As I should have mentioned in my previous post, the House and Senate are likely to vote on the Farm Bill conference report tomorrow.

The bill, an abysmal one that carries a price tag of roughly $300 billion, will likely pass easily in the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill sailed through the chamber last year in a 79-14 vote.

So the questions over the possibility of an override center mainly on the House, which will likely see a closer vote, but not by much.

If House Republicans are unable to secure enough votes to sustain a veto, it would signify a remarkable failure of their leadership, especially of House Minority Leader John Boehner. Boehner has publically opposed the bill, but - along with House Minority Whip Roy Blunt - has refused to actively push his Republican colleagues to do the same.

An article in today’s The Hill notes:

[L]obbyists said members were being told to “vote their districts,” meaning they could support the measure without fearing any consequence from leadership.

What’s worse is that the bill probably could have been improved upon, much earlier in the process. The Republican leadership has full discretion over committee assignments. Instead of seating on the Agriculture Committee a balanced array of viewpoints, the House GOP leadership has chosen a collection of members that hail almost universally from farm-heavy districts and are greatly predisposed to support an increase in agricultural spending.

In fact, an informal vote count compiled by the office of Rep. Jeff Flake suggests that every single Republican member of the House Agriculture Committee is likely to support the Farm Bill tomorrow.

What would the bill look like if Rep. Flake or another critic of current farm policies was a member of the committee? Sure, one member can have only so much impact on a committee of 46. But at least that would give taxpayers a voice at the table.

Further to my quasi-post on the farm bill Friday, I may have been premature in my enthusiasm. According to an article [$] today in Congress Daily, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee Charles Grassley (R, IA) is confident that Congress will be able to override the President’s threatened veto:

Grassley expects the White House will not push Republicans to sustain the expected veto. If Bush does push support for the veto, cautioned Grassley, he should expect “very weak loyalty in the Congress from his own party.” Bush has said that some Republicans in safe seats who represent districts without agriculture might not worry about offending anti-hunger advocates by turning down the bill’s $10 billion increase in nutrition programs. Grassley said today that such a scenario is the only way he could envision the White House getting enough House support to sustain a veto.

The full conference report, in all its glory, available here for the strong-of-stomach.

Also alarming: the conference report apparently includes language that would nullify a federal appeals court decision under the Freedom of Information Act that has done so much (via the great Ken Cook at the Environmental Working Group) to shed light on these egregious subsidies. See here.

On Wednesday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is releasing his revised budget proposal against a backdrop of a massive deficit.  In my op-ed in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, I lay out the background of the “fiscal crisis” in the state (too much spending) and point out a few specific programs the governor can terminate.  Enacting a spending limit and working to increase the use of public-private partnerships would be great, but this year’s budget debate highlights the need to also eliminate programs, cut spending (not merely spending growth) and refocus the state government on its core functions. 

Not from California?  Your state has also likely forgotten the lessons of the 1990s and may have its own “crisis” brewing. 

Sunday’s NY Times acknowledges that:

It is time to end an outdated tax break for corn ethanol and to call a timeout in the fivefold increase in ethanol production mandated in the 2007 energy bill.

But then it goes on to state:

This does not mean that Congress should give up on biofuels as an important part of the effort to reduce the country’s dependency on imported oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What it does mean is that some biofuels are (or are likely to be) better than others, and that Congress should realign its tax and subsidy programs to encourage the good ones. Unlike corn ethanol, those biofuels will not compete for the world’s food supply and will deliver significant reductions in greenhouse gases…

Congress’s guiding principle should be to tie federal help to environmental performance. The goal is not just to stop the headlong rush to corn ethanol but to use the system to bring to commercial scale promising second-generation biofuels — cellulosic ethanol derived from crop wastes, wood wastes, perennial grasses. These could provide environmental benefits and reduce dependence on oil without displacing food production.

But as noted on this blog previously, this is wishful thinking. Tilting the field to help cellulosic ethanol, whether directly through subsidies or indirectly through mandates, will inevitably make it more attractive for farmers to divert land and water to grow fuel rather than food. As a result some portion – perhaps even a large portion – of the resources that would otherwise be used for food production would go toward fuel production.

