Tax Beaner looks at the Federal Budget Process

Here is the first of many essays from Tax Beaner, a former colleague of mine, and self described "leader of the opposition" for Canada's John Galt.

Now here is another approach to taxation. Do not measure taxation by the
tax collected but by governmental expenditures in a year. Why? Because
this would treat deficits as deferred taxation, accrual basis instead of
cash basis. Now here is where the research comes in. To really get it
right, the expenditures should be expressed as the inflation adjusted
percentage of GDP. But should the expenditures necessarily be tied to the
GDP for the same year? Expenditures are budgeted and approved without
really knowing what the GDP will be for the next year, but we do know what
the revenue is for the year most recently ended. Just trying to answer
the question, "Is the government being fiscally responsible?"
Additionally, we often know what the revenue will be at the time a
"special expenditure" is voted on and approved. Should the "special
expenditure" trigger a "special tax assessment". Hoo-hah, that would
really make Congress and the President think twice before purposely
leaving things out of the budget that they know they'll need later.