The superficiality of these models doesn’t paint a complete picture

At your request: This week's California Commentary by Jon Coupal
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** California Commentary
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** The limits of interactive budget tools
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By Jon Coupal

Did you ever want to write your own state budget? Maybe not, but some media outlets and progressive organizations have created interactive websites where ordinary citizens can do just that.

These are intended, we suppose, for educational purposes and perhaps, more specifically, to demonstrate how difficult and complex it is to create a budget for the nation’s most populous state.

For example, in 2019, CalMatters created a “Budget Decider” that allowed anyone to input various dollar amounts on both the revenue side and the expenditure side to create a state budget. The website states that it was designed “to improve your understanding of where taxes come from and where all that money goes.”

A similar interactive website was created by the progressive organization Next 10 called the “California Budget Challenge.” Its stated purpose is “to educate citizens about the state budget and the tradeoffs that are made to bring the budget into balance.”

Any attempt to educate the public about public policy and the tradeoffs that come with fiscal issues and state budgeting should be applauded, as long as it does not deceive the users.

But an argument can be made that the superficiality of these models doesn’t paint a complete picture about how government taxes its citizens and businesses and how it spends that money.

First, these exercises assume a zero-sum game. If you add revenue to one program, such as education, you must either raise taxes or reduce spending on something else, such as transportation. But budgeting is not a zero-sum game because changes in tax policy and spending have secondary impacts. This is the problem with what is known as “static scoring.”

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Jon Coupal is the President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA). He is a recognized expert in California fiscal affairs and has argued numerous tax cases before the courts.
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