Pressuring the people to pressure the politicians about our national debt
First came the New Year’s tax increases of the “fiscal cliff.” Last week, the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration took effect. Still, Congress will spend much of March negotiating a deal to fund the federal government for the next six months — a deal that, in all likelihood, will mean borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars more.
Lurching from one crisis to the next, however real or contrived each one may be, has not put the country on a more solid, sustainable fiscal path. That’s where Maya MacGuineas comes in.
“We actually know for the most part what the parameters of a fix are,” MacGuineas, head of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told me during a stop in Atlanta two weeks ago. “You know that you’re going to have to look at all parts of the budget.
“You know that a key challenge here is reforming our entitlement programs, as aging and health care are driving the debt, and that … we can reform entitlement programs in ways that are true to protecting people who depend on them — if we get ahead of it.”
True to CRFB’s bipartisan credentials, MacGuineas doesn’t put all the emphasis on the spending side. She also points to the $1 trillion in annual “tax expenditures,” subsidies hidden in the tax code rather than appropriations bills.
“Nobody looks at them,” she said. “These spending programs, dressed up as tax cuts — many of which are not working, many of which are de-leveling the playing field instead of allowing for a functioning economic system, all of which are draining the Treasury — need to be part of that evaluation too.”
So, how do we get politicians to do something they seemingly don’t want to do? One step is for everyone to acknowledge the immediacy of the problem.
“It really concerns me,” MacGuineas said, to hear “the argument, ‘Look at the [interest] rate environment. Why would we want to focus on the deficit? What we should be doing is borrowing more.’ That’s what people who give you credit-card teaser rates say also, to hook you in.”
Government debt that isn’t repaid on time — i.e., virtually all of it — must be refinanced later, almost certainly at higher interest rates. Just a 1-percentage-point increase in interest rates, MacGuineas said, could mean at least $1.3 trillion more in interest payments over the following decade.
“That’s the amount the super-committee [created by the 2011 debt-ceiling deal] failed to find in savings,” leading to the sequester cuts, she pointed out.
Another way is to point out the glaring flaws of proposals on the table.
“I give Paul Ryan credit for putting out a budget that shows how he would do it with spending cuts only,” MacGuineas said, “but don’t forget that budget includes a bunch of Medicare savings he said he opposed during the [2012 presidential] race.”
President Barack Obama’s budgets have their own problems, she said: “One year, he talked about 12-year budgets compared to other people’s 10-year numbers. The next year he counted war savings [after previously announcing the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan], which is really a gimmick.”
MacGuineas said voters “bear a huge responsibility” for continuing to “elect people with a bunch of promises that just are not workable, but they sound good.” That said, she insisted voters “should be able to trust their elected leaders to lead an honest discussion about it. … And that’s not happening.”
She also hopes that if others, such as herself, force that honest discussion upon the country, it will change the political incentives that affect taxing and spending.
“I think what happens in discussions is there are tipping points. And I think if you have enough people talking about this, you have the next ‘Ross Perot moment,’ where it goes from everybody promising fiscal giveaways to, suddenly, we the voters demand they tell us how they’d fix it. And once it gets to that point, then you know that somebody selling you the easy way out isn’t telling the truth, and then it becomes politically more important to have a fix.”
– By Kyle Wingfield
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467 comments Add your comment
JKL2
March 7th, 2013
8:54 am
Jefferson- If you want to get out of debt, you will have to support more revenue, anything less would mean you are fooling yourself .
No matter how many times you say it, it does not make it true. Unless you control spending, no amount of revenue increase will ever be enough.
