March 29, 2024

Today’s Economist: Bruce Bartlett: The Real Long-Term Budget Challenge

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Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He is the author of “The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take.”

On Dec. 3, the Government Accountability Office released new estimates of the federal government’s long-term budget outlook. They show that our real long-term problem is quite different from the one constantly portrayed by congressional Republicans.

Today’s Economist

Perspectives from expert contributors.

As the table shows, spending is not out of control. Entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are rising gently as the baby-boom generation retires. All other spending, including that for the military and domestic discretionary programs, falls – with the notable exception of interest on the debt. Interest rises sharply as the deficit rises, principally because the G.A.O. assumes that revenue will not be permitted to rise above its historical average – as Republicans continually insist.

Government Accountability Office
Government Accountability Office analysis of Census Bureau data

Republicans demand that Social Security and Medicare be cut immediately to deal with the so-called fiscal cliff. Popular suggestions for doing so include raising the age of eligibility for Medicare and changing the indexing formula that adjusts Social Security benefits for inflation.

To be sure, some restraint is needed in federal entitlement programs. But the idea that we are facing a crisis is complete nonsense. Spending for Social Security, in particular, is very stable. Relatively modest changes, such as raising the taxable earnings base slightly, would be sufficient to put the program on a sound footing virtually forever.

As a Nov. 28 Congressional Research Service report explains, historically 90 percent of covered earnings was subject to the Social Security tax. In recent years, this percentage has fallen to 84 percent, as the bulk of wage gains has gone to those making more than the maximum taxable income, currently $110,100. Raising the share of covered earnings back to 90 percent would be sufficient to eliminate almost half of Social Security’s long-run actuarial deficit, according to the Social Security actuaries.

Frequently, Republicans assert that domestic discretionary spending is the major source of bloated government. These are basically all programs other than entitlements and interest on the debt outside the Department of Defense, which always needs more money in the Republican world view. These include agriculture, education, energy, science, law enforcement and many other programs that people take for granted and oppose reducing. Moreover, such programs have already been cut sharply by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

That leaves interest on the debt as the principal driver of long-term spending and deficits. As the G.A.O. projections show, net interest rises from 1.4 percent of gross domestic product this year to 3 percent in 2020, 4.9 percent in 2030 and continues rising astronomically thereafter as interest accrues on the bonds previously sold to pay interest on the debt.

Interest rises from 6.1 percent of the federal budget in 2012 to 12.9 percent in 2020, 21 percent in 2030 and eventually reaches 59 percent if current projections are maintained through 2082, the last year in the G.A.O. analysis. As a share of the deficit, interest would rise from 19.2 percent this year to 62 percent in 2020. In the long run, virtually all of the deficit is accounted for by interest on the debt.

These facts explain why the tax pledge that virtually all Republicans blindly support is ultimately self-defeating. Refusing to raise revenue automatically leads to higher spending for interest on the debt. However, Republicans routinely deny this, asserting that capping revenue at some arbitrary percentage of G.D.P. will somehow or other force huge cuts in spending that will prevent deficits from rising to inconceivable levels. Implicitly, they believe in a nonsensical theory called starve-the-beast that is totally refuted by the budgetary experience of the last 20 years.

The frightening thing is that the projections for interest on the debt assume that interest rates don’t rise in the near term and don’t rise at all even as the federal debt rises to 200 percent of G.D.P. in 2037 and to 885 percent of G.D.P. in 2082. The G.A.O. assumes that short-term rates on Treasury securities average 1.3 percent through 2017 and 3.7 percent in the long run, and rates on 10-year Treasuries will average 3.4 percent in the short-run and 5 percent in the long run.

These assumptions cannot be taken at face value. Federal borrowing of the magnitude projected would undoubtedly raise inflation and real interest rates, both of which would raise market interest rates far above those projected, sharply raising federal spending for interest. Rising inflation would also force the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy, which would also raise real rates.

In short, the G.A.O. projections are a best-case situation insofar as interest on the debt is concerned. It could get a lot worse very quickly, and at that point it is almost a certainty that taxes will rise far more than would be necessary to stabilize the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio and hence interest on the debt. Therefore, the absolutist position against raising revenue is essentially penny-wise and pound-foolish.

