Capital Budgeting
Tuesday, October 28th, 2003That kind of thinking, moreover, frames the debate on everything else. During the last presidential election, when it appeared we might actually have some temporary budget surplus lying around, we heard hundreds of proposals for how to spend the money – almost all of them by making permanent commitments to entitlement programs rather than one-time commitments to capital improvements. To someone who has to manage cash flow and capital needs for either a family or a business using a finite reserve fund as a down-payment on permanent spending commitments seems ludicrous; in an environment where there is no distinction between operations and infrastructure it seems routine.