Government budget / deficit control

            The control and balancing of government budgets is widely seen as a main reason for economic problems: growth of government programs and expenditures that are not covered by tax revenues but by incurring debt, followed by periods of emergency budget slashing by cutting back on programs, eliminating entire departments and dismissing the workers in those programs, thereby contributing to rising unemployment, for example. Calls for the reduction of government and the scope of government activities are countered by calls for increased government regulation and stimulus programs whose costs are expected to be recovered by the economic growth they are trying to generate, are leading to confrontational and acrimonious debate;  there are few if any solutions proposed that promise to solve these recurring problems or garner wide consensus support.

            Measures that have been / can be proposed to counter the problems of government budget control include  the following:

            - Drastic reduction of government size and activities

            - Constitutional amendments to require ‘balanced budgets’ for each budget period (year);

            -  Increase taxes

            - ‘Percentage budgeting’ 

              Budgets specifying percentages of expected revenues, rather than actual monetary amounts.

            Calls for budget reduction and 'balanced' budgets as well as increasing taxes have been widely discussed; the following will focus on the proposal of 'percentage budgeting' as an alternative approach that aims at not only reducing the often contentious process of constructing budgets, that can end up with wholesale slashing of entire programs and departments with little regard for the actual consequences for the segments of the public served by those departments nor for the employees working in them.

            Government (as well as private enterprise) budgets would be discussed and specified in terms of percentages of overall expected revenues allocated to the various departments and programs, accompanied by careful forecasts estimates of what those revenues will be. Each program and department will then prepare its own plans and budgets, taking its specific conditions and mission into account (better than the legislative budgeting process) and developing its own scenarios and contingency plans for different levels of revenue.  It is argued that not only will this result in smoother budgeting process, but also better budgeting decisions guided by detailed 'in-house' knowledge in each department, and stimulate efforts for innovation and increasing efficiency.

            The percentage budgeting process might be guided by the introduction of 'percentage budget voting': giving voters the opportunity of expressing their own preferences for budget allocation.  Each party of candidate might offer a percentage allocation that can be endorsed as a package by the voter; or voters can specify their own percentages (which will 'count' as valid only if the percentages actually add  up to 100%, as a crude competency test for making such decisions).

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