Centerfield

Everything's painted as a "handout" now - and the GOP argues people in need can go to Church or other places, not use their precious tax dollars.

So if you don't belong to a church, you're just out of luck?

Posted by: JP at March 29, 2006 07:26 AM

Marcus, you've just posted an entire copyrighted article. Do you have written permission from the copyright to do so? Does the phrase "copyright violation" mean anything to you?

Posted by: Tully at March 29, 2006 09:10 AM

Oh, yeah, jp, because there are no other charities in this country except religious ones, right?

Because free markets have brought so much ruin to the world, right? Everybody who lives in a non-free market economy is doing great, right? If only it weren't for those evil people who believe that the free market will reduce prices and increase incomes more than any other economic system in history. Woe is us.

I'm sick and tired of the utter hypocrisy of Democrats like Marcus. Has a fit if some right-wing nut job questions his patriotism because he's not willing to support military action against a proven threat to our country, but feels free to suggest that anybody endorsing general Republican precepts like smaller government and less welfare are heartless, cold, uncaring people who want children to starve.

If you want to change the tone of politics in this country, if you want to encourage people to work together rather than separate into opposing camps of extremes, don't post garbage like this.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 29, 2006 09:13 AM

I agree Marcus. This is a lengthy partisan rant, much of which comprises a cherry-picked laundry list of GOP sins. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that. It's just that it's such a long list that it makes actual discussion awfully difficult. The sheer volume simply seems geared not to discussion, but to supporting your thesis that the GOP is utterly beyond the pale. So I'm not sure that this is a post worthy of engaging on its merits.

I am quite open to letting people who like it here try a hand a posting, and since you've been elsewhere engaged lately, a lengthy vent is defensible, especially since you at least placed much of it in extended entry.

So I can roll with it fine, but over time, it may come to a point where we as a group collectively raise the question of who really belongs here as a CF poster. You may not know this, but a year or two back we asked a very pro-war fairly righty poster whether he'd consider looking for a better home, since we didn't feel his tone a good match for centrism. He agreed, and moved along.

You may demur or deny the following, but I believe that you've got a bit of a challenge to face. Taken as a whole, will the sum total of your posts __ever__ include any substantive criticism of democratic party policy vision, as distinct from being disappointed with their strategy? Will we ever hear you say "on issue x, I think the democrats suggested policy is ___[short-sighted, far too expensive, impractical, unlikely to work, will have unintended negative side affects, may actually make the problem they are trying to address worse]___?

If your posts are taken to represent the blog as a whole (they don't, but people assume this based on whatever aroma the one-week group brew has been wafting), you'll get called a lefty stooge. Which is fine. And perhaps this post will lead to CF's "righty stooge" card being revoked in the minds of some lurkers.

But I take it as a matter of pride that i've been variously called both a lefty and a righty tool by one name or another. I believe that this is a badge of honor that all centrists should aspire to...

Posted by: bk at March 29, 2006 09:17 AM

Marcus, Tully is 100% correct. We frown on pasting in an entire article. Or even the vast majority of any article, unless said article is especially brief. That's well beyond the confines of fair use provisions. P

Please edit this article down to a blockquote of the portion of the article that you feel is most relevant, and provide a link for people to use should they wish to read the entire entry. This point is not at all a matter of politics, it's a matter of etiquette for blog journalism.

Posted by: bk at March 29, 2006 09:49 AM

Actually, the excessive copying and pasting notwithstanding, I think the fact that this post is appropriate on a “centrist” blog is itself commentary on the state of American politics. I've always considered myself a moderate, and my political views have not changed significantly in the past decade; however, the nation's political climate has skewed dramatically to the right during that period.

Contempt for hypocrisy is not a partisan ideal. What would you have Marcus do? Post at least one “I despise left wingers who protest the killing of baby seals but could care less for unborn children” rant for every “I despise right-wing 'Christians' whose actions are completely un-Christlike” post?

The post seems fair to me.

Posted by: Chris at March 29, 2006 10:31 AM

Chris, we try here to engage in rational discussion with those with whom we disagree, even on sensitive and difficult topics. It's not easy to do that when someone says: "Jesus would certainly be appalled but he's dead and his teachings seem forgotten by those in power."

It's entirely appropriate to make a post about the 1,000 low-income seniors allegedly losing their monthly food boxes in san Francisco. That's a single issue that we can look at logically, get more facts about, and discuss. But to extrapolate from that and go into a rant about how evil Republicans and the "Christian Right" are does not get us anywhere. We don't tolerate that kind of rhetoric any more than we would tolerate someone saying: "All Democrats are unpatriotic pansies who want the terrorists to win."

It's not a matter of demonizing both sides equally. It's a matter of not demonizing anybody as part of a political debate.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 29, 2006 10:40 AM

Your point is well-taken, Pat. My criticism was directed at bk's tit-for-tat remarks:

Taken as a whole, will the sum total of your posts __ever__ include any substantive criticism of democratic party policy vision, as distinct from being disappointed with their strategy?

I respectfully submit that this is the sort of argument which results in news outlets thinking that they may discharge their duty as journalists by simply recruiting talking heads from both parties.

Posted by: Chris at March 29, 2006 10:53 AM

I agree that Marcus (1) should not have posted the entire article in violation of the copyright, and (2) perhaps adopted a more measured tone. But I am disturbed by the idea, as Chris points out, that strong criticism of one side must always be balanced by an equal criticism of the other, especially since Marcus has been at least a semi-regular. It's not like he is making a drive-by comment and leaving. And why does he have to criticize Democrats? There certainly are enough people here that do that already. Why does everything have to be evenhanded? Why can't you blame one party or the other? And the fact is, there is much more criticism on this blog about the Democrats position against the war than there is about Republican social and economic policy.

I certainly agree that one of the things I like about this blog is the general civility of tone. But I don't see Marcus's piece as being any kind of personal attack or beyond the bounds of civility. He is making an obviously harsh assessment of GOP policy and perhaps overgeneralizing. But, then argue with the substance of what he says. I'm sure he is willing to engage in the discussion.

Posted by: Marc at March 29, 2006 11:03 AM

Chris, I think you are missing my point. I'm NOT for "tit-for-tat-ism." I don't think that sort of balance needs to occur within the frame of every single post, and I think I was quite clear about that when I said "Taken as a whole, will the sum total of your posts." Note the plural. Not one post, more than one post; many posts!

I am taking pains to quite openly acknowledge that this post of Marcus's is ok (leaving aside the copyright issue) while expressing concern about what an accumulation of Marcus's posts might reveal about how well his philosophy fits with the views of our other posters about what constitutes centrism. Suppose 5 more of Marcus's posts are exclusively lengthy rants about the GOP? Suppose a hundred more are the same?

Now I'll go ahead and grant that it's conceivable that this could really and truly be because the GOP in fact is pure evil and none of the sins of the democrats are remotely comparable. But this is not something that most of us here believe.

So IMO if all you ever do in voicing complaints about politics is disparage the GOP (again, let's note the exception for complaints about democrats' strategy and effectiveness while avoiding criticism of actual policy), you've probably not found the right blog home for your views.

I respectfully submit that this is the sort of argument which results in news outlets thinking that they may discharge their duty as journalists by simply recruiting talking heads from both parties.

I agree that this approach is far too often ill-suited to the way any single story is treated by the media. Not to mention shoddily executed. Feet are too seldom held to fires. I'm not suggesting that one can truly achieve editorial balance (or more importantly, insight) by providing competing partisan rhetoric. I'm saying that centrists generally reject both sides rhetorical spin and say "here are the good points each side makes, and here are the places where each side neglects to address the other sides good points... . We're caught in a cycle of thesis-antithesis, and there's seldom any comprehensive synthesis ever offered by the media.

So to reiterate, I'd expect over time that if Marcus really belongs here, he might occasionally suggest that a democrat has a bad idea or a republican has a good idea, and I'd expect in the latter case such instances would not be limited to the odd occasion where a moderate republican happens to say something that matches a simplistic talking point of the democrats.

Posted by: bk at March 29, 2006 11:25 AM

I don't ask for short-run balance. Or even long-run balance. Just substance, and that's where debate comes in. There is most assuredly substance here. Factual debate will eventually strip away and seperate the rant from rhetoric and substance. We can't debate it unless it's presented, however forcefully. Cold water can always be thrown on firebombs, but if no one throws any bombs, what do you talk about?

I get accused of partisanship all the time, when what I'm striving for is objectivity. "Balance" between partisan talking points is not my goal, and I demand it from no one else. Only by close examination of talking points and partisan claims do we dig down to the underlying realities--and unrealities. My goal is sober assessment of realities, complete to context. If that favors one side over another on any particular subject, then that's the way it is. Call it what you like.

But Marcus really needs to edit out anything past "fair use" with the article. The link is in the body of the post, towards the top. Copyright abuse and electronic potted meatoid product are the only things I've ever edited my own comment sections for, despite some extreme provacation and very heated debate at times.

If all we ever listen to is our own conception of the middle (which is different for each one of us) how do we know what anyone else thinks? Do we want a groupthink of the middle? (I for one welcome our new insect overlords...)

