Balance the Budget Balancing the budget for the United States is a challenge for policymakers because there are very difficult decisions that must be made that can directly affect United States citizens. After completing the simulator for balancing the budget, I now realize the difficulty that is associated with balancing the budget. The decisions are difficult because no matter what cuts you are making the budget your decision is going to deprive a group of people or an agency of essential funds to their existence. Raising taxes, while trying to balance the budget, creates a problem because the ramifications of these taxes can also affect specific groups. Balancing the budget is a challenge that has a multitude of problems and tough decisions that must be addressed. As I started the simulator I was immediately presented with difficult decisions regarding spending. After careful consideration, I decided to cut funding for the National Institute of Health, which does research in the field of health. The …show more content…
I had cut spending by two trillion and eighty-one billion and I had raised one trillion five hundred and thirty billion dollars in revenue. I would far from being correct because the deficit after all my difficult decision was still 3.27 trillion dollars. I had reduced the budget by a total of 4.33 trillion, yet I was still so far from successfully balancing the budget. At this point in the simulation, I realized how truly difficult it is for policymakers to balance the budget. Even going against some of my beliefs to try to balance the budget, I was unable to do so and can now see the extreme complexity in balancing the budget. Considering that I am a single mind and that I could not accomplish balancing the budget, I now understand how several different minds with different ideologies have not been able to accomplish the
The overall objective of the budget is to create a “leaner, meaner and more efficient” economy, and...
If the government changes the way they spend the budget, then they can change the way our government is ran. According to document C we spend 83% of the budget on “The Big Five”, which are the five main categories in the budget.We need to take 10%
For government budgeting to be effective, the process that guides it must be an evolving one. As the government gets bigger, it will most likely destabilize the existing method. Therefore, it must change to keep pace with the demands and growth of the country. The process must be capable of handling the complexity of our nation and its multifaceted needs so it will always need revisions and restructuring to face these new challenges. Its ultimate goal must be to reinforce the government and strengthen the country.
Gerson, Michael . "The real-world effects of budget cuts." The Washington Post 7 Apr.2011: n. pag. Print.
The political parties continually blame each other in a never-ending cycle, while the state of the economy keeps falling and the national debt keeps rising. Along with that, many functions of the government, such as tax reform and Social Security, have ‘leaks’ in them, where money is being lost. As researchers look into the crisis more and more, they keep finding scary results, such as the predicted debt in 2035 being 185 percent of the country’s (GDP). Despite the work of economists, an economic problem of this seriousness has not ever appeared before. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform worked to create a document that would lead Washington towards a solution, however this article has both advantages and disadvantages in it.
Throughout the years the U.S has had more budget deficits than it has had surpluses. This is due to the excess in spending and not enough revenues to pay for it. Many have debated over the U.S budget deficit problem. However to fix the problem one has to research the past to figure out how the U.S budget deficit got to where it is now. Hopefully by figuring out this, one could project what the U.S budget deficit will look like in years to come.
The federal budget has been a partisan issue since the dawn of politics. People always bicker about what to spend on but what we can’t
As of 2012, the U.S. Congress had failed to pass a budget on time for three years, and had gone more than ten years since it had been done according to the rules “with all the appropriations bills being considered and passed” (“Raising the Bar”). The budget, one of the largest responsibilities of Congress, stands as a testament to
“The Budget and Economic Outlook : Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020.” Congress of the United States
The federal budget is known as the notorious economic tank from which money is distributed to various programs. The money used every fiscal year, which begins October 1st and ends September 30th the next year, belongs to the people. The government raises this money through taxes and they spend it on national defense, Medicare, and social security. The federal budget is an exercise in making choices, and those options will certainly affect individuals living in the U.S. These choices cause debt to pile up on the government, who is struggling to make it disappear. The deficit and debt of a government gauges how well it is being run and how well it has been run in the past. According to The Economist the national debt is the total outstanding borrowing of a country’s government; it is an accumulation of deficits that has yet to be paid off (Economist, A-Z). The current U.S. federal deficit, as of the 2013 fiscal year, is a monumental $680 billion dollars, adding to an even higher debt. Any attempt to diminish this debt has the consumer footing the bill, but there has to be a different way. There have been requests to increase taxes, to raise revenues for transportation infrastructure, to restrategize the military force or to make defense more affordable (“15 Ways to Rethink the Federal Budget”, Brookings).
Reducing government spending has been one of the toughest issues in America and the congress has always put a lot of pressure on the federal budget. In this activity, I was able to simulate a budget that reduces the debt to below 60% of GDP in 2024 and made sure that the level would be kept through 2030. The decisions made were tough; however, I was convinced that the cuts I made in the budget were necessary as shown in the discussions below.
Participative Budgeting is the situation in which budgets are designed and set after input from subordinate managers, instead of merely being imposed. The idea behind this sort of budgeting is to assign responsibility to subordinate managers and place a form of personal ownership on the final budget. Nearly two decades of management accounting research has resulted in equivocal findings on the consequences and effects of participative budgeting (Lindquist 1995). Participative budgeting certainly has various advantages, these include the transferral of information from subordinate to superior increased job satisfaction for the subordinate, budgetary responsibility and goal congruence. Its disadvantages include budgetary slack and negative motivation, however it is the conditions in which participative budgeting takes place determines whether the budgeting process is successful. The conditions are dependent on various factors such as the level of participation, level of subordinate influence, the extent to which budgetary slack takes place, volatility, job related information, and the complexity of the budget.
Capital budgeting is one of the primary activities of a company. Most of the company uses capital budgeting for decision making process of selecting and evaluating long-term investment. The company have to make a right decision with respect to investment in fixed asset such as purchasing of new equipment and delivery vehicles, constructing additions to buildings and many more. The decision must be right because of the project involve huge amount of cash outflow and it is committed for many years.
Line item budgeting categorizes various expenses and places them in list format on a document for budgetary purposes. This type of budgeting is considered the heartbeat of budgeting due to the systematic method by which it controls revenue and expenses, this is made evident when Tyer and Willand (1992), pointed out “Statutory or administrative controls could be imposed on the transfer of funds from one-line item to another, or between broad categories of expenditure.” According to Schick (1971), “line item budgets were attractive to legislative officials because they did not focus explicit attention on substantive policy issues or choices.”
The national budget is the main instrument through which governments collect resources from the economy, in a sufficient and appropriate manner; and allocate and use those resources responsively, efficiently and effectively (Todorovic & Djordjevic, 2009). The work of public budget has increased extremely more complicated, abstruse and worrying (Hou, 2006, p.730).