure, we have tax policy that is about to get a lot more interesting at the end of the year, when a bunch of tax provisions expire. Sure, we have Social Security starting to go broke quicker than anybody anticipated. Sure, we have a huge problem with chronic unemployment in the private sector and bursting employment in the public sector. Sure, almost every state seems like it is ready to belly-up financially.
Sure, we have all of those problems, problems that are all budget-related. But that doesn’t mean we should do a budget.
We don’t need no stinking budget.
Budgets require tough choices. Budgets require (at least notionally) that the numbers all add up. Budgets require leadership.