• Home
  • About Donald
  • Contact Donald

Donald Marron

Musings on Economics, Finance, and Life

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Free Brookings Papers on Economic Activity
President Obama’s Tax Proposals »

Time Management and the Budget Debate

March 23, 2011 by Donald

What features tiger blood, March madness, federal deficits, and Stephen Covey’s time-management advice? My latest column at CNN Money:

America faces trillions of dollars in deficits in coming years. But Congress has been reduced to funding the government three weeks at a time so it can fight over mere billions.

Why is Congress spending so much time and effort on so little money? Are those billions bigger than they appear because cuts today will carry forward into further cuts tomorrow? Is today’s skirmishing part of a larger political strategy to rein in our deficits?

Maybe.

But I think good old-fashioned human psychology is a bigger factor. Congress faces the same time-management challenge that plagues me and, I suspect, you. The urgent crowds out the important.

Productivity guru Stephen Covey popularized the “important versus urgent” distinction, showing how we should spend our time versus how we do.

People spend too much time on “waste” and “distraction,” immersed in unimportant issues. Waste and distraction can be fun, of course, and are welcome in small doses. Charlie Sheen’s rantings about his “tiger blood” are entertaining. And no one should berate President Obama for filling out his NCAA bracket. But let’s hope he didn’t spend too much time on it.

Today Congress faces a different problem. It seems stuck in the realm of “crisis and necessity,” to use Covey’s terms. Unless lawmakers pass yet another spending bill, many agencies will run out of money on April 8. Unless Congress increases the debt limit, America will be unable to pay some of its bills.

Urgent and important, these issues demand congressional attention. As Samuel Johnson might have said, nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of a government shutdown and subsequent hanging by the voters.

And therein lies the problem. America faces much larger fiscal challenges — a broken tax code and an unsustainable build-up of debt. But these exceptionally important challenges aren’t urgent. Neither has a deadline. And so they languish, prompting commission reports and congressional hearings but little action.

Budget watchers often lament that we won’t fix our budget until struck by an actual fiscal crisis — skyrocketing interest rates or a failed Treasury auction. Indeed, some experts sometimes seem to be wishing for such a crisis so that long-run budget issues finally become urgent.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Rather than wait for (or cheer on) an actual crisis, we have a better option: leadership. The art of leadership is getting people to pay heed to what’s important, even when it isn’t urgent. President Obama, for example, enacted his health reform legislation one year ago because he pushed for it, not because it was politically urgent.

We need the same leadership on budget issues and tax reform. Our elected leaders must make time to address our long-run challenges, even as they address the urgent problems of the day. The Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Six” has taken an important first step, working together to turn the recommendations of the president’s fiscal commission into draft legislation.

But more leadership is needed. That’s why 64 senators — 32 Democrats and 32 Republicans — wrote to Obama last week urging him to take the lead in deficit-reduction discussions in which everything would be on the table: discretionary spending, entitlement programs and tax reform.

Let’s hope the president takes the senators up on this request. He is in a unique position to elevate the budget debate from day-to-day urgency mode to the realm of leadership, where it belongs.

Advertisements

Share this:

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

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Budget, Politics | Tagged Budget, Politics, Taxes |

  • 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

    • 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”?
    • Should Governments Tax Unhealthy Foods and Drinks?
    • Should Governments Tax Products That Are Fun But Harmful?
  • 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

    • 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

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: