http://robertreich.org/post/3277360050
The Obama Budget: And Why the Coming Debate Over Spending Cuts Has Nothing
to Do With Reviving the Economy
By Robert Reich
Sunday, February 13, 2011
President Obama has chosen to fight fire with gasoline.
Republicans want America to believe the economy is still lousy because
government is too big, and the way to revive the economy is to cut federal
spending. Today (Sunday) Republican Speaker John Boehner even refused to
rule out a government shut-down if Republicans don't get the spending cuts
they want.
Today (Monday) Obama pours gas on the Republican flame by proposing a 2012
federal budget that cuts the federal deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years.
About $400 billion of this will come from a five-year freeze on non-security
discretionary spending – including all sorts of programs for poor and
working-class Americans, such as heating assistance to low-income people and
community-service block grants. Most of the rest from additional spending
cuts, such as grants to states for water treatment plants and other
environmental projects and higher interest charges on federal loans to
graduate students.
That means the Great Debate starting this week will be set by Republicans:
Does Obama cut enough spending? How much more will he have cut in order to
appease Republicans? If they don't get the spending cuts they want, will
Tea-Party Republicans demand a shut-down?
Framed this way, the debate invites deficit hawks on both sides of the aisle
to criticize Democrats and Republicans alike for failing to take on Social
Security and Medicare entitlements. Expect Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson,
co-chairs of Obama's deficit commission, to say the President needs to do
more. Expect Alice Rivlin and Paul Ryan, respectively former Clinton hawk
and current Republican budget hawk, to tout their plan for chopping
Medicare.
It's the wrong debate about the wrong thing at the wrong time.
To official Washington it seems like 1995 all over again, when Bill Clinton
and Newt Gingrich played a game of chicken over cutting the budget deficit,
the hawks warned about the perils of giant deficits, and the 1996 general
election loomed over all. Washington politicians and the media know this
playbook by heart, so it's natural for them to take on the same roles, make
the same arguments, and build up to the same showdown over a government
shutdown and a climactic presidential election.
But the 1995 playbook is irrelevant. In 1995 the economy was roaring back to
life. The recession of 1991 had been caused (as are most recessions) by the
Fed raising interest rates too high to ward off inflation. So reversing
course was relatively simple. Alan Greenspan and the Fed cut interest rates.
In 2011 most Americans are still in the throes of the Great Recession, which
was caused by the bursting of a giant debt bubble. The Fed can't reverse
course by cutting interest rates; rates have been near zero for two years.
Big American companies are sitting on almost $2 trillion of cash because
there aren't enough customers to buy additional goods and services. The only
people with money are the richest 10 percent whose stock portfolios have
been roaring back to life, but their spending isn't enough to spur much
additional hiring.
The Republican bromide – cut federal spending – is precisely the wrong
response to this ongoing crisis, which is more analogous to the Great
Depression than to any recent recession. Herbert Hoover responded the same
way between 1929 and 1932. Insufficient spending only deepened the Great
Depression.
The best way to revive the economy is not to cut the federal deficit right
now. It's to put more money into the pockets of average working families.
Not until they start spending again big time will companies begin to hire
again big time.
Don't cut the government services they rely on – college loans, home heating
oil, community services, and the rest. State and local budget cuts are
already causing enough pain.
The most direct way to get more money into their pockets is to expand the
Earned Income Tax Credit (a wage subsidy) all the way up through people
earning $50,000, and reduce their income taxes to zero. Taxes on incomes
between $50,000 and $90,000 should be cut to 10 percent; between $90,000 and
$150,000 to 20 percent; between $150,000 and $250,000 to 30 percent.
And exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes.
Make up the revenues by increasing taxes on incomes between $250,000 to
$500,000 to 40 percent; between $500,000 and $5 million, to 50 percent;
between $5 million and $15 million, to 60 percent; and anything over $15
million, to 70 percent.
And raise the ceiling on the portion of income subject to payroll taxes to
$500,000.
It's called progressive taxation.
The lion's share of America's income and wealth is at the top. Taxing the
very rich won't hurt the economy. They spend a much smaller portion of their
incomes than everyone else.
Sure – take some steps to cut federal spending over the longer term. Cut the
bloated defense budget. Tame the growth in healthcare costs by allowing the
federal government to use its bargaining clout — as the nation's biggest
purchaser of drugs and hospital services under Medicare and Medicaid and the
Veterans Administration – to get low prices. While we're at it, cut
agricultural subsidies.
But don't believe for a moment that federal spending cuts anytime soon will
get the economy growing soon. They'll have the opposite effect because
they'll reduce total demand.
The progressive tax system I've outlined will get the economy growing again.
This, in turn, will bring down the ratio of the debt as a proportion of the
total economy — the only yardstick of fiscal prudence that counts.
But we can't get to this point – or even to have a debate about it – if
Obama allows Republicans to frame the debate as how much federal spending
can be cut and how to shrink the deficit.
The President has to reframe the debate around the necessity of average
families having enough to spend to get the economy moving again. He needs to
remind America this is not 1995 but 2011 — and we're still in a jobs crisis
brought on by the bursting of a giant debt bubble and the implosion of total
demand.
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