It is, therefore, naïve to claim that fuel production will not compete with food production. But the NY Times seems naïve about mandates, apparently assuming that mandates don’t entail costs, especially if they are in pursuit of goals it deems laudable.

One can get an inkling of the potentially disastrous effects of tilting the field toward biofuels (such as ethanol) from the Burmese experience regarding jatropha, a bush that can provide feedstock for biodiesel. The Wall Street Journal’s James Hookway reported last week that:

United Nations World Food Program officials say the storm wiped out much of Myanmar’s midyear rice harvest and add that grain stockpiles are dwindling because of the military’s jatropha drive. That makes it likely Myanmar’s plans to export rice this year to other needy nations such as Bangladesh will be scrapped…

The most notorious example of errant policy making reflects the fascination of 75-year-old junta leader Senior-Gen. Than Shwe with biodiesel as a way to break the country’s dependence on expensive imported oil.

In December 2005, the battle-hardened commander kicked off a nationwide campaign to grow jatropha, a squat, hardy bush that yields golf-ball-sized fruit containing a sticky, yellow liquid that can be made into fuel. His drive was similar to initiatives in other parts of the world, including the U.S., which encouraged farmers to grow corn, palm oil or other crops for biofuel and which are now facing criticism for driving up the price of food. [Emphasis added]

India, China and other countries grow jatropha on scrubby land where food crops can’t survive. But researchers say that in Myanmar, some of the country’s most fertile land has been converted to cultivating the shrub…

It isn’t clear how much of Myanmar’s arable land has been converted to jatropha cultivation. Organizations such as the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization warned the government about the risks of farming jatropha on land that could be used to grow food. But Gen. Than Shwe’s goal was to set aside an area the size of Belgium to grow jatropha — a huge commitment for Myanmar, which is roughly the size of France.

In 2006, the chief research officer at state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise said Myanmar hoped to completely replace the country’s oil imports of 40,000 barrels a day with home-brewed, jatropha-derived biofuel. Other government officials declared Myanmar would soon start exporting jatropha oil.

Despite the military’s efforts, the jatropha campaign apparently has largely flopped in its goal of making Myanmar self-sufficient in fuel.

While this is an extreme example of poorly conceived policy, it should be kept in mind that the Burmese regime was pursuing what many consider to be a laudable goal – energy independence (with — who knows — possibly the hope of obtaining carbon credits). And what a totalitarian regime can effect with fiat (and sticks), other governments can accomplish with a combination of seemingly more benign policies, specifically subsidies and mandates (i.e., carrots and sticks), in pursuit of the same laudable goals.

The lesson from all this, which the NY Times doesn’t quite get (reiterating from the earlier post) isn’t that biomass – and farmers — shouldn’t play a role in helping meet our energy needs, but that “If farmers can profitably grow fuel rather than food through their own efforts, so be it. But we shouldn’t favor growing one over the other either through subsidies or indirectly through government mandates for so-called renewable fuels. And if anything should be subsidized or mandated, it shouldn’t be growing fuels. That would inevitably compete with food.”

Excellent.

Senator John McCain and other budget reformers are right to rail against the institutionized corruption of federal “earmarking.” Earmarks are, however, just a small part of the massive bloat in the federal budget. Earmark reform is needed, but presidential candidate McCain needs to propose more fundamental budget reforms in the coming months.

Representatives John Campbell (R-CA) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) have just introduced an idea that McCain could champion: A constitutional cap on the overall federal budget. You can read the proposed amendment here, but essentially these House budget experts propose that annual federal spending growth should not exceed the long-run average growth in the U.S. economy, except with a two-thirds vote or a declared war.

I’ve proposed a similar budget cap that would be statutory, not constitutional, and thus easier to implement. See here and here.

Either way, the point for Mr. McCain (or Mr. Obama, if he is so inclined) is to promote some sort of overall cap on the budget to drive home that the government’s budget should not grow any faster than the average family’s budget. 

