Word: budgeted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Peterson. Many economists have railed against these cuts because they have borrowed from America's future competitiveness and well-being. Wrote Peterson in an essay in the October Atlantic: "Unfortunately, since the future has no lobby . . . the Administration and Congress have found this the perfect place to demonstrate their budget-cutting zeal publicly even while allowing all other types of spending to keep rising...
...budget has become increasingly hard to trim as the outstanding federal debt ($2.37 trillion) has mounted, since interest payments on old borrowings are crowding out other items. Net interest outlays increased from 9% of the budget in fiscal 1980 to 14% in 1986, or $136 billion. Such uncontrollable expenditures, along with the Administration's determination to spare large categories like defense and Social Security, have forced budget cutters "to work in an impossibly small corner covering only 30% of the spending total," observes TIME Correspondent Lawrence Malkin in his recent book, The National Debt. A frustrated Pete Domenici, chairman...
Perhaps the most insidious growth in the budget has come in payments to middle- and upper-class citizens, a type of handout that typically carries no test of need. Social Security payments have increased 17% between 1981 and 1986, to $198.8 billion, even after adjustment for inflation. Many entitlements rise automatically because they are indexed to inflation...
...alarming surge of the budget deficits through the $200 billion mark seems finally to be forcing some budget progress. The Administration agreed in 1985 to a freeze in the defense buildup, and that has held increases in military outlays below the level of inflation. During the same year, Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction bill, designed to impose automatic spending reductions if the Administration and legislators failed to meet targets for cutbacks. But the Supreme Court found a crucial part of the law unconstitutional. By the time a revised version was passed in September, Congress had reduced the size...
...American companies cannot hope to conquer the trade deficit as long as its twin, the budget deficit, remains so huge. The stimulus of Washington's deficit spending, especially on a steadily expanding economy, makes the U.S. far too hungry for imported merchandise. This connection between the twin deficits has been almost universally recognized for years, and yet the Administration and Congress are still spending well beyond the country's means. That is the perilous formula that came to grief last week...