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Comment by boxed | Hacker News Reader

It's weird to me that the budget of a government is a bill at all. A budget is a budget, and a law is a law.

The budget is implemented with a law. There's a good reason for that. Parliament passes laws. And the budget is decided by Parliament. So they implement the budget with a law. The mechanism is fundamental to the Canadian (or UK) political system. The government, the executive branch, must have the confidence of the legislative branch, the authority to rule, which means having the support of a majority of Members of Parliament. The budget is a confidence bill; it must be debated, voted on, and pass. If it does not pass, the government has lost confidence, has no right to rule, and an election must be called.

It's conceivable Parliament could implement a law that allows taxation and spending to be discretionary within a range, by the executive -- they in fact do that to give departments some emergency room. A large such allocation happened during the COVID crisis budget. But the overall year-to-year tax levels are debated and argued anyway in Parliament, so they might as well just write it directly into a new law.

> If it does not pass, the government has lost confidence, has no right to rule, and an election must be called.

Generally an election is called, but theoretically the Crown may ask another political party to see they can get enough votes together to pass legislation.

If the current governing party has a majority of seats, then there is obviously no way that any other party can. But if (as now) the currently governing party does not have a majority of seats and are part of a coalition/agreement, then another party could try forming a coalition.

Minority governments have been relatively rare in Canada, and so the 'proper' actions on what to do during them aren't part of the cultural zeitgeist, which can lead to drama:

* https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/king-byng-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King–Byng_affair

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–2009_Canadian_parliamenta...

Hence the existence of "confidence and supply" agreements where a party agrees to a loose coalition whose only pledge is to support the main party therein by voting for budgets (supply) and against no-confidence motions.

> There's a good reason for that.

ok?

> Parliament passes laws.

Ok? So? They also have to go to the bathroom once in a while. They can do more than one thing.

> The budget is a confidence bill; it must be debated, voted on, and pass

Sure.. but again, why can you put NON-budget stuff in there? Because it's a hack. It's not a budget, it's a law.

This is not at all how it works in Sweden. The budget is a budget. It doesn't sneak in laws from the side. We also don't have government shutdowns, because if a new budget doesn't pass the old is in effect a year on. We even had a situation where the opposition got their budget passed instead of the government, and that was annoying as hell to them of course, but we didn't need to call elections.

This "budget" isn't a budget in the sense of a limit on spending. In a parliamentary system, the budget is a set of proposals for what to spend money on and how to raise it. So it involves a piece of legislation to adjust the government's taxation powers.

Well.. no? Because the state have other sources of money than the taxes: previous budget surplus, and loans being the most obvious ones.

Taxation is one thing, the budget is another.

This could just be an annoying issue of how a word is used. Words pick up multiple meanings over time. Certainly "budget" can be used in the sense you say, but "The Budget" is a term for a political event, in the UK and probably Canada which includes other things - much as those of us who like cleanly defined terms would prefer it otherwise...

Who should decide how things are spent?

My wife and I vote on our personal budget all the time.

I think their point is the budget should be passed seperate from any other laws. You don't say "we'll splurge on this vacation only if we agree to split washing the dishes. It's both or neither."

Why do you imagine that non-budget-related issues must be packaged with the budget into the same bill? Parliament may pass as many bills as it has time to.

So politicians can say "I didn't want to extend the copyright, but the budget needed to pass." Plus, passing more things at once limits the average person's ability to take in what they are doing.

Do you have a child as a tie breaker? Or do you mean more discuss with each other potential purchases rather that literally vote on it, which doesn't work very well with two people.

> Do you have a child as a tie breaker?

Thunderdome:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max_Beyond_Thunderdome

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