Posted by: Tully at March 29, 2006 11:38 AM

Fair enough. As a relative newcomer here, perhaps I lack sufficient context to comment on the author's perceived bias.

For my part, I believe that the sins of both parties are roughly comparable; however, it's important to remember that only one party currently has its hand on the policy execution switch.

Posted by: Chris at March 29, 2006 11:41 AM

FWIW, let me be clear that I'm not advocating balance, per se, over the long run either. Individuality practically demands variance and bias. I'm not complaining about imbalance, only relentless one-sidedness. If you call youself a centrist but somehow or other only ever manage to say truly negative things about one side's policy, that's a good indication that you're more likely a partisan.

For example, Pat's a republican. I don't know how often he has ever come out and said that he thinks a particular policy take of the democrats is better than the GOPs take. But he's never shy to point out the flaws in a GOP take, and he generally complains about as loudly about GOP paternalism as democratic paternalism. So I don't feel he's a blindly loyal, my-side-right-or-wrong kind of guy.

Posted by: bk at March 29, 2006 12:46 PM

I seem to have predicted correctly.

First off a hearty thank you and a Guinness to Tully for the heads up on the copyright. I've trimmed it down and will trim it down more tomorrow to something more acceptable. I just didn't have the time to summarize. Like I said I'm busy. Since one of my main clients got bought and the crew I worked for got laid off I've had to scramble like crazy to get more clients and train up on some software that I've been neglecting lately. If you ever make it here to SF I"ll take you over to one fo the Irish pubs or better, the EdinBurgh Castle on Geary.

Secondly Bk and others, find me something just as egregious that the Democrats have done and I will take them on. No holds barred. Unfortunately I don't think the democrats have done anything as stupendously bankrupt like cutting food programs for poor seniors while giving tax breaks to GOP donors right and left or run up deficits that will burden my daughter and her cohorts for the rest of their lives, economically and politically.

No I'm not calling the GOP evil but I do point out that you are what you do, not what you say. When you say that your party is fiscally responsible and then goe Bizzarro world with a spending spree that would make a 70's Democrat blush with shame the GOP should be prepared for the inevitable backlash rather than blame everything on the media, Al-Queda and Chpappaquidick.

I will point out that on this board I have said before, plainly and out loud, that I am a liberal, albeit a moderate one on the score of a fiscal hawk balanced budget, accountability, no gimmicks in taxes or accounting, open books, and a better ehalth policy) and a semi-social lib(equal rights and opportunity, an end to2nd class citizenshp for gays, etc.). I have no problem posting my views regarding either social issues or fiscal ones. When they collide like this, where fiscal idiocy leads to social trouble, I will not shy away.

So bk, what do you feel about the Bush administration and the GOP congress cutting this particular social program, which costsa about as much as a new fighter jet or two, to help balance the budget mess that they created in the first place? Or are you just too busy to count coup or points or whatever?

Is bringing up food programs, politics, deficits, the poer of the religious right and questions about their values just to overwhelming for you all?

BTW as to being a semi-regular: what can I say.
I'm a single dad trying to put a kid through 9 years of private school because prop13, overbearing top heavy school administrators, politcally correct ideophobes turned what was a great school system in the 50's and 60's into head cheese. I gotta mortgage and a 2nd plus cridit cards to help me underwrite my kid's education. I work freelance as an editor in a tough market. When I was starting out almost 30 years ago you could put all the manuals for switchers, editors, DVE's on half a shelf. Nowadays just a full Avid manual takes up half and the Final cut take another, That doesn't include all teh animation and image software one has to learn to keep an edge.
Plus I have a very nice girlfriend and an Aussie sheperd namd Gus whom I've had for more than 10 years.

The only reason I'm on is that I have 45 minutes to kill because a drive corrupted some media.

Posted by: Marcus at March 29, 2006 01:58 PM

Marcus, I don't know nearly enough about the admin's various budget actions as a whole to truly be able to comment intelligently on what this says about all of their priorities.

In the case of this specific program, it appears on the surface that it has merit. However I don't know why it was cut. Was it mismanaged? Did it spend too much dough on overhead? Or was it really the perfect model of social beneficience? I also don't know whether some other similar programs were started or boosted concurrently. Sometimes when a program gets "cut," its because someone made a decision to shift the funds to another similar program or agency that does a better job.

So I don't feel that I have enough information to leap to the conclusion that the admin is slashing worthy programs to decrease yacht taxes.

I didn't support the tax cuts, and I agree that the loss of the relative budget stability of the 90s is regrettable. IMO, the smaller the dewficit, the better. However, when pushed about this, I feel that it's important to note that deficit spending is NOT fundamentally unwise. It can be indefinitely sustainable as long as its sizeis a relatively small portion or total worth and grows at a rate smaller than income growth. For example, you have a mortgage and other day to pay for your kids school. That's deficit spending. But it makes sense becuase you want a house and you kid needs decent schooling. And that debt is Ok as long as your total debt compares favorably to the worth of your assets, and the your debt isn't growing faster than your income.

Debt is not fundamentally wrong or immoral. Unless you ask, say, Osama Bin Laden.

Posted by: bk at March 29, 2006 03:37 PM

Marcus,

I'll say flat out that I am seriously concerned with the level of debt we are creating....and whether or not the government is acting in a fiscaly responsible manner with the budget. It is definately a genuine concern.

As for some of the other issues though, it's not a matter of hypocracy or irresponsibility or even cold heartedness. There is a serious philisophical difference between liberals and conservatives about the appropriate role of government in society.... and this is in part what your discussion touches on...and I believe it is a serious misrepresentation to promote the idea that this difference makes Republicans cold-hearted, irresponsible or hypocritical.

In my private life, I support the moral virtue that people should assist those less fortunate then themselves and I do so myself to the degree that I reasonably can afford. However, I am absolutely adamantly opposed to the idea that the government should act as some sort of chartible organization. This is neither a cold-hearted nor hypocritical position....anymore so then a person who believes in displaying courtesy in thier own private life but who does not think it appropriate that the government should go around jailing or fine everyone who neglects to say "Thank You" or "Please".

Basicly I believe as a matter of philosophy that the governments legitimate role is to mitigate between the conflicting rights of it's citizens, provide for the national defence, uphold the rule of law and insure that the nation is competitive in the family of nations. Now if some poor unfortunate senior is having difficulties meeking ends meet on thier limited budget..... that is a tragedy and I am certainly willing to help them privately to the degree that I can but I am absolutely and admantly opposed to using the force of law to require other people to help (regardless of thier wishes in the matter). I believe governments appropriate response to such a situation is to point out that Laws should be fair but LIFE most certainly is not...and that it is not it's appropriate role to provide redresss for all the vagaries and unfairness of life...just to insure that the Law treats people fairly.

Furthermore, from an entirely practical sense there are a vast number of government programs that are entirely wastefull, misdirected or uneccesary. It is not irresponsible to seek fiscal responsiblity by attempting to eliminate these programs and services (i.e. reduce spending) rather then by increasing revenues (i.e. taxes).

I will go out on a limb right now and predict that we will devote billions of dollars to combat the horribly over-hyped and sensationalized avain flu which will end up killing less people world-wide (whether we spent any money on it or not) then a hot Saturday night in downtown Detriot or a week on Californias freeways. Remember the last supposed pandemic...the Swine Flu? More people died from taking the vaccine then were killed by contracting the disease itself.

Further more even when such threats are legitimate the government tends to spend money in an incredibly inefficiant and irresponsible manner to address them. It is interesting that one of the things you mentioned was the West Nile virus. You see my wife used to be employed by a Federal Program (completely unrelated to West Nile virus issue) and several years ago...the last time the threat of West Nile raised it's ugly head...she and most of her co-workers were employed (at double pay rate) to man a phone-bank answering questions about West Nile....essentialy they were mandated to provide a schedule for spraying and read off a list of canned answers to pre-defined questions.... something that could have been provided for a fraction of the cost with a standard Telephony Application, a pre-recorded message, public service anouncments on the radio or even a press release and a few adds in the local newspaper - your tax dollars at work! At least she was able to afford a nice vacation and some new furniture because of it ;)

Posted by: cengel at March 29, 2006 03:46 PM

Any time, Marcus. And if you're ever in this neighborhood gimme a shout and we'll crawl the brewpubs. (We have an "Irish pub" here, but I don't recommend it. The brewpubs, OTOH, are good.)

All program cuts hurt someone, and the response is driven by whose ox is getting gored. In this case it's poor seniors. But to some extent that shows the problem of depending on the federal government in the first place. San Francisco is one of the wealthiest cities in the nation. Why does anyone in San Francisco need to depend on the federal government for food? Where are the city and the state here?

The article states that the cost of the food boxes is $18/month per recipient, and that there are 1000 recipients in San Francisco. That's $18K/month, or $216K/yr. San Francisco has an annual budget of $5.3 BILLION for serving their 750K residents. They receive $233 million from the feds in direct grants. $17.3 million of that is federal grants for serving the homeless population. Are they simply unable to cough up $216K/yr to take care of their own? Those heartless bastards! :-O

Yes, let's do bring up social spending and deficits. The Bush-year Congresses have increased social spending at rates not seen since Johnson's Great Society. Entitlements are now over half the budget. Education spending up 50%. Medicaid up 50%. Food stamps up close to 50%. Discretionary spending is only 40% of the budget, and that includes ALL military spending. The other 60% of the budget is entitlements, and they're growing faster than the economy and the rest of the budget.

