Topic: Tax and Budget Policy

Government Spending Up, Private GDP Down

By
Chris Edwards

It drives a lot of us at Cato nuts to read news stories almost every day which simply assume that government spending is good for the economy. Any defense or nondefense spending restraint will hurt economic growth, it is assumed. Even a recent AEI study seemed to accept this Keynesian concept.

Government spending certainly helps the government-dependent parts of the U.S. economy. But most Americans live in the private economy, and so they might like to know how government budget actions affect the economy that they live in.

So let’s explore the spending-to-growth relationship with national income accounts data. I ran a simple regression with 60 years of data, 1953 to 2012. The variable I was trying to explain was real private GDP growth. Private GDP is total GDP less the government portion of GDP from Table 1.1.5. The explanatory variable was total (federal/state/local) government spending from Table 3.1. Both variables were converted to constant dollars using the GDP deflator.

The chart below shows the Excel plot of the results. The downward slope of Excel’s fitted trend line means that higher government spending growth in a year corresponds to reduced private GDP growth that year. For example, if real government spending growth was zero, private GDP would be expected to grow at 4.2 percent. If real government spending growth was 5 percent, private GDP growth would be expected to fall to 2.8 percent.

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Topics: 
Tax and Budget Policy

The Pentagon as a Jobs Program

By
Tad DeHaven

One of the realizations that helped me to dispense of the neoconish foreign policy views of my youth is that for federal policymakers, the Pentagon is like a giant jobs program. Regardless of need, a military installation or armament factory can generally count on the unwavering support of the member of Congress who represents the district or state where the facility is located. 

On Monday, the Associated Press’s Richard Lardner provided a textbook example: over the past two years Congress has spent almost a half billion taxpayer dollars—and wants to spend another $436 million—upgrading Abrams tanks that experts and the Army itself say aren’t needed.

Who are some of the biggest congressional backers of the tank upgrading? Why, Republican “deficit hawks”! 

Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located. 

If there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics. 

“The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country,” said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.

Ah, yes, the “national security” excuse—probably the most cited justification by politicians to spend other people’s money since the ink dried on the Constitution.        

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Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Tax and Budget Policy

How to Engage with Cato on Social Media

By
Zach Graves

In case you haven’t been following what the Cato Institute has been doing lately on social media, here’s an accessible list of all of Cato’s current projects across different social media platforms:

Facebook

Twitter

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Topics: 
Cato Publications, Education and Child Policy, Foreign Policy and National Security, General, Government and Politics, Political Philosophy, Tax and Budget Policy

The American Roots of Tax Aversion

By
David Boaz

In last Sunday’s Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin wrote that Republicans must move beyond their adoration of Ronald Reagan and recognize, among other modernizations, that

America will not return to the pre-New Deal era. Limited government, not small government, must be the aim. That requires low taxes, not taxes that never increase.

She wants Republicans to give up “the pledge” and be willing to raise taxes if that’s the prudent thing in any circumstance.

Republicans and conservatives and libertarians who don’t want to follow her advice could find some historical support just a few inches away on the same page of the “Outlook” section. Reviewer Walter Isaacson quotes this line from a new book on the origins of the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution, Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick:

Rather than propose a means of raising revenue that they deemed fair, the colonials were more than happy to direct their considerable energies toward opposing whatever plan the British ministry put forward.

That is, the American revolutionaries didn’t feel obligated to help the British government raise all the money it wanted. They were satisfied to oppose what they regarded as unwarranted taxation.

Tax resistance: an American tradition since 1773. Or 1767. Or 1687.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

Tax Revenues from Legal Marijuana Overstated

By
Caleb O. Brown

There are plenty of reasons to legalize marijuana. But one that has received perhaps too much attention is tax revenue. In this Cato Daily Podcast (Subscribe! via iTunes), senior fellow Jeff Miron argues that tax revenue estimates are simply too rosy.

Miron’s 2010 report, The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition, estimates that the overall fiscal impact (including tax revenue) of legalizing marijuana nationwide could be tens of billions of dollars, the revenue boost that legalization supporters trumpet is overstated.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

House, Senate Pass Different Bills: To Become Law Anyway?

By
Jim Harper

Something fishy happened on Friday, and without further action in Congress it should scuttle the legislation to exempt the Federal Aviation Administration from sequestration-based spending limits. But maybe the old saying, “close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades,” also applies to Senate unanimous consent agreements. If President Obama gives the bill five days of public review under his Sunlight Before Signing promise, perhaps it can be hashed out before anyone does anything foolish.

