FT 8-06: Commonwealth Budget for FY2019 (Passed)

[YE]

May the FM please give a clear explanation for why nothing is being spent on the Medicaid Expansion Act?

https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Medicaid_Expansion_Act

[YE]

Bump.

This is still waiting for the GM but there's a major backlog atm. Patience is virtue.

[YE]

Bump.

This is still waiting for the GM but there's a major backlog atm. Patience is virtue.

I'm not being impatient at all. Rather, I'm bumping them so that we can find the threads.

I mean they're already on the 9th Parliament noticeboard

[YE]

Well anyway, once Truman costs the Budget I'll introduce my amendment. I don't want to cut too much or too little, after all.

Is it something that'd require the GM? I don't like bugging the GM department too often. There's a few things that need to be ironed out that I'm unsure why they weren't in the previous year surplus.

[YE]

Well anyway, once Truman costs the Budget I'll introduce my amendment. I don't want to cut too much or too little, after all.

Is it something that'd require the GM? I don't like bugging the GM department too often. There's a few things that need to be ironed out that I'm unsure why they weren't in the previous year surplus.

Well, I would like to know the full figures for the current version of the budget before amending it.
I don't want to cut taxes too much, otherwise we won't have any money for all the dams and roads and airports and railways and subways and metros and buses and irrigation schemes and trams and so on that I want to build. Particularly the Dams.

I've been intending to have the surplus at around $100 billion or so (and spend about at least a fourth or so of it per year) to ensure we don't run a deficit in the next few years and the budgetary process isn't as dragged out next year.

[YE]

Gah we really need a Deputy GM, don’t we?

Patience is virtue. As long as we get this done while I'm FM, I'll be a happy man.

[YE]

Maybe can we table this bill or something until the GM's office gets its act together?
Given they've had almost 4 months to cost this.

More like 2 months but no, this bill cannot be tabled. If you and others want, we could increase the number of slots on the floor though.

[YE]

What's the status of this?

Right now I'm looking through older budgets passed by other regions that we can use as a template.  This page provides some examples.  

Waiting for the unknowns to be solved. After that, we can make final adjustments that won't require the GM and add the new spending since then (as well as stuff that should have been included in past budgets).

[YE]

Amendment (just adding the new taxes in - basically a procedural amendment):

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Bumping this because I'm about to introduce an amendment.

[YE]

Amendment:

Amendment (just adding the new taxes in - basically a procedural amendment):

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Bumping this because I'm about to introduce an amendment.

Actually there's only one bill for sure that I needed to add lol since everything else more recent counts for FY2020.

Edit: I missed a few bills in the Truman ministry holy sh*t. Added.

[YE]

Looking through older stuff, I stumble upon two bills that were signed prior to the signing of the FY2018 Budget yet not included in the final bill.

Warren Act: $618,750,000 - one time thing
Mann Act: $300,000,000,000 - one time thing

None of these were actually included in the FY2018 so I'm not sure if they're legally funded programs.

I also think I found an error in the math of the FY2018 budget (not counting for the above two items). I am getting $804,529,005,200 in revenue, $426,628,500,000 in spending,  leading to a surplus of $377,900,505,200.

This still is unresolved:

Other bills that also go in this category:
Preventing Atlasian Anti-Choice Act: $600,000,000

This I'd assume would come directly out of the infrastructure fund:
Fremont Railway and Pan-Regional Transport Act: $4,618,000,000

All except for the one above should have been included in FY2018 but were not explicitly mentioned in the 2018 bill so not sure if these are valid.

So yeah, this is why I've been skeptical of too much spending as it is as we could have a surplus of about $75 billion or something much greater than that. I was intending to take care of this at the end of the budget process but seeing as I did the budget framework months ago and know the ins and outs and my term as FM as ending in a few weeks, we need to settle this now.

[YE]

Also, I see some discussion about the Carbon Tax in this thread, and I believe I've found the problem with it.

