More and more often recently, on television screens, words have been heard about the consolidation of society, consolidated opinion, etc. One more foreign word, unobtrusively (or, on the contrary, quite aggressively) entered our vocabulary. The meaning of the word "consolidation" can most correctly be considered in matters relating to various concepts from the economic environment. The most obvious example is probably the consolidated budget.
General idea of the budget system
The budget code for each level of government (federal, regional, local) has fixed its “cash wallet” - the budget. These "wallets" receive specific types of income. They can be spent on purely specific expenses, which each level of government has its own, established by laws. "Wallets" are called that way - the federal budget, regional budgets and local budgets. Each of them is independent and almost independent. “Almost” - because the incoming cash is not always enough to fulfill the assigned powers. In such situations, financial assistance is usually provided from one budget to another.
Budget expenses
The costs are also fixed in a rather interesting way: some types of expenses, for example, expenses for improvement or national defense, are typical exclusively for one level of government. And some (for example, education, healthcare) are financed from the federal, regional, and local budgets. Therefore, it is extremely incorrect to say that if the expenditures of one federal budget for health care make up 3%, then only 3% of the budget is allocated for medicine. This, incidentally, is committed by many journalists by pulling some convenient piece out of context. An objective indicator in this case is the consolidated health budget as a whole. And it will be far from 3%.
Consolidated Budgets: Examples
The very meaning of the word “consolidate” implies an understanding that it is necessary to combine, add up the numbers. To combine the indicators of budgets usually begin vertically and from below. To make it clearer, this can be considered in the following example:
- At the very bottom of the power vertical are local governments. According to the administrative-territorial division, the municipal districts include rural and urban settlements. To fulfill their authority, each settlement has its own financial resources, combined into the budget of the settlement, and to fulfill the authority of the district, the district administrations use the district (here it is the "district", not the "district") budget as a source of funds. To get an idea of the general budget of the administrative-territorial unit - the municipal district as a whole, i.e. the budget of the territory, you need to summarize all the budgets of the settlements and the district. What did you get? This is the consolidated budget of the district as a whole.
- Regional authorities (administrations of territories, republics, regions) have their own tasks. For their implementation, a regional budget is formed (regional, republican, regional). And in order to understand what budget the territory as a whole has, it is necessary to summarize the budgets of all the municipalities of the region with the regional. What will turn out in the end is the consolidated budget of the region.
- The highest level of power is federal. He uses the funds of the federal budget to carry out his powers. And if you add it together with the consolidated budgets of all regions, you get the consolidated budget of the Russian Federation, that is, our entire country. Here from it is already possible to take indicators characterizing the expenditure of funds in one direction or another. They will be objective and sufficiently visual.
