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Understanding President Obama’s Revenue Targets
President Obama and administration officials have offered two different revenue targets for the fiscal cliff debate: $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion (sometimes reported as $1.5 trillion). You might be...
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The Six Best Fiscal Cliff Videos
Are you suffering fiscal cliff fatigue yet? I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good fiscal cliff video. Here are six of the best, some wonky, some wacky. 1. David Wessel, Wall Street Journal:...
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Cartoon: The Politics of Carbon Taxes
Artist/Source: Tom Toles at Go Comics h/t: Greg Mankiw, A Cartoon for the Pigou Club
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Is the Trillion-Dollar Platinum Coin Clever or Insane?
Policy wonks are debating whether a trillion-dollar platinum coin would be a clever or insane way for President Obama to play hardball with Republicans in the upcoming debt limit battle. Here’s what...
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Debt Limit: Routine or the End of World?
The debt limit in simpler times: P.S. This is a repost from 2011.
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Treasury Puts the Kibosh on Platinum Coins
Ezra Klein reports an official statement from Anthony Coley, a Treasury spokesperson, killing the platinum coin strategy: “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law...
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Five Key Facts about the House Debt Limit Bill
On Wednesday, the House will vote on a bill to delay the upcoming debt limit showdown. The bill includes no spending cuts, no tax increases, and no platinum coins of unusual size. Instead, it will...
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Why Many Economists Favor Immigration
In today’s New York Times, Greg Mankiw offers a nice explanation for why many economists favor immigration: First, many economists, especially conservative ones, have a libertarian streak. Ever since...
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The Balanced Budget Amendment’s $300 Billion Error
The balanced budget amendment introduced by Senate Republicans yesterday contains a striking error. As written, it would limit federal spending much more than they claim or, I suspect, intend (I said...
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Should Economists Pay More Attention to Politics?
Economists often ignore politics when analyzing policy issues or view politics as a problem to overcome rather than as fundamental. When evaluating a carbon tax, for example, I try to tote up its...
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Smart Tax Reform Could Shrink the Government
Max Baucus and Dave Camp, leaders of the Senate and House tax-writing committees, are on the road promoting tax simplification. One goal: cleaning out the mess of deductions, exclusions, credits, and...
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Rajan’s “The Paranoid Style in Economics”
Raghuram Rajan, soon to be India’s chief central banker, has an excellent piece today dissecting “The Paranoid Style in Economics” and counseling humility for folks engaged in economic policy. A short...
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Ike and the 1953 Debt Limit Showdown
It’s debt limit season again. Treasury will soon exhaust all the “extraordinary” (if familiar) measures it’s using to stay within the limit. By mid-October, Treasury will have just $50 billion on hand....
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The 47% is Now 43% and Falling
Remember the 47%? Well, my colleagues at the Tax Policy Center just updated the numbers. For 2013, they estimate that the fraction of Americans not paying any federal income tax is down to 43%. Why?...
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The Costs of Debt Limit Brinksmanship
Today I had the chance to testify before the Joint Economic Committee about a perennial challenge, the looming debt limit. Here are my opening remarks. You can find my full testimony here. I’d like to...
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Actually, the United States Has Defaulted
Since the day of Alexander Hamilton, the United States has never defaulted on the federal debt. That’s what we budget-watchers always say. It’s a great talking point. One that helps bolster the...
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Should We Eliminate the Extraordinary Measures?
You’ve probably heard that Treasury will hit the debt limit on October 17 and soon thereafter it won’t be able to pay all of America’s bills. That second part is true: Congress needs to act...
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Time to Fix the Budget Process
Congressional negotiators are trying to craft a budget deal by mid-December. Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square asked twelve experts what they hoped that deal would include. My suggestion: it’s time...
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Three Things You Should Know About Dynamic Scoring
The House recently changed the rules of budget scoring: The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation will now account for macroeconomic effects when estimating the budget impacts...
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