Word: budgeting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...BATTLE of the Bulge, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, was "the last major German counteroffensive of World War II, an unsuccessful attempt..." The Battle of the Bulging Budget, currently being fought in New York City, will most likely be analogously defined: "the last major Lindsay counteroffensive of the Urban Fiscal Crisis, an unsuccessful attempt...
...present time there is one program planner in the City's Bureau of the Budget exploring the possibility of an "economic and social report of the Mayor" that would be comparable to the President's annual economic report. The difficulty of such a task is immensely complicated by the lack of a sophisticated understanding of the urban economy and social structure. In New York City, this lack of sophistication reflects a lack of data rather than brainpower...
...Budget Director of New York City might well respond to this question, depending on how frank he was willing to be, that a crisis atmosphere around budget time is good politics-it tends to get more money out of a recalcitrant state legislature...
HOWEVER, there are more substantive reasons why a crisis atmosphere prevails. Accepting the skeptics' point that there is presently a disproportionate amount of wealth in metropolitan areas, one cannot overlook the dynamics of annually balancing the local budget. Things do tend to get worse over time. This is explained by the relatively simple concept of a "fiscal gap" or a "fiscal imbalance...
This fiscal gap substantially accounts for the "political theatre" of the "battle of the bulging budget." The tendency for costs to exceed taxes requires periodic adjustments to annually balance the local budget (as required by law), either by downgrading program quality, raising tax rates, or increasing dependence on outside aid. Usually some combination of all three types of adjustment is used, leading to cries of distress from three overlapping groups: public service recipients, City taxpayers, and State (and to a much lesser extent, Federal) taxpayers...