tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19639811.post-1137215745447905612006-01-13T23:13:00.000-05:002006-01-14T00:15:45.556-05:00On Wednesday, the 10 o'clock news on CBC carried a story about the NDP budget. The CBC is usually straight-up, so I was surprised to hear the newscaster do his best to make it sound like the NDP budget was imbalanced. The segment was overflowing with rhetoric like "How can the NDP afford $71B in spending?" Only at the end of the short segment did the newscaster reveal the NDP's answer: the NDP budget, unlike previous years' Liberal budgets, doesn't include an unallocated chunk of money. The Liberals have effectively been ignoring their own revenue projections, bringing in budgets that deliberately don't account for all the revenue the government is projected to earn. The unallocated money is designated as "surplus," and it's the root of the outcry you may remember before the election was called. Since the Liberals didn't include a big chunk of revenue in their past budgets, that chunk was free for them to spend on any area they like -- without revealing their intentions for that money at budget time, when they release their budget for the year. In the past, they've applied it to the debt, which is fine. But just before the election was called, the Liberals were mulling splitting 2005's unallocated chunk of money between debt, tax credit and maybe some social program. Who knew how they would've used it? They didn't declare their intentions for that chunk of money at budget time, so they were free to use it for <i>whatever was politically expedient, whenever they needed a political boost</i>. This isn't a good trend. Imagine that the government sets aside more and more money like this, every year. That's a greater and greater proportion of our country's budget which is not declared at budget time, which is not part of the main budget that is voted on in Parliament, which is open to being used like a political poker chip whenever the government needs a shot in the arm. The Liberals' reasoning has been that they do this so that they won't have to go into deficit if revenues aren't as high as forecasted. Sounds good, until you realize that there's another option: if revenues aren't as high as forecasted, <i>cut spending</i>. That's the NDP plan. The NDP budget spells out exactly where <i>all</i> of the federal budget is going to go. And the NDP <i>guarantees</i> a balanced budget for five straight years, with a promise to delay new programs in the event that finances don't reach projections. That's the honest way to do a budget. That's the NDP way.Natalkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17904243446473763995noreply@blogger.com