HDB
March 7th, 2013
8:54 am
MiltonMan
March 7th, 2013
8:31 am
“I vividly remember libs bragging about the multiple “affordable housing acts” that they championed which bascially let anyone with a pulse “buy” a house. ”
Affordable housing has been a staple of the American government since 1937! No one reduced the credit requirements in home purchasing; it was the LENDERS who went looking for buyers of sub-prime mortgages.
southpaw
March 7th, 2013
8:55 am
HDB
In FY 2011 Bush was long since out of power. He couldn’t decide to continue or end the stimulus. The House of Representatives had to appropriate, or not appropriate, money to continue the stimulus after 2009. And I DON’T note the “level of spending increases;” I note the actual dollars spent, and President Obama is spending them faster than President Bush.
fair and balanced
March 7th, 2013
8:57 am
I am so happy to see Paul Ryan now supports the $716 billion Medicare cuts that a year ago he and the supreme flip flopper claimed Obama was stealing from Medicare and Ryan’s mother. Maybe she really did not need that free gym membership and free scooter after all.
JKL2
March 7th, 2013
8:58 am
HDB- The question I’ve always asked but no one has yet to give a definitive answer: Where was this level of concern about government spending when the nation was BUSHwhacked?
Ever heard of the Tea Party?
My question (which you’ll never answer) is if you were so upset at Bush, not are you just not livid at obama?
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
March 7th, 2013
8:59 am
Nonsense, JDW. Spending was around $3 trillion in 2008. Obozo refuses to return it to pre-recession levels, even though the recession ended four years ago!
His failure on the economy is solely responsible for adding $6 trillion to the debt and keeping unemployment at or above 8% for more than four years.
HDB
March 7th, 2013
9:01 am
Lil’ Barry Bailout – OBAMAPHONE!!!
March 7th, 2013
8:49 am
….from southpaw….here’s the expenditures of the Bush years!
2002 2,010,894
2003 2,159,899
2004 2,292,841
2005 2,471,957
2006 2,655,050
2007 2,728,686
2008 2,982,544
2009 3,517,677
Note: FY 2009 Bush spent 3.5T…and had a 1.4T DEFICIT!! Also, knowing that Bush kept the two wars OFF THE BOOKS, it is quite feasible that he had been running trillion dollar deficits for at least FIVE YEARS!! Better rethink the possibilities……
MiltonMan
March 7th, 2013
9:02 am
“MiltonMan personally re-writes history and economics all in one post. It must be so incredibly frustrating to know it all and never get your rightful deference from the real world.
Now I understand why cons turn up their noses at “so-called experts.” They’re self-made authorities on any subject and that’s that.”
…and Aquagirl stayed under the water just a bit too long resulting in brain damage. Refutes my “opinions” with her own “opinions” thus resulting in her being correct??? Did you “graduate” from APS?
HDB
March 7th, 2013
9:09 am
JKL2
March 7th, 2013
8:58 am
“My question (which you’ll never answer) is if you were so upset at Bush, not are you just not livid at obama?”
To answer your question: I was upset at Bush for spending on TWO UNNECESSARY WARS and keeping the expenditures off the books, tax cuts for the rich while ignoring the infrastructure and ignoring the needs of the people in New Orleans. I’m more angry at Congress rather than Obama because the national needs aren’t being met because of their obstruction and obfuscation!! I AM angry at Obama because he hasn’t been as forceful as I’d hoped….but he’s dealing with things a lot better than I would have if I were in the same situation!!
curious
March 7th, 2013
9:10 am
Lot of anger here.
You aren’t convincing anybody of anything except what a sad person you are.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
9:10 am
@LBB…”Spending was around $3 trillion in 2008. Obozo refuses to return it to pre-recession levels,”
Lots of things were cheaper five years ago…what possible rational can you have for that statement. As for the recession….what is driving the higher spending are still in many ways the associated costs of that recession and the unemployed it spawned.
JKL2
March 7th, 2013
9:12 am
Let’s see what the President has to say about the deficit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kuTG19Cu_Q
curious
March 7th, 2013
9:13 am
We haven’t had a budget for 4 years or so. How are we managing to increase spending so much ?
Somebody must be approving these expenditures.
HDB
March 7th, 2013
9:13 am
“Ever heard of the Tea Party?” — Not until 2009….after Obama was elected!!
