Your Federal tax dollars at work.
I was gratified to hear Alan Greenspan's testimony to Congress yesterday in which he called for cuts to Social Security spending as the most critical element of a deficit-elimination process. This is the only sensible approach to a problem which will presently balloon entirely out of control--spending on the elderly (Social Security and Medicare combined) already amounts to more than one-third of the total federal budget, and matters will only get dramatically worse from here as the Baby Boomers retire and health care costs continue to spiral out of control. Luckily I have devised a solution to both problems, which--posturing by the Democrats notwithstanding--has plenty to make everyone happy.

But, in order to present it in a credible and comprehensive manner, a few numbers would be in order. These will also serve to allow me to confirm for myself that the plan works before dispensing a bunch of facile platitudes on the subject which sound pretty as long as they're kept to generalities. Facts are good and are our friends. We'll leave the facile platitudes to the politicians, since they are almost universally incapable of doing any justice to any problem of even moderate complexity, which the current situation certainly is.

Remember the annual muted hooplah surrounding the release of the President's budget proposal? I saw a bunch of stock shots of a guy pushing a hand truck with stacks of budget documents on them, each one shrinkwrapped individually and about the thickness of four telephone books, and said to myself "Gotta have it." Yes, accountants can be such dorks sometimes, but the whole notion of having that many actual numbers to run my fingers through and see just how bad things really are--as measured with numbers, not volume of rhetoric--presents a really exciting opportunity to see what all this budget deficit fuss is all about and how it can be fixed. So I found myself wishing I could have my own copy, not just the fat cat members of congress, none of whom naturally read it anyway.

It occurred to me about that time that as a taxpaying citizen of a free republic, I by all rights should have a copy of the budget, at least if I wanted one, which I did. So I wandered off to the Office of Management and Budget website to commence making inquiries.

I already knew I could download much, or most, or theoretically all of it, from OMB's FY 2005 Budget page. But the ability to do so is rather theoretical, since in addition to the obviously named Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005 (which itself contains some 33 chapters, each of which can be downloaded individually); there's also some supporting documents such as Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005; a whole fascinating collection of Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005; and an Appendix which contains a further 35 chapters. And other stuff too. For some of it it isn't immediately obvious what overlaps with what, if in fact it does at all. It's a little overwhelming to try to look at online, even though it is in fact all there.

So the accountant in me decided that the thing to do was to get one of those really pretty shrinkwrapped bound hard copies all the cool kids in Washington are toting around these days. Hard copies are just so much easier to work with. So I followed OMB's link to the Government Printing Office's page to buy these very documents, and found out that sure enough they are available to buy for any schmo who wants one, provided that schmo has $250 he doesn't mind parting with to get his own pristinely geeky hard copy of the US budget and its various supporting documents. Which I don't, in fact, have, living as I do on a budget where American Express doesn't grant the same sort of consideration for deficit spending that Congress enjoys.

So, being cheap, I ordered the CD-ROM which contains all the budget documents and costs just twenty bucks. Which, yes, gets me right back where I started, having only electronic copies I'd have to print myself (just like the internet version), but at least I wouldn't have to download seventy-odd individual files, create a little file directory system for them, get bored and give up halfway through, etc. But it's here that things got funky.

First of all, twenty bucks is a bargain compared to the $250 they're asking for on the hard copy, but--again--for taxpaying citizens of a free republic, the feds ought to practically force everyone to take one of these, just so we can all play the role of informed voter debating from the facts. Instead they sell them, charging what seems to me kind of a steep price for a CD containing nothing but data which is in the public domain. I can buy fifty blank CD-ROMs from Office Depot for about $15, and churn out fifty copies of whatever is on that disc in the matter of a few hours. An additional two dollars each (let's be generous) for jewel case and printed liner notes, assuming these are inlcuded, plus fifty cents to mail the final product, and the government's actual cost is about $4 apiece, including labor. Perhaps the other sixteen dollars I paid is my gift to reduce the Federal debt and should be included on my IRS Schedule A as a charitable contribution. I could buy a disc from the thieving RIAA for less. Note to potential IRS inquisitors: I will not include any such thing on my Schedule A, the information on which really is entirely legitimate and painfully honest.

Next problem is that every clown in the country who cobbles together a weblog for his own amusement probably went through some of the same process I did, and these CDs must have sold like hotcakes because I ordered my copy only one day after it was released, and ten days later got a postcard informing me that my budget document was out of stock and should be available in another four to six weeks. Hmph. Given the modest difficulty of burning a disc and mailing it, I'm struggling to comprehend the possibility of facing a month and a half delay. Which, after all, represents a delay in receiving a one-year document which is nearly 12% of that year. I hope it's still relevant by the time I get it.

Adding insult to injury, I discovered today that GPO then proceeded to charge my credit card twice for the same order that I still haven't received. Grr.

So, the short form of all this is that while I have developed a scheme to save the country from the sure economic ruin which our present inertial course will eventuate in, I don't yet have the numbers to do fact-checking and so forth. So you'll all have to wait. But it's coming, eventually, just like my alleged CD-ROM is.