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… Read More

I have to admit, I am really enjoying the DOGE process, and how they have been handling the “obviously” bloated federal government. It has generated a lot of whining by the three million federal employees who feed off the taxpayer all across the country, but it has been a necessary part of bringing the federal government under control, and reducing the extraordinary cost of the continuing expansion of the power and control of those three million federal bureaucrats (not one of whom has been elected). The question is: how do we make these amazing advances permanent?

The answer: Zero Base Budgeting.

What is that, many people ask, how does it work? To understand it, we need to have an understanding about how government budgeting works. I am not familiar with the federal budgeting “language,” but I can guarantee, the process of getting a budget at the federal level is very similar to that used by state government. The words may be different, but the process works the same.

So let’s talk about how the state budget is achieved. The first thing to understand is that government budget types have their own language.… Read More

I read extensively writers arguing their points of view from the left of center. Any experienced reader of mine knows that I believe you must understand what the people believe who occupy the opposing domain to your personal policy beliefs. You must attempt to understand their positions. If you can gain clarity in those positions and still disagree, you are typically in a much better position to argue against them. Recently, their beliefs were unmasked by a noted columnist on a central policy discussion in the public arena. Rare clarity has been provided. As you may know, I don’t think for the most part the Left is evil. I think they are sadly misguided in their analysis of public policy positions. I believe quite often they either omit facts because of their unwillingness to engage people with opposing opinions or their logic is deeply flawed. That is what leads to them expressing their views in nonsensical manners, ala Kammy Harris. On this occasion a major opinion writer at a significant publication explained his thinking regarding Trump’s method of auditing the expenditures at a variety of government agencies and conclusions that were offered… Read More

Like most everyone, I too was taken aback by the horrific release of the dead bodies returned to Israel. We knew they were holding dead bodies. We knew this moment would come, but when it came it still staggered the mind and wrenched emotions. I would be sitting, and my mind would drift to the thought of what had just occurred. I would start to cry. In the middle of work or in the middle of lunch or sitting on the couch at home I could not escape the horror, and you begin to wonder how we got to this place. I have read about people acting inhumanely over the centuries. You can’t really classify them as “barbarians.” The word comes from the Greeks and was perpetuated by the Romans to address “the other” — the people who weren’t Greeks or Romans. It has become a word that over the years symbolizes the thoughts of the most uncivilized and brutal people. Attila the Hun and then Genghis Khan were widely known for brutalizing people they conquered. Hamas has no apparent peer rivaling their degenerate behavior. The only thing that comes to mind is the Hutus’ mass murder of Tutsis in Rwanda. They raped and killed women and children in large… Read More

When Trump was campaigning in 2016, he went into many communities that most Republicans did not court. Some of these communities were facing challenges. Those challenges had persisted for years with elected officials making promises to help. The help never arrived. He asked for the vote of the people in those communities with the pitch, “What do you have to lose?” He has applied that philosophy to some public policies and the resistance to the status quo has been like driving a car into a wall. In Trump’s first term, there was hysteria about a proposal he made about tariffs. Trump was attempting to find a method to stop the hollowing out of many jobs in middle America due to trade with China. Since Kissinger and then Nixon went to China the accepted theory was if we opened up China’s society, they would become civilized. It had not worked for 30 years when Bill Clinton proposed they should join the World Trade Organization (WTO). That finally happened on December 11, 2001. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The WTO is an international organization that guides trade between nations. The problem is the organization enabled China, but as it… Read More

You may have noticed that we had a budget deficit in the last fiscal year of $1.8 trillion. In five years, our annual expenditures increased $2.5 trillion per year. They have never come down from the year of the international pandemic. Yet with the new government in Washington moving toward cuts, one would think an asteroid the size of Mars is headed toward the planet when any budget cuts are mentioned. What are they willing to cut? The non-military federal workforce has increased 30% in the last 25 years. This is an era where private industry companies have cut personnel because of technological advancements. Our population increased 21% during this period of time. The government has grown in all respects yet apparently there is an element of the country that thinks we can’t cut anything despite the staggering numbers laid out above. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has projected that, if we continue on our current trajectory, we will have an annual budget deficit of $2.9 trillion. Raising taxes on the “rich” or “corporations” is not the answer. Revenues keep going up every year, accelerated by the Trump tax plan… Read More

I believe one can explain almost all of what happens in politics and government by reference to the rules of politics are set out in the last 10 days. They were developed through my experience in politics and elected office. Here they all are in one spot, and if you need more information about what the rules mean, you can reference the individual explanations:

Ray Haynes Rule of Politics

“In this country, there is the evil party and the stupid party and it is not hard to tell which is which.” “Republicans lose elections because they break their campaign promises. Democrats lose elections because they keep theirs.” “Democrats are intensely partisan, and they prove that partisanship by screwing Republicans whenever they are in power. Republicans are intensely nonpartisan, and they prove that nonpartisanship by screwing Republicans whenever they are in power. So it doesn’t matter who is in power, Republicans get screwed.” “At some time in political history, Democrats married Unions as their partner in the path to political power, and Republicans married the business community as theirs. … Read More

“The greatest threat to our Republic is the unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy”

To describe why understanding this rule is so critical to making sure we protect freedom and opportunity for our children, I have a story that demonstrates how the bureaucracy spends its time trying to manipulate elected officials. Keep in mind, when I was in the Senate, I was the only Republican on a three member budget committee that spent over $50 billion in state and federal money and oversaw about 60,000 total employees. Pete Wilson was Governor, and I was brand new to the Senate Committee and actual oversight of the very large, and very expensive health and welfare budgets in state government.

The chief bureaucrat of one of departments (which, in California government is called the “career executive assignment (CEA),” that is, a permanent bureaucrat that had worked himself up the bureaucracy to become the chief advisor to the politically appointed head of the department) came to my office to defend a relatively large increase in personnel for his department. The Democrat chairman of the committee proposed eliminating some (though not all) of… Read More