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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (48949)	1/11/2012 3:25:41 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: "All spending (except maybe interest on the debt) is discretionary in the normal English language sense of the word. One law can change it." but we are not talking about that 'definition'. We are using the more apropos 'definition' that all budget analysts and all of official Washington uses, and has used for generations, when discussing the particulars of the federal budget. And that draws a bright line between OBLIGATED SPENDING, (i.e., spending that is on "auto-pilot" because laws, often of very long standing, require it... for example entitlements) and spending that is considered more flexible or trivial in nature, and that is subjected to fine-tuning every single year in the normal course of budget appropriations (i.e., first requested by Executive and/or some Congress critters... next appropriated for some specific purpose). And even 'more discretionary' particular example of 'discretionary spending' is that spending that various administrative officials (Agency heads, sub-chiefs, etc.) already have some control over whether it gets spent or not, by dint of specific grants of authority. What is commonly held to be "discretionary" in the massive federal budget is but a SMALL PORTION of the overall budget. (And it has gone down, not up, in the past three years....)