The tax code is a giant complex problem with a giant complex solution.  But of nearly equal weight is the idiocy and built in budgeting process for the federal government that guarantees bigger government and bigger deficits.

Base line budgeting is a trick.  Explained thus:

“In a one-sentence description, a baseline government budget involves carrying over the current spending level from year to year and treating it as the floor on which to build additional spending changes. The major assumption in this approach is that the existing spending level of the agency is correct and needs no adjustment. Any new change should be on top of the existing level, not into it.

As the website Citizens Against Government Waste explains,

“In reality, baseline budgeting is one of the most sinister ways that politicians claim to cut spending when they are actually increasing spending.”

In short, this budgeting trick automatically builds in increases to government agencies and programs.  If sectors are budgeted for a 6% increase, but Congress wants it only to be a 4% increase, the headline story is that Congress wishes a 2% cut.  In fact it is only a cut in the increase, not the net.

“For example, if an agency's budget is projected to grow by $100 million, but only grows by $75 million, according to baseline budgeting, that agency sustained a $25 million cut.”

This explains a deception that fuels the ever increasing deficit and the leviathan government.  Attack the tax code ala Rand Paul and his flat tax proposal.  But Rand and others should pick up the torch on the systemic budgeting procedure known as base line budgeting.