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Last week, Len Burman published a provocative op-ed suggesting that President’s Obama idea of freezing non-security discretionary spending amounts to “chump change” and that if he wants to make real budget improvements the President should propose to freeze tax expenditures (i.e., all the various preferences in our famously complex tax code). By Len’s calculations, such a freeze would increase tax revenues by $3.5 trillion over the budget window, 14 times as much as the $250 billion in spending reductions from the narrow spending freeze.

Over at the National Journal, John Maggs interviewed Len about his proposal and then asked various experts for their reactions.  Here’s what I wrote:

Len is right to focus attention on tax expenditures. They involve big money, distort our conception of the size of government, often disproportionately favor the affluent, and receive too little oversight.

He’s also right that they deserve special attention when Congress decides that it wants to increase tax revenues. As Len says in the interview: “Cutting tax expenditures is a much better way to do this than raising marginal tax rates since the former tends to improve economic efficiency by reducing economic distortions — for example, among different kinds of investments — while the latter increases the economic cost of taxation.”

Of course, there are some complications. In addition to the obvious political challenges, tax expenditure cutters face another problem: agreeing on what provisions should actually be characterized as tax expenditures. One could, of course, just use whatever definitions the Treasury and the Joint Committee on Taxation use. But analysts do not agree on which provisions are really spending programs in disguise.

Some cases are easy. Tax credits for using ethanol-blended motor fuels are clearly spending programs run through the tax code. But then there are items like the 15% tax rate on capital gains and dividends. That rate is scored as a tax expenditure in the current system because 15% is lower than the rates on ordinary income. It wouldn’t be viewed as a tax expenditure, however, by analysts who believe that a consumption tax, rather than an income tax, should be the lodestar for judging tax policies. My point is not to take sides on that issue, but just to point out that there is sincere debate about which items labeled as tax expenditures should be viewed as hidden spending programs and which as good tax policy.

In response to one question, Len raises the idea of subjecting all tax expenditures to annual reauthorization as one way to rein them in. I appreciate the desire for greater oversight, but I find this idea worrisome. We are already cursed with a tax system in which an enormous number of provisions are scheduled to expire. That creates needless uncertainty, placing a real burden on businesses and families and often undermining the very intent of the tax provisions. As a case in point, consider the research and experimentation tax credit, which Congress extends every year or two. That’s absurd. If the credit is good policy, it should be enacted on a permanent (or, at least, prolonged) basis so that it provides a clear signal to firms that engage in R&E. Conversely, if it’s bad policy, we should kill it. Revisiting it every year will just enrich lobbyists, distract legislators from more important issues, and weaken any incentives it might create.

I expect that the same holds true for many other tax expenditures. Some deserve to be enacted for prolonged periods to accomplish their goals. Some deserve annual review. And many deserve to be killed.

The most encouraging item in todays jobs report was the sharp drop in underemployment (which includes not only those who are unemployed but also marginally attached workers and those who are part time for economic reasons). The underemployment rate fell to 16.5%, down from its peak of 17.4% last October and from 17.3% in December:

The headline unemployment rate also declined; it now stands at 9.7%, down from its 10.1% peak in October and from 10.0% in December.

These declines are encouraging, but the labor market obviously has a long way to go. Just how far was reinforced by BLS’s updated figures on the number of payroll jobs. Total job losses now stand at 8.4 million since the recession began at the end of 2007.

In the past two weeks, my students and I have been discussing the importance of property rights. One message: creating property rights isn’t enough. You also need a way to enforce those rights; otherwise, they may be meaningless.

Which brings us to the universal problem of shared refrigerators. At Georgetown, our refrigerator has a big handwritten sign that says, in essence, “Don’t Take Other People’s Food.” I wonder how well that works?

I learned about another solution from many Facebook friends this morning (see also this post by Tyler Cowen): a sandwich bag with trompe l’oeil mold:

The bag reminds me of a sign in a gem/jewelry store in Australia. The entrance was like walking through a mine shaft with all sorts of quartz crystals sticking out of the wall. Rather than ask the customers to please not touch the crystals, the store had a sign that said: “Danger, the crystals contain poison. Do not touch.” When I asked, the proprietor confessed that the crystals were harmless, but they had to fib in order stop customers from trying to break off the crystals.

At a time of unsustainable deficits, deficit neutrality is a remarkably lame vision for climate policy.

Last year, President Obama proposed to raise $500 billion over ten years through a cap-and-trade system that would limit carbon emissions. This year his climate policy raises nothing.