So, do you want current or increased social spending (entitlements) or do you want lower deficits? Doesn't budget control have to have something to do with entitlement restraints? The math says "Yes."

Posted by: Tully at March 29, 2006 04:03 PM

Well, I don't try to hide my "Republicaness"-- I'm from Orange County, California, so of course I would have become a Republican!-- but my status as an armed servant does tend to keep me less partisan than others; that's the price you pay for serving our great country, and I have no problem with it. (Additionally, being a "Republican" actually ranks low on my list of "identifying labels," below far more important categories, such as "Dodger Fan," "Orange County Native," "Californian," "Pac 10 Fan," "Political Moderate," and so on).

Having said that, while I think that Marcus's verbage in support of the cited article was antagonistically partisan and (to be frank) rather immature, and that I agree with Tully's point that the real question should be why the federal government is expected to carry out this function that (in my mind) deservedly rests with the state and local governments, I think it is impossible to blame anyone but the Republicans for the current state of the budget.

Yes, the Democrats don't exactly help matters with their hysterical defense of existing spending programs -- any attempt to slash any non-defense program is instantly denounced as pure evil, and, for that matter, in their bid to demonstrate their national security credentials, even defense cuts are also now used to demonstrate the GOP's "weakness" on defense issues. But at least they've never heralded themselves as the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility.

If it were a Democratic Administration and a Democratic Congress that had inflated the deficit so irresponsibly, Republicans would be using this political football for as much yardage as they can get. I see no reason why we shouldn't expect the Democrats to do the same.

Posted by: Bobby at March 29, 2006 04:49 PM

Bobby, I agree that Republicans are responsible or the inflated budget. Where I disagree with Marcus (leaving aside his tone, attitude, and insistence that his party is the only acceptable party) is whether electing Democrats would make things better. As Tully notes, a HUGE chunk of the increased spending has been on what we all understand to be Democrat-favored activities. It's not like all spending increases went towards the war.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 29, 2006 05:11 PM

It took us most of a century to get into this mess, with ample help from everyone, including the voters. No single admin can solve it, no single admin can make it much worse. The purse strings are not held in the White House, but in Congress. No matter who's in charge, the other side will point the finger and lay blame. But it's Congress and those who elected them that created the problem, not any one party, not any president. And it took much joint effort.

Posted by: Tully at March 29, 2006 05:59 PM

I am certainly willing to help them privately to the degree that I can but I am absolutely and adamantly opposed to using the force of law to require other people to help (regardless of thieir wishes in the matter)

See for me it's a matter of degree, not of principle. I think that some conservatives (but not just conservatives) here in America have a little bit of a "born of 3rd base and think they hit a triple" problem. It's a lovely notion that spontaneous private charity could be sufficient to mitigate tragedy and poverty in the absence of state entitlements. But have we seen the poor, sick and old well taken care of voluntarily in the past?

Based on history, it sure seems like overall public well-being rose at the same time as democracies arose and the poorer folk voted themselves some progams to provide minimal levels of some things.

I basically agree with Hubert Humphrey's notion that a society should be judged by how it treats the less fortunate people in the shadows.

So while I certainly could be persuaded by the notion that the current level of entitlements may be too high, out-of-control, and unsustainable, I'm untroubled by the notion that a democracy has decided to institute rules that require all to contribute taxes to provide minimal support. Maybe we've gone too far beyone "minimal" and that's worth debate. But I don't think it's a fundamentally bad approach to acknowledge as a society that we have the means to make sure that all americans have food, a roof over their head, a basic education, and a system to support them as they age and their bodies fail.

So I like the "everyone pays their fair share" approach of funding welfare via taxes. And sure, one could argue that our tax system isn't especially fair. Maybe it's not, but to me it still feels more fair than hoping that everyone will choose to be generous enough. That's a good system when times are good, but it's not such a great one when times get tight.

BTW, I basically agree with Bobby's, Pat's, and Tully's points, too. Like Bobby points out, it really is hard to blame anyone but the Republicans for the widening of the deficit that has occured on their recent watch. Tully is right that there's been a cumulative conspiring of all involved over generations as well. And Pat is certainly right that it's doubtful that, say, an Al Gore presidency would have been devoted to budget balance in a way that GWB has not been.

Bobby, good luck to the Dodgers, or the West Sox as I like to call them. Grady Little is a pretty good manager. It's ironic he's most known for sticking with his starter too long, as he is actually a guy who was likely to have a quick hook with a starter tiring. In 2003, our bullpen was an utter disaster for most of the season. I'm hoping Nomar bounces back. He'll drive you crazy swinging at first pitches, but when he was great with us, he was a coiled-spring line drive machine. Bill Mueller (nickname Billy Ballgame) is as solid a pro as they come. DLowe is a total adventure though, a first class space shot. If you've never seen it, look up some of Bill Simmons columns on "the Derek Lowe face." Priceless stuff.

Posted by: bk at March 29, 2006 07:55 PM

Marcus,

I can sympathize 100% with the point of view you're trying to convey.

It DOES seem wrong that a country with so much wealth, so much revenue and such an enormous budget should look to cutting food boxes for seniors scraping a living at a cost of $111 million (30-40 cents per citizen per year) instead of finding that $111 mil (and then some) somewhere else. I agree. And it does irk me that we look for "savings" in such sensitive places while we overlook other ways to save.

HOWEVER, like others have said, there is a way to convey the substance of that point of view without ranting. That kind of screed belongs on DKos, not here.

Posted by: John at March 29, 2006 08:17 PM

Brian,

"And Pat is certainly right that it's doubtful that, say, an Al Gore presidency would have been devoted to budget balance in a way that GWB has not been."

I'm not necessarily taking Gore's side on this, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say "doubtful". Gore wasn't ready to push a string of tax cuts.

I'm not saying I'm convinced that without Bush's tax cuts we'd have no deficit. We probably would have...not just as large. Considering Gore, admittedly or not, was basically a continuation of Clinton's policies, it's safe to say, right or wrong, that he'd have been MORE budget-conscious than Bush...if for no other reason than by being less generous with tax cuts.

Besides, let's not forget that, right or wrong and all events of 2001 being equal, Gore would have been much less likely to invade Iraq...especially under those circumstances at the time.

Posted by: John at March 29, 2006 09:18 PM

Brian,

I haven't been this excited about the Dodgers in years!

There's definitely some reasonable questions about the lack of homerun power-- we may not have a single hitter get 40 or even 30 HRs this season-- but I do think we have a reasonable chance of six regulars (Furcal, Lofton, Drew, Kent, Nomar, Mueller) hitting .300, and approaching .350 or better OBPs. That alone would be a great thing for RBIs, and so I think we're going to be okay without the long ball.

The concern about Mueller is that he has little homerun power, just "gap" power, and Dodger Stadium is notorious for killing doubles and triples. Combined with the assertion that he's apparently a below average base runner (I don't know that one to be true), there's some fear that he won't turn out to be the best choice when, say, Nomar could have played third, and Choi could have stayed at first.

And, of course, any team with Nomar, J.D. Drew, and 38 year old Kenny Loftons and Jeff Kents, probably should be concerned about the durability issue. But I like the starting rotation-- again, no superstars, but a lot of consistent innings-eaters-- and I like the bullpen. I'm really looking forward to this season.

Posted by: Bobby at March 29, 2006 09:25 PM

John, let's look at some numbers.

From 9/30/92 through 9/28/2001, the federal budget deficit went from $4.06 trillion to $5.8 trillion, an increase of $1.8 trillion, an increase of 44%. From 9/28/2001 to 9/30/2005, it went up by $2.1 trillion to $7.9 trillion, an increase of 36%. As of March 28, the budget deficit was $8,368,398,006,564.24, an increase of 43%. So the total percentage increase in the federal deficit at this point of the Bush Administration is right about the same as during the Clinton Administration. Not that that's a good thing, but relevant if we're going to compare parties and guess who's more likely to be fiscally responsible.

Now let's look at revenue. President Bush promoted (and CONGRESS passed) 2 tax cuts, in 2001 and in 2003. Keep in mind that the economy was in bad shape after the dot com boom went bust and 9/11, with GDP growth slipping from close to 6% down to a bit over 2%. Anyway, according to the federal budget [pdf warning], total tax receipts in FY 2001 were $1.266 trillion. In 2005, total tax receipts were $1.325 trillion, and are estimated to be at $1.42 trillion in 2006 and $1.51 trillion in 2007. So with the 2 Republican tax cuts, tax revenue has increased, by $60 billion.

That figure is somewhat misleading, because there was a tremendous surge in tax revenues from 2004 to 2005. In 2004, total tax revenues were only $1.084 trillion, a drop of about $260 billion from $2001, and the years 2002 and 2003 were similar to 2004.

So yes, tax revenue decreases in 2002-2004 are partly responsible for the increased budget deficit. But they do not account for the total increase. Spending, both defense and non-defense, was up significantly over the same period, as well.