USA Today ran an article about the ever-expanding band of bureaucrats on all levels of government. Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the author points to a new 76,800 bureaucrats added to payroll from January-March this year;

That’s the biggest jump in first-quarter hiring since a boom in 2002 that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. By contrast, private companies collectively shed 286,000 workers in the first three months of 2008.

For the most part, when a public employee is hired the full cost of their labor – including generous government pensions and health care coverage – is not accounted for upfront.  With the baby boomers starting to retire, the costs of maintaining the army of bureaucrats will only rise.  Tack on the large unfunded liabilities in government-provided defined benefit plans and retiree health plans, and you easily have a trillion-dollar problem. 

Most governors in “fiscal crisis” states will call for temporary hiring freezes that fail to address the core issue of reckless government expansion.  But watch for some states, like Tennessee, to take steps to cut costs by culling a small number of their taxpayer-funded workers.

At a recent health policy forum in Washington, D.C., noted health economist and wit Uwe Reinhardt shed some light on that question:

[T]he following can be said: the United States Congress has absolutely no interest in reducing . . . dubious Medicare expenditures. Let me repeat that. The United States Congress has no interest whatsoever in reducing dubious Medicare expenditures . . .

So the interesting and intriguing question for all, for journalists too, [is]: why is the Congress so disinterested in cost containment when it constantly whines about having to restructure Medicare? That is to me a huge mystery.

Obviously, Prof. Reinhardt hasn’t read this.

Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the Diva of Deception, the Impresario of Illusion — THE AMAZING HILLARY!! Watch her make the federal gas tax SEEM TO DISAPPEAR!! But in fact, you’ll still be paying the same price for gas! Even the media can’t figure out this trick!! She’s remarkable! She’s astounding! So hurry right in and see the First Lady of Legerdemain, the Mistress of Magic!

That’s what Hillary Clinton’s campaign managers should be barking about her joining John McCain in proposing to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the 2008 summer driving season. Says Candidate Clinton, the move would “immediately lower gas prices.”

What makes her proposal a true work of wizardry is that, she claims, it would not reduce government tax revenues. Whereas McCain says he would reduce government spending to make up for the lost tax money (an example of magical thinking?), Clinton would implement “a windfall profits tax on the big oil companies” to close the revenue gap.

Did you catch The Amazing Hillary’s trick? Did you see why consumers would still pay the same price for gasoline? No? OK, let’s watch the sleight of hand in slow motion:

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Appropriations lobbyists have weathered a rough few years of media scrutiny, and a series of earmarking outrages has put pressure on Congress to pass minor reforms. Luckily there may be fewer vehicles for earmarks this year as Congress will probably pass only one or two appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2009 and leave the budget mess for a new president to sort out.

Congressional appropriators have well-rehearsed defenses of the earmarking process, and an anonymous appropriations lobbyist has joined the fray to strike back at earmark critics. I obtained a copy of a six-page document defending the earmark system called “Fairness of Congressional Earmarking Report,” which is circulating around Capitol Hill.

Earmark enthusiasts argue that the Congressional system of doling out money to local governments, businesses and special interest groups is better than giving “faceless bureaucrats” the ability to allocate federal funds. The anonymous white paper expands on this argument and tries to make the case that earmarking is a much fairer process than letting federal agencies allocate the money.

The author of the paper is a member of an exclusive clique of former appropriations staffers called the 302(b) Group, according to Washington Post lobbying columnist Jeffrey Birnbaum.

Whether earmarks are useful depends on one’s perspective. To appropriations lobbyists and groups that have difficulty obtaining federal funding through merit-based, competitive grants, earmarks are a welcome bonanza. To taxpayers and advocates of spending restraint, transparent government and federalism, they’re woefully inefficient and pit parochial interests against the national interest.

Let’s look at the debate from the perspective of an appropriations lobbyist, to whom all federal spending is good federal spending:

The most democratic way to distribute these federal dollars is to spread funding across to numerous, meritorious local government projects rather than to concentrate resources to a select few.