The president still backs cap-and-trade, but he has caved into congressional pressure to give away or spend all that potential revenue rather than use it to help taxpayers. Cap-and-trade has thus become cap-and-spend.

The new policy is described as follows in a footnote to Table S-2 of the budget:

A comprehensive market-based climate change policy will be deficit neutral because proceeds from emissions allowances will be used to compensate vulnerable families, communities, and businesses during the transition to a clean energy economy. Receipts will also be reserved for investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including support of clean energy technologies, and in adapting to the impacts of climate change, both domestically and in developing countries.

I am sympathetic to the idea that the value of some emission allowances should be used to compensate some families, communities, and businesses as the system ramps up. But studies have repeatedly found that such compensation would require only a fraction of the overall value of the allowances. There should still be plenty of room for allowances that are ear-marked for deficit reduction.

Proponents of the bills currently pending in Congress counter by pointing out that allowance giveaways would get smaller in later decades, helping cut future deficits.

I wouldn’t bet on it. In my experience, these dessert-now-spinach-later policies usually get renegotiated just as the spinach course is about to begin. The alternative minimum tax is about to hit more taxpayers? Let’s patch it for a year. Doctors are about to get their Medicare payments cut? Let’s put that off for another year. Terrorism risk insurance is about to phase out of existence? Let’s extend it for a few more years until we are ready. And on and on.

If we are serious about using some allowances for deficit reduction, we are better off doing it immediately, not creating beneficiary groups who will lobby for extensions when their free dessert is coming to an end.

And faced with $10 trillion or more in deficits over the next decade, we could really use the money.

Note: In his 2010 budget, the president proposed to raise $624 billion in revenues from a cap-and-trade program. $120 billion was earmarked for investing in clean energy technologies, so I netted it out in calculating the $500 billion figure above. The president proposed using those funds to pay for a permanent extension of the making work pay tax program, but they could also have been used to reduce the deficit. (See Table  S-2 from last year’s budget)

1. Big deficits. Under the President’s specific proposals, deficits will total $10 trillion from 2010-2020. Oh, and if existing policies (as defined by the administration) run their course, those deficits would actually be $12 trillion. Those are gigantic numbers. Under either scenario, our debt would grow faster than the economy every single year. That’s simply not sustainable.

2. The Fiscal Commission warning label. Budget-watchers know Table S-1 as the place to go for budget totals. In today’s budget, however, Table S-1 had a new feature: a box describing the President’s Fiscal Commission:

The Administration supports the creation of a Fiscal Commission. The Fiscal Commission is charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.  Specifically, the Commission is charged with balancing the budget excluding interest payments on the debt by 2015. The result is projected to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio at an acceptable level once the economy recovers.  The magnitude and timing of the policy measures necessary to achieve this goal are subject to considerable uncertainty and will depend on the evolution of the economy.  In addition, the Commission will examine policies to meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government.

I think of this as a warning label because it’s trying to warn readers that the official deficit forecasts are too pessimistic if, and some would say this is a big if, the commission has an impact.

I think the commission is a step in the right direction, and I welcome the President’s willingness to set an intermediate fiscal goal, even as I might quibble about some details. In addition, I wish he had gone further and specified a target for reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio by, say, 2020.

3. The freeze on non-security discretionary spending. When this was announced last week, I was stunned by heat it generated in the blogosphere. Folks on the left decried it as harmful budget cutting in the face of a weak economy, and folks on the right decried is a sham that would have no effect. I spent about an hour trying to figure it out and decided I couldn’t find enough information to have an informed view one way or the other.

Now that the budget is out, I feel vindicated in that view. To fully understand the trajectory of non-security discretionary spending, you need to consider such obscure bits of budget arcana as the obligation limitations used for transportation funding (ob lims, to the initiated), the proposed conversion of Pell grants from discretionary to mandatory spending, the reassignment of bioshield from security to non-security spending, and the fact that Census spending is particularly high in fiscal 2010 because of the decennial census. I haven’t actually crunched the numbers, but that’s not my point tonight. Instead, my point is simply how hard it can sometimes be to match budget reality to budget communications.

More tomorrow.

A sharp reader offers the following hypothesis (which I have edited):

Illinois is fundamentally bankrupt. It has less than $1 million in cash, pays vendors net 90, and owes its state university $450 million that it cannot pay. Oh, and it also has $60 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.

Now that the Republicans have 41 votes in the Senate, Illinois can’t count on any federal aid. The President’s home state will thus become insolvent.

(For some background on Illinois’s budget woes, see this link.)

My reader expresses similar concerns about California (where Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget assumes $6.9 billion in federal aid) and New York.

