A Cowardly Proposal

President Obama submitted his budget proposal on Monday.  This budget lays out the president's priorities and represents his vision for America.  As a sidenote, it shows that Obama is a coward and a colossal liar.

In 2009, the president made it clear that spending on a large stimulus was needed to end the recession and begin a recovery.  In 2010, his top priority was passing health care reform, which he argued was key to lowering costs.  In 2011, he came to realize that our booming deficits were an issue and pushed for a balanced program of tax increases and spending cuts.

But today, we can honestly say that President Obama is quite simply full of it.  In 2012, he proposes raising taxes well beyond anything ever discussed in the last 30 years and the final result is a larger deficit that last year.  Despite his words to the contrary, this budget makes it clear that raising taxes is not about fairness or lowering the deficit, it is only about spending more money; and spending it on his special interests, not America's interests.

This budget raises the tax deduction for buying an electric vehicle from $7,500 to $10,000.  This deduction has little effect on sales and the average income of those who purchase these $40,000+ cars is $177,000.  At the same time, the President would kill a Washington DC scholarship program for poor children that, by all marks, is succeeding. 

So the president who once said that he only cared about what works, has decided that putting more money into a failed effort for the rich is more important than a successful program for poor children.

When Obama took office he said that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.  Instead he doubled it.  If passed this budget would raise revenue from 15.4% of GDP to 20.1%, far above the post-WWII average of 18% and yet he spends even more, raising the projected deficit to $1.39 trillion.

The president has said that we need to temporarily spend more to fight this current crisis, yet his budget lays out a ten year plan that never spends less than 22% of GDP and is nearly 23% in 2022.  Given that spending was as low as 18% under Clinton, there is no way to call such a spending spree temporary.

The tax increases he proposes are unrealistic.  Dividend income would rise from it's current 15% to 39.6%.  The president has spent much time talking about the so-called Buffett rule that would tax the wealthy at a 30% minimum, but that is found nowhere here.  Why?  Because for Obama, 30% wasn't really enough.  With certain phaseouts on deductions, the actual tax rate for the wealthy will now be nearly 45%.  Is there a better way to kill economic activity than this?

Remember when Bill Clinton talked about the peace dividend from the end of the Cold War?  That peace dividend under Speaker Gringich went a long way toward balancing our budget.  President Obama's budget would make deep cuts in our defense budget, but this peace dividend would be transferred into more green boondoggles and high-speed rail projects. 

So what we have is a budget that would raise taxes beyond the thinkable, cut defense and still lose more money than before.  President Obama's budget claims to cut spending and lower the deficit but it doesn't.  He claims that this is a vision for an America built to last, but it isn't.  President Obama has talked a big game about being responsible and remaining true to our American values, but this budget makes that a lie; and the president is a coward for not having the temerity to level with the American people and tell them the truth.

We Need an Economic "Gamechanger"

I've done my best over the past few days to emphasize that President Obama's "tax the wealthy" plan has the potential to do great harm to our floundering economy while doing nothing to overcome our pile of debt.  The idea that increased tax rates will result in associated revenue increases is not backed up by historical data. 

Throughout the past several decades, the top tax rate has fluctuated from as high as 91% in the early '60s to 28% at the end of the '80s to our current 35%.  Yet despite the huge difference between 91% and 28%, our revenue has consistently remained around 18% of GDP. 

The changes in actual tax revenue tracks more closely to economic contraction/expansion than tax rates.  In good economic times, even with an expanding GDP, revenue as a percentage of GDP increases, whereas as revenues decrease as a percentage of GDP during recession, despite a falling GDP.  During our current economic hard times, revenue sits at about 16% of GDP, but reached 21% at the height of the '90s tech bubble.

Conclusion #1:  If you want to increase revenue, you need to expand GDP.

It's time to toss aside the class warfare talk of what's fair and just talk about what works.  Raising tax rates is not stimulative and does not correlate with increased revenues or an expanding GDP, so there is no economic value in doing so.

But something must be done.  Doing nothing is not an option.  The following chart shows us that we can't just wait for something good to happen.

The biggest problem we face is not a true lack of revenue, but an explosion in our spending.  Even aside from the temporary spending measures put into place over the past few years, our entitlement growth will continue us on an unsustainable path.  Tax revenue in this chart is displayed at the historic average of 18% of GDP.

For those who believe that simply raising taxes will bring in enough additional revenue to fix this problem, here is another chart.

As it shows, even if we assume that we could hold revenue at our highest recorded percentage to GDP, we would still be swamped by the rising red ink.  What we are left with is this - we are not on a path to recovery, we have lagging revenue with no realistic plan to increase it and even if we could magically assume record revenues, it still wouldn't be good enough to bring our deficits under control.