You’re probably aware of the background: Across-the-board spending cuts were threatening air travel delays because of FAA furloughs. Late last week, the House and Senate both passed bills to allow the Department of Transportation to move money around, clearing up that problem. (No new spending; just movement of funds from lower priorities to air traffic control.)

As I detailed on the WashingtonWatch.com blog late Saturday, the Senate and then the House passed identical bills, but determined to see the House version passed into law. Because the House would pass its bill after the Senate was gone for the week, the Senate agreed to automatically pass a bill coming from the House “identical” to the one it had passed. Problem solved.

But on Friday afternoon, after the House had passed its identical bill, sponsor Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) came to the floor and asked unanimous consent to change the word “account” to “accounts” in his bill. The change is a mystery. My guess is that the reference to a singular appropriation account would not allow needed flexibility because there are many FAA accounts. But the change also made the sentence ungrammatical as it has a second reference to a singular account.

Whatever the reason, there was a reason. And after changing the legislation, it was no longer identical to the Senate-passed bill. Thus, the bill sent to the Senate could not be automatically passed. Accordingly, the bill does not go to the president and does not become law.

Now, is the difference between the singular and the plural of the word “account” small enough that the Senate can go ahead and treat the bills as identical? That threatens the meaning of the word “identical.” It certainly mattered in the House. Procedure expert Walter Oleszek calls unanimous consent agreements of this type “akin to a negotiated ‘contract’ among all Senators, [which] can only be changed by another unanimous consent agreement.”

The House-passed bill not being identical to the Senate-passed bill, the better approach is to find that the Senate unanimous consent agreement does not apply, and the House bill should sit in the Senate awaiting further action.

At the time of this writing, no public sources indicate that H.R. 1765 has been passed in the Senate, presented to the president, or signed. If President Obama does receive the bill, he should give it the five days of public review that he promised as a campaigner in 2008. This would allow things to get sorted out, so that we avoid the constitutionally embarassing spectacle (and future Jeopardy/Trivial Pursuit item) of a president sitting down to sign a piece of paper that is not actually a bill readied to become a law.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

New York Is Open for Business, Cuomo Style

By
David Boaz

Danny Hakim of the New York Times tells us how state government works under Andrew Cuomo, in an in-depth investigation of the Empire State Development Corporation:

New York State’s economic development agency created a new position last June, and then found a candidate to fill it: a young man named Willard Younger, who had just graduated from Colgate University with a degree in classics and religion. He became a special projects associate, at a salary of $45,000 a year, according to state personnel records.

His father, Stephen P. Younger, is a lawyer and power broker in legal circles who was a member of one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s transition teams. He has also donated $26,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the years, disclosure records show.

The next month, the agency hired 23-year-old Andrew Moelis, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, for another new position, strategic planning associate, at a salary of $75,000 a year.

Shortly before Mr. Moelis’s first day of work, his father, Ron Moelis, a prominent real estate developer, gave $25,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign, according to the records.

Check out the return on investment available to political donations: give $25,000, get $75,000 within a year. I wonder if any of Mr. Moelis’s real estate developments offered such an ROI. As I wrote many years ago in the Wall Street Journal:

Business people know that you have to invest to make money. Businesses invest in factories, labor, research and development, marketing, and all the other processes that bring goods to consumers and, they hope, lead to profits. They also invest in political processes that may yield profits.

If more money can be made by investing in Washington than by drilling another oil well, money will be spent there….

Every dollar spent by the federal government ends up in someone’s pocket as a salary, a transfer payment, a subsidy, a purchase or a loan. But there are other valuable services available, too: regulations that eliminate or hamstring your competitors, for instance, or a tax provision that induces consumers to purchase your product.

But “jobs for the boys” can also be a way to reward political supporters. And if it’s a job for your own boy, so much the better.

Agencies like this can also be very helpful to a politician with larger ambitions:

Empire State has also hired friends of Mr. Cuomo who may help form his political brain trust should he decide to run for president in 2016.

James P. Rubin, a former State Department spokesman, was hired at the agency in 2011 as counselor on competitiveness and international affairs, with a salary of $150,000 a year. Mr. Rubin’s appointment was seen by political consultants as a move by Mr. Cuomo to add a foreign policy hand to his stable.

Empire State hired 49 people in the first 20 months of the Cuomo administration, according to personnel records obtained by The Times. Nearly a third were the governor’s political associates, donors and friends, or their relatives, the records and interviews show.

At least seven of the new hires with connections were placed in newly created positions.

We hear a lot about austerity in government today. We hear that “state and local government coffers [are] empty.” We hear that spending has been “cut to the bone.” I’d say that the Empire State Development Corporation would be a good place to save the New York taxpayers $741.8 million this year.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

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