Stan Collender
| May 15, 2012, Midnight
Unless the House decides to consider another makes-no-sense-and-has-no-effect bill such as the “reconciliation” bill it passed last week, the fiscal 2013 budget process essentially is over and done with until after Americans go to the polls in November.
Stan Collender
| May 8, 2012, Midnight
I only realized how angry I was about the cliff several days ago when I started to outline this week’s Fiscal Fitness. By the time I sat down to write it several days later, I was fit to be tied and needed to avoid anything that included caffeine.
Stan Collender
| April 24, 2012, Midnight
One of the things that always impressed me about the earliest days of the Congressional budget process — circa 1977-80 — was how quickly Members of Congress learned to use it to send messages.
Stan Collender
| April 17, 2012, Midnight
After almost two years of continuing expectations that the next budget-related opportunity is going to result in the “big deal,” we should all know and admit by now that when it comes to federal spending, revenues, the deficit and the national debt, dreams hardly ever come true.
Stan Collender
| March 27, 2012, Midnight
Many of the supporters of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's fiscal 2013 budget plan talk almost reverentially about a federal budget myth that should have been debunked a long time ago: the need to get the government back to historical averages on spending and revenues.
Stan Collender
| March 20, 2012, Midnight
With the temperature in the high 70s and even low 80s last week, what few wanted to admit out loud lest they tempt Mother Nature became just too obvious to ignore: Winter in and around Washington, D.C., is going to end this year without any significant snowfall. To say that we got one or two dustings overstates the amount we actually received.
Stan Collender
| March 13, 2012, Midnight
Pushed by their tea party wing, House Republicans are seriously considering a fiscal 2013 budget resolution that proposed to cut appropriations below the levels agreed to last August. The effort is a combination of ridiculous politics and infuriating brinkmanship that will accomplish nothing, or at least nothing positive.
Stan Collender
| March 6, 2012, Midnight
Even though it’s only the beginning of March and the budget process is just getting under way, “wait till next year” has already become the phrase of choice among budget watchers who want everyone to believe that next year will be the one when it all comes together.
Stan Collender
| Feb. 28, 2012, Midnight
Congressional Republicans have been adamant that reductions in the projected spending assumed in the federal budget baseline for projected continuing military activities in Afghanistan must not be used to offset the cost of anything. They’re not wrong in making this stand. They are, however, being astounding hypocrites in the process.
Stan Collender
| Feb. 21, 2012, Midnight
By last Tuesday — that is, by the day after it was released — you had trouble finding the Obama administration’s fiscal 2013 budget. Even in a city like Washington, D.C., the speed with which the Obama budget went from lead story to old news was impressive. It was also a great indication of what this year’s budget debate will be like.
Stan Collender
| Feb. 14, 2012, Midnight
The fact that President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget released Monday adds up mathematically is almost entirely beside the point. The real question — the one we’ll be debating all year — is whether it adds up politically.
Stan Collender
| Feb. 7, 2012, Midnight
The silly season — when ridiculous, reckless or just plan irresponsible budget-related plans or ideas are proposed and, sadly, often debated — typically doesn’t happen at the start of the year. This year is clearly different.
Stan Collender
| Jan. 31, 2012, Midnight
You would think that the deficit and national debt that many in Congress keep telling us are way too big would prompt a serious discussion about what should be done that has at least some prospect of actually succeeding.
Stan Collender
| Jan. 24, 2012, Midnight
This year’s almost three-week period between tonight when the president delivers the State of the Union address and Feb. 13 when the his fiscal 2013 budget is expected to be released will give the White House an enormous advantage in getting positive media coverage and will put Congressional Republicans on the defensive.
Stan Collender
| Jan. 17, 2012, Midnight
The 2012 budget debate in Washington is going to be vastly different from the one that took place in 2011.
Stan Collender
| Dec. 13, 2011, Midnight
The most striking thing about the continuing federal budget stalemate is that few seem to be willing to accept or even state out loud what should be obvious: Eliminating the deficit will impose some pain on most Americans.
Stan Collender
| Dec. 6, 2011, Midnight
Instead of a dreaded year-in-review column that, as I said last December, is mostly “a snooze,” Fiscal Fitness last year listed seven predictions for what would happen in 2011. I’m going to keep that policy alive this year for three reasons.
Stan Collender
| Nov. 29, 2011, Midnight
Most of the postmortem analyses of the super-bust committee’s entirely predictable but nonetheless impressive crash-and-burn last week so far has mostly been nothing more than after-the-fact spin by the participants.
Stan Collender
| Nov. 15, 2011, Midnight
Former Speaker and current GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich might well have said that he wants to kill his personal physician because he didn’t like being told his blood pressure was too high. But that’s the equivalent of what Gingrich did say during a recent debate, when he made it clear that the Congressional Budget Office has to be eliminated if health care reform is going to be repealed.
Stan Collender
| Nov. 8, 2011, Midnight
I predicted two things in the Sept. 6 Fiscal Fitness — the first published after the Budget Control Act was signed into law this past Aug. 2 — that are coming true faster than I, even on my most cynical days, would have dared to forecast.
