Some of you thought my recent complaints against uncompromising Republicans toward the fiscal cliff were somewhat one sided. It takes two to tango in the compromise game, of course. I would like to suggest a structural change in the U.S. budgetary rules that I think will help reduce our deficits and our debt while at the same time making government more effective. It shifts the focus of the debt reduction discussion from taxation to expenditures, which is the side of the equation on which the Democrats have been irresponsible and uncompromising. The Democrat controlled Senate has not even passed our government’s budget for the last three years.
The subject of taxation divides into its structure (what is taxed and how the burden is shared among the population—these are issues of fairness and the economic consequences), and its level (how much revenue is raised). Getting the structure right is very important for economic growth and for public acceptance of and cooperation with paying the taxes chosen. My views on taxation were reviewed four years ago: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/how-to-measure-the-size-of-government/ and more extensively almost 40 years ago: http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/29/.
My proposal, which is really a bit of left over unfinished business from the Reagan administration, is that the level of tax revenue should be set to pay for all of government’s expenditures over the business cycle. Deficits would be allowed during recessions (the so called automatic stabilizers), which would have to be paid for with surpluses during booms. I would like to see a constitutional amendment that imposes this requirement in place of legislated debt ceilings. If the public really wants more government spending, taxes will need to be raised to pay for it.
The focus on taxation, and the refusal of many Republicans to raise them, has been very counterproductive. The Republicans have done a terrible job of making the case for smaller government and I blame a lot of that on their emphasis on taxes rather than spending. If we insist that Obama’s spending programs must be financed by tax revenue rather than borrowing (except for automatic stabilizers during recessions – e.g., increases in unemployment insurance and the natural fall in tax revenue when incomes fall), people would start focusing on the fact that they will have to pay for these expenditures. It would make fighting for more restrained spending easier.
The government (federal, state and local) should be involved in some areas of our lives, but we should make the case for such involvements carefully because the nature of government, if not firmly and continuously resisted, is to keep growing. The defense industry in the United States is large and powerful. It has an obvious profit interest in seeing the government’s defense expenditures increase and it has the economic means to help influence such an outcome. The taxpayers’ representatives in government need the counter pressure those taxpayers can provide to evaluate defense spending and all other government programs carefully and to apply rigorous cost benefit analysis to every proposal.
Even then, it is well known in public choice literature that it is difficult for the diverse and defused public interest of taxpayers to dominate over the individual special interests of bankers, pharmaceuticals, farmers, teachers unions, etc. If these special interests are able to gain special favors from the government (e.g., farm subsidies) they benefit greatly but the cost is spread widely over all taxpayers. These forces push government to grow into activities that can harm the economic efficiency and growth that benefits us all. But they also invariably push and ultimately cross the boundaries of honest advocacy into blatant corruption. I expounded on this dangers in (at least) two earlier blogs:
https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/keep-it-lean/ and http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/17/ikes-farewell-address-fifty-years-on/
Liberal (in the classical meaning defined by John Stewart Mill) and democratic societies are the exception in history. They are not easily defended.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
Happy New Year.
Warren's space 