This article is part of a a series of international responses to Policy Network‘s discussion paper In the black Labour: Why fiscal conservatism and social justice go hand-in-hand.

To most Americans, fiscal responsibility is a question of political morality. If Democrats allow the debate to be framed as a choice between more deficit spending and debt reduction, they lose

Much to the perplexity of US liberals, the politics of debt reduction dominated Washington in 2010, despite a faltering economic recovery.

No one was more incensed by the seeming illogic of this than Paul Krugman. The influential New York Times columnist railed often against “premature austerity” and urged President Obama instead to open the spigots of federal spending. It was the standard Keynesian prescription, but it betrayed a political tin ear. To a public alarmed by large-scale public borrowing and spending, it sounded like throwing good money after bad.

After 2007, US budget deficits ballooned as the Bush and Obama administrations spent heavily to bail out the big banks (plus insurance and auto companies) and counter the worst recession since the 1930s. The federal deficit, $469 billion in 2008, zoomed to an eye-popping $1.3 trillion in 2011. Coming on top of the Bush tax cuts and two costly wars, this emergency spending pushed the US national debt over 70% of GDP.

Had this torrent of spending – reinforced by generous doses of monetary “easing” – unlocked business investment and cut the jobless rate, all might have been forgiven. But it didn’t, and public apprehension about exploding debts amid a jobless recovery rose steadily, reaching a crescendo in the 2010 elections. Republicans swept House races and, lashed on by the Tea Party, stormed into Washington determined to cut government down to size.

Thus 2011 became a year of fiscal brinkmanship. First the government was almost shut down last spring when budget talks broke down. Then came the summer showdown over raising the debt ceiling, which ended when Obama blinked and agreed to GOP demands for spending cuts rather than let America default on its debts for the first time ever. In the fall, a bipartisan “supercommittee” that was granted extraordinary powers to rein in deficits failed to reach agreement, triggering automatic domestic spending cuts in 2013.

Despite such nips and tucks, US leaders thrice failed to come to grips with the structural causes of America’s debt crisis: tax revenues well below historic norms, and the rapid growth of public health and pension costs as the baby boomers throng into retirement. This ensures that the debate over how to control the national debt – $15 trillion and growing – will be front and centre in the 2012 presidential election.

The public’s top priorities are jobs and reviving US competitiveness. But fiscal discipline also matters to most voters, especially the moderates and independents who hold the balance in close races. Only by embracing both goals can progressives forge an electoral majority in 2012. If Obama and the Democrats allow the fiscal debate to be framed as a choice between more deficit spending or debt reduction, they lose. If instead they champion fiscal restraint and focus the debate on the fairest and most growth-friendly way to achieve it, they can win.

That’s because Republicans have painted themselves in a corner by refusing to raise any new tax revenue to help solve the debt crisis. Americans don’t relish paying higher taxes, but they do want their elected leaders to work together to solve the country’s problems. House Republicans have repeatedly put their anti-tax dogma before their responsibility to govern, and have seen their public approval ratings tumble as a result.

In contrast, Obama appears eminently reasonable in calling for “shared sacrifice”, which in practice means reducing the debt with a mix of spending cuts and tax revenues. He has also put Republicans on the defensive for opposing tax hikes on the rich, even to pay for tax relief for working families.

But Obama can’t let his own party off the hook, either. If Republicans are in denial about the need for higher revenues, Democrats have yet to get serious about the other side of the fiscal equation – slowing the unsustainable cost growth of the big “entitlement” programmes: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Washington has promised more to future retirees than it can afford to pay; the government recently put the funding gap at $34 trillion, many times larger than the entire US economy.

There’s nothing “progressive” about denying hard fiscal facts, yet many liberals cling to the habit of opposing any cuts in future benefits – even for wealthy Americans – as a breach of faith, if not a plot to kill social insurance in America. Not only is this stance blind to demographic and budget realities, it’s morally dubious as well.

If benefits for the elderly are deemed untouchable, then Congress will have to either raise taxes on everyone, including working families, or cut domestic spending to the bone, or both. Domestic spending (including defence) has already borne the brunt of the spending cuts agreed to last year. It is only 12% of the budget, but it includes all the key public investments progressives should be for – in infrastructure, education and workforce skills, science and technology – not to mention public health and safety and measures to alleviate poverty. To shield entitlements from cuts is, in effect, to give priority to retirees’ consumption over strategic investments in a more prosperous and equitable society.

