Does the Federal Government Budget Backwards?

   What was our Founding Fathers’ attitude regarding debt? “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”  Thomas Jefferson later remarked,  “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.” 

   If you are like many Americans, you might have assumed that the federal budget process begins with a determination of what activities are lawfully authorized by the United States Constitution along with an analysis of what they will cost.  And then, you might have assumed that these necessary and authorized activities would form the basis around which to organize per-sonnel and material resources.
 
   But this assumption would not be accurate.  

   The way to understand what is Constitutional (that is to say “legal”) spending, we need to go the Constitution and read Article 1, Section 8, which outlines what federal funds are authorized to utilize with defined conditions.

   Here are a few things Congress is currently unconstitutionally funding outside of the seventeen powers in Article 1, Sec. 8: The BATFE, FDA, Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban D ...

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