This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The “paid for” question arises as Congress continues debating the huge infrastructure bill advocated President Joseph Biden, many Congressional Democrats, and a few Republicans.

The Wall Street Journal, perhaps a bit predictably, showed up with an editorial questioning whether the deal really was paid for.  The editorial appeared under this headline:

SO MUCH FOR ‘FULLY PAID FOR’

The infrastructure bill’s financing is full of gimmicks, as expected.

Here are a few paragraphs from the editorial:

“One claim about the Senate’s infrastructure bill is that it would be, as the authors said, ‘fully paid for.’  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) rudely blew apart that myth on Thursday, not that the authors seem to care.

“CBO’s budget gnomes found that the $1 trillion spending bill will add $256 billion to the federal deficit over 10 years.  But it’s worse than that. CBO also explained that the bill will increase the government’s contract authority by an additional $196 billion over the 2021 budget baseline. The estimate is complex, but the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculates the mix of costs and savings will result in nearly $400 billion in deficit spending over a decade.

“A couple of examples highlight the fiscal flim-flam. The bi-partisan group of senators tried to claim as ‘savings’ some $53 billion in unemployment benefits that states won’t spend as anticipated.  But CBO notes that the ‘lower outlays had already been counted in its baseline and so don’t now amount to a ‘reduction in spending.’

“CBO also didn’t credit $106 billion in supposedly unused Covid paid- and family-leave tax credits, and only a portion of what senators claimed were $67 billion in savings from a Covid employer tax credit.  Of the $210 billion of ‘unused’ Covid funds senators ultimately claimed they were ‘re-purposing,’ CBO gave them credit for about $21 billion.”

You get the picture.  More budget shenanigans.

At the same time, there are those who will say it is past time for the federal government to invest in improved infrastructure – and I am one of who supports such investments, for that is what they are, investments.  That’s if, by infrastructure, you mean typical investments in roads, bridges and the like.  If you go beyond that definition, then you should not call it infrastructure; you should call it something else, whatever it is.  Then, let that spending rise or fall on its merits or demerits.

Of course, that’s not what happens at the federal government.  Games are played with numbers and definitions.

I have said this before – aside from war-time spending or spending to avert a recession (which should stand on their own), I wish federal spending proposals would subscribe to more rational, transparent criteria. 

Too much to ask, you say.  Perhaps.  But the expenditure of time, effort and energy – if done in the name of transparency – would result in better government.