Douglas Carswell's Blog

Imagine if Parliament were to do its job like Congress?

The United States Congress has insisted that the American government does not increase the country’s overdraft by as much as President Obama had wanted. 

You might not have guessed it from the appalling BBC coverage over the past few days - which has portrayed Congressional efforts to limit the debt as grossly irresponsible - but all that has happened is that the elected legislature has done its job. The federal government asked for yet more money, and – given the $ multi billion gap between how much the US Treasury spends each month and how much it takes in tax – Congress said “no - borrow less”. 

Perhaps if our own Parliament had done likewise, total public debt in Britain might not have risen by an extraordinary 18 percent over the past year?  We might even have actually started to close the deficit, rather than just talk about it?    

Listening to Mark Mardell wheezing away from Washington, his assumption seemed to be that the only responsible thing to do would be to vote to increase America debt. At no point did I hear the publicly paid for Mr Mardell and co explain the counter argument; achieving a sensible, more balanced budget could be achieved by reining in public spending and borrowing.   

Perhaps the BBC types find it hard to comprehend that a legislature might responsibly say “no” to the government’s demands for more money because our own Parliament does not seem capable of doing so. Since the 1930s, Parliament has gradually surrendered control over supply to the Treasury. 

American voters can watch to see if their representatives vote to increase tax and borrowing. In Britain, Treasury officials make these decisions, leaving it to MPs to rubber stamp on Estimates Days.

While Congress fiercely debates the fiscal deficit, a few summers ago, the UK government was able to commit us to bank bailouts - thanks to which the level of GDP spent by government will rise to over 50 percent - without even a Commons vote.

While Congress sets the debt ceiling for America, our own Parliament recently approved a budget that doubled the rate of income tax on low earners without many MPs even realising for a whole year after they had voted it through! 

Individual Congressional committees can comb through the accounts of federal agencies and veto expenditure. Our own Commons committees don’t even have the power to approve who gets to head up national agencies, let alone withhold their budgets.

Democracies with weaker legislatures tend to have bigger governments.  If we want smaller government in Britain, Parliament must start to do its job.

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