Will America Be a Fiscal Failure?

Investor's Business Daily has an excellent editorial on fiscal policy, and not just because they quote me. They understand that America's fiscal problem is spending rather than deficits. They also realize that tax increases are completely misguided since the economy will be less vibrant and politicians will feel more leeway to spend money. The net result would be continued deficits and even bigger government.

...leaders of President Obama's deficit commission offered up the darkest of outlooks for our financial future — calling current trends in U.S. budgets a "cancer" that will "destroy the country from within" unless halted soon. ...Based on current estimates, today's total federal debt of just over $13 trillion will hit $20 trillion by 2020. Beyond that, the coming retirement tidal wave of 65 million baby boomers will push Social Security and Medicare spending to stratospheric levels. America's debts will become crippling. By some estimates, total U.S. commitments for entitlements total $107 trillion over the next 75 years or so. That's an unpaid tax bill of $912,000 per household, or $351,000 for each child born today. Besides, raising taxes will do little other than ruin the economy. As noted recently by the Cato Institute's Dan Mitchell, repeated studies over the years have shown that the optimal size of federal government spending to the economy is well below about 20% of gross domestic product. Anything above that kills off economic activity. ...By the way, when state and local spending are added in, government in a few short years will take up more than half of all U.S. GDP. In short, the U.S. is essentially on the road to becoming just another stagnant, state-run welfare economy. The only real answer: Shrink government to expand the private sector. Anything else, such as massive tax hikes, is doomed to failure.

You Don't Need to Waste More Money to Shrink Government

It's rather symbolic of what's wrong with Washington that a commission ostensibly created to promote deficit reduction is seeking a bigger budget, as noted in the Tax Notes story excerpted below. Rather than impose a bigger burden on taxpayers, though, I will generously suggest that they could easily fulfill their mandate by perusing Cato's Downsizing Government website. And if they really want to do the right thing, they can always just look at Article I, Section VIII, of the Constitution and get rid of existing programs and activities that are not enumerated powers of the federal government.

Saddled with a tight deadline and great expectations, members of President Obama's deficit reduction commission say they may not have the resources necessary to meet their task. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which the president created through an executive order in February, is charged with developing a plan by December 1 that would stabilize the budget deficit by 2015 and reduce the federal debt over the long term. The group is widely expected to consider a combination of tax reforms and spending cuts. But despite the weighty demands, the panel has only a fraction of the staff and budget of standing congressional committees. The panel's own cochairs and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have criticized the meager resources and called for more support. ...The White House has set aside the resources to provide the equivalent of four full-time salaries and $500,000 in operating costs for the commission, fiscal commission Executive Director Bruce Reed told Tax Analysts.

The Problem is Spending, not Deficits

Reckless spending increases under both Bush and Obama have resulted in unprecedented deficits. Congress will soon be forced to increase the nation's debt limit by an astounding $1.8 trillion. Government borrowing has become such a big issue that some politicians are proposing a deficit reduction commission, which may mean they are like alcoholics trying for a self-imposed intervention.

But all this fretting about deficits and debt is misplaced. Government borrowing is a bad thing, of course, but this video explains that the real problem is excessive government spending.



Fixating on the deficit allows politicians to pull a bait and switch, since they can raise taxes, claim they are solving the problem, when all they are doing is replacing debt-financed spending with tax-financed spending. At best, that's merely taking a different route to the wrong destination. The more likely result is that the tax increases will weaken the economy, further exacerbating America's fiscal position.