Ah, democracy. The implication is that if someone is against earmarking, they must be some sort of dictator-loving democracy hater. The Chronicle of Higher Education published an investigative piece in March showing that the top recipient of educational earmarks for research in FY 2008 was Mississippi State University (Number two? The University of Mississippi). The Bulldogs are not known for a world-class research program, but they happen to have influential representatives and senators on the appropriations committees to steer funds their way. Never mind that educational earmarks receive little to no scrutiny to determine merit by scientists or that millions of dollars winds up at universities with no graduate or research programs in the research areas for which they receive funds. That’s earmark “democracy” in action.

The paper also analyzes the appropriations process during FY 2006 (when Congress used earmarks) and FY 2007 (when Congress did not use earmarks because the appropriations process fell apart and Congress fell back on a series of continuing resolutions that just increased spending across the board).

Generally speaking, federal agencies awarded substantially fewer grants when compared to when Congress earmarked these funds. A few local governments did better; the vast majority did not.

There’s a debate over whether earmarks increase overall spending or if they only divert it. Assuming that overall spending doesn’t change in a given year, earmarks just redirect spending to narrow interests; removing earmarks does not decrease spending. However, the paper seems to argue spending was reduced without considering the money was likely spent on other priorities.

In the bizarro lobbying world, the federal government spending less money on special interest projects is automatically a bad thing. To taxpayers, the notion that the government isn’t indiscriminately spending money because a representative or senator inserts an earmark in an appropriations bill is usually a good thing.

Communities across the nationwide are faced with increased traffic congestion and transportation needs. These local governments must address broken sidewalks, antiquated infrastructure, congested roads, and inadequate bicycle and pedestrian trails.

Setting aside this excerpt’s grammar issues, it’s comically ludicrous to suggest that the federal government needs to bail out local governments so that they can fix broken sidewalks and bike trails. Local governments are more accountable to residents’ spending wants and needs. It’s also more efficient to tax local and state residents to provide local and state infrastructure and services instead of routing the money through the maze of federal bureaucracy.

Reasonable people can disagree about the solution to the earmark problem. An effective argument for appropriators is that until the system is reformed, it’s their duty to get as much money for their district as possible — even if it’s wasteful and inefficient. This anonymous paper, though, is a silly defense of the system. It’s understandable why the author wants to remain anonymous.

I’m sorry to bring bad tidings so close to the weekend, but apparently House and Senate conferees have reached agreement [$] on the broad outlines of a Farm Bill.

We will have to wait until Monday to get the full, disgusting details but broadly, we know this about the proposed bill:

• it will raise the target prices and loan rates for northern crops (i.e., wheat, soybeans, other feedgrains) beginning in 2010
• raise the sugar loan rate three-quarters of a cent
• include a sugar-to-ethanol program (whereby the USDA would buy sugar that would otherwise threaten the domestic minimum price and sell it, presumably at a loss, to ethanol plants)
• an additional $4 billion for conservation programs
• $10.361 billion extra for domestic and international food aid programs
• The bill also includes the new “permanent” disaster program (some thoughts on that here), albeit at $250 million less than the original $4 billion request

To pay for this, your representatives in Congress cut the $5.2 billion per year direct payments program (that is the program that pays farmers on the basis of past production and yields, regardless of what they produce now) by 2 percent per year for four years. Recall that the direct payments program, while an offence to taxpayers everywhere, is at least less trade distorting than the price-linked subsidies that the conferees have agreed to increase. And in the final year, when it really counts for purposes of planning future spending levels (i.e., the baseline), the direct payments will go back up again.

The one possible bright light at the end of this sewer-pipe: a presidential veto. No word from the administration on this latest deal, but it does not fit their past definition of an acceptable amount of reform and thus, assuming intestinal fortitude on the part of President Bush (I know, I know), would likely elicit a veto threat.

Happy weekend, everybody.

