Defense Spending Omnibus Bill (for the coming fiscal year)

RonsardEntrente

Date: Friday, 25 Feb 2011, 7:20 PM | Message # 1

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Introduction

Senator Lord Titus Veritas and I have been tasked with submitting a bill to advance funding for various classified military projects. With the collaboration of both the Defense and Commerce committees (as well as my own team of macroeconomists), I respectfully submit the following bill for the Senate's preview.

Section 1. Expenses. The following amounts shall be expended from the Imperial treasury for their respective specified projects by the end of the next fiscal year.

Sub-section a) Any expenses not verified in receipt for their respective projects will be immediately returned to the general fund of the Emperor.
Sub-section b) Standard auditing procedures shall be suspended in lieu of the sensitive and confidential nature of the projects thereof.
Sub-section b-1) Expedited auditing procedures shall be conducted by the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) with oversight from COMPNOR.

+ 20 billion for the expansion and refitting of ship yards that have the capability of producing star destroyers
+ 75 billion for the construction of new ships of the wall
+ 5 billion for advanced research on various classified ship projects

Total expenses: 100 billion credits

Section 2. Revenues. The following amounts shall be received and cut from their respective specified projects by the beginning of the next fiscal year in order to balance the principal expenses in Section 1.

Sub-section a) Any revenues in excess of those needed to pay for their respective projects will be immediately returned to the general fund of the Emperor.
Sub-section a-1) Excess funds shall not be returned for their original purpose even in the case that they are not needed for special military spending.

- 20 billion diverted from internal security/intelligence efforts, primarily on Imperial Center and other core worlds
- 50 billion from phasing out obsolete social services accounts (primarily non-humans affected) and welfare programs
- 25 billion raised from additional tariffs on non-essential goods and manufactures
- 5 billion from more stringent prize ship standards for pirate ships captured in the field, including a steeper cut for the Imperial treasury

Total revenues: 100 billion credits

Section 3. Carry-over clause. All other defense spending and revenues for the current fiscal year shall remain the same for the following fiscal year unless another bill is submitted by the Defense committee specifying any other changes.

Conclusion

This bill will advance His Majesty's pursuit of space dominance, security for the Empire, and the requisite technological advances to achieve such space superiority while maintaining fiscal neutrality in the upcoming fiscal year's budget.

Ronsard Entrente - Sponsor

Lord Titus Veritas - Co-sponsor

Ronsard Entrente

Senator of Commenor
Ranking Member, Commerce Committee

Titus_Veritas

Date: Tuesday, 19 Apr 2011, 12:05 PM | Message # 2

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Due to a mass clerical error which misprinted these numbers that were feed to my office, for which proper discipline and measures have been applied to ensure do not happen again, I must withdraw by name from this legislation. I do ask that Senator Entrente table this measure and consult myself once more on the spending legislation.

Viceroy Titus Veritas, House Veritas
Consul of the House of Lords

Former Senator of Deralia and the Tammuz Sector (50 BBY - 30 BBY, 18 BBY - 10 BBY)
Former Chairman of the Imperial Senate Defense Committee (18 BBY - 10 BBY)

Jace_Varitek

Date: Tuesday, 19 Apr 2011, 1:22 PM | Message # 3

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Hey all, I hope it's okay I moved this thread here for the time being, while we sort some of this out. Once we've done that, I can delete all this OOC and move it back there. For now though, I wanted to ask how sure we are that these numbers are correct, or close to correct? My concern here is that the canon seems to vary on how much a credit is even worth, let alone how much a Star Destroyer is worth (it's said that one Star Destroyer costs 388 million credits, which is then referred to as "equivalent of several star systems' annual economic output." Surely this can't be right, though—388 million is absurdly low for the economic output for an entire system for an entire year, unless we assume the value of the credit to be significantly more than the USD. The costs of firearms in Star Wars, though, seems to suggest the value of the credit is similar to or even less than the USD).

For these reasons, I've always discouraged RPers from getting specific with numbers. It seems to me there's just no way to know if they're correct or not. That's why, in the past (here, here), budget measures have usually dealt with percentages, which are a lot more manageable (not to mention that most RPers seem to tune out when numbers come into play, as we've seen with this particular bill). So if you do plan to move forward with this bill, do let us know what your views on this, Ronsard. And Titus, feel free to hop in here with your thoughts, too.

Jace Varitek
Manager/Administrator from January 2003 to Present
My recent posts here, pre-2009 archives here

"When my information changes, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
—John Maynard Keynes

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