It’s too bad that misplaced fears about the fiscal cliff have taken off the table the option of simply letting all the automatic tax increases and spending cuts go into effect. While this would indeed reduce short-run growth, the Congressional Budget Office says the reduction in projected deficits would actually raise growth in the medium- and long-term (see pages 24-25 of the report).

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/the-real-long-term-budget-challenge/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Opinion: The Dangerous Notion That Debt Doesn’t Matter

Debt doesn’t matter? Really? That’s the most irresponsible fiscal notion since the tax-cutting mania brought on by the advent of supply-side economics. And it’s particularly problematic right now, as Congress resumes debating whether to extend the payroll-tax reduction or enact other stimulative measures.

Here’s the theory, in its most extreme configuration: To the extent that the government sells its debt to Americans (as opposed to foreigners), those obligations will disappear as aging folks who buy those Treasuries die off.

If that doesn’t seem to make much sense, don’t be puzzled — it doesn’t. Government borrowing is still debt that must eventually be paid off, just as we were taught in introductory economics.

Failing to repay the debt would mean not only the ugliness of default but also depriving the next generation of whatever savings their parents parked in government bonds.

And remember that just a small fraction of Treasuries are owned by individual Americans. Institutions and many foreign entities own the rest and are not about to give up claims that they are owed.

The more realistic alternative of continuing to service that debt offers the unattractive eventual prospect of either higher taxes or sharp cutbacks in government programs, or both.

That problem is greatly compounded by the fact that the $10 trillion of debt that is held by investors represents only a fraction of the federal government’s obligations and ignores an additional $46 trillion of commitments to Social Security and Medicare.

Of course every modern economy both tolerates and benefits from some amount of debt. But the United States has been on a binge, brought on by a toxic mix of spending increases and tax cuts that began with the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s and were later turbocharged by those of President George W. Bush.

The figures are stark. In 1975, government debt per household was roughly equal to half of a typical household’s annual income. Today, it’s 1.7 times. Add entitlements, and the obligations would take a mind-boggling nine years of family income to pay off.

Even deficit hawks like me recognize that with the economy still barely above stall speed, now is hardly the moment for the government to slam on the fiscal brakes, debt or no debt.

So that means there’s no realistic alternative to more debt. But we can reduce the adverse consequences by how we spend this borrowed money. There are two main forms of stimulus: one kind is channeled through tax cuts and then mostly spent, just like a strapped family that puts its monthly expenses onto a credit card. Alternatively, government can direct its resources toward long-term investments that earn a return; think roads and dams but also medical research and education.

At the moment, gridlock grips Washington, and about all that Congress has offered is a two-month cut in the payroll tax, which may help shake the economy out of the doldrums but provides little lasting benefit.

We could just as effectively throw borrowed hundred-dollar bills out of airplanes. About the only worse approach would be nothing at all.

Government’s focus should shift toward investment. To do so, multiple challenges must be overcome.

First, unlike every company in America, the government doesn’t keep its books in a way that highlights these important two categories, investment and consumption. As a result, Congress can’t evaluate the long-term impact of its actions.

Second, the dark shadow of the Tea Party movement has made added spending — the route for most new government investment — taboo.

While public investment may take longer to unleash its positive forces, the case for it is compelling, in part because rising entitlement expenditures have crowded out government’s investment activities.

In the early 1950s, government devoted about 1.2 percent of gross domestic product to infrastructure; by 2010, that amount had fallen to just 0.2 percent. Meanwhile, federal spending on research and development dropped from a high of nearly 2 percent in 1964 to 0.9 percent in 2009.

By contrast, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s much-praised Works Progress Administration spent the equivalent of at least $1.5 trillion over eight years on projects that in New York City alone ranged from building La Guardia Airport to reroofing the New York Public Library to creating a lasting body of literary and artistic work.

I agree that short-term help for the economy combined with long-term deficit reduction is the right direction for budgetary policy.

But we also need to make every dollar of debt matter, and therefore we should be directing our efforts to lifting the economy toward programs that provide long-term benefit, not just a short-term burst of caffeinated energy.

A contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and a longtime Wall Street executive who was a counselor to the Treasury secretary.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4dda30840ac296856b32dce77e9beef9