absolutely no one anywhere says making these programs permanent can be "somehow done automatically." You're arguing against arguments nobody is making. And it's difficult to understand the tenor of your responses, they just sound emotionally over the top. I get it, you don't like the WSJ editorial, you don't like the CBO director's letter, and you don't acknowledge the point being made in the closely-related NYT article. Instead you'd prefer to keep hammering home a point that no one disputes. I'm not sure why I'm responding but at some point I will likely let you have the last word.
BBB Is a Fiscal Risk The debt crisis is real. At least one party needs to act like the grownups. https://www.thebulwark.com/bbb-is-risky-fiscally/ excerpt: The BBB plan adopted by the House contains major expansions in subsidies for enrolling in health insurance, unconditional cash support for families with children, free enrollment in preschool for all children ages 3 and 4, and much else. The plan’s proponents say the bill is fully paid for with spending cuts and tax hikes, but that is not true. The clear intention of the authors is to have these benefits become permanent commitments of the federal government, almost certainly with proposed expansions in their generosity in future years. And yet the House bill sunsets most of the new commitments by mid-decade to artificially lower the advertised total cost. For instance, the higher subsidies for enrolling in health insurance would expire after 2025. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the bill as written includes new benefits worth $2.2 trillion over ten years (excluding the complicated effects of tax relief for state and local taxpayers). Over the same time period, the tax hikes and other revenues total about $2.0 trillion, leaving a $160 billion hole. Over the first five years, when the costs of the new benefits are mostly in full force, the deficit increase is projected to be $750 billion—more unnecessary fiscal stimulus as inflation soars. And if all of the new benefit commitments were made available to recipients indefinitely, the total cost of the BBB plan would increase by another $2 trillion over ten years, putting the total cost at $4.2 trillion. The plan’s advocates respond that when the time comes to extend the sunsetted provisions, Congress will come up with new offsets to cover the expense and ensure deficit neutrality, so there is nothing to worry about. That argument presumes Congress will identify real offsets instead of gimmicks to satisfy budget rules—which history suggests is doubtful. There are many reasons the gap between federal spending and revenue has steadily widened over the years, but one is that entitlements tend to grow as new recipients find their way to them, and the offsets deliver less revenue than what was projected as the targets find ways to avoid losses. Further, if every dollar of available revenue is used to pay for BBB’s benefit expansions, how will Congress find the resources to pay for the spending that is already in current law? This concern seems to be top of mind for Senator Manchin, and rightfully so. He repeatedly expresses a desire to ensure the money is there for existing programs before Congress makes new commitments, and to calibrate the generosity of expanded benefits, not their duration, to match the offsets used to pay for them. If the federal government is to avert a debt crisis, the long process of turning things around has to begin somewhere. Restraint when writing new commitments is a good place to start. Congress will soon need to go much farther than that.
Remember how the US beat the USSR through not building infrastructure, improving higher education, and lots of public research. Remember how the Chinese propelled themselves to the global front through being cheap and not investing in itself? This is the same thing as the dumb **** austerity of 2008-2016. Why do conservatives and “moderates” like @Os Trigonum love China and Russia?
Biden Spending is catching up to Trump Spending from the year before. Pandemic "status quo" is ultimately unsustainable, but it's a perfect pretext for countries with aging unfunded populations to throw a debt jubilee or something like it... March 2020's stock market crash wasn't entirely due to Covid. Markets were already spooked the year before from the government's fundamentals (wild spending during a recovery, financial engineering in place of real corporate growth to boost stock prices, unresolved trade disputes)
You were. Me: "It's frankly ridiculous to beat up a current bill based on a future projection that is not in the current bill." You: "I disagree. Many policies lead to unintended consequences. It makes perfect sense ahead of time to try and anticipate what those consequences might be. Avoiding such analysis seems to me to be borderline irresponsible."
consider the source, that same extremist partisans that had remained silent on Hoover inept policies which led the US economy into a depression W's inept policies which led to the bankruptcy of the US financial industry Trump's foolish/ineffective trade war leading to supply chain bottlenecks yet assailed their successors' clean-up efforts FDR's policies which added stability and proceeded to resuscitate the US economy towards becoming the largest economy in the world Obama's effective policies to rescue the bankruptcy of the US financial industries caused by W's incompetence Biden's concerted effort to build more infrastructure to add efficiency, including expediting/facilitating the supply chain bottlenecks
why are your posts always formatted so weirdly? not trying to be insulting or anything, but I just don't read them with all the bullets dots indentations etc etc.
Wasn’t Biden suppose to be at the Army Navy game ? That’s president tradition to attend @asianballa23 Why not brah
when I reach a state of exhaustion and/or exasperation, sure. I'm still just getting warmed up though.
I see the party of borrow and spend suddenly cares about budget deficits and the national debt again. Right on schedule when this spending would actually create jobs and help the middle class.
as expected L The Biden administration won’t extend student loan relief and confirmed student loan payments restart February 1, 2022.
