Author Archive
Our Brave Leaders
The Washington Post reports: “Obama has decided not to endorse his deficit commission’s recommendation to raise the retirement age, and otherwise reduce Social Security benefits, in Tuesday’s State of the Union address.”
When I read this, I thought of a song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
Brave Sir Robin ran away
Bravely ran away, away
When danger reared its ugly head
He bravely turned his tail and fled
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin.
In the movie, Sir Robin and the other knights are galloping along on horseback, except when you look closely you see that their aides are banging coconuts together only simulating the sounds of brave mounted knights.
Isn’t that what’s going on in Washington? A giant fiscal disaster looms over the nation, and our leaders are only simulating leadership. Republican leaders can’t name a single program that they would cut, and President Obama runs away from a reform to the nation’s most costly program that should be a no-brainer.
Rather than chasing the Holy Grail of “investment” spending, the president needs to sit down with his congressional knights at a roundtable and get the kingdom’s finances under control with major spending cuts.
Government Health Care in 1798
The 1798 ”Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seaman” is getting attention in the Washington Post and Forbes. The stories suggest that this act in the early republic was a precedent for socialized federal medicine today.
I offered this brief description of the law as part of a timeline on the evolution of the federal Department of Health and Human Services over at www.downsizinggovernment.org:
1798: Congress passes the Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen. It provides health services to members of the merchant marine and funds a loose network of hospitals through the Marine Hospital Fund. The MHF is plagued by cost overruns, administrative mismanagement, and rationing of care. Some leaders oppose the new federal subsidies as an abuse of state sovereignty.
My timeline entry has footnotes to sources for those statements.
On the politics of this, note that John Adams, who signed the bill into law as president, was on the “big government” end of the Founders, and his big-government approach in office in the 1790s–like signing the Alien and Sedition Acts–led to the ouster of the Federalists by Thomas Jefferson in 1800. (Nonetheless, Adams was, of couse, a hero of the Revolution and a truly great man).
Swap Debt Limit for ‘Cut and Cap’
Gross federal debt just hit $14 trillion and will soon reach the legal limit of $14.3 trillion. House Republicans are wondering what spending reforms they can extract from the Democrats for their support of a debt-limit increase.
I propose a “Cut and Cap” strategy. The GOP should insist on the $100 billion in initial cuts they promised, and also demand passage of a legal cap on overall federal spending. A simple form of such a cap would specify that total federal outlays cannot rise more than inflation plus population growth each year. If it did, the law would require that the president sequester, or cut, spending across-the board to meet the limit.
The chart illustrates the power of such a cap. The top line shows total spending as projected under President Obama’s budget. The president has spending growing at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent between 2013 and 2020, which is absurdly high given that we are running trillion-dollar deficits. The bottom line shows spending capped at 3 percent annual growth, which is roughly the sum of expected population growth and inflation.
Even with the modest goal of limiting spending growth to 3 percent, the results would be dramatic over time. Spending in 2020 would be $1 trillion less than the president is projecting—$4.6 trillion rather than $5.6 trillion. As a share of GDP, spending would be 19.2 percent instead of Obama’s projected 23.5 percent. That would put the budget close to balance as revenues will be about 18.5 percent of GDP in 2020 with current tax cuts in place.
The chart assumes that the cap and the $100 billion of cuts are put in place right away. However, because Obama’s budget assumes that spending is flat for the next two years as “stimulus” spending peters out, the cap wouldn’t really start biting until 2014.
I’ve discussed a spending growth cap in more detail here and here. One nice feature of such a cap is that any spending cuts achieved would be locked-in as the spending limit would ratchet downward to the new lower budget level. So the House Republicans should insist on “Cut and Cap” this year, and then keep on cutting after that.
Investment Flows and Corporate Taxes
The Obama administration is showing interest in reforming the U.S. corporate income tax. That’s good news because a lower corporate rate would boost domestic investment, which in turn would generate more jobs and higher wages and incomes.
A lower corporate rate would also attract more inflows of direct investment from abroad—foreign-based businesses expanding their plants and building new plants in the United States.
