Thread by @StevenTDennis

If you are a young reporter wanting to understand Washington, you could do worse than reading the budget from start to finish. On almost any page you can find a multi-decade saga if you look hard enough.

The wrong way to read it is just as a bunch of numbers. Why is there breast cancer research in DOD of all places? There’s a fun story behind that. Why do government rocket launches cost so much more than private launches? Another story. Every line item started somewhere.

My favorite are the charts in the back. They are key to putting in perspective other stories. You should know, for example, that the Gov’t will spend ~$62T on autopilot over the next decade. A $6T increase would be a little less than 10%. And so on.

You also kind find out, by comparing past budgets, the delta between what administrations said they wanted and what they ultimately delivered. And many, many other things.

For instance, Rob Portman proposed the last balanced budget when he was OMB director. It's a fun read. (He wanted revenue neutral tax reform, including paying for an AMT fix!) If you don't know what that last sentence means, learn. It amounted to about a trillion $ a decade.

If you want to read a little more on the breast cancer thing, there's a CRS report. Long story short: They had leftover defense money, but 1990-era budget caps prevented them from shifting to domestic $.
Solution: DOD breast cancer research program! fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R…

Sometimes things are explained by which chairmen have jurisdiction over which departments. I think that's why we have/had that issue where two different agencies regulate salmon???

It's also why you end up with hodgepodge departments like "Commerce." Obama/Zients tried to propose changes and I went to the chairs who vowed to kill the idea in the crib. Nobody wanted to lose their jurisdiction, risk status quo, etc.

If you read the budget, you'd know this, because you'd get to "Commerce" and you'd be like, what the hell? Who created this menagerie?

One thing I've learned: Expensive programs can be more popular with Congress than cheap programs. There's a reason why some weapons systems have subcontractors in hundreds of congressional districts, and it's not for efficiency!