MountainMan
March 7th, 2013
9:17 am
You cannot solve the budget deficit with tax increases because historically for every dollar of new revenue, the government adds $1.17 of new spending.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2010/11/wsj-each.html
JKL2
March 7th, 2013
9:17 am
HDB- I AM angry at Obama because he hasn’t been as forceful as I’d hoped…
It’s called lack of leadership. Unfortunately the 47% sheeple love his incompetence as long as they are getting a check from the government.
independent thinker
March 7th, 2013
9:18 am
If Kyle and the cons wanted to deal honestly with facts they would at least read the publications of the White house office of management of Budget and historical trends of spending, GDP and current budget cuts, Of course this require some intelligence and ability to do Math which as ole Bill said is not a strong quality in the stupid party. GDP is up nearly 2 trillion dollars since Obama took office. Defense spending increased by almost 250% from 281 billion to almost 650 billion – a greater increase by percent than medicare or social security. of course there is increased spending due to
stimulus and unemployment benefits- primary beneficiaries?? the states. And the list of spending reductions is quite impressive. But again this is a communist publication to brainwash the public.
Aquagirl
March 7th, 2013
9:19 am
Refutes my “opinions” with her own “opinions” thus resulting in her being correct???
No, I didn’t attempt to refute your opinion whatsoever. I simply noted it was an opinion with no basis in fact, and that you think your feebly gathered opinion is right simply because it’s yours. No facts or actual reality will change your mind, you’ll simply re-imagine the world to fit your perception.
I don’t know why you suffer from this debilitating illness or why it’s so common in the little CPAC cluster but it’s fascinating to watch the process play itself out.
Kyle Wingfield
March 7th, 2013
9:23 am
JDW @ 8:45: It’s not as if we haven’t been through this before, but …
You keep acting as if someone other than taxpayers or lenders is putting up the money for what you call “investment income.” Those are investments in U.S. Treasurys; taxpayers (or lenders, when we are running a deficit) are the ones providing the money for the interest and principal payments on those investments. The fact is, the four main accounts listed on that document spent about $411 billion more in 2011 than they took in via what most Americans consider their funding sources: e.g., payroll taxes and premiums. If spending on those programs had been equal to what was taken in via payroll taxes, premiums and such, the deficit would have been $411 billion smaller. There is no getting around that.
Kyle Wingfield
March 7th, 2013
9:26 am
JDW @ 8:50: Are you ever going to quit lying about who was responsible for 2009 spending? We have been through this many times before…you have even admitted in the past that some of the spending in FY09 was Obama’s responsibility. We may disagree about how much — although the facts are on my side — but why do you insist on absolving Obama of any responsibility for FY09 spending unless I call you on it?
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
March 7th, 2013
9:26 am
How about being concerned about GE paying no taxes on over 11 million in profits?
Look up the words “Green Energy Subsidies,” einstein.
And there is a big difference between “helping the poor” and giving them money that future generations will have to pay.
Kyle Wingfield
March 7th, 2013
9:28 am
And HDB @ 9:01 brings up one of the other most blatantly false talking points on the left: “Also, knowing that Bush kept the two wars OFF THE BOOKS, it is quite feasible that he had been running trillion dollar deficits for at least FIVE YEARS!!”
When you talk about “expenditures” — not spending in the main budget bill, those quaint little things that Congress used to pass before Harry Reid decided it was to his political benefit not to do so — you are talking about ALL spending. Every dime. That includes the wars and other spending that was done in supplemental appropriations bills.
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
March 7th, 2013
9:32 am
Most of this countries debt was run up during Republican administrations.
Now just like before with Clinton it will be up to a responsible Democrat to balance the books.
jms
March 7th, 2013
9:33 am
Our future looks bleak. Our children’s future, even worse.
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
March 7th, 2013
9:35 am
We have been through this many times before…you have even admitted in the past that some of the spending in FY09 was Obama’s responsibility.
We were right in the middle of the Bush recession then.
” This sucker could go down ”
- President George W Bush referring to the economy he presided over.
MiltonMan
March 7th, 2013
9:37 am
“Most of this countries debt was run up during Republican administrations.
