May 25, 2013

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Krugman agrees with the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour (not that he wants to)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - 3:29 PM

In Nobel-prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's column Monday, he makes an interesting point about California's budget woes that supports much of what The Concord Coalition's message has been for the last three years traveling the country on the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour. The irony is that he often protests much of what we stand for.

In writing about the political barriers to sound fiscal policy and governance in California, he expresses concern that it "foreshadows the future of the nation as a whole." He continues:

"Last week Bill Gross of Pimco, the giant bond fund, warned that the U.S. government may lose its AAA debt rating in a few years, thanks to the trillions it’s spending to rescue the economy and the banks. Is that a real possibility?

Well, in a rational world Mr. Gross’s warning would make no sense. America’s projected deficits may sound large, yet it would take only a modest tax increase to cover the expected rise in interest payments — and right now American taxes are well below those in most other wealthy countries. The fiscal consequences of the...

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Adding Up the Candidates' Plans
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - 12:41 PM

There is a good article in the New York Times today, as part of their "If Elected..." series, that tries valiantly to add up the candidates' taxing and spending promises with an emphasis on their deficit implications. As a budget policy analyst, I know how tough such a task is during an election campaign, and empathize with any reporter who attempts to do so.

What I try to keep remembering to tell members of the media as I go through the numbers with them, is that the numbers are certain to change, and the candidates and their advisors know that, but what really matters is the commitment to fiscal responsibility once in office and what flexibility they have left themselves with, after the campaign ends, to alter their plans. 

Sometimes plans change because campaigns are two-year long processes, and the plans a candidate designed at the beginning, might no longer be what can be written into legislation and enacted once the campaign ends. I think that has clearly happened in the last couple months with the crisis in the financial markets.

Unfortunately, more often than...

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Fiscal Challenges for the Next President
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - 12:45 PM

Today, the Concord Coalition released our second issue brief during the general election. In this one, called “Fiscal Policy Beyond Election Day: Nine Challenges for ’09," we discuss how the reality of the nation’s current economic and fiscal transformation will affect the plans the presidential candidates have developed. Additionally, we propose that recent events, and the unrealsitic nature of the plans even before the financial crisis required massive government intervention, will require whoever becomes president to re-prioritize to fit current circumstances and to improve the well-being of future generations.

Our first issue brief looked more closely at the specifics of the candidate's taxing and spending plans and how by accepting currently policy trends as the baseline by which their plans should be judged, they were setting lower expectations for themselves than they should, and certainly lower expectations than the American public should...

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