I updated this chart from our book, Global Tax Revolution. It shows that during the 1980s, the United States enjoyed higher inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) than outflows. But since then, the pattern has reversed—our companies are now investing more abroad than foreign-based companies are investing in the United States. (Data is from the BEA).
There are numerous factors that affect these flows, but there is no doubt that taxation plays an important role. If we cut our corporate tax rate, we would attract more investment (move the black bar upwards), which would be good for the U.S. economy.
There is an important caveat with the data, however. A large portion of FDI involves mergers and acquisitions. If a foreign company takes over a U.S. company, that’s an investment inflow. If such a takeover is a market-driven event that increases efficiency, that’s fine with me. However, there is evidence that foreign companies are taking over U.S. companies because we have anti-competitive “worldwide” corporate tax rules.
So the solution is to move to a “territorial” corporate tax system and substantially reduce the federal corporate tax rate. That way, we wouldn’t artificially encourage the takeover of U.S. firms, while also attracting larger inflows of job-generating greenfield investments.
A final note on the chart: it clearly shows that U.S. international investment has exploded in magnitude over the last couple of decades. That explosion has greatly increased the importance of having a competitive corporate tax code. So good for the Obama administration for looking into possible reforms.
Republican $100 Billion Spending Cut
A top agenda item for the incoming House Republicans is to immediately start cutting spending. The GOP promised to reduce “nondefense” (or alternatively “nonsecurity”) spending for 2011 to the 2008 level, representing a $100 billion cut. GOP leaders are now being accused of backsliding on that promise, so let’s take a look at the numbers.
The idea is to reduce fiscal 2011 “budget authority” to the level it was in fiscal 2008. The chart shows the growth in nondefense budget authority since 2000. The spike in 2009 is from $265 billion in discretionary spending authorized in the “stimulus” bill.
Congress currently has a “continuing resolution” in place that keeps 2011 spending at about the same level as 2010, as shown in the chart. Thus, the House GOP will need to cut spending for the remainder of this fiscal year by about $55 billion to hit the 2008 level. That is less than $100 billion, but the higher cut number was based on proposed spending by Obama for 2011 that wasn’t enacted.
The important thing is that Congress needs to start cutting all types of spending right away. We face a fiscal emergency as debt is exploding, and there are many federal spending activities that are damaging to society and the economy. The GOP should cut defense and entitlement spending as well, but nondefense discretionary cuts are a good place to start.
In considering cuts, note that about $136 billion in nondefense discretionary “stimulus” bill money is still sloshing through the government in 2011 and beyond, so spending cuts (unfortunately) won’t starve the bureaucracies as much as liberals might fear.
The chart puts proposed spending cuts in context. House GOP leaders now admit that they spent too much during the past decade, and indeed the chart shows that nondefense discretionary spending jumped $264 billion over the last decade. Much of the increase came when the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House, so now is the GOP’s chance to start reversing out those Bush-era increases.
Data note: current stimulus and nondefense discretionary budget authority data are available on pages 13 and 21 of CBO’s August outlook.
Privatize the FAA
Bloomberg is reporting more bad news for the nation’s air traffic control system, which is run by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA is $500 million overbudget and six years behind schedule on a $2.1 billion technology upgrade project.
The FAA has a long history of mismanaged technology projects, and so the latest screw-ups are nothing new. Yet the nation needs high-tech advances in air traffic control more than ever to ease our increasingly congested airspaces.
There is a better way to run air traffic control—a private sector way, as Canada has been demonstrating. In 1996, Canada converted its government air traffic control system to a private nonprofit corporation. Nav Canada has been a smashing success, providing an excellent model for possible U.S. reforms.
A December 24 story in the Financial Post describes how Nav Canada is a world leader in efficiency, safety, and technology under private management. “A once troubled government asset, the country’s civil air traffic controller was privatized 14 years ago and is now a shining example of how to create a global technology leader out of a hulking government bureaucracy.” It really is an impressive story of pro-market reform.
Canada’s system recently won an award from the International Air Transport Association. The IATA said that “Nav Canada is a global leader in the efficient implementation and reliable delivery of air traffic control procedures and technologies.”
We should have that type of efficient air traffic control system in this country. Privatizing the FAA should be a high priority for the next Congress.
See here for a discussion on privatizing air traffic control.
