Baseline budgeting

Let me give you a product.  You're sitting there minding your own business and here comes an ad for potatoes, and you see potatoes, which are normally a buck-fifty a pound are now a dollar a pound.  You don't need any, but you can't pass up that price so you go buy a couple pounds.  You spent money you would have otherwise never spent because you don't need the potatoes. You only bought them because they're on sale.  So you're actually out the money, and you're telling yourself you saved a bunch.  This is how government baseline budgeting works.  They have a budget that automatically triggers every item going up eight to 10% every year, and if it only goes up five, they claim that their budget's been cut, even though they had a 5% increase.  You have just spent money that you weren't going to spend, but because there was a sale, you've told yourself you saved money.  Liberals tell themselves this. They've been planning on a tax increase, therefore more money, but there never was a tax increase. It never became law. But now there definitely isn't gonna be one, they claim the deficit's gonna be hurt because they're not gonna get what they never were gonna get.