government spending

A few more weeks for a budget deal?

March 10, 2011 10:59 pm by James Politi

Politics in Washington are notoriously unpredictable – but for anyone gaming whether or not the US will face a government shutdown on March 18 – here are a few good reasons why it won’t happen.

The most likely scenario at this point appears to be another short-term extension of the budget – somewhere between two and four weeks – that would give all sides a bit more time to negotiate.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are currently putting together a bill along those lines – and the Obama administration may well be open to accepting it. The White House has already suggested $6.5bn in cuts that could be applied towards that short-term extension without causing too much political furore. Read more

Tags: consolidation, government spending
Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink

Macroadvisers on drag from spending cuts

March 8, 2011 3:25 pm by Robin Harding

Macroadvisers have put out their estimates of the economic effect of passage of the House Republicans $61bn of FY11 spending cuts. They are lower than Goldman Sachs, higher than the Fed, and look pretty solid to me.

Our simulation analysis suggests this near-term fiscal drag would reduce annualized growth of real GDP during the second and third quarters of this year by ¾ percentage point, with smaller impacts for a few subsequent quarters.

Tags: Fiscal, fiscal policy, government spending, North America, US
Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink

Fighting over US budget baselines

March 4, 2011 4:39 pm by James Politi

A war of words and numbers has broken out in Washington over the geekiest of subjects: which budget baseline should be used to calculate the level of spending cuts being negotiated by the White House and congressional leaders.

On Thursday afternoon, Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, announced that the Obama administration was putting on the table an additional $6.5bn in spending cuts to woo Republicans into a deal before March 18, the new deadline for a government shutdown. At least everyone agrees on those basic facts.

Here’s where things get tricky. Mr Sperling said that with those cuts, the White House was meeting Republicans “halfway” compared to their own spending targets – a clear sign of the administration’s willingness to negotiate. Read more

Tags: consolidation, government spending, North America
Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink

Bernanke on the Fed’s fiscal calculus

March 2, 2011 5:39 pm by Robin Harding

Ben Bernanke is testifying at the House today (it’s pretty dull) but he has spelled out the Fed’s estimate of what a $60bn cut to federal spending in FY11 (i.e. in the remaining months until the end of September) would do to the economy.

It would cut 0.1-0.2 percentage points from output this year and 0.1 percentage points next year. At some unspecified time horizon, it would lower employment by 200,000. Read more

Tags: ben bernanke, Fiscal, government spending
Posted in Federal Reserve | Permalink

Bernanke talks fiscal policy with Congress

March 1, 2011 8:24 pm by James Politi

In Ben Bernanke’s testimony before the Senate banking committee today, there was plenty of talk about US fiscal and budgetary policy.

It’s the hot topic on Capitol Hill, with Congress moving this week towards a deal to cut spending by $4bn and avert a government shutdown – at least for two weeks.

Needless to say, in the question-and-answer session, lawmakers from both parties were desperately trying to get the Federal Reserve chairman’s approval for their positions.

Republicans are advocating for aggressive cuts in discretionary spending, while Democrats, in the words of Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, want to apply a ”scalpel” rather than a “meat axe” to the US budget. Read more

Tags: ben bernanke, consolidation, default, government spending, North America, US
Posted in Federal Reserve | Permalink

Moody’s and the US debt ceiling

February 24, 2011 9:19 pm by James Politi

The US is little more than $200bn away – or about 2 months – away from reaching its congressionally mandated national debt limit of $14,300bn.

The need to increase it to avoid a potentially disastrous US default is the next fiscal battleground in Washington, after the lawmakers stop squabbling over a government shutdown.

Republicans want to use the opportunity to push for more spending cuts, while Democrats say this is not the place to negotiate.

On Thursday, Moody’s Investors Service offered its analysis of the likelihood that a major crisis will ensue, threatening America’s triple-A credit rating much earlier than even the most ardent fiscal hawks would imagine. Read more

Tags: bonds, consolidation, debt, default, government debt, government spending, moody's, North America, treasuries, US
Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink

The cost of a US shutdown: $8bn a week

February 23, 2011 8:17 pm by James Politi

Goldman Sachs has waded into the raging political war over US fiscal policy, with a note explaining the economic ramifications of the battles on government spending, a possible shutdown of federal operations, and even the furore over collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and some other midwestern states.

On the budget itself, Goldman economist Alec Phillips says the Republican plan approved by the House of Representatives last Saturday – with $61bn in spending cuts between now and September, would lead to a drag on US GDP growth of 1.5 to 2 percentage points in Q2 and Q3, before it tails off.

Mr Phillips also points out that the more likely scenario – a compromise with $25bn in spending cuts – would lead to a 1 percentage point hit to GDP growth in Q2, fading thereafter, with “negligible” impact on growth by the end of the year. Read more

Tags: consolidation, government spending, North America
Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink

Obama’s deficit pledge deconstructed

January 26, 2011 3:06 am by James Politi

President Barack Obama certainly made America’s fiscal health a pillar of his “state of the union” address, calling it a key element of his plans to secure US global competitiveness. “A critical step in winning the future is to make sure we aren’t buried under a mountain of debt,” Mr Obama said. “We have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in.”

Mr Obama did indeed dedicate plenty of space to deficit reduction in his speech – but there were no major surprises in terms of specific proposals for budget cuts, and there was no push for a comprehensive deficit reduction plan along the lines of last year’s Bowles-Simpson debt commission, which proposed cutting politically explosive areas such as social security, Medicare, and individual tax breaks.

Instead, this is what Mr Obama proposed, which fiscal hawks may find underwhelming, but others may argue is perfectly consistent with a strategy designed to continue stimulating the economy now and begin to move in the direction of fiscal retrenchment at a later date. Read more

Tags: consolidation, government spending, North America, tax
Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink

Fiscal policy and Obama’s speech

January 24, 2011 4:25 pm by James Politi

President Barack Obama delivers his “state of the union” address to Congress on Tuesday night: it’s one of the biggest political events of the year in the US, in that it sets the tone for the legislative agenda and the big policy debates for the rest of the year.

Fiscal policy is expected to be at the heart of Mr Obama’s speech in 2011. From what we know at this stage, he will use the opportunity to call for new investments to boost America’s competitiveness in global economy.

At the same time, he will make an appeal for the US political system to start considering serious deficit reduction proposals to rein in the country’s debt burden, which is expected to balloon in the coming decades if no action is taken.

One big question heading into the ”state of the union” is what the balance will be between new spending proposals – from infrastructure, to clean energy technology to education - and deficit reduction initatives. Read more

Tags: consolidation, government spending, North America, stimulus, tax
Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink

In search of new policies for America’s worst-off

October 13, 2010 9:43 pm by James Politi

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 hit hardest in two areas: sun-belt states such as Arizona and Florida that were exposed by the housing boom and bust, as well as rust-belt states like Michigan and Ohio that were already suffering from the erosion of America’s manufacturing base. Interestingly enough, Texas and the Midwest, which bore the brunt of the 1980-1982 recession, managed to escape most of the pain this time around.

The worst-off communities in this cycle were the focus of a conference this morning organised by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, which conducts research on economic policy and counts Robert Rubin, former treasury secretary, and Roger Altman, former deputy treasury secretary, as senior advisers. Read more