A strong argument can be made, from the sudden increase in tax revenues in 2005, that it took some time for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to really impact the economy. Once they did, tax revenues grew dramatically, even though the tax rates had been cut significantly.

In the end, there's no way to say for certain what would have happened to tax revenues without the tax cuts. Would the economy have done about the same (in which case tax cuts cost us revenue)? Or would the economy have slipped even more than it was slipping at the time (in which case the same tax rates may have brought in less money, anyway, and the economy may have stayed in the doldrums)? The 2005 jump in revenue, following close on the heels of the 2003 tax cut, demonstrates conclusively that tax RATE cuts do NOT always result in tax REVENUE cuts. The guessing game is always to figure out which tax cuts will have which result. And that's not an easy prediction to make.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 30, 2006 12:03 AM

On the other hand, federal tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have been mostly falling since Reagan was elected, and are at some of the lowest levels they've ever been since 1948.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 30, 2006 12:09 AM

Pat,

"total tax receipts in FY 2001 were $1.266 trillion. In 2005, total tax receipts were $1.325 trillion, and are estimated to be at $1.42 trillion in 2006 and $1.51 trillion in 2007. So with the 2 Republican tax cuts, tax revenue has increased, by $60 billion."

Believe me, I appreciate the difficulty in surmising "what if...if" statements concerning the effects of tax and economic policy. As I wrote the post, I considered alternate realities resulting from different policies. As for the quote above, I think we should always consider things in relation to size and current dollars.

By that, I mean that tax figures (or budget) from previous years should be done in an apples to apples fashion by using "the same dollars" and it should be shown in relation to population and hence economy size.

So, considering the numbers that you pulled from Clinton years, (unless they're already adjusted to match current dollar values) they should be revalued and not taken at the value from that year. Also, those revenues should then be judged in the context of the GDP and population of that year. I've seen charts that adjust revenue figures on equal dollar values and they can be eye-opening.

Now, I'm not saying it's good for an administration to "out-earn" another one. That's not my premise nor should it be a standard, stated or implied, to judge an administration's performance.

Now on that note, some Dem partisans would argue that the strong 90's growth was PROOF that you don't need to slash taxes to get the economy healthy and that the growth followed tax INCREASES. I say that's interesting, they may have a point BUT good luck proving it. I'm not going to. But it should leave the skeptical mind to consider different scenarios when valuing the worth of tax cuts in light of what recent history shows us.

As for Gore, again, I'm not going to assume what the economy would have looked like over these past years. I'm just throwing some plausible factors out there to consider. What would have had in the end? I don't know. One could argue he would not have cut taxes...which may resulted in slightly slower growth or no change at all. Who knows. My claim was very narrow. And that was that he, IMO, would have been more sensitive to budget deficits. Whether or not what he may have done would have yielded a better condition is another story.

Posted by: John at March 30, 2006 08:51 AM

One problem with arguments based on many of these numbers is that administrations since Kennedy have manipulated them, and no one ever seems concerned about including liabilities like Medicare or its new massive drug benefit on the balance sheet. A very interesting take is here (.pdf alert! -- I posted about it here):

Excerpt:

Real unemployment right now — figured the way that the average person thinks of unemployment, meaning figured the way it was estimated back during the Great Depression — is running about 12%. Real CPI right now is running at about 8%. And the real GDP probably is in contraction.

* * *

Where the official federal deficit in 2004 was reported at about $412 billion, and the GAAP-based deficit was around $616 billion, they said that if you added in the net present value of the underfunding of Social Security and Medicare, the one-year deficit in 2004 was $11.1 trillion. That’s trillion, not billion. That amounted to almost 100% of GDP at the time. Now, that $11 trillion included a one-time spike of about $8 trillion, to account for what Congress and the President did in setting up the Medicare drug benefit without funding it going forward. But you can see that if you back out that one-time charge, that on a GAAP basis, accounting for Social Security and Medicare, in 2003 the deficit was around $3.7 trillion; in 2004 it was $3.4 trillion; and in 2005 it was $3.5 trillion. We’ve had three years in a row here where the GAAP deficit has been basically $3.5 trillion. So the deficit and the total obligations of the federal government are increasing by roughly the amount of GDP every three years.

Posted by: Chris at March 30, 2006 09:32 AM

Pat, please note that you're talking about the public debt, not the deficit. Labelling error.

Now on that note, some Dem partisans would argue that the strong 90's growth was PROOF that you don't need to slash taxes to get the economy healthy and that the growth followed tax INCREASES.

Dem partisans aren't the brightest economists around. Yes, you can have economic growth without cutting taxes. It's even possible to have economic growth after raising taxes. So what? That doesn't mean that taxes don't affect growth, or that they are the only factor that does so. They most assuredly do, and they most assuredly are not.

Cutting taxes unequivocally results in higher growth than the pre-cut baseline. Raising taxes unequivocally results in lower growth than the pre-cut baseline. The strong '90's growth (and resulting strong revenues) had little to do with tax rates, and everything to do with a "perfect storm" of an extended business cycle upswing from Reagan policies, a quantum leap in technology and productivity, the fall of the USSR, and the brief but potent reign of the Gingrich freshmen.

The correct metric for measuring revenue, spending, and debt is percentage of GDP. (Population is irrelevant in budgetary macro-analytics, save as a factor in entitlement spending.) You can find the cumulative figures for US gov't revenue/spending/debt here, expressed in both absolute dollar and GDP terms. [PDF warning] You can find the complete public debt figures here, broken down into "debt held by the public" and "intragovernmental holdings," which is money the government owes itself, being money they collected and spent and now promise to pay future entitlement benefits with.

Please note that even if we had a balanced budget right now, the public debt would still continue to increase. This is mostly because we pay more in payroll taxes than are currently used in paying SS benefits, so the "intragovernmental holdings" portion of the national debt continues to rise. It will continue to do so for several more years regardless of what happens with "debt held by the public."

Now, go back the CBO PDF site, page 3, Table 2, and read down the column of Debt Held By The Public in %GDP terms. Also read down the columns of both revenue and expenditures in %GDP terms. Follow up with trips to page 5, Table 4, and then take a spin down through Tables 6, 8, and 10 in the following pages. If you paid attention, you now know more about federal spending/revenue/budget/debt trends than 95% of the people who panic about them.

Carry on.

Posted by: Tully at March 30, 2006 09:48 AM

I'm having trouble following this, and I think part of it is the loose use of debt and deficit......Tully, would you be willing to give me some quick dirty numbers so I can do some basic proportional reasoning. What the follwoing nunmbers, give or take

annual tax receipts (or total amount of gov't money collected to pay for programs, not including "revenue' from the sales of bonds that's really debt)

annual deficit (amount spent annually over and above what is actually revenue)

total cumulative debt (outstanding loans/bonds that need to be repaid)

I look above and in 1 place I see Pat saying that annual tax reciepts are about, what 1.2 trillion. then elsewhere someone says that the deficit is 6 or 8 or 11 trillion. That can't be right. We can't be spending 5 or 10 times what we're collecting. We'd have collaped a long time ago.

But if the total cumulative amount we owe is 5 or 10 times what we collect annually, that's not beyond the pale even if it's troublesome and needs to be addressed.

Posted by: bk at March 30, 2006 11:50 AM

As someone pointed out earlier, I think the confusion is definitional. The federal government's version of accounting is different than that to which we're accustomed. The figures we typically hear do not properly account for significant future liabilities.

Posted by: Chris at March 30, 2006 11:55 AM

Brian,

Pat's revenue numbers differ from what I'm used to seeing. I've always seen a chart that sees tax revenue peak from 99-2001 at just under 2 tril then just over 2 tril and then back down. I didn't go into that since, proportionally, I wanted to point out that static number differences to suggest increases are hazy and that things need to be put in relation to GDP and equal-valued dollars to get a clear picture. Tully's links (which I've glossed over before) show this picture.

Tully,

Thanks for the links.It does show a different perspective. But again, this whole tangent started with speculation about Gore. I simply said that I think it's inaccurate to guess that Gore would have been less budget-defecit conscious than Bush has been. I'm talking about likely intent and policies that we can figure he would have supported. It would be just as inaccurate to suggest that Gore would NOT have produced budget deficits on the premise that his "non-tax cuts" would have shored up the budget gap because that thinking ignores effects that cuts and non-cuts have on ultimate revenues. Nothing happens in a vaccum.

The only possible factor I suggest is that Gore would not have invaded Iraq...at least not in the fashion or at the time that we did. I'm sure, right or wrong, that we can all agree on that. However, these supplementary fundings would not show up in the "offical budget deficit" anyway...just on the national debt. So, it's of little consequence when official budget shortfalls. Likewise, military spending would probably, right or wrong, not have accelerated as quickly as it has in the past few years.

Now, like I said, the reality and result (net effect if you will) of what these possible and plausible policy positions that Gore may have espoused would have been on the economy and hence, tax revenues and deficits is beyond me and up for debate.

Posted by: John at March 30, 2006 12:16 PM

All in the first link, Brian.

