« Beach Goo Natural | Main | Housing Could Drop 25% and Last Until 2010 »
February 01, 2008
MANDATES REDUCE CONTROL OVER BUDGET
by Jack Lee
You know what a mandate is in political terms? It is a legal demand that government spend X amount of dollars on a particular area, like welfare or the military.
When they are unfunded mandates it gets even more dangerous for a balanced budget. Its one thing to mandate that 30% of sales taxes be spent on education, it's quite another to say we must spend, oh say, $38 billion from the general fund on education, just as a made up example.
Where's that $38 billion coming from? See, how risky these unfunded mandates can get and right now mandates and unfunded mandates represent about 70% of the nation's budget. That is 70% of the our vast monitary resources that is beyond debate or control of Congress! And each entitlement program that is mandated only takes away from the responsibility of Congress to manage our budget.
Since I used eduction as a ficticious example you may be interested to know California's Proposition 98 was an initiative passed in November 1988 and amended in June of 1990 by Proposition 111. It provides a minimum funding guarantee (mandates) for school districts, community college districts, and other state agencies that provide direct elementary and secondary instructional programs for kindergarten through grade 14 (K-14).
Mandates, you have to be careful when voting them in.
Posted by Post Scripts at February 1, 2008 10:15 AM