A National Conference of State Legislatures report released today is sparking gloom-and-doom headlines about states in fiscal crises. Conspicuously absent from the news stories is any mention of the root cause of the “shortfalls” supposedly wrecking havoc in state capitols.  Over the last few years, state lawmakers forgot the lessons of the 1990s, and decided to add new programs and significantly expand general fund spending on existing programs.

Now, according to NCSL:

Current state fiscal conditions are being driven by weak revenue performance. State officials expected revenue growth to slow in FY 2008, but not as dramatically as it has. […] Because most FY 2008 budgets were built on revenue forecasts that are not materializing as expected, budget gaps have grown.

This reminds me of a short story by J.D. Salinger in which the main character describes the tragic lives of “bananafish:”

Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. […]  Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again. Can’t fit through the door.

In FY 2007 alone, states raised general fund spending by 9.3 percent, well above the 30-year average of 6.4 percent.  18 states saw spending rise by at least 10 percent.  The only real news here is that state governments are finding themselves in a fiscal “hole” because they gorged on revenues when times were good, and now they have been fat so long they forgot how to go on a diet.

Taxpayers can breathe a sign of relief. According to the Tax Foundation, April 23 is Tax Freedom Day. That means that the average American has finally earned enough to pay estimated federal, state, and local taxes for 2008. One of the most depressing finding in the Tax Foundation’s report is that Americans pay more in tax than they do for food, clothing, and shelter combined. To compensate for being the bearer of bad fiscal news, the Tax Foundation released an amusing video. It doesn’t quite equal this classic tax video, but it’s worth watching.

Are you an entrepreneur who deposits a regular amount of your business revenues in the bank? Watch out, the government might come after you for illegal “structuring.”

Are you a high earner who regularly pulls out a substantial amount of cash from your bank account? Watch out, your bank could be sending ”suspicious activity reports” about you to the government, as former senator Bob Dole’s bank did.

Have you ever deposited or withdrawn more than $10,000 from your bank? Watch out, because your activities were recorded on a government database of “currency transaction reports,” which is growing by 16 million new reports each year.

Did you overstate your income on a loan form when you bought your house? Watch out, the government could nail you for both ”bank fraud” and “money laundering.”

Forbes focuses on government encroachments on our civil liberties in a series of articles this month. See here, here and here

As a tax wonk, the IRS angle in these articles caught my eye. But like many people, I find it very disturbing that continual expansions in federal power are shrinking the realm of privacy and individual automony in modern society.  

The Washington Examiner reports on how carefully your taxpayer dollars are spent by both federal and local governments:

The District of Columbia has agreed to pay $1.75 million to head off a lawsuit alleging that the city bilked the federal government out of money to educate children who didn’t exist, The Examiner has learned.

For decades, District schools took in millions of dollars in grants to educate the children of migrant farmworkers and fishermen. But, as first reported by The Examiner in August, a 2005 audit discovered there were no such children in the system.

As other states contemplate cutting spending growth in light of slowing revenue growth, New York State recently passed a $122 billion budget for 2008-2009. Coming nearly 5 percent higher than last fiscal year’s spending plan, the budget relies on $1.5 billion in higher taxes and fees, including a near-doubling of the state’s cigarette tax rate. The increased taxes will fund, among other programs, a record-breaking $1.75 billion increase in school aid. But it’s doubtful the state will even raise that money because higher taxes will just generate an even larger black market in cigarettes.

Despite this stunning increase in spending, the state is still using creative techniques to balance the last budget. According to a recent Times Union article, the Paterson administration “swept” $100 million from various special accounts to supplement general revenues. But the funds in the dedicated accounts are raised through user fees and slated for specific programs, not for the general spending whims of policymakers;

For instance, more than $1 million was swept from the Animal Population Control account, which is fueled from $3 surcharges on dog licenses, $25 Love Your Pet license plates and other funds from pet lovers. It is supposed to go to spaying programs.

Beyond the fact that Albany should not be in the spaying business to begin with, there appears to be dishonesty in budgeting if Albany creates new programs, overcharges “fees” to accumulate surpluses in various dedicated accounts and then “sweeps” the funds into the black-hole that is the general fund budget. It comes as no surprise several of these user fees were increased in the 2008-2009 budget. With spending on an unsustainable upward path, much more sweeping is yet to come.

Two weeks ago, the Senate passed legislation ostensibly intended to address home foreclosures. That legislation is now being criticized as little more than a handout to corporate interests. The criticism is legit; the bill is largely a package of tax breaks for developers (and other struggling industries, including those that have nothing to do with housing), along with tax credits for the purchasers of foreclosed homes (a provision that has its own criticisms) and grant money to local governments that want to play Flip This House.

Across Capitol Hill, the House is considering different foreclosure legislation that would give tax credits to first-time homebuyers and developers of lower-cost housing (proposals that are subject to some of the same criticisms now being lobbed at the Senate bill). House and Senate committees are also considering additional legislation that would permit the Federal Housing Authority to underwrite as much as $300 billion in mortgages for borrowers who are at risk of falling behind on their payments.

Lawmakers’ interest in combating the mortgage problem is understandable: default and foreclosure are painful for homeowners, clusters of vacant houses are hard on communities, and the struggling homebuilding industry is a significant contributor to the nation’s overall economic malaise. (Another factor that makes it understandable: this is an election year.)

However, before Congress puts taxpayers (most of whom are also paying mortgages or renting their homes) on the hook for billions of dollars in grants, tens of billions in tax breaks, and guarantees for hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages, three points should be acknowledged:

1. The bailout proposals are as much a benefit to lenders as borrowers.
2. The homebuyers who are to be rescued are not the victims of “raw deals” (unless they were deceived or defrauded).
3. The bailout could make the nation’s overall economic condition worse.

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Every so often, a politician commits the horrible mistake of saying what he really thinks. This happened at the Democratic debate. Barack Obama has a very punitive proposal to nearly double the capital gains rate. When asked by one of the moderators whether this makes sense, especially given the historical evidence of big “Laffer-Curve” effects, Senator Obama dismissed concerns about falling revenue, arguing that a high rate was justified by “fairness.” In other words, Senator Obama is so fixated on punishing success that he is even willing to reduce the amount of tax revenue flowing to Washington that he and his buddies can redistribute. This position is so radical that my Cato colleague Sallie James was distracted from her work on the free trade agreement with Colombia (I’m not a foreign policy person, but that’s apparently a country bordering Nepal and Mauritania) and demanded that I say something about the issue. But let’s first look at what Senator Obama actually said: 

MR. GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

SENATOR OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

The Senator then proceeded to bash evil rich (sorry for the redundancy) people, so the moderator asked the question again:

MR. GIBSON: But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up.

SENATOR OBAMA: Well, that might happen or it might not. It depends on what’s happening on Wall Street and how business is going.

This exchange is particularly revealing since Senator Obama actually admitted that a tax rate increase might lose revenue, but he held firm to his position that the capital gains rate should be increased from 15 percent to 28 percent. This reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with an economics professor from an Ivy League university. He told me that he once asked his left-wing colleagues whether they would support lower tax rates if they knew that tax revenues would rise. Most of them, he said, shared Obama’s viewpoint that punishing success was more important to the statist ideology than increasing revenue for government.

A major pharmaceutical company is moving its tax domicile to Ireland because the U.K.’s corporate tax systems is too burdensome. This story from the Guardian is a great example of tax competition, of course, but it also highlights the fact that governments are only subject to competitive pressure if taxpayers have the freedom to shift economic activity to jurisdictions with better tax law - and they have the ability to benefit from those better laws. Sadly, American companies no longer have this freedom thanks to “anti-expatriation” or “anti-inversion” laws enacted by greedy politicians:

Shire, the country’s third biggest drugmaker, has intensified the debate over Britain’s corporate tax regime with plans to move its tax base to Ireland from the UK. The FTSE-100 company said it was applying to a court to create a new holding company incorporated in tax-haven Jersey and would become tax resident in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are less than half those in the UK. …its board of directors will hold meetings in its Dublin office once the tax residence move gets court approval. Most importantly, the move means it will be subject to an official corporate tax rate of 12.5%, compared with 28% in the UK. …Business lobby group the CBI said Shire’s decision deepened its concerns about the UK corporate tax system. “We are particularly worried that an uncompetitive corporate tax system is spoiling the UK’s attractiveness as a place to do business, and that other internationally-mobile firms will follow Shire’s path,” said CBI director-general Richard Lambert. Last month, technology giant Yahoo announced it was moving its European headquarters from London to Switzerland to increase competitiveness and deliver “efficiencies”. A recent survey by accountancy firm KPMG blamed complex rules and a mass of legislation for putting the UK in the bottom half of a league table of the most attractive places to do business in Europe. The study ranked Cyprus, Ireland and Switzerland top for their combination of easy-to-understand rules, low tax rates and stable fiscal laws. The UK came 12th out of 22 countries for the attractiveness of their domestic tax regimes.

The good news, according to Tax-news.com, is that newly-elected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants to reduce Italy’s top income tax rate from 43 percent to 33 percent. The bad news is that he made similar promises the last time he held office, but never delivered. One can only hope that this time he is more serious about improving Italy’s economy:

Italy’s evergreen centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, is set to return for his third stint as the country’s Prime Minister following his recent election victory, and has promised to reduce Italy’s tax burden… Berlusconi has also pledged to axe other taxes, including an overtime levy, a tax on annual bonuses, and a tax on car ownership, and, before his five year term is out, he wants the top rate of income tax reduced from 43% to 33%. Ultimately, Berlusconi is targeting a reduction in the country’s overall tax burden to less than 40% of gross domestic product from its current level of more than 43%.

A chart in the Wall Street Journal is headed “Sen. John McCain’s tax-cut proposals and their average annual cost, in billions.”

I guess it depends on whether you see the world from the perspective of the taxpayers or the tax-eaters. I would have titled it “McCain’s tax-cut proposals and their average annual savings to taxpayers.”

I was exploring some old CBO reports for information on dynamic budget scoring and I came across this nugget:

If a tax cut—such as a rebate or a higher standard deduction—does not reduce the tax on income from an extra hour of work, the additional income will create an incentive for people to cut back their working hours and spend more time at home. Not everyone will respond, but some people (especially second workers in a family with one full-time earner) may decide to leave the labor force to care for children or aging parents or to pursue other interests.

(Supplement to CBO’s May 9, 2002, Testimony on Federal Budget Estimating May 2002 CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, page 9)

We are about to receive a rebate in May this year as part of the economic stimulus that Congress passed in February. I suppose the folks at the CBO would have pointed out that although a rebate may stimulate consumer spending, it is also likely to reduce labor supply. The net impact, therefore, would not necessarily involve any increase in national output but it would certainly induce stronger inflationary pressures—adding fuel to the inflationary fire the Fed’s apparently stoking by cutting interest rates so rapidly. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the dollar’s value took a nosedive during February this year.

Higher rebate-induced debt and higher inflation implies higher future interest rates and, therefore, increased cost of financing consumer and investment spending. Rebate recipients will benefit today, but everyone will lose in the long-term as the economy becomes more sluggish.

Bottom line: Politicians gain by appearing to be doing something – and most of us lose!

Reporters are lighting up my voice mail and inbox with queries about what I make of Sen. John McCain’s call today for suspending SPR fill orders and the federal gasoline tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day in a bid to get gasoline prices down. Color me tepid.

Let’s take these issues one at a time. John McCain is absolutely correct to blame the SPR for helping to drive-up world crude oil prices. Oil economist Phil Verleger, for instance, thinks that federal fill orders for the SPR has driven up the price of crude by at least $10 a barrel and perhaps as much as $30. But why only temporarily stop the madness? Now’s a good time to dump the all federal inventories on the market and shut the SPR down once and for all. If we’re lucky, we’ll burst what may be an oil price bubble along the way and finally have something positive to show for the tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds that have been sunk into this white elephant.