Now just like before with Clinton it will be up to a responsible Democrat to balance the books.”
Depends on what your defintion of “is” is.
Georgia
March 7th, 2013
9:39 am
The last issue standing for the GOP is the national debt and the deficit which are supposed to be two different things but voters are too simple to understand the difference. However, if the GOP is hoping that the debt (deficit) will save them, well, guess what? The debt/deficit is a red herring. There never has been, nor will there ever be any correlation between growth and the debt/deficit. It isn’t a problem, and never has been. Recessions/depressions are caused by factors still unknown, like sunspots, gravity and what happens to all the rubber on tires? Why aren’t all of our roads rutted with tire rub-off? Where does all that rubber go? Nobody knows. (or cares). . We don’t know nothing. We just work till we die and spend all our money on beer and cigarettes. Notice that nothing ever really happens? We are told that things are happening, but nothing ever really does. Except acts of war. Those are real.
But everything else, especially about the economy is all hooey. Total hooey.
ISAIDHOOEY!!!!
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
March 7th, 2013
9:39 am
Depends on what your defintion of “is” is.
Ill take that over
The smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud.
Great job Brownie.
Kyle Wingfield
March 7th, 2013
9:40 am
independent thinker @ 9:18: “GDP is up nearly 2 trillion dollars since Obama took office.”
Almost all of it due to inflation. Adjusted for inflation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP in 2009* was $12.76T. In 2012, it was $13.59T. That’s 6.5% growth in three years, which is pretty bad by America’s historical standards.
* This is the most favorable comparison for Obama. Because GDP is measured in calendar years, not fiscal years that begin Oct. 1, the actual comparison should be to 2008, when real GDP was $13.16T. But because Obama took office amid a deep recession, I’ll stipulate that, for these purposes, it’s fair to make his starting point 2009, when the economy bottomed out.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
9:46 am
@Kyle…“You keep acting as if someone other than taxpayers or lenders is putting up the money for what you call “investment income.” Those are investments in U.S. Treasurys; taxpayers (or lenders, when we are running a deficit) are the ones providing the money for the interest and principal payments on those investments. ”
Treasuries are investments pure and simple. In the years when the programs collected far far more in taxes than expenditures investments were made…safe investments…now you want to say that the debt is not owed? I call bull$hit.
“The fact is, the four main accounts listed on that document spent about $411 billion more in 2011 than they took in via what most Americans consider their funding sources: e.g., payroll taxes and premiums. If spending on those programs had been equal to what was taken in via payroll taxes, premiums and such, the deficit would have been $411 billion smaller. There is no getting around that.”
Not true…the programs took in $1.335 trillion of which $129.6 was investment income …had such income been eliminated, and there is no reason whatsoever to do that, then the contribution to the deficit would have been $79.9 billion. The problem with this whole line of thought is that this money was INVESTED by the American people and now some would like to steal it…again.
The problem is that many in this country don’t want to fund the rest of the government…almost half of that military. They would rather…aheeemmm….repurpose those tax and investment dollars that currently fund Social Security and Medicare just fine thank you very much.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
9:47 am
ooopsss HTML skills are off
southpaw
March 7th, 2013
9:50 am
Thanks Kyle @9:26 & 9:28, & LBB @8:59. HDB, I already pointed out that the totals include off-budget outlays.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
9:54 am
@Kyle…”Are you ever going to quit lying about who was responsible for 2009 spending? ”
I would like to ask you the same question…as would the people over at FactCheck.org who say
The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office. That includes spending for the bank bailout legislation approved by President Bush. Annual increases in amounts actually spent since fiscal 2009 have been relatively modest.”
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/
Bush submitted a budget of $3.1+ trillion for 2009. That total was run up to $3.3+ trillion by automatic spending related to the Duhbya Recession…Obama AT MOST and this is quite generous added $200 billion to the total.
Using that as a baseline spending has increased less than 3.5% per year or about half of the annual increased racked up by Duhbya and Reagan…
It is not I that has lost a grasp of the facts.