There is little mystery over what it will take to solve America’s debt crisis. President Obama’s own Fiscal Commission says $4 trillion in debt reduction over the next decade is necessary to stabilise the national debt at around 60% of GDP. Hitting that ambitious target will require a political “grand bargain” in which Republicans accept increased tax revenues, and Democrats agree to trim benefits for affluent retirees in the future. Unfortunately, Obama’s reluctance to endorse his Commission’s blueprint has left his own party as well as the public in doubt about the depth of his commitment to fiscal stabilisation.

As the presidential race begins in earnest, Obama will come under growing pressure to offer bigger and more specific ideas for spurring economic growth and shrinking the national debt. He needs a concrete plan for restoring fiscal responsibility gradually, through a combination of tax and entitlement reform, while also boosting public investment. Properly sequenced, a “cut and invest” approach can attenuate the dilemma Krugman and others point to – the collision between the stimulative effect of public spending (and tax cuts) and the contractionary impact of fiscal retrenchment.

Adopting a 10-year framework for debt reduction will reassure nervous investors that Washington is determined to get its borrowing under control and protect the nation’s credit. By cutting debt service payments, it will redirect public spending from consumption to productive investment. It will reduce America’s dependence on foreign lenders (especially China) and rebuild the nation’s “fiscal reserve” so that it can borrow to meet future emergencies or downturns without plunging into Greek-style levels of debt.

The economic case for providing certainty about debt reduction is compelling. But most Americans don’t wear green eyeshades; for them, fiscal responsibility is a question of political morality. They see the nation’s runaway debt as emblematic of a corrupt political class that doles out slices of the public weal to privileged interests and rent-seekers in return for campaign contributions. The image of a bloated state that lives beyond its means powerfully buttresses the anti-government populism that resonates not only with Tea Partiers but also with the independent voters that progressives need to win back this year.

The good news for Obama is that the demands of economic growth and fiscal rectitude point in the same direction – away from America’s old economic model of debt-fueled consumption, towards a new progressive growth strategy based on higher levels of investment, faster innovation and expanded production.

Photo credit: Andrew.Speight

Have you checked your wireless bill lately?  You’ll see a hefty set of extra taxes on mobile service—taxes that are not imposed on any other good or service. These excise taxes represent a toll that state and local governments impose on their population of phone users. It is very tempting, at this time of tight budgets, to keep raising and raising the excise tax on wireless. After all, no one really wants to give up using their iPhone.

It is time to remove that temptation.

Congress is finally considering a bill that makes good economic and social sense – the Wireless Tax Fairness Act (WTFA). The WTFA will prohibit state and local governments from imposing any new discriminatory tax on or with respect to mobile services, mobile service providers, or mobile service property for five years from the date of its enactment. Currently, wireless tax rates average 16.3 percent nationally, two times the national sales tax rate, according to Scott Mackey, an economist who works on wireless tax policy. These taxes are paid by us, 300 million everyday consumers, and each of us pays an average $7.84 a month in wireless taxes, fees, and government surcharges.

Wireless taxes are a perfect example of how excise taxes can lead to distortions in the market, hurting consumers.  In fact, wireless taxes are more distortionary than other taxes, because of how narrow they are in scope, explicitly targeting wireless services (and therefore explicitly targeting the people who rely on wireless services). Further, demand for wireless services have been found to be rather sensitive to price, causing consumers to drop service as wireless taxes creep ever higher. This means that as taxes on wireless services increase, people will consume less – less of a service integral to everyday activities.

Worse, the market distortion caused by wireless taxes is particularly hard on poor and middle-income families. Studies by the Pew Foundation show wireless taxes are “regressive” in that they negatively affect poor and middle-income families more than the wealthy, as poorer families rely more heavily on wireless services for internet and phone access. So, not only do wireless taxes impose distortions on the entire population of wireless users, but they more negatively affect the people who struggle the most to pay for it.

Wireless taxes, unlike other “sin” taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, are simply a means for states and local governments to collect money for general funds with no other intended purpose. In other words, states and local governments are not imposing wireless taxes as a way to encourage less wireless use. Yet that is exactly what wireless taxes do.

Dissenters say states and local governments won’t be able to pay for basic public goods and services if the WFTA goes into effect. They argue states need all the money they can get in these tough economic times. But state and local government budget gaps should not be resolved at the cost of people’s ability to access wireless services. The idea of taxing people’s connection to the information economy, which allows people to be more productive and make larger economic contributions to society, makes no sense. It is in these tough economic times Congress should implement policies that encourage more wireless use, and more participation in the information economy of the future, not less.