Actual debt held by the public as of today or so is $4.8-odd trillion, about 38% of current GDP. The government owes itself another $3.5 trillion, of which more than half is the SS & Medicare "trust funds." Total current national debt counting both categories is roughly 67% of current GDP. For comparison with that U.S. "public debt" of 38%, the public debt of France is 66.5%, Great Britain 42.2%, Germany 68.1%, Spain 48.5%, Japan 170.0%.

All of those nations account for their intragovernmental holdings differently, so it's tough to quickly and easily get good figures on that portion of their national debt. (See below, in response to Chris's observation on "liabilities.")

The first part of that is straight deficit financing. No different than a mortgage or a credit card. The second part is legally binding promises to pay out funds in the future, mostly for entitlement programs.

The federal deficit (or, MUCH more rarely, surplus), as compared to the national debt, is the difference between revenues and expenditures for a given fiscal year.

The figures we typically hear do not properly account for significant future liabilities.

Chris, that's because for the most part those are not legally binding obligations at all, but political promises related to payout levels of entitlements. To be even more specific, those "liabilities" are based an actuarial projections of current benefit level payouts, which are set by statute. Since the statutes can be altered by Congress, the promise is only as good as the taxing and borrowing capability of the government, and the willingness of the current Congress at any given moment to not change the statutes, i.e., change benefit levels.

Congress giveth, and Congress can taketh away. If the Medicare drug plan vanished tomorrow as its earlier incarnation once did, that "liability" would vanish with it. But we all want our entitlements, and insist the government cough up. It's actually paying for them that we wish to avoid. :-)

I simply said that I think it's inaccurate to guess that Gore would have been less budget-defecit conscious than Bush has been.

Or more. It's simply inaccurate to guess, so I won't. Waste of time. We are where we are. Where do we go from here?

Posted by: Tully at March 30, 2006 12:49 PM

Tully:

Your points are well-taken, but setting aside the ethical implications of the government withholding significant portions of Americans' paychecks on a promise of future benefit only to later default on that promise via Congressional fiat (sounds like fraud, to me), it's still fishy accounting. I'm not an accountant or an economist, so please feel to correct me; but do corporations not account for future pension liabilities? One of the points made in the article I linked to earlier is that payroll taxes have been artificially lowering the “deficit” for decades ; i.e., “[e]ven though the surplus of FICA payments it currently receives over social security payments it makes are counted as a cash infusion, there is no offsetting liability for future outlays....” The same may be said for Medicare. What good are these sorts of statistics if they bear no real resemblance to what most people think they mean?

Posted by: Chris at March 30, 2006 01:12 PM

Brian, as Tully so properly pointed out (thanks for the catch, next time would you proof read my post BEFORE I say something stupid? ;), I said budget deficit when I should have said public debt. The increase in the total public debt from year to year is due to each year's budget deficit.

Chris, if Congress does it, it is by definition and fiat neither fraud nor theft. Political suicide, maybe, but not fraud or theft. As a political aside, note that if President Bush's private savings plan were adopted, taking that money from you WOULD actually be fraud and theft.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 30, 2006 01:49 PM

"Where do we go from here?"

My opinion?

Discretionary Outlays:
% of GDP

98-6.4 03-7.6
99-6.3 vs. 04-7.8
00-6.3 05-7.9

I dunno 'bout you, but I like the left chart better.

What to cut?

over that same period,

Defense:
% of GDP

98-00= 3.1, 3.0, 3.0
03-05= 3.7, 3.9, 4.0

Mind you! Those stats DO NOT include supplemental funding like the famous "87 Billion" for Iraq. That percentage is based on "official" numbers. I'm confident so fair and critical analysis would reveal some spending that we could easily do without. My guess, though, is that some of that spending cut would lower the tax revenue since it may involve trimming a few contracts...maybe even some jobs.

On the domestic spending side, there's an increase of 4 to 5 percentage points in spending. Defense and Domestic were actually equal in 98 and 99 at 3.1% and 3.0 respectively. I'm sure we could trim some fat there without going after programs for the poor and education. A few bridges to nowhere and some pork for things like "The Cowgirl Museum" in TX are some ideas.

Heck, a national lottery whose proceeds go strictly to the national debt or someother precise obligation. Interest on the debt currently chews up like 15% of the budget...but I can't remember if it's the mandatory budget or the whole budget.

How's that for a start?

Posted by: John at March 30, 2006 02:10 PM

Your points are well-taken, but....it's still fishy accounting.

It's not fishy accounting at all. The "trust funds" are what the government is actually legally obliged to repay the SS/Medicare system. But there is no obligation to maintain current benefit schedules and such. Entitlements are political programs.

I'm not an accountant or an economist, so please feel to correct me; but do corporations not account for future pension liabilities?

Yep. They also set aside REAL assets to cover them. (Sometimes the assets they set aside are of very dubious quality, but that's another subject.) The government does not. The government's sole real "asset" is your pocketbook, and their legal power to raid it via taxation. By law, the government can only "set aside" assets by loaning money to itself, i.e., "investing" the money in T-bills. Such as the SS "trust fund" assets are. But lending money to yourself is a wash. No real asset is created that isn't directly offset by a corresponding liability, so you really gain nothing.

But that doesn't mean that Congress has any legal obligation whatsoever to maintain SS benefits as they are today, or as they were when you paid in--just that they pay that official debt back to the system. Also by law, if they don't have the cash to pay benefits, they have to reduce benefits across the board.

Pay now, or pay later. You still pay. The idea that we can get something for nothing out of SS is illusory. It's a pay-go system now, and will continue to be. What will end up changing is either the benefit schedules, the payroll tax schedules, or both. The "surpluses" have been spent, and they show up in the debt account as debt, which they are. The taxpayers will have to shell out to pay that debt. Government promises to give us something for nothing are worth nothing, as they can only fulfill them by getting the money from us. Circular.

And pretty much what Pat said.

PS--when seeking sources for real economic information, newsletters from small brokers interviewing rogue economists who are also selling something are not the best sources for unbiased information, objectively presented.

Posted by: Tully at March 30, 2006 02:16 PM

San Francisco is a great town; we went there on our honeymoon and then last summer. Fabulous! Would love to get together next time we get out that way.

As for the Dodgers, good luck--they ought to be pretty good. I'm a Braves fan so I don't have to worry until we lose in October.

I don't do numbers, so I'm not going to even read them (my eyes glaze over). I think people made a lot of sensible points about Marcus's post--it was a bit overwrought. But I think you should give him the benefit of the doubt--it is difficult, as he said, to devote the time necessary to express opinions in a measured way. However, I think there has been a definite dearth of philosophical debate on this blog about the proper role of government. Clearly, Cengel (and I presume others)lean toward the libertarian view of small government. That's fine, but I think we need some balance here toward the other side. I would like to see more people defend an activist government--not because I think the other position is immoral but because it's an alternative that should be discussed on a centrist web site. It seems to me that this blog has implicitly adopted a stance favorable to limited government and tagged what is really a fairly conservative position as centrist.

Posted by: Marc at March 30, 2006 02:45 PM

Interest on the debt currently chews up like 15% of the budget.

Actually about half that, and it's close to the lowest point since Nixon was in office. It was that high (15%) while Clinton was in office, though.

For anyone who actually wants to play Congresscritter and hack away at federal spending, here's a good place to start. Try your luck, and every time you make a change don't forget to ask yourself how likely your changes are to actually get through Congress, and how the folks back home are going to respond. Have fun! :-)

Posted by: Tully at March 30, 2006 02:50 PM

All fair points, Tully. But I submit that sorting statistical fact from fantasy is not easy, especially for laypeople like me. In some sense, even the OMB and CBO are "selling something."

Posted by: Chris at March 30, 2006 02:56 PM

But CBO and OMB are selling audited material to known standards. Not the best that it could be, but as good as it gets.

Posted by: Tully at March 30, 2006 03:12 PM

I would like to see more people defend an activist government--not because I think the other position is immoral but because it's an alternative that should be discussed on a centrist web site. It seems to me that this blog has implicitly adopted a stance favorable to limited government and tagged what is really a fairly conservative position as centrist.

I do think that many of us here lean towards a government that acts under constraints. But I also think that cengel is sort of at the rightward bounds. More realistically, I think that many of us who'd prefer the government to be "limited" would fairly happily settle for one that was at least willing to be limited by what it could afford to pay for. IMO it's undeniable that the human tendency towards self-interest manifests itself in american democracy as two conflicting impulses. We want lower taxes, and we want more/better services. For my part, I'm far more concerned that our government attempt to at least reconcile these impulses by either collecting the amount needed to pay for the services we democratically say we want, or by only providing an amount of services that can be fully paid for by the amount of money which we've democratically consented to fork over.

These conflicting impulses will always exist, and we'll always debate them, but from day to day, they should be reconciled in the form of a government that is solvent: it spends pretty much about what it collects from year to year, and it stands ready to collect tomorrow what will be needed tomorrow.

Marc, if you want to defend an activist governmnet, go ahead. Start the thread. What are the things that you think the government isn't doing now that you think it should be doing? How would you pay for these extra things, and who'd be paying? What evidence do you have that a majority of Amereicans wants these additional things?

