Miscellaneous

Well why should the government behave like the rest of us?

If I ever got audited by the IRS (*finds biggest fucking piece of wood in the forest and knocks on it hard as a motherfucker*), I don't imagine the agency would be too pleased if it determined I was being "creative" with my accounting. I don't know, but I'm guessing that they prefer that standard accounting rules be used. And yet, seems that our own federal government isn't necessarily so keen on those standard practices. At least, that's what one takes away from this story about the fact that the government keeps two sets of books.

One set of books, for example, shows a deficit of $318 billion in 2005. That's the number the Feds like to tout. But the other set of books, which the government apparently doesn't talk about, is audited and uses standard accounting rules -- it shows the 2005 deficit to be either $760 billion or $3.5 trillion. Either one of which is just a bit larger than the Fed's "little" $318 billion number.

Some Congress members want the government to start using the audited numbers, and while the House supported such a proposal, the Senate decided not to bother considering the matter. Feeling better about the state of the economy yet, when Congress can't even decide on using standard accounting for figuring out its own budget? Yeah, me neither. Me fucking neither.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on June 09, 2008 (boomark / email).