So I wondered when I awoke Thursday morning to news Congress had narrowly avoided crashing the economy by passing a temporary measure to fund our government and raise the debt ceiling. With this news, local TV stations were reporting Senator Charles Grassley had voted against the measure. (Steve King, unsurprisingly, did too.)
What’s up with that, Senator Grassley?
In a search for answers, I checked the Senator’s web site for a statement about his vote. Here’s a portion: “Government spending has exploded since 2008, increasing the national debt by $6 trillion. Obamacare is a drag on the economy and hurting workers' ability to find full-time jobs.”
This is false, or at best, misleading. Let me count the ways.
1. Government spending: A March 2013 article from the Economic Policy Institute titled, “Forget Spending Cuts, the U.S. Economy Really Needs a $2 Trillion Stimulus,” states:
“This economic forecast [CBO 2013-2023] showcases the results of the misguided framing and resolution of the ‘fiscal cliff’ debate and the more recent sequestration fight. Near-term deficit reduction intrinsically works against restoring full employment, and obsessing with medium- to long-term deficit reduction diverts policymakers’ focus from the jobs crisis at hand.”
2. National debt: In an April 2013 post entitled “Policy Basics: Deficits, Debt & Interest,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted: “Raising the debt limit does not directly alter the amount of federal borrowing or spending going forward. Rather, it allows the government to pay for spending on programs and services that Congress has already approved. Nor is the need to raise the debt limit a reliable indicator of the soundness of budget policy.”
3. As I’ve outlined in recent columns, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is funded mostly by cost savings and new revenue outside the appropriations process. Again, see Sarah Kliff’s post at Wonkblog on Aug. 30, 2012. Additionally, rather than creating a drag on the economy, the regulations under ACA will help control health care costs and thus help the economy grow long term.
4. Obamacare does not limit workers’ ability to find full-time jobs. Again, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities debunks this claim in a report posted earlier this month, stating in one subhead: “Data Don’t Support Claim of Big Shift to Part-Time Work. Instead the report points out: “The fact is, it’s too early to know how health reform will ultimately affect the amount of part-time work. But there’s every reason to expect the impact to be small as a share of total employment.”
Daily Kos diarist Mets102 wrote about voting for default in a post entitled, “162 Republicans to America and World: Drop Dead.” The post explained: “The global economic system is based upon the premise that the debt of the United States Government is, for all intents and purposes, a riskless investment. To call that premise into question is upend the global economy. Overnight, stock markets across the globe would crash. The retirement savings of tens of millions of Americans would begin to disappear, whether those savings are from 401k's and like vehicles or from defined pension plans. . . . The results that would flow from default would be catastrophic.”
Catastrophe – that’s what Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Steve King voted for. Not to stabilize the economy, protect the nation or help their constituents. They voted for the Tea Party.
Time to quit drinking the tea.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Monday, November 18, 2013
Friday, June 21, 2013
Workforce, government: Who sets our priorities?
One week ago yesterday, I was exiting the parking ramp at 7th and Grand Ave. in Des Moines at 7 a.m. Having parked free all weekend, I wanted to get out before I raked up any parking fees. As I approached the exit, I noticed the gate down and the attendant booth empty.
As I pulled to a stop, I scanned the messages and buttons across the self-serve terminal. Nothing fit except the “Press for assistance” button. So I did.
I immediately heard a dial tone and dialing. Moments later, I was talking to a nameless voice in an office who knows where. I explained my situation and he replied, “OK, I’ll let you out.” After listening to keys punching, I saw the arm rise and exited. Last time I’d used this parking ramp, an attendant had been present to answer my questions and let me through the gate.
This incident brought to mind a response I received to my column about living wages for workers. The reader stated wages reflect the value of the work and claimed the minimum wage drove small businesses to close their doors. His example was the loss of full service gas stations.
I found it a strange coincidence that when I shared this reader’s views the next day with a friend from Clarinda, she retorted, “It wasn’t the minimum wage. It was Casey’s. People decided they wanted soda and cigarettes instead of service.”
She came to her conclusion via the experience of her father and grandfather who owned several service stations in southwest Iowa during the period we went from full to self service gas stations.
Which leads me to ask, who sets our priorities? Did we really decide we wanted to pump our own gas or did someone else decide there was more profit in selling soda and cigarettes? Did the parking company decide they could increase profits with fewer employees? Because I know from my days as a corporate manager and school board director, people (employees) are usually one of the biggest expenses.
But I think maybe we are hitting the law of diminishing returns. If we don’t employ people to work, people will not have money to purchase goods and services.
Unfortunately, Americans have come to see business as the economy, rather than as one sector. Healthy economies also have healthy government, military, non-profit and religious sectors. But we’ve been led to believe business drives everything.
