It’s good to know that Carly Fiorina is 90% sure that she’ll be a Republican candidate for president and that she’s bringing her ‘A’ game with some really great ideas.
Right of the box, she recommends zero-based budgeting, which is probably an even more sub-mental idea that you imagine. It’s true that administrations submit a budget plan, but Congress controls the pursestrings and they don’t waste time reevaluating the need for every single item in the federal budget. For starters, there’s the non-discretionary budget, the size of which varies more through changes in demographics and the economy than through adjustments for inflation. In 2011, it made up 56 percent of the overall budget, and interest payments made up another approximately seven percent. In any case, when it comes to the discretionary budget, the congressional appropriations committees set the rate of increase or decrease and typically don’t simply tag it to inflation. Of course, with Sequestration, the appropriations committees lose this discretion.
Fiorina justifies the need for zero-based budgeting using a curious argument.
“Washington, D.C. has become a vast and unaccountable bureaucracy. It’s been growing for 40 years,” she opined. “We have no idea how our money is spent.”
Either this is an acknowledgment that the Reagan Revolution roughly corresponds with an era of unaccountable spending and government growth or it is a rigorous defense of New Deal fiscal discipline and streamlined bureaucratic efficiency. I think it’s actually both, although not intentionally.
Speaking of streamlined bureaucratic efficiency in the Reagan Era, Ms. Fiorina has another idea.
“We have — how many Inspector General reports do we need to read that say, you know, you can watch porn all day long and get paid exactly the same way as somebody who’s trying to do their job?”
Her solution is to introduce “pay for performance in our civil service.” That way, she can get at-work porn-watching back to a manageable level, hopefully around the rate we saw in the early Ford administration. Of course, there’s probably no way that Fiorina can fail to improve on the Reagan administration, as James Dobson, Ed Meese, and Henry Hudson watched more porn than the combined populations of the next eleven largest nations combined. Their report was more lurid than Kenneth Starr’s.
So, it’s good to know that Ms. Fiorina is proposing manageable goals. Her plans are like a Swiss watch.
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Demon sheep!!!!
Having walked away from her disastrous time at HP with about 40 million in cash/ stock, she’s hardly in a position to cut budgets to the bone. One of the largest golden parachutes.
And that after totally destroying the culture, innovation, and values of HP. She is also one of the most enthusiastic outsourcers. She brought in H-1Bs, HP became a shell of its former self.
More blatant GOTP hypocrisy. I wonder how many of her bonuses she actually “earned.”
Pay-for-performance would have turned her (and lots of other overpaid CEOs) into a pauper.
Fiorina is into failing up.
Before HP, there was Lucent Tech — a spinoff from ATT that included Bell Labs. Carly got out of there (1999) before the major problems at Lucent were recognized in the business press.
Sometime between 1998 and late 2001 I’d formed a negative assessment of Fiorina’s business and management skills which was contrary to the business press accolades that she was then receiving. Enough so that when a former HP engineer, Bob*, who had gone on to form his own tech company asked for my opinion about what he should do with his HP stock in light of Fiorina as CEO, with no hesitation I said, sell it.
*not his real name.
The average voter appears to be a hell of a lot smarter than the overpaid HP board that hired her.
Ans that’s why they get paid tens of millions.
Let’s see … Carly Fiorina
Worst tech CEO ever
Lost the Senate race by TEN points during the height of the TeaParty Revolution
Is opposed to all forms of gun control
Ran two companies into the ground (HP and Revolution Health Group)
yeah. She’ll fit right into the Klown Kar.
Carly Fiorina: Vote for me. I’m really good at blowing stuff up!
The Carter administration did in fact implement zero-based budgeting within departments. Congress made sure that the things that should have been cut were in fact left in. But the analytical excercise was key to the elimination of some high-profile boondoggle budgets like the B=1 bomber and neutron bomb. Reagan, of course, quickly reversed the practice and block-granted to the states the programs he wanted to get rid of.
Although an honest zero-based budget analysis of the US national security institutions would make an interesting if lengthy read. Likewise, the appropriations to support ex-Presidents, Congressional retirement pay, and some other denizens of the nooks and crannies of the budget.
I’ve never actually seen a corporation that seriously implemented zero-based budgeting despite the hype in the business press. It’s one of those seductive ideas that in practice is politically impossible to honestly implement. And too threatening to chief executive officers with the skills of Carly Fiorina.
It’s the budgeting equivalent of Congressional term limits.
As a resident of DC who is less than 40 years old, you’re damn right it has been growing. We have two richest counties in the US, Fairfax and Loudon, and another of the top 5, Arlington. The great recession never really hit us, property values keep climbing, and we have a non stop influx of the young and educated who have gentrified all the poors out of desirable areas of DC since the Obama administration.
However… that’s all due to Republican policy. This is the result of privatizing everything. Creating contractor after contractor and each get’s it’s sliver of the pie. Northern Virginia turned blue and took Virginia with it because of all the rich defense contractors, lobbyists, lawyers, that have been calling it home since Reagan strolled into office.
So yeah, DC has grown and it’s utterly unaccountable. Virginia also went blue. However all of this is due to the vultures that decended to contract.
By which you mean, after the watch has been severally dismantled by each of the instruments in a Swiss Army knife?