Let’s refresh what we learned in our Budgetese as a Second Language (BSL) lesson yesterday:
Base – what the government agency spent last year
Budget Change Proposal (BCP) – what the government agency wants to spend this year.
Baseline Budget – the base plus the BCP number
Budget Cuts – Cuts to the Baseline Budget, usually a reduction in the amount requested in the BCP
Line item – each individual BCP request per program
Legislative Action – the vote by the decision makers on the BCP requests.
Now, with that refresher, we are ready to talk about zero base budgeting. Simply stated, a zero base budget process requires the bureaucracy to assume a zero base when it prepares its BCP. What that means is that expenditures for personnel, equipment, logistics, real estate leasing or purchase costs, plus transfers made to accomplish the mission of the bureaucracy are listed in the BCP, and the decision maker, that is, legislator or member of Congress can see everything on which the bureaucracy is spending to accomplish its purpose, not just want they want is the coming year.
Why is that important? First, it requires the bureaucracy to provide an analysis for everything on whch it is spending money, and second, it provides the decision maker full information on what the bureaucracy is doing, so he or she can see the entire picture, that is, is the bureaucracy accomplishing its mission effectively and efficiently.
Right now, when you hear about the crazy stuff on which government spends money, that information comes from someone who has spend hours and hours digging through past budgets, finding the expenditure somewhere in the past, and following it to the present day to see if the government agency is still spending its money on that same item.
As an example, when I sat of the budget subcommittee for health and welfare, I found an item in the welfare budget that has put a spending item that was sending over $1 million to a housing complex in South Central Los Angeles that had been put in the budget in the 1980s by then Assemblywoman Maxine Waters. The state was in the midst of a budget shortfall, but the Department of Social Services was looking to increase the spending on this odd program, so it was in a BCP. When I suggested eliminating this spending, which seemed like a sweetheart deal for a Maxine Waters supporter, I was told “leave in alone, neither you nor I want to piss off Maxine Waters.” Personally I didn’t care, but it was clear the Democrat chair of the Committee had no interest in fighting her, so I didn’t have the votes to eliminate the program.
Another example, the budget for the California Department of Education had a line item for English as a Second Language (ESL) expenditures that sent money to a specific group that supposedly organized classes for ESL programs in Los Angeles and Orange County, and this group had gotten money for these programs from the intervention of a legislator. However, big surprise, the money was diverted by this group from ESL programs to voter registration focused on illegals. The year over year spending did not stop until the chief executive of the group went to prison for the theft of the government money he used to register the voters. It took a full fledged federal investigation by the Bush administration to stop this program. Legislators didn’t know about it because it was hidden in the baseline budgeting process.
This is how budgets get bloated. A spending proposal is stuck in the budget, the money starts flowing, the baseline budgeting process hides the expenditure, and the decision makers simply look at changes to the base, not individual expenditures to the base. A zero base budgeting process would change all that.
Why don’t we do this, you ask? Because if the decision makers mandated this system, bureaucrats would have to work harder, include all the information important to make and informed decision, and the decision makers would have full information before they voted. There are a lot of decision makers who don’t want all the information on which their vote is based to be public and bureaucrats don’t want to have to work that hard. So, they both have a mutual interest in limiting the information available to the public on what is in the actual budget.
Why is the DOGE process so important? It is changing the mindset of decision makers in Washington, and those who want to drain the Washington swamp are now getting the information they need to reduce the bloat in government. However, these short term cuts will fall apart if the current budgeting process, the baseline budgeting process, remains in place. The budget change proposals need to start with a zero base every year, so that informed decisions about cuts and expenditures can be made by everyone, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government so that they review every program every year. That is the only way to root out and limit fraud, waste, corruption and inefficiency in government on an ongoing basis.