The government would have to double income tax rates and not see any tax avoidance or evasion to close the deficit.

Did you know? The government would have to double income tax rates and not see any tax avoidance or evasion to close the deficit.

• 2011 Deficit: $1,299 billion
• 2011 Income tax revenue: $1,273 billion

The Founding Fathers Solve Our Debt Crisis

The United States accrued a huge debt to fight the American Revolution. The debt equaled 35 to 40 percent of GDP at a time when government spending and taxes were just 2 percent of GDP. Interest consumed about half of the government’s revenues. Numerous states and the government under the Articles of Confederation were negligent in paying interest and principle.  The nation faced a real debt crisis.

The Founding Fathers recognized the burden of such a large debt and wanted to pay it off.

Read the rest at What Would the Founders Think…

Paul Ryan’s plan doesn’t go far enough

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Paul Ryan explains his budget proposal and includes this great chart:

Part of Ryan’s plan is to reduce government spending to the “long-term average” of about 19-20 percent of GDP. By what twisted logic does it make sense to leave government spending at 19-20 percent of GDP? Even Bill Clinton spent less than that.

Spending at these “average” levels is what got us into this mess. We should return to the level of federal government spending that existed prior to the progressive takeover of government, when the federal government spent about 2 to 4 percent of GDP during peacetime, more during depressions and wars. Maybe 2 to 4 percent is too low in these “modern” times. Personally, I think the federal government should spend about 5 percent of GDP. Three percent of which would be for defense and two percent for all other functions of the federal government, which are not that many according to the Constitution.

Where’s my magnifying glass? I’m trying to find the budget cuts.

The Washington Times reports:

The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning.

That figure tops last February’s record of $220.9 billion, and marks the 29th straight month the government has run in the red — a modern record. The last time the federal government posted even a monthly surplus was September 2008, just before the financial collapse.

Last month’s federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats’ opening bid of $6 billion.

Actually, those figures overstate the cuts because it is comparing a yearly cut to a monthly deficit. In reality, the annual deficit of about $1.6 trillion is 26 times as large as the Republican budget cuts and 267 times the size of the Democrats’ proposed cuts.

I’m glad to see Washington is taking this problem seriously…

The Monster from the Senate Chamber

The latest spending bill out of the Senate is a monster. According to John McCain as reported on Drudge, the bill has 6,488 earmarks worth $8.3 billion. That’s 65 earmarks and $83 million per Senator. It gets worse. “Members requested over 39,000 earmarks totaling over $130 billion.” That’s 390 earmarks and $1.3 billion each.

Now you know why I am proud member of the Tea Party. This unchecked wasteful spending has to stop. If I am an extremist for this, so be it.

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Barry Goldwater

Sovereign debt crisis worsening. Governments paralyzed. Solution too hard to swallow.

Despite all the governments’ efforts, or maybe because of them, the sovereign debt crisis is only getting worse. Marketwatch reports:

The euro zone’s sovereign-debt crisis intensified Tuesday, with yields on Spanish, Italian and other peripheral government bonds soaring in the wake of a weekend meeting of European Union finance ministers that failed to soothe fears of the potential for future defaults.

The yield on 10-year Spanish government bonds jumped to around 5.63%, strategists said, a day after surging to 5.43%.

The move sent the yield premium demanded by investors to hold 10-year Spanish debt over comparable German bunds to more than three full percentage points.

“Ireland’s bailout did nothing to ease the euro-zone debt crisis: it might have even made it worse,” said Steven Barrow, currency and fixed-income strategist at Standard Bank. “For now the market sees a pattern emerging and the next piece of the bailout puzzle seems to be Portugal, with Spain to follow after that.”

The yield on 10-year Italian bonds also rose for a second day to hit 4.77% from around 4.64% on Monday. Portuguese, Greek and Irish bond yields also rose. And outside the periphery, the Belgian 10-year bond yield continued to climb, hitting 3.97% versus around 3.86% on Monday.

How long before Europe realizes that bailing out the banks, announcing plans to cut their deficits to 3 percent in four years time, and getting bailouts from EU and IMF will not work? The sovereign debt crisis will continue until these European countries announce balanced budgets effective immediately (2011) or, at the worst case, next year (2012) and that they will never again bail out the banks. They also have to leave the Euro, which is partly responsible for the mess to start with.

Unfortunately, I doubt the European governments will implement these measures. And if they were to do so, the people would be in full revolution. The only easy way out I see is if the economy suddenly stages a huge recovery. Barring that, it looks like things will be getting worse, possibly much worse.

Government says it’s OK to break social security agreement, but not pension agreements.

Barack Obama’s debt commission proposed several changes to Social Security to help reduce the deficit. The New York Times reports:

The plan would reduce cost-of-living increases for all federal programs, including Social Security. It would reduce projected Social Security benefits to most retirees in later decades, though low-income people would get higher benefits. The retirement age for full benefits would be slowly raised to 69 from 67 by 2075, with a “hardship exemption” for people who physically cannot work past 62. And higher levels of income would be subject to payroll taxes.

I have no idea how much these measures will contribute to reducing the deficit or paying off the debt. My complaint is more ideological.

When employees contribute to social security, they are doing so with the understanding that they will receive certain benefits starting at a certain date. Currently, an American expects to pay a certain amount each year into the system, retire at age 67. and receive cost of living adjustments (COLA) each year. The proposals by the debt commission would violate this agreement, forcing people to pay more each year if they earn over a certain amount, retire at a later date than originally agreed to, and receive less in benefits than promised as the COLA is reduced. In effect, the government is unilaterally canceling its contract with each American and replacing it with a less attractive one.

In reality, I am not opposed to these changes, especially the retirement age which will not fully take effect for 65 years, thus having little effect on anybody working today. The reduction in COLA would have a much greater effect on everybody starting in the near future while the removal of the cap on social security taxes would have an even larger effect, but only the wealthy. But while these are necessary changes, contrast this with the government’s stance on pension funds.

In a Q&A titled The pension time bomb, The Week asks:

Can benefits be scaled back?

Only for future employees. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently signed legislation reducing pension benefits for new state employees. In California this month, voters in nine municipalities approved ballot measures to limit benefits for future public employees. And governments are starting to take a harder line in collective bargaining with public unions. “I’ve seen a sea change in the local collective bargaining process,” said Dwight Stenbakken, deputy executive director of the League of California Cities. Some analysts recommend following the lead of Georgia, which requires that prior to being enacted, any changes to retiree benefits be studied for long-term impacts. According to the Pew Center on the States, the policy has helped Georgia avoid “costly and irreversible” mistakes.

These pension liabilities have already been promised to employees and retirees. The government has a contractual obligation to pay the pensions as promised.

So why are the pension obligations sacrosanct while money can be taken from Social Security beneficiaries? Social security is just as much a contractual obligation as public union pensions. If social security benefits are to be reduced for those who have already paid in, public union pension benefits should be as well.

* Though I have not yet read this (too busy writing my next book), Robert Graham discusses this topic in much more detail in his Job Killers: The American Dream in Reverse. How Labor Unions are Destroying American Jobs and the Economy. If you’ve read it, leave a comment here or send me an email, tweet, or facebook message letting me know what you think of it.