Comments on: Budget in Brief. But not the Questions. http://www.hlswatch.com/2010/02/02/budget-in-brief-but-not-the-questions/ News and analysis of critical issues in homeland security today. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:03:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: William R. Cumming http://www.hlswatch.com/2010/02/02/budget-in-brief-but-not-the-questions/comment-page-1/#comment-137993 William R. Cumming Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:49:11 +0000 http://www.hlswatch.com/?p=8130#comment-137993 Well the budget in brief docs were designed to reward the lazy by giving highlights. Since many appropriations acts are now passed before the MEMBERS of Congress read them perhaps we are headed to that future world where information overload leads governments to issue a sing word each day that provides the context for that nation's focus. What I always found embarrassing about the B-I-B was that most of the authors had no capacity to read the budget and of course Congress has always failed to force the Executive Branch to develop data on the migration of programs from one budget cycle to the next. Here is my reform proposal. No budget for certain agencies. Just use a flat percentage of the DOD budget. So DHS and State for example would just get their annual cut of the annual National Security budget. I recommend 10% for STATE including AID and 15% for DHS including all components but FEMA. FEMA is the President's only grant program that he/she can directly trigger without an department head approving so I suggest that rather than have stimulus bills just let the President annually have authority to declare up to 50% of the DOD budget as needed for his/her percieved disaster needs. So for example the Detroit economic disaster could get an annual amount of say the same funds sent to AF-PAK but as a percentage. Hey Jonathan Swift had a solution to IRISH demographics also. Well the budget in brief docs were designed to reward the lazy by giving highlights. Since many appropriations acts are now passed before the MEMBERS of Congress read them perhaps we are headed to that future world where information overload leads governments to issue a sing word each day that provides the context for that nation’s focus. What I always found embarrassing about the B-I-B was that most of the authors had no capacity to read the budget and of course Congress has always failed to force the Executive Branch to develop data on the migration of programs from one budget cycle to the next.

Here is my reform proposal. No budget for certain agencies. Just use a flat percentage of the DOD budget. So DHS and State for example would just get their annual cut of the annual National Security budget. I recommend 10% for STATE including AID and 15% for DHS including all components but FEMA. FEMA is the President’s only grant program that he/she can directly trigger without an department head approving so I suggest that rather than have stimulus bills just let the President annually have authority to declare up to 50% of the DOD budget as needed for his/her percieved disaster needs. So for example the Detroit economic disaster could get an annual amount of say the same funds sent to AF-PAK but as a percentage.
Hey Jonathan Swift had a solution to IRISH demographics also.

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