In Defense of Budget Trickery

30Mar09

David Broder and many other people have criticized Kent Conrad’s decision to shift the budget window from ten to five years, in line with Bush’s budget practices. While making half the debt disappear by changing the dates certainly seems shifty, it’s actually makes more sense to use a five year window.

Predictions longer then five years are pretty useless. Wars, recessions, and politicians all change, and the further we move into the future the less certainty our predictions have. Are estimates of the future over the next five years aren’t certain, but they have real meaning and decent chance of being broadly accurate. We can estimate economic growth for around the next 3 years, after which point we’re really just making estimates on historical experience. We can make real predictions about our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan over the coming 4 years, but again the further we move into the future the greater the chance something we didn’t predict makes a claim on our resources. Politically Obama has 4 years for sure and 8 maximum, after that predicting the priorities of the next President is largely impossible.

What would have ten year budget projection have looked like in 1976? To be at all accurate you would have needed to account for tax cuts, and military spending increases that weren ‘t on anybody’s radar at the time. Ten year projections for 1992 would have been just as useless. To the extent you can “control” the budget situation, you can only do it by focusing on the short term and moving things in the right direction.

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Tags: 5 year budget window, David Broder, Kent Conrad