Kyle Wingfield
March 7th, 2013
9:54 am
JDW @ 9:46: “the programs took in $1.335 trillion of which $129.6[B] was investment income”
And $326B was from general revenues. So, getting back to my point, the supposedly sufficient revenue streams for these programs fell short by about 34 percent.
Even assuming it doesn’t hurt to tap into the trust funds — an assumption I’ll make only in this argument, to demonstrate how dire the situation is — they will be depleted in a couple of decades. At which point, MacGuineas said, we are looking at a 22 percent cut across-the-board for SS and Medicare, for anyone who’s retired at that time. That, or a tax increase of several hundred billion dollars per year.
The longer people like you keep insisting there’s no problem, the bigger the problem is going to be when we finally run out of smoke and mirrors.
HDB
March 7th, 2013
9:55 am
JKL2
March 7th, 2013
9:17 am
“It’s called lack of leadership. Unfortunately the 47% sheeple love his incompetence as long as they are getting a check from the government.”
I would say lack of leadership; Obama has a different leadership style…..
…and in that 47%, are you counting the military as sheeple….are you counting the air traffic controllers as sheeple…or are you counting the millionaires and business executives that pay NO INCOME TAXES as sheeple?? Please clarify…………
Steve
March 7th, 2013
9:57 am
Kyle – so the response is to just keep cutting spending yet ignoring the tax loopholes for the rich, the tax rates lowered to the point where government is starving? The only way we get out of this mess is to raise taxes (rich now, everyone when the economy is back), and continue to cut spending across the board. Americans are going to have to make sacrifices, but that includes the wealthy, and if you look at wealth distribution right now, the wealthy are in incredible shape. Corporations are sitting on billions of dollars. It’s time to fix this mess.
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
March 7th, 2013
10:01 am
Dont worry Kyle.
The calvary of nuts will be here soon enough.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
10:02 am
@Kyle…”And $326B was from general revenues. So, getting back to my point, the supposedly sufficient revenue streams for these programs fell short by about 34 percent.”
You are spinning and badly…directly from the Trustees report.
“In 2011, approximately 13 percent of OASDI Trust Fund income came from
reimbursements from the General Fund of the Treasury. Public Law 111-312,
the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation
Act of 2010, accounts for almost all of the reimbursement for the year. This
act specified general fund reimbursement for temporary reductions in revenue
due to reduced payroll tax rates for employees and for self-employed
workers.”
You know full well that the general revenue contribution is a one off and not part of normal operations.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
10:03 am
@Kyle…”The longer people like you keep insisting there’s no problem, the bigger the problem is going to be when we finally run out of smoke and mirrors.”
I have never denied that we have a long-term issue that must be address. My issue is with people like you intimating that these programs are drivers of our CURRENT deficits…they are not.
Michael
March 7th, 2013
10:06 am
Aesop and Lil barry,Remind me again of how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanastan have cost. Not to mention that there are thousands of Vets filing for benefits from VA that will continue to cost billions over the coming years. Gotta love Dick Cheney.
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
March 7th, 2013
10:07 am
Americans are going to have to make sacrifices
But most are unwilling to do this. Americans want to have thier cake and eat it too.
Consider what Americans did during WWII. A lot of things were rationed in those days.
Do you think today’s spoiled American would make those sacrifices ???
Absolutely not.
Kyle Wingfield
March 7th, 2013
10:10 am
According to the Open Congress summary of HR 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, introduced in Congress on Feb. 22, 2009, and signed by Obama on March 10, 2009:
“This bill totals about $410 billion and covers funding for fiscal year 2009 for the nine federal agencies that were not funded under the regular appropriations process last year.”
That’s on top of the stimulus. So, your $200B doesn’t come anywhere close.
Yes, I realize your FactCheck article mentions that omnibus bill. But it strains credibility — to put it mildly — for those fact-checkers to assign Bush responsibility for $378B of a $410B bill that he did not sign. The fact that those agencies got $378B in the previous fiscal year does not cut it as an argument. Is it impossible to think Bush wanted to cut their spending to help offset the other spending he’d increased? If we are assigning responsibility to presidents for spending they signed into law, how can we possibly assign responsibility for that spending to Bush?