Yes, it’s covid fault. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-in...fastest-pace-in-a-decade-11639560051?mod=e2tw U.K. Inflation Accelerates at Fastest Pace in a Decade Supply-chain problems and higher energy costs turbo charged price rises Consumer prices in the U.K. rose 5.1% in November compared with a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday, the biggest annual jump since Sept. 2011. The surge in inflation in November was driven by higher prices for clothing, food and gasoline. Producer prices also rose steeply, suggesting inflationary pressure ahead. Prices charged by companies at the factory gate rose 9.1% on the year, data showed, while the prices manufacturers paid for raw materials and components rose 14.3%.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fe...debt-wages-federal-reserve-powell-11639322957 The Fed Is the Main Inflation Culprit The central bank has enabled price increases that may soon pose a risk to financial stability. By Kevin Warsh Dec. 12, 2021 1:04 pm ET If price stability is squandered, financial stability is put at risk. If financial stability is lost, the economy is imperiled and the social contract is threatened. During the past several quarters, U.S. inflation has surged—now running about triple the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. The surge in prices is unlikely to reverse on its own. The longer that prices are unstable, the greater the challenge to the conduct of macroeconomic policy. The last thing the country needs is its third major economic upheaval in a decade and a half. The consequences of inflation—and the attendant risks—have long been understood. In 1898 economist Knut Wicksell explained: “Changes in the general level of prices have always excited great interest. Obscure in origin, they exert a profound and far-reaching influence on the whole economic and social life of a country.” Inflation is the sincerest form of fakery: A surge in the cost of living that robs hardworking Americans of the fruits of their wage gains. An incomparable asset boom predicated on perpetually low interest rates. Alchemy for an overly indebted nation. Vulnerability that can lead to miscalculation by a fierce geopolitical rival. And despair by the body politic, whose common sense is at odds with the anxious conformity of those in power. Inflation is a choice. It’s a choice for which the Fed is chiefly responsible. The risk of an inflationary spiral arises when policy makers first dismiss the problem and then cast blame elsewhere. Inflation becomes embedded in the price-formation process when the central bank acts belatedly or with insufficient conviction. To date, the Fed has acted as an enabler. The sure sign of a problem: when a president gives voice to the scourge of inflation—and takes executive action—well before the central bank acknowledges the severity of the situation. “Supply-chain bottlenecks” is the popularized rationalization for the surge in prices. But the supply-chain story sheds more shade than light. Consumer prices are higher because prices are rising at the points of production, assembly and transportation. This is a description of the state of affairs, not its source. The Fed’s inertia in withdrawing extraordinary monetary policy—amid full employment—is the proximate cause of surging prices. When monetary policy is too tight, it slows aggregate demand. When monetary policy is too loose, it damages aggregate supply. Extraordinarily aggressive monetary policy, namely quantitative easing, discourages investments in real assets like capital equipment relative to financial assets such as stocks. That’s why nonresidential capital investment in the real economy—things like port modernization—is running 7% below the pre-pandemic trend and 25% below trend since the advent of QE. A more exuberant stock market and a less resilient real economy are both consequences of the Fed’s extant policy regime. By August 2020, the Fed had become impatient with the purported low inflation rate of the Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen years. Chairman Jerome Powell called low inflation—which averaged 1.7% in the prior decade, a mere 0.3 point below the Fed’s target—the pre-eminent economic challenge of our time. So the Fed bet on a new policy regime to get inflation higher. It worked. It’s not the first time a central bank wanted a little more inflation and got a lot more. Last year, in another break with precedent, the Fed loudly and explicitly endorsed a blowout in federal spending. Congress swiftly agreed. Federal spending increased from an average of about 21% of gross domestic product in the prior decade to more than 30% in fiscal 2020 and 2021. National debt relative to GDP increased from 79% in 2019 to more than 100% today. Most troubling, the Fed bankrolled the fiscal profligacy, purchasing more than half of the new Treasury debt issued this year. Call it monetary dominance. In congressional testimony recently, Mr. Powell made clear he was surprised and troubled by the medium-term trajectory of inflation. At this week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, the Fed seems ready to abandon its policy priors. Achieving a soft economic landing at this late stage is difficult. If the sole task were to drive inflation down, the Fed would immediately taper its asset purchases and start raising rates. But a significant tightening cycle would likely cause market volatility to surge and assets to reprice. The authorities have expressed little concern about financial excesses, bubbles or financial imbalances. Hope they’re right. I expect tension between the Fed’s goals of price stability and financial stability to be in sharper relief in the new year. Stopping QE altogether—even a few quarters ago—would have kept a lid on inflation and allowed a more measured path of rate increases. The Fed now has fewer degrees of freedom to keep the economy out of harm’s way. If the Fed doesn’t act with due speed and skill, inflation—the most regressive tax of all—will do further harm, particularly to the least well-off. If the central bank lurches into a significant, unexpected rate-rising cycle, the same hardworking Americans will bear the brunt of an economic slowdown. The economy—and the country—is at a critical juncture. The biggest mistake of all, however, is to underestimate America’s strengths. The U.S. economic and political system often shows less well than it performs. At present, the first obligation of policy makers is to ensure a return to price stability. Mr. Warsh, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, is a distinguished visiting fellow in economics at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
