We Can’t Afford the Payroll Tax Cut Extension

Americans should be used to the high political drama coming out of Washington.  Oh, there are the stories of marital infidelities, disappearing Congressional aids, toe-tapping senators and the like.  Then there are the great debates where both sides of an issue scrap and claw their way to political pay dirt.  Healthcare reform and the recent battles on raising the debt ceiling come to mind.  Funny how things always come together at the 11^th hour?

Currently on the docket is the payroll tax cut extension. Passed in 2011, the payroll tax cut reduced a taxpayer’s contribution toward Social Security from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent.  The goal of the legislation was to put more money in taxpayers’ hands in order to stimulate the economy.  The measure expires on December 31, 2011.

Now, the drama comes in because the Democratic controlled Senate approved a two month extension to the measure while the Republican controlled House rejected the Senate plan in favor of a one year extension.  Democrats are bent on their bill and Republicans on theirs with time quickly running out.  If an extension is not approved by December 31, 148 million Americans will see their taxes go up – at least that is the story coming out of the White House.

In the first place the name of the measure is a bit of a misnomer intended I am sure to confuse many taxpayers.  The payroll tax cut is not a cut to a worker’s income tax amount.  It is a reduction in the amount that workers pay into the so-called Social Security Trust Fund.  In other words, it is akin to paying less on a retirement annuity each month but still maintain eligibility for full retirement benefits under the original policy.  An annuity holder would never expect this allowance.  For the life of me, I can’t understand how the average taxpayer would – unless they have been confused.

Secondly, the propaganda pundits on the MSM are claiming that if the tax cut is not extended it will potentially push the U.S. economy into a recession.  Of course, that is the knee-jerk reaction of all Keynesians when it comes to government intervention in the economy.  They believe in the more the better with no regard for tomorrow since “in the long run we are all dead”.

And essentially this tax cut extension is a Keynesian spending program because the tax pays for an entitlement that has to be paid to retirees.  With a drop in tax revenues the government will have to print money in order to meet Social Security obligations.  Those obligations simply aren’t going away and have to be met.

The problem with more spending is that it doesn’t work to stimulate the economy out of recession.  Since January 2009 the federal government has spent $4.5 trillion. Unemployment is higher, food stamp rolls are at an all-time high, and many Americans are still losing their homes.  When is enough enough?

Lastly, how smart is it to cut funding for a program that is already bankrupt?  The Social Security Trust Fund already pays out more than it receives in tax revenues.  Future unfunded obligations for both Social Security and Medicare are over $50 trillion.  Given the program is not going to end anytime soon, putting it in even worse fiscal condition borders on the criminal.

The payroll tax cut is nothing more than another something for nothing proposition.  It has not helped the economy so far and an extension would further devastate the fragile balance sheet of Social Security and Medicare.  Once again Washington is offering the world – more free money, Social Security intact, no spending cuts, and a blind eye to trouble down the road.  It is amazing that Congress and the President can’t find a measly $100 billion to cut from the enormously bloated federal budget to pay for the plan.  With leadership like that in Washington it will be a miracle if the economy doesn’t eventually fall over a cliff.  But have no fear, I am sure Congress and the President will get together at the 11^th hour to produce the tax cut extension.

Article first published as We Can’t Afford the Payroll Tax Cut Extension on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Gingrich Plan Has Been Tried Before

In the debates for the Republican nomination for president, it is no accident that Newt Gingrich constantly invokes the name of conservative icon Ronald Reagan.  Gingrich continually reminds us that he was in Congress fighting for Reagan’s tax cuts and his military budgets in the early 1980s.  Naturally this is a calculated political strategy   on the part of Gingrich since the most faithful Republican primary voters are Reaganites.  But, the strategy is more than political; it is an indication of how he would govern if elected president.

According to Gingrich’s official campaign website, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives is essentially proposing the same program that Reagan foisted on America in the 1980s.  The key elements of which are huge tax cuts and military spending.

In terms of taxes, Gingrich’s plan would lower individual tax rates, lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 12.5 percent and eliminate the capital gains tax.  Any lover of small government should love these proposals, however Gingrich never addresses how he would pay for the tax cuts.  On his site, he proposes no specific spending cuts and claims he will balance the budget by “growing the economy” through tax cuts.

For his part, Ronald Reagan based his entire economic platform to get the economy moving again on tax cuts.  He also claimed that lowering taxes would grow the economy and balance the federal budget.  After eight years in office he managed to triple the federal debt.  The problem with Reagan wasn’t that he cut taxes (he also was the biggest tax raiser in history to that point) it was that he didn’t cut spending.  He proposed cuts when he ran for president, but didn’t follow through on his rhetoric.

