Record Details

Kicking the Can: The U.S. Congress, the Bush Administration and the 2008 Budget

International Public Management Review

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Kicking the Can: The U.S. Congress, the Bush Administration and the 2008 Budget
 
Creator Doyle, Richard B.
 
Description In December 2008, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued its annual report on the health of the federal budget. The report details the U.S. government's long-term financial outlook, including the biggest fiscal challenge, i.e., the unsustainable growth in entitlement programs. Later the same month, U.S. federal budget legislation for FY 2008 was completed, with passage of an approximately $555 billion omnibus appropriations bill for largely non-defense spending ($70 billion was included for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). There was considerable conflict between the Democratic Congress and the Bush Administration over funding for these two wars. Except for the Mexican War (1846-48), the U.S. has always raised taxes to pay for war, lest deficit and debt get out of hand. This article examines the FY 2008 budget and issues related to its passage, and the longer-term issue of U.S. government fiscal sustainability. It argues that Congress did little to address this problem, rejecting the few initiatives proposed by the Bush Administration. The budget views of the presidential candidates suggest that U.S. fiscal sustainability will remain in jeopardy.
 
Publisher International Public Management Review
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2014-03-21
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://journals.sfu.ca/ipmr/index.php/ipmr/article/view/46
 
Source International Public Management Review; Vol 9, No 1 (2008); 94-106
1662-1387
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://journals.sfu.ca/ipmr/index.php/ipmr/article/view/46/46
 
Rights Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License that allows others to share the work for non-commercial use with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.2. Authors and IPMR are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, distribute it via EBSCO, or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.