Bush Deception Points
Former President George W. Bush’s book Decision Points is apparently selling quite well. The book includes a defense of the president’s fiscal record, and a table on page 447 compares Bush to prior presidents on spending and debt (you can see the table on Amazon’s search inside feature).
One problem with the table is that Bush claims credit for the low spending and debt of President Clinton’s last year, fiscal 2001. The first budget Bush crafted was for fiscal 2002. Here are the data reported by Bush, and data recalculated to better reflect the budgets that each president had some control over. Figures are averages over the fiscal year periods, measured as a share of GDP:
Decision Points Comparison: Clinton (1993-2000) 19.8%, Bush (2001-2008) 19.6%.
More Accurate Comparison: Clinton (1994-2001) 19.4%, Bush (2002-2009) 20.4%.
The book makes Bush look better on spending, but a more accurate comparison shows Clinton to have a better record.
It’s true that Bush was not responsible for some of fiscal 2009 spending, and if we take that year out Bush would have average spending of 19.8%. But consider the direction of spending under the two presidents–spending fell under Clinton from 21.4% to 18.2%, but it increased under Bush from 18.2% to 20.7% by fiscal 2008 (and even higher in fiscal 2009). (Spending data are here).
The table in Decision Points also shows Bush looking better than Clinton on public debt as a share of GDP, averaged over each president’s tenure. But the debt data has the same time period problem as the spending data. More importantly, Clinton delivered surpluses his last four years in office, which handed Bush a budget with very low debt and low interest costs. The low interest costs helped mask the spending-increase policies of Bush for a number of years. But Bush’s profligacy eventually became clear to analysts and the public alike, and this autobiography cannot undo his record as the biggest spender since LBJ.
Final note: yes, I understand that Congress plays a large role in federal budgeting, but so do presidents. Presidents propose annual budgets, they twist arms and use the bully pulpit to increase or cut programs, they support legislation to expand or contract entitlement programs, and they sign or veto appropriation and authorization bills.
Government Program Immortality
Who said: “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”?
As political junkies know, that was Ronald Reagan at the 1964 Republican convention. The Internet attributes other similar quips to Reagan.
Reagan apparently borrowed the idea from Senator James F. Byrnes, who stated on the floor of the Senate in 1933: “The nearest earthly approach to immortality is a bureau of the federal government.”
My source is “Reorganization of Federal Administrative Agencies,” Congressional Quarterly, September 17, 1933. The article is a reminder that concerns about government waste, duplication, overlap, and inefficiency certainly did not start with Reagan. Government failure has been around a long time.
The CQ article notes that the 1932 Democratic platform called for “an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance, to accomplish a saving of not less than 25 percent in the cost of the federal government.”
Alas, that leaner-government policy was not exactly the approach followed by FDR.
Breastfeeding and the Government
The media is reporting on a new study that finds long-term benefits to kids of breastfeeding.
Yet if health experts agree on the advantages of breastfeeding, why does the federal government subsidize mothers to use formula through the $7 billion Women, Infants, and Children program?
The WIC program is run by the Department of Agriculture, which summarized the subsidies as follows (page 1):
…infants participating in WIC consume about 54 percent of all formula sold in the United States. In most states, WIC participants use food vouchers or food checks to purchase their infant formula, free of charge, at participating retail grocery stores.
It’s true that in addition to handing out free formula, WIC administrators counsel women on the advantages of breastfeeding. But the counseling apparently isn’t working if WIC infants consume more than half of all formula. I am told that breastfeeding isn’t easy, so if you give moms a free alternative, many of them take it.
This is one of many examples we see of the government’s right hand working against its left. The Army Corps of Engineers destroys wetlands, while other federal agencies protect them. Milk and sugar programs push up food prices, while other programs subsidize food costs. Politicians complain about energy companies gouging consumers, yet federal ethanol policies push up energy costs.
The winners in each case are the political class — high-paid government administrators, members of Congress, and the groups hooked on federal subsidies. The losers are the rest of us — average taxpayers and consumers.
For more on federal food subsidies, see here.
