So we hit the debt limit...

[grumbler]

Also, this may be a dumb question, but if you can't find enough ways to reduce the expenses, how about, you know, doing it the way all normal countries do, and raise taxes?

It is a dumb question.  There are two possible ways to reduce deficits:  reduce spending, and increase revenue.  There are ways to reduce spending until the deficit is manageable, there are ways to increase revenue until the deficit is manageable, and there are ways of combining spending reductions with revenue increases until the deficit is manageable.  "All normal countries" don't attack deficits by raising taxes.  Taxes will certainly be increased in the US as part of the deficit reduction strategy.  The question of how much of the deficit reduction will come from revenue increases and how much from spending reductions is what the US political system is now working out.

[crazy canuck]

Is there any movement in the US to make your budgetary process work better.

The budgetary process isn't really the problem; the problem is that the political system as a whole is designed to require political compromise.  That is fine in concept but breaks down if there are enough individual officeholders for whom compromise is anathema.

But isnt that a weakness then in your budgetary process - that it requires reasonable people on all sides?  In our system the opposition can flail away as much as they want for dramatic effect and hope they can make hay at election time.  But they cant hold the country to ransom.

Did you suddenly forget about the last 6 years of minority rule?

No, I had that in mind as a good point of comparison.  At no point could the opposition hold the Country to ransom.  They only thing they could do was force an election if they dared to do so.  And when they did look where that got them.

[citizen k]

Also, this may be a dumb question, but if you can't find enough ways to reduce the expenses, how about, you know, doing it the way all normal countries do, and raise taxes?

It is a dumb question.  There are two possible ways ...

Marty still won't get it.

[grumbler]

I think what CC means is that in many countries (for example, Poland) you have special constitutional rules for the budget. Stuff like fast track voting, limited ability of the Parliament to add items to the budget proposed by the cabinet, or a right of the Head of State to dissolve the Parliament if the budget is not approved by a certain date.

Such rules would be not only unnecessary, but pernicious, in a non-Parliamentary system which uses separation of powers as part of a system of checks and balances

[crazy canuck]

I think some of our northern neighbors just don't get the system of checks and balances (having nothing like it except by tradition), and think it is a major flaw in the US constitutional arrangement.  I don't really blame them; they are conditioned to think of the government of the majority as all-powerful.  The US system of government was set up to avoid the flaws of the British system, and ended up with some flaws of its own, but I still think it works far better than a Parliamentary system in most areas.  In budgeting, maybe not so much.

I think some US citizens think too highly of themselves and their system.

[crazy canuck]

I think what CC means is that in many countries (for example, Poland) you have special constitutional rules for the budget. Stuff like fast track voting, limited ability of the Parliament to add items to the budget proposed by the cabinet, or a right of the Head of State to dissolve the Parliament if the budget is not approved by a certain date.

Such rules would be not only unnecessary, but pernicious, in a non-Parliamentary system which uses separation of powers as part of a system of checks and balances

Yep, the best evidence shows your system works perfectly.  How many days from default are you?

[grumbler]

I think some US citizens think too highly of themselves and their system.

Some do, just as some Canadians do.  That's one of those "duh" observations I wouldn't have thought needed to be articulated.

[grumbler]

Yep, the best evidence shows your system works perfectly. 

Disagree.

How many days from default are you?

About seventeen years, if I lost my job tomorrow and didn't cut expenses.

[Admiral Yi]

I assumed this is just rolled over.

Debt service is a flow, not a stock (like national debt).  So whenever principle comes due, you need money to pay it off.  Whether that comes from revenue or borrowing is irrelevant.

[The Minsky Moment]

It seems to me your system works pretty well outside of budgetary matters.  For example you have sub-committees that seem to work in a number of areas.  As an outsider looking in it seems that the sub-committee system isnt really used for budget creation.  Instead you get people taking hard positions and then only meeting at the last minute.

Sure the committee system is used for the budget.  There is an appropriations committee and a bunch of subcommittees covering each major department.  But at the end of the committee processes there has to be an agreement that can survive conferencing and get signed.  This budget isn't being held up because of procedural delays in reporting bills in the like.  It is being held up because of the difficulties in surmounting the final stage of assembling a majority on a bill that the President will sign.

