A transparent budget proposal—such as the Administration’s first 2012 Budget presented by President Obama on February 14 or the House Budget presented by Paul Ryan on April 6—contains year-by-year tables showing the proposed path for government outlays over time. These are needed to estimate the economic impact of a budget and assess its credibility.
But the second Administration budget for 2012 and beyond presented by President Obama this week contains no such information, either in the speech or in the fact sheet to go along with the speech. How can one determine the impact of a budget on the economy if one does not know the path of proposed spending? This lack of transparency is not simply an issue for policy wonks as William Galston of Brookings explains in his critique of the Administration’s Budget II. It raises questions about the credibility of the budget process.
Continue reading John Taylor at his blog Economics One…
(photo credit: dj venus)
