UPDATE: Jason Linkins at one of the non-Breast-Enhanced sites of the Huffington Post did a burlesque of which I can only dream on the same piece. Via Chris Hayes’s Twitter feed (and he got it from David Sirota), the following is from “No more ‘me first’ mentality on entitlements“: While it does not happen often, […]
Mark Thoma posted yesterday Is Galbraith Right that Deficits are Never a Problem? on Paul Krugman’s NYT piece I Would Do Anything For Stimulus, But I Won’t Do That (Wonkish) on MMT and soveriegn debt (using Angry Bear’s posting of Jamie Galbraith’s testimony to Congress as a link), and has included Jamie Galbraith’s response. It […]
Hat tip reader ilsm for this article by Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg.com July 6, 2010 U.S. spending on weapons through 2016 likely will grow faster than the overall defense budget, which will have annual increases of only about 1 percent above inflation, according to Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale. “Our goal would be to get […]
Hat tip reader 1Watt,Hermit Democratic Underground and New Deal 2.0. Testimony is public domain…here it is in entirety. Statement to the Commission on Deficit ReductionJames K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr., Chair in Government/BusinessRelations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at AustinJune 30, 2010 Mr. Chairmen, members of the commission, […]
by Bruce Webb CBO Director’s Blog summary of Long Term Budget Outlook (Interesting side comment: “Later this week, CBO will release a report on a number of different policy options for changing Social Security”). Elmendorf, not surprising given his history and current job, is fully on the side of the deficit hawk/hysterics. Report text (1.2MB […]
by Bruce Webb High on the list of tasks mandated of the Obama Deficit Commission is to get the deficit down to 3% of GDP by 2015. Unfortunately for them they have set up a situation where they can’t move that number via cuts to Social Security, if anything such cuts more one of their […]
by Bruce Webb Reader BuffPilot has been asking Angry Bear for awhile now to post the following graphhttp://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/If you follow the link you will see that Heritage updated it with new CBO and OMB data this year. That is below the fold.http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/05/past-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-pictures/ Which I will amplify with the actual CBO Tablehttp://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Chapter1.shtml I am not sure […]
Note: This is “what I believe I said,” not“what I would have said” and is presented here solely to document the confluences that were, perhaps, clearer in my head than they were in the presentation itself. As such, several references here are echoes of earlier pieces of the presentation. (Links to same will be updated […]
by Bruce Webb Well it looks like we are going to get a Deficit Commission and one way or another Social Security will be on the table. But what exactly does that mean for either Social Security or the total deficit picture? Before answering that lets review a couple of basics. In talking deficit reduction […]
CBO: At 9.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), that deficit would be slightly smaller than the shortfall of 9.9 percent of GDP ($1.4 trillion) posted in 2009. [emphasis mine] A 7.1% decline in real GDP terms isn’t just “slightly smaller”; it’s a real improvement that is greater than any (mythical or not) “spending freeze” […]