If you decide to start this thread, I'd like to suggest that it be informed by current budgetary outlines. For example, it should account for the problem that some 50-60% of spending is non-discretionary, and for the amount that goes to paying off debt, and for expected future unfunded liabilities. In short, you should account for the likelihood that future government expansion is unlikely to be affordable without drastic cuts and re-prioritizing of spending within the shrinking portion of government spending that is discretionary.

Posted by: bk at March 30, 2006 03:22 PM

I'll second what Marc said, actually. I'm a limited-government guy myself, but I think it's a very valid debate to have.

The BIG caveat being that I want an actual philosophical debate, not a "tax and spend Democrats giving your money to welfare queens" versus "cold heartless cruel Republicans" mutual diatribe. If I have some spare time this weekend, maybe I'll do a post to start us off.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 30, 2006 04:14 PM

Okay, so after looking at all the data, I'm willing to concede that the historical trends of the deficit and the national debt are such that the current Administration hasn't significantly deviated from the norms of previous Administrations.

But I still maintain that contemporary Republicans in the White House and Congress bear a disproportionate burden for the current phase of the problem (everything else that led to it not included). We came to power in 1994, in part, on a promise to bring fiscal accountability (promising a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, among other things) to the government, and then once we got elected, we dropped it like the Term Limits Amendment.

I agree that it's tough to enact spending cuts and instill discipline in government spending-- I'm fully aware of that. But we elected those men and women to make tough choices and implement the right policies-- not to abandon their principles and build a perpetual majority. If they're only going to do the easy part of governing and abandon the less popular items, well, that's what got us in this mess in the first place.

Posted by: Bobby at March 30, 2006 04:39 PM

Tully,

Damn! I had to play with Budgetism chart for a while to get a surplus. The nail in the deficit's coffin came when I finally replealed the 2001 and '03 tax cuts on the bottom 60%. It didn't feel good. I basically wound up slashing spending until and replealing the tax little by little from top to bottom until I just eliminated the cut for the bottom 60% and ended up with a $5 billion surplus.

I'd be reviled by many and loved by few if I were Prez with that budget.

Ofcourse, that little game takes place in a vaccum and doesn't account for net effects of certain changes they may show up in the next fiscal year.

Posted by: John at March 30, 2006 05:06 PM

We came to power in 1994, in part, on a promise to bring fiscal accountability (promising a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, among other things) to the government, and then once we got elected, we dropped it like the Term Limits Amendment.

Amen! At least as to the fiscal accountability part. On term limits, I lean somewhere between agnostic and doubtful.

The problem with Tom DeLay, for example, is not that he's a crook (I'm not saying he is or he isn't, but there's certainly no real evidence of it thus far), but that he led the party on the path to being typical political fat cats, devoted primarily to hanging on to power for its own sake, rather than to accomplish meaningful goals.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 30, 2006 05:10 PM

on that Budgetism chart again,

It's hard to cut certain tax breaks on R&D and things that may lead to more growth and jobs without knowing just what that upside would be.

Also, the interest payment on the debt didn't seem to move down and it should. If it did, I didn't notice.

Very informative.

too bad it dfidn't include "intelligent guess" mock projections on different tax proposals like flat tax, consumption and other variations. The variables involved can be so hazy.

Posted by: John at March 30, 2006 05:24 PM

You got that last part right, John. Small differences in assumptions, a percentage point here and there, a tenth of a percentage point, even, will have huge impacts on the outcomes of the projections.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 30, 2006 05:45 PM

The real nightmare is that even the "detailed" model isn't all that detailed. Take the CSFP program cut that Marcus started the thread with. $107 million total, which is being "moved" over to the Food Stamp and WIC programs. No actual money being saved, but just changing the structure of how the money is delivered has people up in arms.

Take that little beauty known as "earmarks." You could eliminate all the earmarks from the budget and still only cut spending by a couple o' billion. A good thing to do, to be sure, but not a big impact. Slicing out ALL the items ID'd as "pork" by the Porkbusters project would knock a "mere" $23 billion off the deficit, and I know from my own research that the Porkbusters' list is riddled with massive errors, some of them outlandish. In my own state it "identifies" over a billion in pork, 500M of which is a project that simply does not exist at all and never has, and the rest being a line-item listing of every single dollar in "discretionary" federal funding destined for the state. And some of that is double-counted.

That there's some pork in there I have no doubt, but I'd be truly surprised if 10% of what's listed comes close to qualifying. A lot of what I saw there listed as pork is highway projects, where the funding is mandatory. Each and every one of us pays taxes into the Highway Trust Fund every time we buy gasoline, several cents a gallon, and the money is supposed to come back to us in road projects funding for interstate and federal highways. Is that pork? Getting back what you're supposed to, that you paid in on a specific tax for a specific purpose? (This trust fund is also part of the national debt, BTW.) Of course, that money doesn't get distributed by origin either, and getting anything at all back from the fund in amounts resembling what your state has sent is an accomplishment. After all, Robert Byrd thinks it's HIS fund. How else did a state the size of West Virginia end up with 37 THOUSAND miles of highways?

It's not as easy as we like to think it is, and the big pressure isn't even coming from the discretionary & defense side. "Program spending" (entitlements) are increasing faster than discretionary & defense spending and faster than GDP, and without entitlements reform that's just going to get worse. That's 60% of the overall budget, and climbing.

Posted by: Tully at March 30, 2006 06:42 PM

Tag--John, the interest payment doesn't move because you're having a miniscule effect on the principal, and that's mostly a future effect. They shouldn't have "buttoned" that box, as in the short term the only way to reduce it is to repudiate debt or buy some back, and a small surplus doesn't buy back much at all. You're nibblin' at $8+ trillion. Getting a breakeven budget won't move it at all--what's out there is still out there, you're just not ADDING to it.

Posted by: Tully at March 30, 2006 08:23 PM

Tully,

""Program spending" (entitlements) are increasing faster than discretionary & defense spending and faster than GDP, and without entitlements reform that's just going to get worse. That's 60% of the overall budget, and climbing."

According to Harry S. Dent, the man who predicted the 90s Boom, virtually all economic expansion and recession is based on demographics regardless of policies. He also predicted Dow 40,000 by like 2010 so he's far from perfect...but anyway, he predicts a major recession by the end of this decade as boomers head into retirement. The loss of manpower from the workforce, the loss of consumers from key market segments, the lowered tax base and increased govt. spending will slow the economy down drastically and widespread disruption as the working population goes thru a major restructuring.

However, if you look up projections into the height of boomer retirements the increases in entitlement spending rise to like 13-15% of GDP (sorry can't remember the link or if my figures are right) as opposed to the 11.8% seen in 2005. Is that an unsurmontable jump? I'd like to think we can work around it. Plus, I believe the amounts of the projected entitlements are actually higher in equal dollars than they are now. But I do remember that it's very possible depending on economic conditions that the trust fund will recover and never "run empty" and need to "borrow" to pay its obligations. But I think the fact that a lot of that money is being borrowed right now is not figured into that.

Shaky stuff.

Posted by: John at March 30, 2006 09:30 PM

Tully, how come if you balance the budget, thereby eliminating the deficit, and ceasing any addition to the cumulative debt, the debt doesn't go down. Do you mean only that it doesn't go down instantaneously? Because if we stopped adding to the debt, the outstanding debt would start to go down as bonds got retired, wouldn't they? Or are payments for bond cash outs not part of the budget?

Posted by: bk at March 31, 2006 09:08 AM

All I can say about Dent is that he's a bright guy, he's selling something, and even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and again. Demographics does not determine quantum breakthroughs in technology and productivity (indeed, they're not predictable at all) and that's mostly what drove the 90's boom and bubble. But it does have an effect.

However, if you look up projections into the height of boomer retirements the increases in entitlement spending rise to like 13-15% of GDP.

Try 20% of GDP by 2050 if there are no entitlement reforms. On top of the 8% or so in discretionary & defense, assuming we can hold THAT line constant.

But I do remember that it's very possible depending on economic conditions that the trust fund will recover and never "run empty" and need to "borrow" to pay its obligations.

You need to understand the nature of the SS/Medicare trust funds, John. Namely, that they don't exist. To be precise, they are government debt accounts. There is no actual money in them, just promises by the government to privide X amounts at Y times to the SS/Medicare programs. But they are not real assets, they do not generate real revenue, and they can only be "cashed" by raising the money to do so somewhere, which means through taxes or borrowing. Putting more money in the "trust funds" actually makes the problem worse, not better. It gives the feds more money to treat as a slush fund, while stacking up those IOU's in that filing cabinet in West Virginia. Blowing more money now and writing more IOU's does NOT give us any additional money in the future to pay those IOU's.

how come if you balance the budget, thereby eliminating the deficit, and ceasing any addition to the cumulative debt, the debt doesn't go down

Um, Brian, if you scissor up your Mastercard but make no payments at all, does the balance stay steady, decline, or increase? If you pay interest charges only, does the balance stay steady, decline, or increase? Really, this one's not rocket science.

In anycase, as long as we have the "trust fund" fiction, that associated "trust fund" portion of the national debt will continue to increase right up until the taxes revenues funding it become equal to or less than the benefits paid out.