At least Gingrich is not being dishonest about his intentions not to cut federal spending, but his overall policy will have the same effects as Reagan’s – an enormous increase in the national debt.  Given that our debt has already reached a critical point, we can ill afford a return to 80s style economics; thus we can ill afford a President Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich is also proposing Reaganesque militarism if he is elected president.  Of course that is the path we have been on since the 1980s anyway.  He has no intention of making any military cuts a part of debt reduction.  In fact, according to his campaign website, under President Gingrich the U.S. would continue to be the world’s military policeman:

“America’s foreign policy must begin by understanding who we are as a country.  We are, as Ronald Reagan said, the world’s “abiding alternative to tyranny.” Therefore, America’s foreign policy must be to ensure our own survival and protect those who share our values.”

So while he proposes to cut taxes drastically and offers no spending cuts, he also would seek to at the very least keep spending enormous amounts of money on military adventures that don’t contribute to our safety and security.  In fact, by defending Israel unconditionally his policy would make us much less safe.

There is no doubt that Ronald Reagan’s legacy is still very much with us today.  Indeed, Newt Gingrich has co-opted the Reagan governing plan as his own.  It is a simplistic plan that set us on the road to an astronomical national debt.  We are currently at a breaking point with that debt and all Newt Gingrich can do is propose more of the same?

Obama is Correct but for the Wrong Reason

In a recent interview with 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft, President Obama was asked if he felt he overpromised during the last presidential campaign when it came to fixing the economy.  The President responded:

“I didn’t overpromise. And I didn’t underestimate how tough this was gonna be…Reversing structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades — that was gonna take time. It was gonna take more than a year. It was gonna take more than two years. It was gonna take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.”

It is uncommon, but I must admit that I totally agree with Obama.  However, my agreement with him is for a reason that he did not intend with his remark.  He was espousing the view that it would take many more years of Keynesian economic policies to dig ourselves out of the economic ditch.  I am saying his position is precisely why it will take many years to recover from the Great Recession.  Essentially history proves that Keynesian economic theory does not work.  In fact, it has been proven to make things worse.

An often forgotten (either intentional or not) economic depression took place in 1920.  It was in 1920 that the spending of Congress and the inflation of the dollar by the Federal Reserve in order to fight World War I finally caught up with the U.S. economy.  After the artificial boom brought on by government policy busted, unemployment increased from 4 percent to 12 percent.  At the same time, GNP contracted by 17 percent.  Relatively speaking, the depression of 1920 was as severe as any in U.S. history.

In those days America still believed in free market capitalism.  President Harding’s response was to slash the federal budget almost in half between 1920 and 1922.  He also reduced tax rates for all income groups and decreased the national debt by one-third.  Additionally, the Federal Reserve did not use its powers to increase the money supply to fight the contraction.

No, the federal government and the central bank’s response were to let the economy liquidate the mal-investments that had built up during the spending and inflating of the war years.  It wasn’t to try to “stimulate” the economy back to growth and the Federal Reserve did not attempt to re-inflate the economic bubble.

By 1922, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and it was only 2.4 percent by 1923.  Recovery occurred within two years of the onset of depression and opened the gate for a decade of enormous economic growth.

 

Now fast forward to the Great Depression of 1929-1946.  The common myth is that Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of the Great Depression with his New Deal policies.  The New Deal represented the first time in our country’s history that the federal government attempted, in a robust way, to remedy an economic downturn with “stimulus” spending and other bureaucratic interventions.  Roosevelt’s program included make work schemes, industrial codes of fair competition, guaranteed trade union rights, the regulation of working standards, minimum price fixes on agriculture, petroleum and other products, and other assorted welfare programs.  Essentially Roosevelt had taken over the U.S. economy and then over time he found it necessary to raise excise taxes on business to pay for his schemes.

The result was a prolonged depression.  The New Deal did not allow the mal-investments of the previous boom to liquidate.  It discouraged entrepreneurs from investing and the artificially high prices it imposed squelched consumer demand.  It was such a failure that in 1939 Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt’s confidant and Secretary of the Treasury, proclaimed:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started.…and an enormous debt to boot.”

And this is why Barack Obama was correct in his statement that it will take many more years to turn the economy around.  History proves that government intervention in an economic downtown only worsens the situation.  Since taking office in 2009, Obama has spent trillions through make work projects, Cash for Clunkers, First Time Homebuyers’ credits, extensions to unemployment benefits, and other schemes.  He reappointed Ben Bernanke to Chairman of the Federal Reserve precisely because he favors the Fed’s long term quantitative easing program which has pumped trillions more new cash into the economy.

What do we have to show for it? – an economy still in shambles 4 years after the downturn with real unemployment north of 16 percent, a lackluster GDP, 46 million Americans on Food Stamps, and $4.3 trillion more in debt.  Obama is right, it will take years to undo the damage caused by his policies.  The question is, why doesn’t Timothy Geithner have the same honesty that Henry Morgenthau Jr. did?

Article first published as Obama is Correct But for the Wrong Reason on Blogcritics.