The same goes for the federal gasoline tax. John McCain of all people should know that federal gasoline tax revenues are steroids for localized pork and special-interest subsidy. Road construction and maintenance (and the taxes that pay for them) should be turned back to state and local governments. A short-term moratorium on taxes, however, would probably have little impact on pump prices. If gasoline supplies are relatively fixed over the next several months (as I suspect they are), any service station that tried to pass the tax cut on to consumers would find demand increasing beyond where it otherwise would have been, and that increased demand would bid prices back up to where they were before federal taxes were cut. Over the long term, a cut in federal gasoline taxes would indeed reduce pump prices, but that’s not what John McCain is talking about here.

Sen. McCain is on the right track. But half-measures won’t accomplish much.

In a fit of either highly coincidental timing or good humor, the Supreme Court today released opinions in two tax cases. In MeadWestvaco Corp. v. Illinois Department of Revenue, the Court limited the power of states to tax the money that a company based in another state earns when it sells off an investment in a division involved in a separate line of business. In U.S. v. Clintwood Elkhorn Mining Co., the Court decided that a taxpayer seeking a refund for an invalid tax under the Constitution’s Export Clause must seek a refund from the government before bringing a lawsuit.

So the taxpayers went 1-1 today, but the cases were both technical and not worth getting into. Perhaps the only interesting thing about them — aside from this whole Tax Day thing — is that they were both unanimous. This technicality and unanimity could be further evidence of Chief Justice Roberts trying to steer the Court to take on less high-profile (typically business) cases, with narrow issues that prevent the fractured 5-4 decision-making that make the Court seem more political than it really is (or should be).

On this unfortunate day, when many of us are pulling out our hair as we deal with last minute tax headaches, it is helpful to think there may be a better future. Some of us fantasize about a flat tax while others of us dream about a national sales tax. Both of these tax plans share common principles - including a low rate, no double taxation, and equal treatment of economic activity. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the existence of two attractive tax reform plans has divided the pro-tax reform camp, and this has rebounded to the benefit of the status quo. But this division is not necessary. In a new video released by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, I explain why it is important to junk the system. More important, I suggest a strategy for uniting tax reform advocates:

As always, I welcome feedback on these videos.

While most other East European nations have adopted pro-growth flat tax systems, Hungary and Poland are still burdened by class-warfare systems that penalize people for contributing more to economic performance. The Budapest Times, however, reports that Hungary’s small parties may combine to push through an 18 percent flat tax:

MDF leader Ibolya Dávid called for opposition parties to attend talks on 15 April to work out details of a bill to submit to parliament by May. The party wants to emulate regional peers such as Slovakia and Romania by introducing a flat 18% personal income tax to reduce a tax burden it called “unfairly high”. The Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and main opposition party Fidesz - along with its ally the Christian Democrats (KDNP) - have said in the past that they would favour a flat tax. …The MSZP has only 190 seats in the 386-seat parliament, meaning that the opposition parties could force through a flat tax bill by banding together. Hungary is ranked as having the second-highest tax burden for single people, behind Belgium, amongst the members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Many feel the high burden - made worse in 2006 when the government hiked taxes as part of its economic reforms - damages Hungary’s regional competitiveness.

Meanwhile, the Polish government already has promised to implement a flat tax, but a key official has suggested that the new system may be implemented in 2009 rather than in 2010 or 2011 as originally planned. Because of its size and geography, Poland’s shift to a flat tax would be a momentous development and could sharply increase the pressure for pro-growth reforms in Old Europe:

According to Zbigniew Chlebowski, head of ruling Civic Platform’s (PO) parliamentary club, there is a possibility of introducing a flat tax rate as early as 2009. Chelbowski said that Prime Minister Tusk supports this option and is ready to fight President Kaczynski should he veto it. Chelbowski, however, did not give a concrete rate of the possible flat tax, but stressed that it shall surely be lower than 18 percent, because such a rate would be higher than the present tax rates. The final decision is to be made in July or August. The ruling Civic Platform had originally planned to introduce the new tax in 2010 or 2011.