The fact is we are at a crossroads.  We cannot continue down the path that we are on.  The same game of small adjustments here and there will not be sufficient.  It's at moments like this, that something drastic needs to happen.  What we need is a gamechanger and it is this - dramatically cut spending to expand the economy.

I can hear the collective gasp arising from the gallery, but wait a moment before you hit that "close tab" button.  I can show evidence of how this has worked before.

Our debt currently sits at 42% of GDP, the highest it has been since WWII.  But in the early '90s, Canada's overspending had put its debt at 53% of GDP.  At that point, they began a gamechanging plan.  They cut spending very dramatially and instituted new market reforms and tax cuts.  They consistently balanced the budget.  This chart shows the results.

The Canadian economy boomed as spending was cut.  Average growth matched the highs of the mid-90s U.S. economy until the 2009 recession took its toll.  Despite a small uptick, their debt is again on a downward trajectory and sits 10% less than before they changed course.  Their dollars are now more valuable than ours as our debt levels are heading in the opposite direction.

During that same time period, Japan was following the same Keynesian spending plans that Obama is proposing.  The results were atrocious.  Economists now refer to that time period as Japan's "Lost Decade".

The Keynesian economic model has been refuted time and again.  Look at how government spending affects states.  In data compiled from 1968-2008, here is a quick summary:

• When a state's Senator ascended to the chair of one of the top-three committees, earmarks in the following year increased between 40% and 50%, and discretionary state-level Federal transfers increased about 10%.  In the median case, that represented a $200 million increase in Federal spending directed to that state.

• In response, the average firm in the median state cut its employment growth rate by 3% to 13%, reduced capital expenditures by approximately 15% or $39 million, R&D expenditures by roughly 10% or $34 million and experienced a decline in sales.  They also increased their dividend payouts by 13%, suggesting fewer investment opportunities.  These results were even more pronounced for firms within industries targeted by the Federal spending and for firms that did not have overseas operations, and therefore were more exposed to the effects of the increase in Federal spending on their home state's economy.

Co-author Professor Coval says, "Our findings suggest that they (public policymakers) should revisit their belief that Federal spending can stimulate private economic development."

Conclusion #2:  Spending cuts expand the economy while increased government spending causes contraction.

In other words, cutting into the deficit by dramatically decreasing government spending can help grow the economy, producing jobs which will increase tax revenue helping pay down the (now reduced)deficit.

As Paul Ryan has stated many times, "We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem".  They say the first step to recovery is understanding that you have a problem.  Getting both parties to admit that we have a problem can lead us to the real gamechanger that we need. 

Until then, expect more nonsense about what's fair as Congress and the President fight over who will be allowed to get in the lifeboats as the unsinkable United States of American slowly takes on more water.

Where Two Paths Diverge...

Here is the truth about the future: We are living on borrowed money and borrowed time. These deficits hike interest rates, clobber exports, stunt investment, kill jobs, undermine growth, cheat our kids, and shrink our future. 

- Walter Mondale, Democratic Presidential nominee, July 19, 1984 Democratic National Convention

Today, President Obama acknowledged reality.  Just two months ago, he submitted a 10 year budget that said and did nothing to lower our deficit in the near term.  Unusual as it is for a President to scrap his own plan, Obama was forced to present a new plan due to the reasoned response to Paul Ryan's The Path to Prosperity and it's acceptance as a serious proposal.  His choice was to either allow the Republicans to direct the narrative or attempt to offer a competing vision on how to accomplish the same goals.

 

Despite acknowledging reality today, the President chose to offer a 12 year plan that will do little other than make it seem he is doing something.  Talk of commissions, defense cuts and future year triggers means that he has no intention of changing his current spending plans.  Instead, he offered numerous tax increases as his planned "spending cuts".  His new approach sounds like his old approach and brings to mind another failed liberal politician.  

“If Dukakis is elected, he would act next year as he acted last week: trim here and there, but then take a frequent flyer to the last resort [new taxes]. He would accelerate rather than break the spending urge in Congress.”

- William Safire
New York Times
6/29/88

Americans have come to the realization that the status quo is not sustainable.  In Ryan's plan, the Republicans have offered a real plan that will seek to balance the budget over the long term by overhauling our taxcode to make it fairer and making changes to Medicare and Medicaid now in order to make these programs sustainable.  In responding to the Republicans 2012 budget proposal, Obama has chosen to champion a course that would make Michael Dukakis proud by pledging to tax our way to prosperity. 

For all the faults with the President's plan, the greatest is that he attempts to hijack the narrative with a falsehood.  The only real spending cuts he offers are tax increases.  As I'm sure many of you have heard, we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.  In using an Orwellian nomenclature of calling a tax increase, a "spending cut", Obama seeks to confuse the issue.