Likewise, we’ve been taught to believe government has a spending problem; in fact, that government IS our problem. But as a recent Facebook infographic of the lastest collapsed bridge notes, “We DON’T have a spending problem. We DO have a priorities problem.”
So maybe we should ask who is setting those priorities. Are we citizens demanding fair wages and government policies to benefit people? Or are we allowing someone else to call the shots? Because as my husband once said to me, “Cherie, I can’t read your mind.”
What we do matters. We can choose to shop locally at stores that employ people to bag our groceries and at farmers markets with products from local growers. We can read news from many sources instead of listening to or watching only our favorite talking heads. We can vote. We can contact our government representatives – local, state and federal – about matters that concern us. If our church and other organizations are important to us, we can support them with our time and money. If we believe workers should be treated fairly, we can join a union.
Simply put, we can act. So, what are you doing to help set our priorities?
As I pulled to a stop, I scanned the messages and buttons across the self-serve terminal. Nothing fit except the “Press for assistance” button. So I did.
I immediately heard a dial tone and dialing. Moments later, I was talking to a nameless voice in an office who knows where. I explained my situation and he replied, “OK, I’ll let you out.” After listening to keys punching, I saw the arm rise and exited. Last time I’d used this parking ramp, an attendant had been present to answer my questions and let me through the gate.
This incident brought to mind a response I received to my column about living wages for workers. The reader stated wages reflect the value of the work and claimed the minimum wage drove small businesses to close their doors. His example was the loss of full service gas stations.
I found it a strange coincidence that when I shared this reader’s views the next day with a friend from Clarinda, she retorted, “It wasn’t the minimum wage. It was Casey’s. People decided they wanted soda and cigarettes instead of service.”
She came to her conclusion via the experience of her father and grandfather who owned several service stations in southwest Iowa during the period we went from full to self service gas stations.
Which leads me to ask, who sets our priorities? Did we really decide we wanted to pump our own gas or did someone else decide there was more profit in selling soda and cigarettes? Did the parking company decide they could increase profits with fewer employees? Because I know from my days as a corporate manager and school board director, people (employees) are usually one of the biggest expenses.
But I think maybe we are hitting the law of diminishing returns. If we don’t employ people to work, people will not have money to purchase goods and services.
Unfortunately, Americans have come to see business as the economy, rather than as one sector. Healthy economies also have healthy government, military, non-profit and religious sectors. But we’ve been led to believe business drives everything.
Likewise, we’ve been taught to believe government has a spending problem; in fact, that government IS our problem. But as a recent Facebook infographic of the lastest collapsed bridge notes, “We DON’T have a spending problem. We DO have a priorities problem.”
So maybe we should ask who is setting those priorities. Are we citizens demanding fair wages and government policies to benefit people? Or are we allowing someone else to call the shots? Because as my husband once said to me, “Cherie, I can’t read your mind.”
What we do matters. We can choose to shop locally at stores that employ people to bag our groceries and at farmers markets with products from local growers. We can read news from many sources instead of listening to or watching only our favorite talking heads. We can vote. We can contact our government representatives – local, state and federal – about matters that concern us. If our church and other organizations are important to us, we can support them with our time and money. If we believe workers should be treated fairly, we can join a union.
Simply put, we can act. So, what are you doing to help set our priorities?
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Will we make an informed choice?
Ok, I admit it. I’m ticked off about the debate. Why?
Not because media pundits, who live for a good figurative shoving match, gave Round 1 to Romney. I’m angry because I see an unengaged citizenry refusing to acknowledge this stuff matters.
What set me off? Facebook.
Yeah, I know it’s a social networking site. People routinely post stupid things. I annoy people by sharing articles with an alternative perspective on politics and religion. I’m well aware most are probably ignored. But as one of my college professors used to say, “Even a blind pig occasionally finds an acorn.” Sometimes I get a person’s attention.
But I blew a gasket the morning after the debate because too many intelligent people I know refused to watch. Really, you’re going to opt for Honey Boo Boo?
Is it any wonder the American people get nothing from their representation in government?
The whole idea of a democracy is citizen involvement, but when citizens refuse to do their work, they have no right to complain about the product. Americans only want to show up every four years for the main event – the election of the President. And then the best we bring is some vague impression of who is “likeable” or “presidential.”
If we know anything about policy or the issues, it probably comes from an ad – TV or direct mail, like the one I received from the Romney campaign recently.
In the past year, both my husband and I were inexplicably registered as Republicans. The only response I got when I marched into the auditor’s office to correct that error was a shrug and a “wishful thinking, I guess.”