HenryWallace used this paper for his revenue estimate (which is worked into the text of FT 2-14), which I then transplanted into the FY2018 budget. The issue was not with the revenue estimate, which is technically correct, but with the bill itself, which lifts the tax described in the paper, but does not lower the corporate tax rate from 35 to 28 percent or allocate 161 billion for low-income individuals (both of which are elements of the carbon tax described in the paper). If those elements had been included in the legislation, the 10-year revenue would add up to less than 200 billion.

The carbon tax rate was changed this year and cut by 40% FWIW since the revenues were literally greater than spending levels. Corporate taxes are a federal issue though in this case so that should have been left out but the funding of low income individuals should have been included. Of course, not sure what to do about it now.

[YE]

Also do we want to fund this? Nothing has been enacted on that I’m aware of.

[YE]

Also, I see some discussion about the Carbon Tax in this thread, and I believe I've found the problem with it.

HenryWallace used this paper for his revenue estimate (which is worked into the text of FT 2-14), which I then transplanted into the FY2018 budget. The issue was not with the revenue estimate, which is technically correct, but with the bill itself, which lifts the tax described in the paper, but does not lower the corporate tax rate from 35 to 28 percent or allocate 161 billion for low-income individuals (both of which are elements of the carbon tax described in the paper). If those elements had been included in the legislation, the 10-year revenue would add up to less than 200 billion.

The carbon tax rate was changed this year and cut by 40% FWIW since the revenues were literally greater than spending levels. Corporate taxes are a federal issue though in this case so that should have been left out but the funding of low income individuals should have been included. Of course, not sure what to do about it now.

So this has just drawn my attention to another issue: the figure that HenryWallace used in the original act (FT 2-14) is actually wrong (even disregarding the low income funding and other things) because it was not corrected for regional population. I'm partially at fault for this because Wallace asked me to check the brookings paper to make sure that his numbers were right, and I completely overlooked the fact that the paper, of course, was for a federal carbon tax.

So the value reported in FY2018 is wrong by roughly a factor of three. At this point it doesn't make much of a difference because of the huge surplus from the previous year, so it wasn't like we were spending money that we didn't have. But that is definitely an issue that I'll fix in this year's budget.

Okay thanks for letting me know.

Seeing that my rationale for me cutting the rate last year was generating more revenue than the budget and thus feared that'd wreck the economy, I'm going to push to repeal it and go back to what we did in FY2017.

[YE]

Also this law is in effect

https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Preventing_Atlasian_Anti-Choice_Coercion_Act

Yea it's been in the back of my mind for months. I'd personally be in favor of gutting it since it's knee jerk but I have reservations I could find the votes to do so.

[YE]

I introduced a bill to re-appeal the 2018 carbon tax seeing lack of commentary.

[YE]

Just realized this has been debated so long it started in my last tenure in Parliament!

Have there been any major changes other than lowering the taxes? I know YE has been leading this process but I'd love to at the very least stay informed of what's going on!

A few smaller spending programs have been added that were passed shortly, and I plan to undo one of my carbon tax cuts, but otherwise, the GM department just needs to fill out the numbers.

[YE]

Just wanted to say that I am working on the Fremont budget now. It should be done in a few days.

Did you hear that everyone?

Thanks Encke for helping make my afternoon.

[YE]

Ok so here's the deal.

Once we get final numbers, I'll move to reappeal the carbon tax cut from 2018 (suspending the rules to allow the carbon tax bill that should be in the queue on the noticeboard to be moved to the floor for a quick up and down vote and then once that gets the votes to pass, we'll suspend the rules to have an up and down vote here.)

Is that good everyone?

[YE]

Looking through older stuff, I stumble upon two bills that were signed prior to the signing of the FY2018 Budget yet not included in the final bill.

Warren Act: $618,750,000 - one time thing
Mann Act: $300,000,000,000 - one time thing

None of these were actually included in the FY2018 so I'm not sure if they're legally funded programs.

