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04/03/2005: "Too Bad We Can’t All Go Off-Budget!"

Future historians will doubtless list one of the most significant developments of the Twentieth Century as the concept of “off budget accounting,” the ability of Congress to spend money without this money being “budgeted.” While it might seem to some that accounting techniques could hardly qualify as a significant societal development, this journal has already pointed out how the invention of double-entry bookkeeping was a significant advance in civilization. In the same way, the development of off budget spending also says something about civilization. What it says is that the great arc of societal advance that began with the renaissance might well have begun receding. Can there be any other conclusion? What can be so basic as the notion that budgets need to accurately reflect what’s coming in and going out. If you’re not doing that, why bother even calling it a budget? That’s exactly what happened with the CEOs currently doing perp walks at courthouses around the country. Their failure, now exposed to all, was is in perverting the accounting process from accurate reporting of receipts and expenditures to the dubious accentuation of positive flows and the hiding of negative flows. In other words, exactly what the Bush Administration has been doing with its enthusiasm for off budget accounting!