All of which raises a question for policymakers and municipal bond investors. Does the election of Scott Brown mean that the Senate will be unwilling to give federal aid to the states? The $862 billion stimulus bill last year (formerly known as the $787 billion stimulus bill) included substantial state aid, and it squeaked through the Senate with exactly 60 votes. Now the Democrats (and the Independents who caucus with them) account for only 59 votes.

Does that bode ill for struggling states and the investors who own their debt? Only time will tell. But I wouldn’t count the states out just yet.

The stimulus bill could have had 62 votes, but Senator Kennedy didn’t vote and Senator Franken hadn’t yet been seated. If the Senate majority can coordinate the same coalition–including Republican Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine–they will have one vote to spare for any new jobs bill (formerly known as a stimulus bill). In addition, with his paean to tax cuts in the State of the Union, the President was signaling that he wants to find enough common ground with congressional Republicans to get a jobs bill passed.

In the short run, then, I wouldn’t be surprised if substantial state aid finds its way into the jobs bill. That may buy Illinois and other struggling states some time.

In the long run, however, the reader is probably right that fiscally-strapped states will find the Senate less welcoming.

Legalistic answer to the title question: No. States can’t seek protection in bankruptcy court, so Illinois can’t technically go bankrupt.

The economy grew briskly last quarter. According to the advance estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, gross domestic product increased at a 5.7% pace in the fourth quarter of 2009, faster than many forecasters had expected. (Note: BEA will revise this figure next month and the month after that. Oh, and then BEA will revise it periodically over the next few years.)

As usual, I think the best way to understand this report is to see what sectors contributed the most or least to reported growth:

As expected, much of the growth reflects businesses restocking their shelves and warehouses: inventories accounted for 3.4 percentage points of the overall 5.7% of growth.

Consumer spending grew at a moderate 2.0% pace and thus added 1.4 percentage points to overall growth (consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the economy and 70% x 2.0% = 1.4 %). That’s down from the previous quarter, when cash-for-clunkers boosted car purchases. Housing investment also slowed, again in the wake of earlier efforts–the tax credit for new home buyers–that had boosted growth in the third quarter.

Business investment in equipment and software showed signs of life, growing at a 13% pace, the strongest since early 2006. That added 0.8 percentage points to growth, slightly more than half of which was offset by the ongoing decline in business investment in structures.

Government spending fell slightly during the quarter. Stimulus efforts boosted non-defense spending by the federal government, but that increase was more than offset by a decline in defense spending and a small decline in state and local spending.

Today the Senate voted 60-39 to increase the federal debt limit from $12.4 trillion to $14.3 trillion. No one is happy that we need to borrow another $1.9 trillion in the next year or two, but the alternative–default–is unthinkable. So let’s hope that the House follows suit when it votes next week.

As expected, today’s vote was entirely party line: 60 Democrats (including the two Independents who caucus with them) voted yea, while 39 Republicans voted nay; one R didn’t vote.

You might be tempted to look at these results and try to read into them some larger ideas about fiscal politics. Perhaps Democrats all voted to increase the debt limit because they are big spenders? Perhaps Republicans will recklessly risk default in their anti-government zeal?

I will leave to you, dear reader, to decide whether such claims have any merit. But please understand that the debt limit vote tells us absolutely nothing about them.

With rare exceptions, votes to increase the debt limit do not involve any real substance. Defaulting remains unthinkable, so the debt limit has to go up. The horse-trading before the final vote may have plenty of substance–this round included a welcome amendment bringing back statutory PAYGO rules as well as an almost-successful effort to create a budget commission–but the final vote is pure politics. The Senate has to deliver a debt limit increase. And that means that the Senate majority has to deliver the votes.

As a matter of politics, then, debt limit votes are a tax on the majority. The majority has to take the hit for increasing the limit, while the minority gets a free ride.

To test this view, I looked at Senate votes on the last five stand-alone increases in the debt limit (three other increases were part of the housing, TARP, and stimulus bills that passed in 2008 and 2009). The chart above shows the fraction of senators in each party who voted to increase the limit.

The results are striking: Back in 2004 and 2006, the Republicans (in red, but do I really need to say that?) controlled the Senate and thus bore the political tax of increasing the debt limit. In those two votes, the Rs accounted for 102 of 104 yeas. In 2009 and 2010, the situation was reversed, as the majority Democrats (yes, in blue) bore the political burden. In those two votes, the Ds (including the Is) accounted for 119 of 120 yeas.