I also think I found an error in the math of the FY2018 budget (not counting for the above two items). I am getting $804,529,005,200 in revenue, $426,628,500,000 in spending,  leading to a surplus of $377,900,505,200.

This still is unresolved:

Other bills that also go in this category:
Preventing Atlasian Anti-Choice Act: $600,000,000

While we wait, we should decide whether to fund those 3 programs listed above. Personally, I’m fine with funding the Warren Act, undecided on the Mann Act, and against the “anti-choice prevention act”.

[YE]

That’s my fault for not looking at the wiki and assuming the speaker updated the OP for amendments. Technically though the 2018 bill overrides it anyway though, correct?

[YE]

Upon closer inspection, the 2018 Royalties Act does probably needs a modification. The FE-3 amendment to the 2016 Royalties Act changed the tax to 10% per THOUSAND cubic feet. With natural gas prices hovering around $4.00/thousand cubic feet, this would amount to roughly a $0.40 tax per thousand cubic feet.

However, a $2.50 tax per cubic foot, as described in FT 8-18, would be a $2500!!!! tax per thousand cubic feet.

Hmmmm...

Ok, will reduce that (and suspend the rules to do so) by a bit since that’s obviously ridiculous.

[YE]

Upon closer inspection, the 2018 Royalties Act does probably needs a modification. The FE-3 amendment to the 2016 Royalties Act changed the tax to 10% per THOUSAND cubic feet. With natural gas prices hovering around $4.00/thousand cubic feet, this would amount to roughly a $0.40 tax per thousand cubic feet.

However, a $2.50 tax per cubic foot, as described in FT 8-18, would be a $2500!!!! tax per thousand cubic feet.

Hmmmm...

Ok, will reduce that (and suspend the rules to do so) by a bit since that’s obviously ridiculous.

Yeah, probably a good idea, since a straight calculation of the revenue for a $2500/1000 m^3 tax results in a figure of 12 trillion dollars.

Also going to add that the Coal tax was supposed to be a reduction from 110$ to 50$, but since the actual 2016 Royalties Act had a 50% per ton tax, the 'reduction' in the 2018 act actually increased the tax (since the price per ton of coal is around 40$). This will need to be fixed as well.

(Meanwhile, the oil tax is all right, with the revenue numbers being roughly double those of last year, which follows the intention of FT 8-18)

Introduced appropriate legislation - thanks again for the effort you put into this!

[YE]

Alright, pending any last second surprises, here's the plan.

I will officially be suspending Article II Section 3 (to increase the number of slots) and the entirety of Article III as of now (so we can knock this out). Out of fairness to the speaker, since I torture him enough as it is, I will administer the two extra slots.

After the 24 hour objection period is over, I will move the two tax adjustment bills to the floor (not breaking the standings orders as it's per FM request).

I will allow 24 hours of debate and then a 72 hour voting period unless there are any amendments on those two bills.

In the meantime, debate here can continue and hopefully we'll discuss our views on the 3 un-allocated spending proposals I mentioned above.

Once those 2 tax bills have the votes to pass, I will add those 2 bills that are being modified to this thread as an amendment. ON Progressive will be in charge of administrating everything else on this thread, (and Scott, please update the headers) as usual, though I'd prefer to see a final vote 24 hours after I update the bills in this thread. All other bills on the floor (so up to 4 non-budget related slots) can be administered as normal up to the discretion of speaker ON Progressive.

Is that clear everybody? Any questions or problems ask me now.

I am not trying to rush this process and I realize there's been a lot of turnover in this body so some of this may not be familiar with all the laws yet but at the same time, I quite frankly don't want my successor to have to deal with the FY2019 budget seeing this has been on the floor for now six months. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

[YE]

I'll add the FT 7-17 at the next amendment.

I introduced a bill to fix said error. There was a last moment debate on just decriminalizing or outright legalization so this error is understandable.