U.S. Corporate Tax Rate the Highest
Japan has announced that it will cut its corporate tax rate by five percentage points. Japan and the United States had been the global laggards on corporate tax reform, so this leaves America with the highest corporate rate among the 34 wealthy nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
That is not a good position for us to be in. Most of the competition faced by U.S. businesses comes from businesses headquartered in other OECD countries. America also competes with other OECD nations as a location for investment. Our high corporate tax rate scares away investment in new factories, makes it difficult for U.S. companies to compete in foreign markets, and provides strong incentives for corporations to avoid and evade taxes.
The chart shows KPMG data on statutory corporate tax rates in the OECD for 2010, but I’ve also put in the new lower rate for Japan. With the Japanese reform, the average rate in the OECD will be 25.6 percent. That means that the 40 percent U.S. rate is 56 percent higher than the wealthy-nation average.
Most fiscal experts agree that cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate is a high priority, and President Obama’s fiscal commission endorsed the idea. If the president wants to get the economy firing on all cylinders–and generate a new pragmatic and centrist image for himself–he should lead the charge to drop the corporate rate to at least 20 percent.
With state-level taxes on top, a federal corporate rate of 20 percent would put America at about the OECD average, and give all those corporations sitting on piles of cash a great reason to start investing again.
Dan Mitchell’s comments are here.
Buy Global Tax Revolution here.
Bright Spots in Fiscal Commission Report
President Obama’s Fiscal Commission has produced a serious and sobering analysis of the government’s budget mess, and it provides some of the needed solutions. Three of the report’s main themes are on target: the need to make government leaner, the need to cut business taxes to generate economic growth, and the need to impose tighter budget rules to discipline spending.
The report rejects the view of many Democratic leaders that the welfare state built over the last 80 years must be defended against any and all budget cuts. “Every aspect of the discretionary budget must be scrutinized, no agency can be off limits, and no program that spends too much or achieves too little can be spared. The federal government can and must adapt to the 21st century by transforming itself into a leaner and more efficient operation.” How lean the government should be, and how many agencies to eliminate, will be the central fiscal debate in coming years. Downsizing government is the order of the day.
The report recognizes the need to spur economic growth, particularly by cutting the corporate tax rate. “The corporate income tax, meanwhile, hurts America’s ability to compete… statutory rates in the U.S. are significantly higher than the average for industrialized countries … and our method of taxing foreign income is outside the norm…. the current system puts U.S. corporations at a competitive disadvantage against their foreign competitors.” The report recommends cutting the 35 percent federal corporate tax rate to 28 percent or less to respond to the Global Tax Revolution and to “make America the best place to start a business and create jobs.”
Finally, the report suggests that Congress impose new procedures to enforce budget restraint. However, the rules suggested by the commission are complex and not tight enough. It would be simpler and more powerful to impose a cap on overall federal spending. For example, a law could require that the government’s overall budget not grow faster than general inflation each year else the president would sequester spending across-the-board. Such a cap would be easy for the public to understand and enforce.
In sum, the report provides a useful menu of reform options that incoming members of a more conservative Congress can pursue next year. We need bigger spending cuts than the commission has laid out—as I’ve outlined in this balanced-budget plan—but the commission deserves credit for spurring a national discussion on how to downsize the federal government.
Obama Adopts Cato Pay Proposal
The Obama administration is supporting a two-year freeze on federal pay. I haven’t seen the details yet, but this appears to be a good start at getting excessive government pay under control.
I’ve been calling for a pay freeze since an op-ed in the Washington Post in 2006. Since then, average federal pay has continued to soar far above average private pay, which has finally prompted policymakers to take note.
The Obama proposal would apparently save $28 billion over five years. Hopefully, that will be the first of many budget savings that the administration and Republicans in Congress can work on together in coming months. I’ve described other ways to tackle the government’s overspending problem here.
The next step to reform federal worker compensation should be to pare back overly generous benefit packages — for example, by eliminating defined-benefit pension plans, which come on top of the defined-contribution pensions that federal workers enjoy.
Another step would be to call in an outside human resources firm to audit the federal pay methodology, particularly the mysterious formula used to calculate the federal “pay gap,” which purports to show that federal workers are grossly underpaid.
See this essay on overpaid federal workers for details on reforming federal pay.
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on Google+
Cato on YouTube