Posted by: Tully at March 31, 2006 09:40 AM

To elaborate, Brian, if you balance the budget you're still only paying the interest. Retiring the principal takes still more money. You don't see a line item for that in the simulator, and the only way you can budge the principal balance through the simulator is by either running deficits or surpluses. Since the principal itself is four times larger than the entire budget, you have to d a lot of saving or new debt-creation to move the interest figure even a little bit, and in the short term you still owe the current interest on the original amount. I haven't checked their model to see if it lets the interest figure move at all--theoretically, it depends on whether you're adjusting today's budget or tomorrow's budget. Nothing will move current interest due but paying it.

Posted by: Tully at March 31, 2006 10:02 AM

I still don't quite understand. In what form is our government's debt? Isn't it bonds/treasury notes? Are you saying that paying off bonds isn't included as a budgetary cost, and that the "balance" point you are talking about would still include the treasury department continuing to sell bonds and notes in order to pay off the bonds and notes that are getting cashed?

See I was under the assumption that paying off the bond was included. But I think what you are implying is that the debt stays stable because the treasury department keeps cycling as I've described. Or do we hold debt in other forms, like say straight loans to other nations and banks where we just keep paying the interest?

Posted by: bk at March 31, 2006 10:17 AM

Debt is "rolled over" via ongoing sales. You only reduce it through surpluses that pay down principal and interest due in excess of new borrowing. And remember, we are "borrowing" and will continue to "borrow" in stocking up the "trust funds" right up until those balances start reducing. The structure of the funds is such that a certain amount of government borrowing is mandatory. Even though the gov't is borrowing from itself, it's still real debt and still shows up in the national debt figures. What that isn't is a real asset...the associated asset (cash) is spent, leaving the future oblgation.

There is also a certain amount of government debt issued for strictly market purposes. We are a safe haven and market stabilizer, and both our own markets and foreign markets and governments WANT to buy our paper, and that paper is still debt even when it's not being issued because we need that money. We will never have a zero-debt state.

Posted by: Tully at March 31, 2006 10:28 AM

Yeah, I've understood the trust fund part for some time now. Basically, as things stand now, when we start needing to pay more SS $ than we collect, (presuming no other changes) we'd have to start selling MORE bond and T-bills. And more every year. And selling bonds = borrowing money.

So it becomes a question of how much paper we can keep floating. The more we float, the more the supply of our paper threatens to outstrip demand, and the higher the rates we have to offer to keep people buying, which is precisely the same thing as "the more money we need to borrow, the higher the interest rates we have to pay." And so the quicker and more exponentially our debt grows. Because we wouldn't just be borrowing more money, we'd be borrowing more at higher rates.

Posted by: bk at March 31, 2006 12:24 PM

As long as the trust funds still have balances, we're really just rolling over paper, converting intragovernmental holdings into debt held by the public. That may seem like a technical point, but it is boosting the supply of gov't debt on the market, as you note, which will in turn affect our terms of borrowing. The gov't loans itself money on very favorable terms, and those terms hide some of the free-market cost of the national debt. The replacement borrowing WILL be at higher (market) rates.

But it doesn't actually change the amount of national debt by itself, just the form of it. Supply and demand are only one part of the interest rate drivers. But this is why we really have to count intragovernmental holdings right along with debt held by the public when totalling the national debt, why it can't just be swept under the rug or written off.

The rest of the debt, that portion of actual "total revenue" deficits, is more worrisome. Simply put, it's just a bad idea to consistently increase debt faster than GDP growth. It's also unsustainable in the long run. OTOH, if debt increases at a rate slower than GDP growth, it actually shrinks in practical terms. Right now it's growing faster than GDP.

I know you know this, I'm illustrating for others who may be reading. The point being that it's actually possible for debt to shrink in practical terms (%GDP) while you're still running deficits, as long as the %debt increases are smaller than the %GDP revenue increases.

The kicker is trying to get politicians to quit "loaning" the government money out of government program revenues in the first place, which both encourages spending and increases debt. We'd have been a lot better off to have not taxed and then "borrowed" that money in the first place, to have stayed with pay-go. The SS/Medicare surpluses were spent to expand gov't. Had they not existed, fiscal discipline would have been tighter and we'd be working from a lower baseline of gov't spending right now. In addition, that extra money left in the economy would have resulted in a higher GDP base.

But what pol can resist a single tax boost that produes a slush fund, as compared to having to constantly justify a creeping tax hike? Even if it actually cost us less that way?

Posted by: Tully at March 31, 2006 12:57 PM

Pat,

Totally agree. Mantras such as "tax and spend Democrat" and cold-hearted Republican" don't advance things much. In general,I don't think it makes much sense to ascribe normative standards to specific political positions on the size of government.

I agree with the general principal that we have to get our financial house in order before we can increase social spending. Deficit spending makes no sense and we have to get that under control The issue, in my mind, really boils down to what we do when we get the budget under control.

Mind you, I am not someone that believes that government is the only solution to our social problems or that the market has no role. But there are social problems, it seems to me, in which government can and should play a greater role than it does. Health care, for instance. Poverty reduction, for another. I'm not advocating another War on Poverty; in fact, I'm not necessarily advocating some great, new expensive social spending. All I'm saying is that government has a role to play--as it has throughout American history in promoting economic growth and social progress. I object to the idea that "we need to kill the beast." Without listing specific policies, it seems to me that there are things government can do to promote growth (I mean besides cutting taxes and interest rates), such as investing in education, infrastructure, and so on. There are certainly arguments to be made as to the appropriate level and types of spending, but it seems to me that the debate over the last twenty to twenty-five years has been dominated by the idea that government should stay out of the way and let the market provide. I am pro-market in general, but I think there is an argument to be made that judicious regulation of business, for example, is effective and socially beneficial and that lack of regulation played a role in the Enron-type scandals. Finally, I think that the anti-government ideology contributed to fiascos like FEMA in New Orleans.

So, what I am proposing is not so much specific government programs or policies as I am suggesting that government action should be part of the discussion and not automatically excluded.

And, this raises another point about tax cuts. If we get to the point that we balance the budget, is it appropriate to cut taxes and shrink the size of government. Obviously, I think not--that there are things we need to spend on to help society and it makes no sense to cut taxes just to cut taxes. (Although I do recognize that there is a place for tax cutting as economic stimulus.)

Posted by: Marc at March 31, 2006 03:38 PM

ye gods, 45 more comments?
okay, don't have time to give them the reading they deserve but I will try to read them this weekend and comment on them, if my kid doesn't have yet another humungous writing project.

A thought crossed my mind about this particular budget situation. I think it was Grover Norquist who said that a good idea was to blow out the budget to "starve the beast", the beast meaning liberal programs.

Well I guess they did have to take that quite literally didn't they.

also was thinking that old age is inevitable and unpredictable and no one is immune to the unpredictable. You can end up in good health and relatively few costs or you can find that by the time you'r 72 you've totally blown your retirement on medical or other emergency costs and you're wondering how you're going to make it for the rest of the month with 10 days to go before you receive what's left of your next social security check.

There must be some point where you trim one bit of the safety net here and one there so much that the safety net no longer can support anything at all.
Then what?

Posted by: Marcus at March 31, 2006 09:20 PM

There must be some point where you trim one bit of the safety net here and one there so much that the safety net no longer can support anything at all. Then what?

Marcus, if you look at federal spending overall absolutely nothing has grown as fast or continues to grow as fast as "liberal" programs. Cutting that one social spending program while shifting its funding to another social spending program is hardly slicing up the safety net. Or "starving the beast," for that matter.

I still want to know why a city that can produce millions in individual political contributions for the 2004 Democratic Presidential primary alone (over a million bucks from a single zip code and almost $8 mil for Dem primaries NOT counting PAC donations), the third richest city in America, can't have an afternoon fundraiser every year to come up with less than $220K to help feed their own old people. Does their compassion only exist when it's Other People's Money they're spending? Wow, what a caring community!

Posted by: Tully at April 1, 2006 11:54 AM

(Cue South Park music...)

Posted by: Tully at April 1, 2006 11:59 AM

Marc,

I actualy self-identify as a "Conservative" rather then "Centrist". I do lean toward a libertarian view of limited government.... and this generaly could be described as one flavor of Conservativism (interestingly there are other flavors of Conservatism which are very much enamored of the concept of large, activist government).

I certainly believe that the view of an activist government role to solve social problems IS a viable philosophical viewpoint to have. It's not a viewpoint that I personaly happen to ascribe to or agree with...but it certainly is a logicaly consistant and valid viewpoint to hold... and I don't seek to dismiss that viewpoint or the people who advocate it out of hand.

Mostly what I objected to in the article (whether it was intentional or not) was the implication that ascribing to a political philosophy of limited government was indicative of cold-heartedness, hypocracy or lack of christian values on a personal level. This was bothersome to me because it is one of the misconceptions that some on the Left often apply to advocates of limited government.

I just wanted to clearly point out the distinction that a position that government is not the appropriate venue to address certain social ills is not equivalent to a lack of concern or even tacit acceptence of those social ills.

