Government Budgetary Processes Explained

1. JEOPARDY #4Ch. 12-15

3. POT LUCK - 100 Term for the practice of providing a spending cut or tax increase in order to fund any additional programs

4. POT LUCK - 100 What is “PAYGO” or “pay-as-you-go”?

5. POT LUCK - 200 Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Company (1895)

6. POT LUCK - 200 What is the Supreme Court decision which declared income tax unconstitutional?

7. POT LUCK - 300 Oft proposed in response to the gargantuan deficits of the 1980s and early 1990s, it would require a congressional SUPERMAJORITY to authorize deficit spending

8. POT LUCK - 300 What is the balanced budget amendment?

9. POT LUCK - 400 As a result of this, beginning in 1985, the government no longer received a larger share of income when inflation pushed incomes into higher brackets while the tax rates stayed the same

10. POT LUCK - 400 What is INDEXING (taxes were indexed to the cost of living)?

11. POT LUCK - 500 It’s Congress’s eyes and ears – it audits, monitors, and evaluates what agencies are doing with their budgets

12. POT LUCK - 500 What is the GAO (General Accounting Office)

13. Won’t Budge-It! - 100 • One is the amount by which spending exceeds revenues in a single year • The other is the total owed by the nation

14. Won’t Budge-It! - 100 What are the federal DEFICIT and the national DEBT?

15. Won’t Budge-It! - 200 It’s the executive agency responsible for preparing the president’s budget proposal

16. Won’t Budge-It! - 200 What is the OMB – Office of Management and Budget?

17. Won’t Budge-It! - 300 Term which best describes the fact that the best indicator of this year’s budget is last year’s budget plus a little more

18. Won’t Budge-It! - 300 What is INCREMENTALISM?

19. Won’t Budge-It! - 400 It’s how the federal government borrows money from citizens

20. Won’t Budge-It! - 400 What are BONDS?

21. Won’t Budge-It! - 500 The first are uncontrollable expenditures -- spending programs based on formulas, and the second are programs with controllable expenditures

22. Won’t Budge-It! - 500 What are • ENTITLEMENTS (or NONDISCRETIONARY spending) and • DISCRETIONARY spending?

23. A Taxing Effort - 100 It’s the source of most federal income

24. A Taxing Effort - 100 What is personal income tax?

25. A Taxing Effort - 200 It’s where all taxing and spending measures must begin

26. A Taxing Effort - 200 What is the House of Representatives?

27. A Taxing Effort - 300 1. The one taxes those with more income at a higher rate 2. while the other requires those with less to pay a bigger percentage of their income in taxes

28. A Taxing Effort - 300 What are • Progressive taxes & • Regressive taxes?

29. A Taxing Effort - 400 Often hailed as the “fair” tax because it taxes everyone at the same rate, it is actually regressive because it takes a greater percentage of total consumption from lower income people

30. A Taxing Effort - 400 What is a “flat” tax?

31. A Taxing Effort - 500 Contrary to popular belief, it is not tax loopholes, but these “revenue losses attributable to provisions of the federal tax laws which allow special exemption, exclusion, or deduction” which cost the federal government a substantial sum – the difference between what the government actually collects and what it would have collected without special exemptions

32. A Taxing Effort - 500 What are TAX EXPENDITURES?

33. More Budgetary Concerns - 100 The rise of the national security state and the rise of the social service state

34. More Budgetary Concerns - 100 What are the two conditions most closely associated with government growth in America?

35. More Budgetary Concerns - 200 Established by the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, it checks the OMB’s facts and figures

36. More Budgetary Concerns - 200 What is the CBO – Congressional Budget Office?

37. More Budgetary Concerns - 300 It’s the bill which draws the bottom line on the budget; it’s the means by which Congress sets limits on expenditures based on revenue projections

38. More Budgetary Concerns - 300 What is a BUDGET RESOLUTION?

39. More Budgetary Concerns - 400 It’s the congressional process through which program authorizations are revised to achieve required savings; it usually also includes tax or other revenue adjustments

40. More Budgetary Concerns - 400 What is budget RECONCILIATION?

41. More Budgetary Concerns - 500 1. The one is how Congress establishes, continues, or changes a discretionary program or an entitlement – specifying program goals and maximum expenditures for discretionary programs; 2. The other is an act of Congress that actually funds programs established by the limits set above; it usually covers one year.

42. More Budgetary Concerns - 500 What are • Authorization Bills & • Appropriations?

43. Acting with Resolve! - 100 Interim measure which Congress passes to fund the government when it fails to meet its own budgetary timetable

44. Acting with Resolve! - 100 What is a CONTINUING RESOLUTION?

45. Acting with Resolve! - 200 • Domestic Spending • Defense Spending • International Spending

46. Acting with Resolve! - 200 What are 3 key categories of DISCRETIONARY SPENDING?

47. Acting with Resolve! - 300 The two Congressional committees that write the tax codes, subject to approval by Congress as a whole

48. Acting with Resolve! - 300 What are the House Ways and Means Committee & the Senate Finance Committee

49. Acting with Resolve! - 400 The Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act (Gramm-Rudman-Hollings) was an attempt at fiscal responsibility which mandated maximum allowable deficit levels and directed the president to order these if Congress failed to meet deficit goals

50. Acting with Resolve! - 400 What are automatic across-the-board spending cuts called SEQUESTRATIONS?