Budget Laws

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Intent

To ensure the reliable funding of essential government functions and establish a framework for temporary and experimental government functions.

Proposal

The legislature shall establish a permanent annual budget for each essential government function.

Permanent here means that the law does not expire. It continues to apply year after year until it is modified by a future budget law.
The legislature shall set an expiration date for any temporary or experimental government function, not to exceed 10 years from the effective date of the law.

The annual budget for a government function may be a fixed number in whole dollars or a computed number expressed as a formula.

When using a formula, the inputs to the formula may be references to the most recenty published edition of any periodically updated government report.

Each government function in the budget shall be marked as either permanent or temporary allocation, in accordance with the law that enacted it.

If a government function in the budget has both permanent and temporary funding, each funding shall be listed and marked separately.

Discussion

There are advantages to operating a stable government, including predictability and gradual change, which enable people to rely on the government and to adjust to changes. A permanent government budget creates stability. Temporary budget items are still possible for experimentation, and when the temporary budget items expire they must either be made permanent or removed. When a majority of legislators agree about a permanent or temporary change in the budget, they can enact a law. Instead of having the same conversation year after year, legislators free up their time for new conversations and to have a constructive and collaborative budget process that results in shared priorities or real compromises.

When the budget for a government is set up to expire, political parties take advantage of the potential government shutdown to bully the other side into voting for a budget they don’t agree with merely to avoid a shutdown. However, this type of behavior causes deep resentment by the other party and degrades the trust that is required for collaborative governance. Furthermore, the potential of a shutdown is a national security risk. The military must have money to pay the salaries of military and civilian personnel, to pay for critical supplies like fuel, and to pay for contractors who build and maintain critical military equipment. Besides the military, other agencies are also involved in national security and they must pay their personnel salaries and keep their equipment running. In addition to the national security risk, a government shutdown is disruptive to many areas of life.

The usual result of a legislature acting to prevent a shutdown is a measure to enact a temporary budget that is identical to the one that expired, so they have more time to negotiate a permanent budget. This proposal will have an even better outcome of avoiding the threat of shutdown and the political gimmicks associated with it and just get to the negotiation, which can happen any time during the year and not just before the budget expires.

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