[grumbler]

Sure the committee system is used for the budget.  There is an appropriations committee and a bunch of subcommittees covering each major department.  But at the end of the committee processes there has to be an agreement that can survive conferencing and get signed.  This budget isn't being held up because of procedural delays in reporting bills in the like.  It is being held up because of the difficulties in surmounting the final stage of assembling a majority on a bill that the President will sign.

More than that:  you have authorization committees and subcommittees that have to authorize before appropriators can appropriate.  The various budgets are committeed to a fare-thee-well; far more so than any other legislation I can think of.

[Malthus]

It's a weakness of the entire constitutional architecture, nothing specific to the budgetary process.  The budget, because it involves the lawmaking process, has to conform to the general rules that apply for all legislation

I think some of our northern neighbors just don't get the system of checks and balances (having nothing like it except by tradition), and think it is a major flaw in the US constitutional arrangement.  I don't really blame them; they are conditioned to think of the government of the majority as all-powerful.  The US system of government was set up to avoid the flaws of the British system, and ended up with some flaws of its own, but I still think it works far better than a Parliamentary system in most areas.  In budgeting, maybe not so much.

Maybe some do, but CC seems to understand 'em just fine: in fact, you both agree - your system, while it may be admirable overall, does not work so very well in the area of budgeting, and so perhaps it would be best in this specific context to introduce modifications (without thereby in any way conceding that the US system is not superior, of course - I cannot blame folks in the US for justifiable pride in their system overall, obvious though its disfunction in this particular case may be to the entire world). 

[alfred russel]

It's a weakness of the entire constitutional architecture, nothing specific to the budgetary process.  The budget, because it involves the lawmaking process, has to conform to the general rules that apply for all legislation

I think some of our northern neighbors just don't get the system of checks and balances (having nothing like it except by tradition), and think it is a major flaw in the US constitutional arrangement.  I don't really blame them; they are conditioned to think of the government of the majority as all-powerful.  The US system of government was set up to avoid the flaws of the British system, and ended up with some flaws of its own, but I still think it works far better than a Parliamentary system in most areas.  In budgeting, maybe not so much.

Maybe some do, but CC seems to understand 'em just fine: in fact, you both agree - your system, while it may be admirable overall, does not work so very well in the area of budgeting, and so perhaps it would be best in this specific context to introduce modifications (without thereby in any way conceding that the US system is not superior, of course - I cannot blame folks in the US for justifiable pride in their system overall, obvious though its disfunction in this particular case may be to the entire world).

The major flaw in our system is that the republicans have gone full retard on us. Bush was handed significant power--all three branches for a while--and look what happened. After 2010 the republicans win half of the legislative branch, and in half a year they have us staring down economic doom. It is quite an achievement really.

Our system can have responsible budgeting--see the Clinton era--and parliamentary systems can have irresponsible budgeting--see all sorts of examples.

[Agelastus]

Our system can have responsible budgeting--see the Clinton era--and parliamentary systems can have irresponsible budgeting--see all sorts of examples.

Such as, to my personal disgust and shame, the United Kingdom for most of the first decade of this century.

[grumbler]

Maybe some do, but CC seems to understand 'em just fine: in fact, you both agree - your system, while it may be admirable overall, does not work so very well in the area of budgeting, and so perhaps it would be best in this specific context to introduce modifications (without thereby in any way conceding that the US system is not superior, of course - I cannot blame folks in the US for justifiable pride in their system overall, obvious though its disfunction in this particular case may be to the entire world). 

Yes, but simply saying "it doesn't work, will you fix it?" doesn't get us very far; for instance, the person who raised the issue initially was under the impressions that "the sub-committee system isnt really used for budget creation" when it is very extensively used (35 committees involved in authorization and 24 in appropriations, plus the two Budget committees, the Finance Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee).  I would point to 200 years of success in using essentially the current process for budgeting as the counter to the "does not work so very well in the area of budgeting" argument (though conceding that a system involving the tyranny of the majority gets budgets done more quickly and seems to produce results that are on a par with the checks-and-balances system).

Now, you can certainly argue that the two-party system is inefficient at the moment, because it involves a lot of win-lose politics right now, but this is a phase the US has gone through before, and likely will again.  Look up Andrew Jackson if you want to see the two-party system really create trouble! 

So, I find the vague "why don't the Americans just 'fix' their system?" questions amusing but far too simplistic to take seriously.  The combination of a checks-and-balances system and partisan politics sometimes looks ugly, but that's the price to pay for a system that has the long-term stability of the US constitutional system.