By David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson
From Governing.com
Fiscally speaking, the state of our union is a train wreck in the making, write the authors of The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis. Consider these disturbing numbers:
• The federal deficit is heading for a record. If trends continue, President Bush’s plan to make most of his tax cuts permanent would increase the national debt by $4.1 trillion over the next decade — a 60 percent increase in one decade — creating a future obligation of $37,450 for every living American.
• By the year 2030, if current levels of spending and taxation continue, the entire federal budget will be consumed by Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest on the national debt.
• In 2002, 38 states cut their budgets by nearly $13.7 billion. In 2003, 40 states — the most ever on record-cut another $11.8 billion. Kentucky and Washington released prison inmates. Texas cut 257,000 children from its health care rolls. Many districts closed down schools.
What’s wrong with this picture? In The Price of Government, David Osborne, acclaimed author of the best-selling Reinventing Government, and Peter Hutchinson, a consultant and former Minnesota finance commissioner, describe what they believe public officials are doing wrong when it comes to matters of budgeting and spending and offer alternatives, starting with a fundamentally new approach they call “Budgeting for Outcomes.”
The authors also say that the presidential campaign so far has ignored the critical debate about the federal deficit because the solutions are too painful — and that both candidates are avoiding their role as leaders.
Eschewing quick fixes, The Price of Government exposes what the authors say is the fundamental flaw in the traditional approach to the preparation of public-sector budgets — a focus on what we cut, while ignoring what we hold on to. Instead, the authors propose a radically different approach to budgeting, turning the focus from what we cut to what we keep. Budgeting for Outcomes offers public servants at all levels of government a prescription for squeezing the maximum value out of every tax dollar collected. Read More
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