If Obama had never signed that bill, we would not add $378B to Bush’s total for FY09. But suddenly we can assign him responsibility for it because Obama did sign it? That’s ludicrous.
Kyle Wingfield
March 7th, 2013
10:12 am
JDW @ 10:03: So what about the $326B in general revenues? Are you denying that the deficit would have been $326B smaller if that money wasn’t needed for those programs?
southpaw
March 7th, 2013
10:13 am
I never expected to say this, but…
Cheesy Grits @10:07, you are absolutely right.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
10:34 am
@Kyle…”That’s on top of the stimulus. So, your $200B doesn’t come anywhere close.”
Talk to FactCheck…
“But it’s also true that Obama signed a number of appropriations bills, plus other legislation and executive orders, that raised spending for the remainder of fiscal 2009 even above the path set by Bush. By our calculations, Obama can be fairly assigned responsibility for a maximum of $203 billion in additional spending for that year. It can be argued that the total should be lower. Economist Daniel J. Mitchell of the libertarian CATO Institute — who once served on the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee — has put the figure at $140 billion”
I understand that when the facts don’t support your version you have trouble…but that goes to the heart of a firm grasp on them. Fact is they went through the numbers and you don’t agree with the facts.
JDW
March 7th, 2013
10:36 am
@Kyle…”So what about the $326B in general revenues? Are you denying that the deficit would have been $326B smaller if that money wasn’t needed for those programs?”
That money replaced the monies lost from the payroll tax cut which has now expired. To use that as an example of a critical funding problem is laughable.
MarkV
March 7th, 2013
10:38 am
At least there is a little bit of progress. Kyle, after earlier proclaiming, in step with the Republican Congressional leadership, that the tax increases have been over with and done with the “fiscal clift” decision, now at least presents arguments that Obama’s approach, to include cutting loopholes for corporations and deductions for high earners, has validity. Calling it “tax expenditures” and thus their elimination “tax spending cuts,” the Republicans may save face and agree to the balance approach Obama favors.
But what is missing most in all the talk about the need for spending cuts (the real spending cuts) is the lack of differentiation. There are spending cuts that should be supported by everyone, such as elimination of fraud and waste (keeping in mind that “waste” is often in the eyes of the beholder).
There are also cuts that only hurt people. When people ask for “tightening the belts,” they surely do not have in mind the wealthy. Cuts in Medicaid fall in the same category. And then there are cuts that save money in the short run, but hurt the country in the long run. Firing teachers, cuts in research, cuts (or inadequate increase) in funding infrastructure projects, for instance.
breckenridge
March 7th, 2013
10:41 am
Something that won’t help the federal debt is the new policy instituted by Texas governor Rick Perry and the GOP controlled Texas Legislature. They were able to stop federal funding of Planned Parenthood in the state as of January 1st, 2013. According to the Texas Tribune, because a considerable number of poor women no longer have free birth control, the policy will lead to 24,000 unintended births in the next 2 years and cost state taxpayers $243 million. And of course that will hit federal taxpayers for the next 18 years in Medicaid, food stamp, welfare and government assisted housing costs.
You can be a religious conservative or a fiscal conservative but you cannot be both. And it’s time the republican party to completely eliminate the religious right and their agenda.
Retired Soldier
March 7th, 2013
10:47 am
breckenridge-
I am a republican, obviously you aren’t. I have a deal for you. You suggest all you want what you want the democrats to do or not do and I’ll worry about the republicans. BTW, it takes a pretty big ego to think you know best for what you dislike so much, much less that your “advice” should be listened too.
Retired Soldier
March 7th, 2013
10:52 am
Mark IV-
With your exceptions there is little left to cut. Pain will be felt by everyone and there can’t be sacred cows. In addition entire departments must go away and the federal government must get out of much of the “goodness” it is in now. That is the only way the budget will be balanced and our debt reduced.