Photo Credit: Jonathon Moreau

President Obama’s tax offensive may be aimed at energizing his despondent base, but it’s also touching a nerve with the broader public. A new Gallup poll finds that Americans overwhelmingly (66 percent) back the president’s call to raise taxes on families making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000.

Evidently, you don’t have to be a European-style social democrat to believe that the rich should chip in more to help get federal deficits under control. Grover Norquist take note: We are all class warriors now.

Official statistics on incomes explain why. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the top 10 percent of earners on average have seen their income grow a whopping 106 percent since 1979. Over the same period, those in the middle and lowest quintile have experienced meager income growth of just 15 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Moreover, IRS data show that the top 10 percent have received 42 percent of the total share of adjusted gross income earned between 1986 and 2008. Conservatives lament that high earners are also paying a higher share of their earnings in taxes. That’s true, but their income is growing faster than their tax burden. The share of income taxes paid by the top 10 percent increased by 28 percent from 1986 to 2008. (IRS tables)

In short, income gains over the past generation have been dramatically concentrated at the top. Modest increases in the tax burden borne by the top 1 or 2 percent of Americans will still leave them very well off compared to the rest of us. As President Obama has said, this isn’t class warfare so much as math.

But the math doesn’t tell us the best way to raise more revenue from the most affluent Americans. In thinking about this, progressives should keep two imperatives in mind. One is the need to make the tax code more pro-growth as well as more fair. The other is to make sure that tax reform advances the cause of debt reduction.

President Obama proposed on Sept. 19 to raise $1.5 trillion in new revenue as part of his plan to cut deficits by $3.3 trillion (not including the Iraq and Afghanistan draw down) over the next 10 years. His tax initiative has two main parts. First, it would cap the benefit from itemized deductions from 35 percent, the top marginal tax rate, to 28 percent for families with income of over $250,000 (200,000 for single-filers). This is not exactly a crushing new burden on the hapless rich. In fact, it would take us back to President Reagan’s 1986 tax reform, which dropped the top rate to 28 percent. The White House says limiting deductions in this way would raise $410 billion for closing federal deficits.

Second, the President’s plan would raise an additional $866 billion by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for high earners at the end of the year, while preserving them for middle class and low income families.

Both ideas are defensible on fairness grounds. But it’s not so clear that increasing income tax rates is the best place to look right now for more revenue. Politically, increases in marginal rates are probably a non-starter with most Congressional Republicans, who still genuflect to the supply side shrine. Even some Democrats, however, are leery about raising personal income tax rates in the midst of the current jobs crisis.

The alternative is the road taken by President Obama’s own Fiscal Commission. Its “modified zero plan” (analysed by Paul Weinstein and Marc Goldwein here) would raise $1.1 trillion over 10 years by eliminating or reducing tax expenditures. That’s a smaller number than the President’s. But most economists believe these backdoor spending programs introduce enormous complexity and distortions into the tax code. Curtailing them would promote economic efficiency and growth.

What’s more, the Commission’s plan uses the revenue to “buy down” both corporate and personal income tax rates, and to cut deficits. These rate cuts were crucial to attracting Republican support for a bipartisan compromise that combined tax reform and entitlement reform to reduce the debt by $4.2 trillion over 10 years.

This approach, also endorsed by the Senate’s Gang of Six, has one huge advantage over other tax reform schemes – it’s attracted bipartisan support. The President’s tax plan, on the other hand, seems calculated to embarrass Republicans rather than draw them toward a “grand bargain” on debt reduction.

In any case, the fiscal commission’s plan doesn’t just pinch the rich, although they benefit disproportionately from tax expenditures and loopholes. It also hits many middle class recipients of tax subsidies like the mortgage interest deduction and the exclusion for employer-paid health plans. As appealing as it is to insist that the rich pony up more to solve the debt crisis, there are practical limits from how much we can squeeze from high earners. In truth, our fiscal chasm is so deep that middle class taxpayers will have to up their contribution as well. Otherwise, we will have to make unacceptably deep cuts in domestic and entitlement spending to get the debt under control.

So by all means, let’s ask the wealthy to chip in more. But let’s also keep in mind that soaking the rich, by itself, won’t restore fiscal responsibility in Washington.

Photo credit: outtacontext