• Home
  • About Donald
  • Contact Donald

Donald Marron

Musings on Economics, Finance, and Life

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Bending the Curve: Redefining Health Insurance
Unemployment Still Rising »

Tracking the Stimulus: Update

September 4, 2009 by Donald

Good news: The Recovery.gov website now includes information about the tax components of the stimulus, not just the spending components:

arrataxrelief

According to the chart, an estimated $62.5 billion made its way out the door in tax reductions through the end of August. The corresponding spending data indicate that $88.8 billion in federal spending made its way out the door by August 28.

Putting these together, you get an estimated $151.3 billion in combined tax reductions and spending increases through the end of August.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post suggesting that Recovery.gov report the tax information in order to reduce confusion. At the time, some commentators were assuming that the spending totals reported on the site measured the entire budget impact of the stimulus. That assumption was wrong, but understandable since the site gave no guidance to the contrary. This led to unnecessary confusion such as the debate about whether the budget impacts of stimulus were about $60 billion (spending) or $100 billion (spending plus taxes) during the first six months of the year.

The new information about taxes is helpful, but comes with one crucial caveat: the figures are slightly-dated estimates, not actuals. According to the footnote, the Office of Tax Analysis at Treasury prepared these estimates back in the spring in advance of the administration’s May budget release.

This limitation is understandable. New spending programs create paper trails that can be tracked to identify actual spending impacts. Reduced tax withholding does not. In principle, Treasury analysts could estimate the tax impacts given what they know (or believe) now, rather than what was assumed back in May. In the meantime, however, it’s valuable for outside analysts to have access to the earlier estimates.

In the spirit of “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk”, let me say thanks to Recovery.gov for posting this additional information, and allow me to make two more requests:

  • Please provide all the month-by-month estimates of the tax impacts. At the moment, the site shows the estimates only through August, the most recently-completed month. That gibes with the site’s goal of tracking the stimulus. But there’s no need for suspense regarding the tax figures. The estimates were prepared last spring, so Recovery.gov should be able to tell us right now what the figures are for September, October, November, etc. That will help analysts think about the economy in the months to come.
  • Please provide an easy way to find week-by-week spending totals that occurred before the first date on the standard spending chart, which shows only a few weeks of data. As a result, past weeks fall off. (Perhaps the older data are available somewhere on the site, but I haven’t found it yet.)
Advertisements

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • Google
  • Reddit
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Budget, Data, Economy, Macroeconomics | Tagged Budget, Data, Macro, Stimulus | 1 Comment

One Response

  1. on July 9, 2010 at 10:38 pm Get Instant Credibility

    Hello Guru, what enticed you to post this article. This article was extremely interesting, especially since I was searching for thoughts on this subject since last weekend.



Comments are closed.

  • Most Requested

    Tax Policy Issues in Designing a Carbon Tax

    Carbon Taxes & Corporate Tax Reform

    Spending in Disguise

    How Big Is the Federal Government

  • Twitter

    Follow @dmarron
  • Get Updates by Email

    Click Here to Subscribe
  • Get Updates by RSS

    Subscribe in a reader
  • Share or Bookmark

    Bookmark and Share
  • Recent Posts

    • Should Congress Use The Income Tax To Discourage Consumer Drug Ads?
    • Designing Carbon Dividends
    • Three Things You Should Know about the Buyback Furor
    • Talking Money, Inflation, Fiat, & Bitcoin
    • How Should Tax Reform Treat Employee Stock and Options?
    • Eight Thoughts on Business Tax Reform
    • The 3-2-1 on Economic Growth: Hope for 3, Plan for 2, Pray it isn’t 1
    • Outside Research Organizations Can’t Replace CBO’s Budget Team
    • Can Trump Make Mexico Pay for the Wall?
    • Taxing carried interest just right
    • Britain Builds a Better Soda Tax
    • Budgeting for Federal Lending Programs Is Still a Mess
    • How Should We Use the Revenue from Taxing Carbon?
    • Happy 70th Anniversary to the Council of Economic Advisers
    • What Should We Do with the Money from Taxing “Bads”?
  • 30-Second Economics

  • Tags

    Accounting Afghanistan Antitrust Arbitrage Auction Auto Banks Baucus Behavioral Economics Birds Budget Budget Process Business CBO Citigroup Climate Change Consumers Corporate Income Tax Data Debt Debt Limit Defense Deficit Economics Economy Energy Environment Europe Fannie Mae Federal Reserve Finance Freddie Mac GDP GM Google Graphics Greece GSE Health Housing Humor Incentives Income Inflation Interest Rates International Internet jobs Life Macroeconomics Measurement Medicare Microeconomics Monetary Policy Mortgage Natural Gas Nature Oil Politics Pricing Recession Regulation Search Social Security Spending Stimulus Stock Market Student Loans TARP Taxes Teaching Tragedy of the Commons Treasury unemployment Warrants
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • January 2017
    • October 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • September 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • February 2015
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
  • Economics & Finance

    • Brad DeLong
    • Calculated Risk
    • Capital Gains and Games
    • Econbrowser
    • Economist's View
    • EconomistMom
    • Greg Mankiw
    • Infectious Greed
    • Keith Hennessey
    • Marginal Revolution
    • Modeled Behavior
    • Paul Krugman
    • Tax Policy Center
    • The Big Picture
    • The Money Illusion
  • More Fun Blogs

    • Donald and Esther’s Travels
    • Kottke
    • Olivia Judson
  • Seeking Alpha Certified

    Creative Commons License
    The content of dmarron.com carries a Creative Commons license.

    wordpress stat
  • Translate this blog into

    Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Simplified Chinese Traditional Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Lativian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese
  • Advertisements

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: