Surplus

An interesting question in chapter 10 is what do we do with the surpluses we have? In the late 90’s there were surpluses and Wildavsky suggests that politics during this time was just as partisan as it was during times of deficit spending. I am wondering what the responsible thing to do would have been. Here is a list of the things that I have come up with.

1. Ensure that we are still following the budgeting rules. We do this because it would have been nice to keep going with the surpluses we had. When we stopped following the rules and revenues slowed, as we learned in class, we had a much larger problem on our hands, as we are dealing with it today.

2. Use the money to increase monies paid to any debt that needed paid off in future budgets. This would have been a good way of continuing prosperity and would help to balance future budgets more easily.

3. Put a portion of the money into rainy day funds to help pay for emergencies, national disasters, or future debt. Deposit monies into the treasury where we can roll over a portion of the surplus into future budgets.

4. Invest into all energy sources, natural gas, oil, clean coal, and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, tide, and geothermal, to lower the price of energy and get us off of dependence on foreign oil.

5. Use the money to get underfunded programs, to the point where they can function properly, but make sure to count this into future budgets so that we are not over spending.

6. Kick back some of the money to the tax payers to help grow the economy, decrease unemployment by helping business to grow, and in the end, hopefully help the tax base to grow some more.

Surely, some, maybe all, of this was done. It seems to me that the best thing to do in times of surplus is plan accordingly and keep the surpluses coming.