In the 1990's a combination of events led to a few years of budget surpluses.  Following the fall of the Soviet Union, National Defense was downsized to cash in on the Peace Dividend.  After being elected, Bill Clinton raised taxes on an expanding economy and then two years later, a Republican congress began reigning in discretionary spending.  Looking at the chart, we can see spending increased back to 20% of GDP following 9/11 and was held there until Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats regained control of Congress.  From there, spending took an immediate upswing.  Under Obama, this spending has been made worse.

Deficits are expected to increase in a recession as revenues decrease, which did happen in 2008.  But by shifting our spending baseline in such an extreme way, Obama has accelerated our impending demise.  The truth is that with or without our current increases in discretionary spending, our spending will soon drive us into a hole that threatens to swallow us.

The President's response to raise taxes while leaving entitlements untouched will only delay by a few years the inevitable.  Soon our entire revenue stream will be spent on entitlements.

Raising tax revenues from the historic level of 18% of GDP will only offer us, at best, a temporary respite.  Of course, raising tax rates has no guarantee of increasing revenue.   As Larry Kudlow writes at National Review,

Of course, the president’s formula of estimating higher revenues to lower the deficit is completely wrong. The reality is that higher tax rates will slow the economy, inhibit new start-up companies, penalize investors, and may very well lose revenues and increase the deficit.

It is questionable what raising tax rates will do to our economy.  What is not questionable is what will happen to our debt if we do not address the real source of our future troubles.

No amount of tax increases will ever be able to manage debt of this size.  Any plan that does not seek to alter or amend Medicare spending is not a serious plan.  Today, our entitlement spending is 58% of our spending.  Add in interest payments and we're now over 75%.  National defense and discretionary spending are left with only 1/4 of our budget.  In the past, our defense spending was close to half of all spending.  Today it sits at 20% and the President looks to cut if further.

 

While he presents us with cuts from a declining slice of the pie, he makes no offer to deal with the programs that will soon make up the entire pie.  What happens then?  Imagine a government shutdown that never ends.

As I have tried to make clear, we cannot ignore the real driver of our budget deficit.  It's the huge twinkie in the room.  Last week's budget showdown over spending cuts in our non-defense discretionary spending is chump change compared to the real issue - entitlements.

That's a big twinkie and it will continue to grow no matter how high taxes are raised. 

In 2008, a very liberal Senator Barack Obama ran as a centrist, promising to cut the budget, not raise taxes on the middle class and be pragmatic and do what works.  Now, when his leadership has been challenged to a large degree by Rep. Ryan, a very liberal President Obama showed us his true colors - tax and spend.  His proposal will soak the rich while cutting defense in order to keep spending more on "investments".

40 years ago, Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security spending was 4% of GDP.  Today it is 10%.  In another 40 years, it is projected to be at 18% - the historical average for tax revenues.  At that point, we have no other money left for defense, interest payments or running the government.  Then, or even sooner, those programs, along with a whole host of other government spending will be cut or eliminated - unless we make changes now.

In choosing to confront Ryan's Path to Prosperity, the President, instead chose to offer up a European vision for a Path to Austerity.  As the two paths diverge, the choice is clear.

Finally..."The Path to Prosperity"

Paul Ryan has released his 2012 budget proposal:  The Path to Prosperity.  It is perhaps, the boldest budget plan ever offered.  As the editors at National Review put it,

Paul Ryan’s budget proposal for next year is the most ambitious conservative initiative since — well, actually, since ever.

Our current budget deficit will be $1.6 trillion this year.  The total national deficit is $14 trillion.  A few months back, President Obama proposed a budget that will never break even over a ten year period and will ultimately end with spending levels at 40% of GDP.

Ryan's budget proposal will cut spending $6.2 trillion compared to Obama's budget.  It will cut spending back to the historical average of 20% of GDP.  His plan will completely pay off the national debt by 2050.  And he will do this without raising taxes.

I wish this graph was lying about our current path.  I wish that everyone understood how perilous our future is.  But wishing doesn't make it so.  Our current path is not just unsustainable, but implies a total disaster awaits us.

Tell Them About the Twinkie

I love Washington DC math.  I'm already a math geek as it is, but when you throw in a certain amount of creativity, math can really be a lot of fun.  I just wish there was a tangible use for Washington math in the real world.  Balancing my household budget would be a piece of cake.  If only...

This week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified before a House subcommittee.  She was questioned on an obvious budgetary fudge of double counting money saved from cuts to Medicare Advantage.  During questioning Rep. John Shimkus (R) asked her,

What’s the $500 billion in cuts for? Preserving Medicare or funding the health-care law?

Sebelius’ reply? “Both.”

By the sheer force of her will power, Secretary Sebelius is able to take $500 billion in cuts and double that into $1 trillion.  Her talents are being wasted in HHS.  Surely the ability to double money on a whim could be used more productively in other areas.