The Federal Budget Is a Permission Slip for Every Swamp Creature in Washington

The Baseline Budget Scam

Baseline budgeting assumes every federal program grows automatically with inflation and enrollment, which means any increase smaller than the assumed rate gets reported in the press as a painful cut. That accounting trick turns routine spending hikes into phony austerity headlines and protects every program from honest review.

The Congressional Budget Office publishes these baselines in its annual Budget and Economic Outlook. The February 2025 edition projected federal outlays rising past $7.3 trillion in fiscal year 2026, with deficits exceeding $1.8 trillion. Those numbers assume Congress does nothing. Doing nothing is the most expensive option.

Conservatives and libertarians have proposed zero-based budgeting for decades. Under zero-based review, every program must justify its existence from a literal zero dollar base each cycle. That sounds radical only because Washington has normalized automatic growth. A family cannot assume its grocery bill rises eight percent a year and still call itself frugal. Neither should Congress.

How Continuing Resolutions Hide Waste

Congress has not passed all twelve appropriations bills on time since fiscal year 1997, so the government limps along under continuing resolutions that freeze spending at prior year levels. That process sounds like restraint, but it actually locks in every wasteful program that a real budget vote might challenge.

When the government operates under a continuing resolution, new starts are frozen and old programs continue at last year's funding levels. That sounds like restraint. It is not. It locks in every bad decision made in previous years and prevents Congress from redirecting money to higher priorities. The wasteful grant survives while the urgent need waits.

The Government Accountability Office maintains a database of open recommendations to Congress and federal agencies. As of 2024, hundreds of those recommendations involved duplicative programs or inefficient spending practices that could save tens of billions of dollars. Continuing resolutions ensure most of those recommendations stay open. They are the dust cover over the mess.

The real victims are not the politicians who miss a deadline. They are the taxpayers who fund the same failed programs year after year because no appropriations committee has the leverage to terminate them. A continuing resolution is not a stopgap. It is a life support machine for waste.

The Regulatory Budget Nobody Sees

The regulatory side of government is larger than the official budget because compliance costs, lost productivity, and delayed investment do not appear on any appropriations table. Those hidden costs land on families and businesses as higher prices, which is the most regressive tax Washington imposes.

Every new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Labor, or the Securities and Exchange Commission creates a new class of compliance officers, consultants, and lobbyists. Those jobs do not produce goods or services. They produce paperwork. And the cost is passed to consumers in higher prices, which is the most regressive tax imaginable.

The paperwork burden is measurable. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs reports that Americans spend billions of hours each year filling out federal forms. Hours are not abstract. They are time parents do not spend with children, time entrepreneurs do not spend building businesses, and time inventors do not spend building the next American industry.

Regulatory budgets also escape the annual appropriations spotlight because they live inside agencies rather than on the Treasury ledger. A rule that costs the economy $10 billion does not require a line item vote. It requires a notice, a comment period, and a signature. The administrative state grows without ever asking Congress for a dime.

What a Real Cut Looks Like

A serious spending reduction starts with the honest admission that Washington performs too many functions poorly and should simply stop doing them. That means zero-based reviews for every program, a federal hiring freeze through attrition, and the termination of corporate welfare dressed up as economic development.

The debt ceiling debate that returns every year or two is a sideshow. By the time Congress argues over whether to raise the limit, the spending has already happened. The real fight is in the appropriations committees, where program managers and lobbyists work together to make every dollar sound essential. It is not essential. Most of it is optional.

The Congressional Budget Office has documented that federal debt held by the public is on track to exceed 120 percent of gross domestic product within a decade. That is a level that economists across the political spectrum agree risks slower growth, higher interest rates, and reduced fiscal flexibility during the next crisis. Pretending otherwise is not conservative. It is cowardice.

The Alamo Post was founded in 2026 to call things by their proper names. The federal budget is not a moral document. It is a permission slip for the administrative state to grow without limit. Tear it up.