And then there’s 2007, when the two parties shared the burden of boosting the debt ceiling. What explains that rare outburst of bipartisanship? Divided government. In 2007, President Bush had to work with a Democratic Congress to get the debt limit passed. With divided government, the pain had to be shared. In the other four years, however, the President was the same party as the Senate majority.

Bottom line: Sometimes it hurts to be in charge.

For a good summary of past debt limit increases, see this CRS report. For information on Senate votes, start here.

Wondering who the three aisle-crossers were? In 2004, Democrats John Breaux and Zell Miller voted yea. In 2009, Republican George Voinovich voted yea.

Amongst its usual cracker jack budget projections yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office provided a few toy surprises for budget watchers. One is an updated estimate of the direct budget costs of the 2009 stimulus bill, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

CBO originally estimated that ARRA would cost $787 billion from 2009 through 2019. Its new estimate is $862 billion, about $75 billion higher.

Key changes to the estimate:

  • Food stamps (officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program): $34 billion more than expected
  • Build America Bond program: $26 billion more
  • Unemployment compensation: $21 billion more
  • Medicaid: $3 billion less than expected
  • Other spending: $3 billion less

(CBO did not make any updates for the tax provisions in ARRA.)

For an earlier discussion of the stimulus being bigger than expected, see this post.

For a discussion of why the $862 billion figure (formerly known as the $787 billion figure) is not really the right measure of stimulus, see this post.

Note: CBO provides many details about ARRA in Appendix A of yesterday’s report.

Today the Congressional Budget Office released its much-anticipated projections for the budget. As usual, the headline figure is CBO’s estimate of the budget deficit, now projected to be $1.35 trillion for the fiscal year, about 9.2% of GDP.

That’s slightly better than last year–when $1.4 trillion deficits amounted to 9.9% of GDP–but is still the second-worst since World War II. And, as CBO notes, new legislation could easily lift the 2010 figure higher. For example, Congress will likely consider further extensions to unemployment benefits and more war spending, not to mention a possible jobs bill.

CBO also projected deficits for the next decade. They are large and persistent:

The blue line shows CBO’s official budget baseline. That baseline shows persistent deficits over the next decade. They fall below 3% of GDP by 2014 and then increase somewhat in later years. I would characterize that trajectory as unwelcome but not a crisis.

It’s also completely unrealistic given Washington’s current policy predilections.

The official baseline is built upon two key assumptions: that existing laws execute exactly as written and that discretionary spending increases with inflation in future years. Those assumptions make sense for constructing a baseline that will be used to score the budget impacts of new legislation. But, as CBO itself notes, they are unrealistic if your goal to make predictions of where current policy is leading:

  • Under current tax law, a remarkable number of tax reductions will expire in the near future. These include the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (EGTRRA and JGTRRA, often known as the Bush tax cuts), the annual patch to the dreaded alternative minimum tax (which prevent the AMT from hitting more and more families), the Making Work Pay tax credit (enacted as part of the stimulus), expanded net operating loss carrybacks (enacted as part of another, smaller stimulus bill in the summer), and a panoply of other, smaller provisions (e.g., the research and experimentation tax credit). It is unthinkable that Washington will allow all these to expire.
  • In recent years, discretionary spending has grown faster than inflation. As yet, there is no reason to believe that will stop.
  • On the other hand, the current baseline assumes that spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue at their 2009 pace, adjusted for inflation, over the next decade. One hopes that assumption is unrealistically high.

To help outside analysts construct alternative baselines that better show existing policy, rather than existing law, CBO provides estimates for several policy alternatives. Analysts differ on which of these alternatives they use to build a policy alternative (and, given more time, they may also use other estimates).

As rough justice I made the following assumptions for the chart above: (1) that regular discretionary spending grows at the same pace as nominal GDP in coming years (closer to recent history than the baseline assumption of growth with inflation), (2) that spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan moderates somewhat in coming years (CBO’s 60,000 troop scenario), (3) that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are permanently extended, and (4) that the AMT is indexed for inflation.

Under these assumptions, the budget picture is much scarier: deficits never get lower than 5.5% of GDP and they are 7.5% by 2020.

Bottom line: Current policy is unsustainable.

Note: You should view my adjusted baseline as a quick-and-dirty, back-of-the-envelope of existing policy. For example, it doesn’t include any adjustments for other expiring tax provisions (which are substantial) or the infamous Medicare doctor payment problem; if you made adjustments for those, the deficit outlook would look worse. On the other hand, many political leaders, including President Obama, want to scale back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts; if you did that, the deficit outlook would look better.

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