Paul Ryan (R-WI), who released a fiscal plan that airily promises both trillions of dollars in tax cuts and a nearly balanced budget within a decade, but never says how he’d get there.
Ryan isn’t saying that his budget implies cuts of $4.6 trillion in popular tax deductions, credits, and exclusions over 10 years, according to new estimates by the Tax Policy Center. And that ignores the $5.4 trillion in revenue lost from permanently extending the 2001/2003 tax cuts.
Ryan proposes big, specific spending reductions such as cutting Medicaid in half and slashing other federal spending (except for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) by nearly 75 percent from current levels by 2050. But his budget still can’t add up without eliminating or sharply scaling back those popular tax preferences. Which ones, it seems, remain a state secret.
.. Actually, he’s wrong. There is an emerging bipartisan consensus to embrace lower rates without ever saying how to pay for them.
The next frontier for the Next Frontier
“America will take the Giant Leap to Mars.” That’s the title of President Barack Obama’s special guest editorial on CNN this week. In his piece, the president said there are now more than 1,000 companies in the U.S. involved in the business of outer space. Getting humans to Mars, he said, will take cooperation between the private sector and the government.
.. But whoever is building the equipment for the next mission, Caceres said getting to Mars is going to cost trillions — a number that doesn’t trip off the budgetary tongue. That’s why, he said, when it comes to discussing planning for the trip, it’s always in future.
A Better, Not Fatter, Defense Budget
The trouble is, the investment has often yielded poor results, with the Pentagon, Congress and the White House all making bad judgments, playing budget games and falling under the sway of defense industry lobbyists. Current military spending is 50 percent higher in real terms than it was before 9/11, yet the number of active duty and reserve troops is 6 percent smaller.
For nearly a decade after 9/11, the Pentagon had a virtual blank check; the base defense budget rose, in adjusted dollars, from $378 billion in 1998 to $600 billion in 2010.
How to Prepare for the Next Recession
If we want to mitigate hardship and help the economy get back on its feet when that happens, the prudent move would be to strengthen the “automatic stabilizers” in the federal budget — programs like unemployment insurance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid — that, without the need for congressional action, expand when the economy is weak and contract when the economy is on its way to recovery. Such programs put money in the pockets of those who suffer most during recessions, money that will be quickly spent back into the economy, and they have an efficient administrative infrastructure in place that can be leveraged to disburse funds rapidly when the need strikes.
.. Consider SNAP. The 2009 Recovery Act temporarily increased the maximum monthly food benefit by about $63 a month for a family of three.
.. So before a recession hits, Congress should enhance SNAP to ensure that such an expansion kicks in automatically when certain economic indicators are breached. Its size should be tied to the severity of the downturn, and the increase would phase out once things improved.