2009 Budget Process Under Way

If your job is funded with federal dollars, now is the time to contact your members of Congress to let them know how funding levels in President Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal will affect your ability to do your job and the quality of public services. The president's proposal was released Feb. 4. Visit AFT's "Legislative Action Center" to contact your members of Congress.

Discretionary, Mandatory Spending

"Without meaningful action, by 2040 our government could only have the resources to do little more than mail out Social Security checks and pay interest on the massive and growing national debt," says David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

In "A Call for Stewardship," released Dec. 17, Walker says that, absent fundamental changes, mandatory spending programs will put intense pressure on discretionary programs or taxes—or both.

Walker notes that "the terminology used today in the budget process for programs fulfilling the express activities envisioned [in the Constitution] for the federal government is 'discretionary spending,' while programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are called 'mandatory spending.' " The report (GAO-08-93SP) is available at www.gao.gov.

Perspective: Social Security Reform

More than 20 years ago, Congress enacted changes to create a surplus in the Social Security trust fund.

The express intention of phased-in payroll tax increases and benefit cuts, adopted in 1977 and 1983, respectively, was to create a surplus to pay down the national debt so that when baby boomers retired, "the government would be able to fulfill its obligations to retirees ... because it would not be paying large amounts in interest on the debt," according to Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ).

"This promise was immediately broken," according to CTJ. "President Reagan and the first President Bush both spent every penny of the growing Social Security surpluses on tax cuts and other government programs.

"Only at the end of the 1990s, under President Clinton, did our government finally begin to save the Social Security surpluses as it had promised. But that achievement was short-lived as the second President Bush quickly reverted to the policies of his father and President Reagan."

For more information, visit www.ctj.org.