Stan Collender
| Feb. 7, 2012, Midnight
The silly season — when ridiculous, reckless or just plan irresponsible budget-related plans or ideas are proposed and, sadly, often debated — typically doesn’t happen at the start of the year. This year is clearly different.
Stan Collender
| Jan. 31, 2012, Midnight
You would think that the deficit and national debt that many in Congress keep telling us are way too big would prompt a serious discussion about what should be done that has at least some prospect of actually succeeding.
Stan Collender
| Jan. 24, 2012, Midnight
This year’s almost three-week period between tonight when the president delivers the State of the Union address and Feb. 13 when the his fiscal 2013 budget is expected to be released will give the White House an enormous advantage in getting positive media coverage and will put Congressional Republicans on the defensive.
Stan Collender
| Jan. 17, 2012, Midnight
The 2012 budget debate in Washington is going to be vastly different from the one that took place in 2011.
Stan Collender
| Dec. 13, 2011, Midnight
The most striking thing about the continuing federal budget stalemate is that few seem to be willing to accept or even state out loud what should be obvious: Eliminating the deficit will impose some pain on most Americans.
Stan Collender
| Dec. 6, 2011, Midnight
Instead of a dreaded year-in-review column that, as I said last December, is mostly “a snooze,” Fiscal Fitness last year listed seven predictions for what would happen in 2011. I’m going to keep that policy alive this year for three reasons.
Stan Collender
| Nov. 29, 2011, Midnight
Most of the postmortem analyses of the super-bust committee’s entirely predictable but nonetheless impressive crash-and-burn last week so far has mostly been nothing more than after-the-fact spin by the participants.
Stan Collender
| Nov. 15, 2011, Midnight
Former Speaker and current GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich might well have said that he wants to kill his personal physician because he didn’t like being told his blood pressure was too high. But that’s the equivalent of what Gingrich did say during a recent debate, when he made it clear that the Congressional Budget Office has to be eliminated if health care reform is going to be repealed.
Stan Collender
| Nov. 8, 2011, Midnight
I predicted two things in the Sept. 6 Fiscal Fitness — the first published after the Budget Control Act was signed into law this past Aug. 2 — that are coming true faster than I, even on my most cynical days, would have dared to forecast.
Stan Collender
| Nov. 1, 2011, Midnight
This week’s Fiscal Fitness addresses the question that seems to be much on the minds of true believers of the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, especially those who went out of their way to let me know their thoughts after last week’s column was published: Why does anyone think the super committee has to succeed?
Stan Collender
| Oct. 25, 2011, Midnight
What happens if, as I and many others increasingly suspect, the super committee isn’t able to agree to a deficit reduction plan, if the plan it agrees to is substantially less than what’s required or if — also as I and many believe — the full House and Senate are unable to pass what’s recommended?
Stan Collender
| Oct. 18, 2011, Midnight
If you watched any one of the three episodes of “Prohibition,” Ken Burns’ excellent PBS series about the attempt in the early part of the 20th century to ban alcoholic consumption in the United States, it’s impossible not to see the strong parallels between that effort and the movement to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Stan Collender
| Oct. 11, 2011, Midnight
It’s impossible to think of the Congressional budget process as anything but an abject failure. Condemning the current process and insisting that it be changed immediately are two very different things, however.
Stan Collender
| Oct. 4, 2011, Midnight
Getting appropriations enacted by the start of the fiscal year used to be a real point of pride for Representatives and Senators, especially members of the Appropriations committees who considered making that happen to be a large part of their job. No more.
Stan Collender
| Sept. 20, 2011, Midnight
The question that everyone should be asking is: Why is the House GOP only proposing a short-term continuing resolution? This should be the moment when either individual appropriations or a full-year CR at the start of the year is not just easy to do but actually gets done.
Stan Collender
| Sept. 13, 2011, Midnight
The name "super committee" mistakenly gives the impression that its members will be able to do their work faster than a fiscal locomotive, change the course of mighty budget politics and bend the health care cost curve in their bare hands.
Stan Collender
| Sept. 6, 2011, Midnight
Events in the past month point out yet again what policymakers and those who observe them always seem to forget: All budget deals and agreements, indeed all federal budgets, basically are only good until what should now be the accepted definition of “long term” when it comes to federal policymaking — lunchtime tomorrow.
Stan Collender
| Aug. 2, 2011, Midnight
By the time you read this, one of two things will have happened: Either the shouting about the debt ceiling will have turned into complete silence because the deal was enacted, or it will have grown into the decibel equivalent of a multiengine military jet going full-throttle during a rock concert because the deal was voted down (or postponed).
Stan Collender
| July 26, 2011, Midnight
In the fast-moving world of the debate over the federal debt ceiling (a phrase that I seriously doubt has been used very often in American history), it’s possible and perhaps even likely that, if it dealt on current events, this week’s Fiscal Fitness would be out of date before it appeared in print.
Stan Collender
| July 19, 2011, Midnight
It’s hard to believe that the House is planning to debate yet another proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, an idea that was so discredited so long ago that it is typically discussed by constitutional scholars, economists and budget experts in tones and words that at best indicate ridicule, scorn and contempt.