For instance..... I didn't think it was really the governments responsibility to find long term housing for those displaced by Katrina. Does this make me a cold hearted bastard who has no sympathy for those unfortunate to have found themselves in the hurricanes wake and who lack sufficent resources to make arrangements for thier own alternative housing? Well, reconcile that with the fact that my wife and I had publicaly offered space in our own home for refugees at no cost (No one ever took us up on it...mostly I suspect because we live in NY state.... but we did publicaly register the available space and would have been happy to provide it if anyone had actualy taken us up on the offer).

Posted by: cengel at April 3, 2006 05:43 PM

Tully,
there are fundraisers. One of the largest ones is the KGO Thanksgiving charity drive and that one I think brought in close to $400,000 dollars in November 2005 to be shared with St. Anthony's dining room, St. Vincent DePaul in Oakland, Catholic Charities in San Jose and a homeless organization in Contra costa County. Thank the very liberal Bernie Ward for showing that San Francisco can put it's money where its liberal mouth is. There's also other charities around here and millions are raised each year already for food programs. We have food banks, second harvest tc. But these resources are under tremendous strain. Tere's something else not figured in this particular instance as far as California is concerned. We toss in about 60 billion more into the Fed budget than we get out of it. Most of that money goes to "Red states, you know, the ones whose political spectrum preaches self sufficiency, up till the money they get my tax dollars. A few billion back to California and we could kiss that food funding problem godd byeas well as other infrastructure problems that need to be fixed.

A couple of other things. Considering that we are in a state of war do you know this is the first time in our history that we've cut taxes rather than increase them? As some have said, where are the financial sacrifices that can at the very least, be a pale shadow of the physical sacrifices being made by our soldiers and their families?
This is not alike other wars in our history. There is no shared sacrifice. We're spending hundreds of billion on a war of choice and the GOP gets bent out of shape when some of us wonder if we can repeal the tax cuts to help pay for this thing.

As far as the discussion, thanks gawd is went to real issues and away from the earlier petty bickering. My thanks. I finally did a decent skim through of all the comments. No need to repeat for teh umpteenth time my disagreement with Tully about the budget. At least we agree about beer.

Cengel, Avian Flu - not overhyped and for some very fundamentally sound scientific reasons. Foremost, it rapidly mutates. This makes it really easy to invade new hosts and to develop easier means of transmission. Secondly, given that this is 2006 and not 1918, we are more vulnerable to a rapid spread of the disease if it breaches only a couple of barriers and starts going from human to human. Third, it targets the young a lot more easily than the elderly. Current virus is very lethal when children come into contact with it, mainly because they breathe more of the virus more deeply into their lungs. Not good.
4th, think 1918. The death toll was massive.

On the other hand, we're getting better at creating new vaccines more quickly. Novel delivery methods are being thought up as well. One way to deliver immunity would be to allow the spread of a milder non-lethal strain into the general population, creating greater herd immunity. Better than trying to give a few billion people shots. IF Avian flu fizzles out, great. All in all it's much better to be cautious if you have the resources, and we DO have the resources, than it is to wait for shit to happen.

Also, Cengel, I can look to lots of past programs and say that not only were they good for the people that were helped by them but they were good for the economic and social health of this country as well - a few examples would be the GI Bill, the tens of billions in federal funds to clean up waterways and sewage, the War on Poverty, derided by the right but did succeed in significantly reducing the number of Americans living in poverty, and rural electrification.

Finally, Kevin Phillips is speaking tomorrow night in Berkely for cody's books and I going to try and get to there if I can.

Posted by: Marcus at April 4, 2006 03:58 AM

We toss in about 60 billion more into the Fed budget than we get out of it. Most of that money goes to "Red states, you know, the ones whose political spectrum preaches self sufficiency, up till the money they get my tax dollars.

Another lovely sound bite that deserves some analysis. If state A has a per capita income of $25K and state C has a per capita income of $40K, and both state's residents are federally taxed at an identical flat rate, which state would pay more money per capita to the federal government? State C, obviously, yet both states are paying the same portion of their GDP to the feds.

Now, if the the federal government pays out to states an amount proportional to their state GDP as a share of the national GDP, which state will get more per capita in federal payments than they paid in? If you said state A, you'd be right. Even at a flat rate of taxation, state A comes out better by just getting an equal share of the federal pie, because they're poorer. Which is the point of that favorite policy of American liberalism, redistributionist tax policies. Right? It works that way even with a flat tax.

And sure enough, about 60% of the difference in federal expenditures per state can be explained that simply. (This is from memory, as I didn't save the figures when I diddled this out back in '04. You can go dig out the figures if you wish.) Now, let's move on to that second favorite scheme of American liberalism, progressive taxation!

If state A's average rate of federal taxation is 20% and state C's is 30%, because of progressive taxation and the difference in per capita incomes, then state C's per capita "contribution" to federal coffers will be proportionally greater than state A's. (If you've guessed by now that state C is California, you get a cookie. Bonus cookies for guessing state A.)

Now, let's toss something else in the mix. What drives the blue-state red-state divide? What's the most singular factor that distinguishes pockets of liberalism from pockets of conservatism? Urban population density, followed somewhat by ethnicity. "Blue" voting and urban population density go hand-in-hand, even in red states.

Not so coincidentally, what's the single biggest factor in higher per capita income levels? Urban population density, followed by ethnicity. The highest per capita incomes occur in the biggest cities and their suburbs.

So, given progressive taxation AND a distribution of federal monies by state GDP share, which states will get more than they paid in, and which less? Hmm, looks like the states with the highest urban population densities will do the most paying, and those with the lowest urban population densities will do the most getting.

So you can complain about not getting as much back from the feds as you paid, or you can complain for more progressive taxation, but if you live in a high-density urban area and cry for both, you're facilitating your own complaint. If you live in one of the wealthier areas of the country, complaining that your tax dollars go to poorer areas of the country is a bit disingenuous. In fact, you should probably be lobbying for less federal government, not more, and for flatter taxes, not more "progressive" rates.

That your cost of living is much higher living in a high-density urban area is your own problem. You chose to live there. That someone in state A can likely live better on $25K than you can in state C on $40K is irrelevant. If all states are treated equally by their contribution to the national GDP, then states with high urban population densities will ALWAYS get shorted on that redistribution.

The only real exceptions to this are the states of Maryland and Virginia, where disproportionally large numbers of federal employees live.

Posted by: Tully at April 4, 2006 11:10 AM

Well, according to the World Almanac 2006, the following states led the way in the category "Federal Outlays to States per Dollar of Tax Revenue Received":

(1) DC ... $6.59
(2) New Mexico ... $1.99
(3) Alaska ... $1.89
(4) Mississippi ... $1.83
(5) West Virginia ... $1.82

(6) North Dakota ... $1.75
(7) Alabama ... $1.69
(8) Montana ... $1.60
(9) Virginia ... $1.58
(10) Hawaii ... $1.58

(11) Kentucky ... $1.52
(12) South Dakota ... $1.49
(13) Oklahoma ... $1.48
(14) Arkansas ... $1.47
(15) Louisana ... $1.47

(16) South Carolina ... $1.36
(17) Maine ... $1.36
(18) Maryland ... $1.34
(19) Idaho ... $1.32
(20) Missouri ... $1.29
(21) Tennessee ... $1.29

Eleven other states (Arizona, Utah, Vermont, Wyoming, Kansas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio) got more federal dollars back than they paid in. Florida and Oregon broke even.

At the other end of the list, New Jersey ($0.57), New Hampshire ($0.64), Connecticut ($0.65), Minnesota ($0.70), and Nevada ($0.70) got the least amount of money back for what they paid into the system. California was 43rd overall with a $0.78 back for every dollar we pay in.

I don't really see Marcus's "Red state hypocrites" theory working, but I'll leave it to you guys to fight over which of those states are "Red" and which are "Blue." I think there's ample evidence of both "Red" and "Blue" states on each list to believe that some other dynamic-- such as the effectiveness of the Senators and Congresspersons elected to represent their constituents-- must be in play.

The notion that California pays more into a federal system than the system gives is a significant piece of Golden State lore (on a par with the fact that baseball prospects who can't make it with the Dodgers invariably go elsewhere to become superstars...), it was a staple of Schwarznegger's campaign, and I think this table seems to at least support the belief: 22 cents of every dollar we pay in taxes goes to some other state. However, it's obvious that we're getting a better deal than, say, New Jersey in this system, which is to say we're not bearing the heaviest cross.

One last point, though: since there are "Blue" states that are getting more money back than they pay in, it's obvious that some Democratic Senators and Representatives are more adept than others in "getting along" in Washington to "bring home the bacon." Because of California's low ranking, it's pretty obvious where that blame lies: in Senators like Barbara Boxer and Representatives like Nancy Pelosi who would sooner fight the ideological fight than bring federal money home to their constituents. Ironically, Californians have control over that variable-- by rejecting the ineffective ideologues and electing more pragmatic Democratic Senators and Congressmen who could better represent our interests. But that is never what California Democrats like Marcus seem to recommend; on the contrary, they tend to demand that other states elect more Democrats so that our delegation is no longer confrontational and ineffectual... That's a recipe for continued marginalization if ever there was one.

Posted by: Bobby at April 4, 2006 05:12 PM