As a consequence, we now get Obama and Romney campaign literature. I tend to toss both, preferring to use my own research to evaluate records. However, this flier caught my attention, first, with a large photo of president Obama.
Next came the headline: “President Obama will continue to grow government. More runaway spending. High taxes. More jobs lost.”
That stopped me before I made it to the trash can because these claims are wrong.
First, let’s take the claim President Obama has grown government with runaway spending.
As Factcheck.org notes: “The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office.” http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/ Yet this article goes on to explain at length the complexity of government spending and our current situation, making it clear no one party is to blame.
Second, will taxes increase under President Obama? Well, as this article on Think Progress notes, income taxes under Obama are at an historic low. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/11/514384/taxes-30-year-low-obama/?mobile=nc%C2%A0 Factcheck backs that up. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/tax-facts-lowest-rates-in-30-years/
And in the future? Well, the Romney flier didn’t specify which taxes, but I’d guess they are including the cost of the Affordable Care Act. Again, I’ll defer to Factcheck: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/biggest-tax-increase-in-history/. Brooks Jackson writes: “In short, there are too many moving parts in both the ACA and in earlier tax laws to make simple comparisons that are valid for all purposes. . . . Despite all these uncertainties, one thing is abundantly clear. There’s no way the ACA’s tax and other revenue increases come close to being the largest in U.S. history.”
Finally, declaring President Obama will lose more jobs denies reality given reports this month that indicate he may finish this term with net job creation, as this Bloomberg article outlines: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-27/payroll-revisions-signal-economy-has-created-jobs-under-obama.html The Romney ad’s claim also makes no reference to the horrible economic conditions President Obama inherited. To deny his efforts to prevent greater economic turmoil is to deny reality.
But then acknowledging reality would mean admitting policies under the previous Republican administration led to the current economic uncertainty.
As Stephen Colbert once said, “It is a well known fact that reality has a liberal bias.” Unfortunately too many citizens pretend what they do won’t make any difference, so they can watch crappy reality TV without guilt.
If you plan to vote, do your homework.
Not because media pundits, who live for a good figurative shoving match, gave Round 1 to Romney. I’m angry because I see an unengaged citizenry refusing to acknowledge this stuff matters.
What set me off? Facebook.
Yeah, I know it’s a social networking site. People routinely post stupid things. I annoy people by sharing articles with an alternative perspective on politics and religion. I’m well aware most are probably ignored. But as one of my college professors used to say, “Even a blind pig occasionally finds an acorn.” Sometimes I get a person’s attention.
But I blew a gasket the morning after the debate because too many intelligent people I know refused to watch. Really, you’re going to opt for Honey Boo Boo?
Is it any wonder the American people get nothing from their representation in government?
The whole idea of a democracy is citizen involvement, but when citizens refuse to do their work, they have no right to complain about the product. Americans only want to show up every four years for the main event – the election of the President. And then the best we bring is some vague impression of who is “likeable” or “presidential.”
If we know anything about policy or the issues, it probably comes from an ad – TV or direct mail, like the one I received from the Romney campaign recently.
In the past year, both my husband and I were inexplicably registered as Republicans. The only response I got when I marched into the auditor’s office to correct that error was a shrug and a “wishful thinking, I guess.”
As a consequence, we now get Obama and Romney campaign literature. I tend to toss both, preferring to use my own research to evaluate records. However, this flier caught my attention, first, with a large photo of president Obama.
Next came the headline: “President Obama will continue to grow government. More runaway spending. High taxes. More jobs lost.”
That stopped me before I made it to the trash can because these claims are wrong.
First, let’s take the claim President Obama has grown government with runaway spending.
As Factcheck.org notes: “The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office.” http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/ Yet this article goes on to explain at length the complexity of government spending and our current situation, making it clear no one party is to blame.
Second, will taxes increase under President Obama? Well, as this article on Think Progress notes, income taxes under Obama are at an historic low. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/11/514384/taxes-30-year-low-obama/?mobile=nc%C2%A0 Factcheck backs that up. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/tax-facts-lowest-rates-in-30-years/
And in the future? Well, the Romney flier didn’t specify which taxes, but I’d guess they are including the cost of the Affordable Care Act. Again, I’ll defer to Factcheck: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/biggest-tax-increase-in-history/. Brooks Jackson writes: “In short, there are too many moving parts in both the ACA and in earlier tax laws to make simple comparisons that are valid for all purposes. . . . Despite all these uncertainties, one thing is abundantly clear. There’s no way the ACA’s tax and other revenue increases come close to being the largest in U.S. history.”
Finally, declaring President Obama will lose more jobs denies reality given reports this month that indicate he may finish this term with net job creation, as this Bloomberg article outlines: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-27/payroll-revisions-signal-economy-has-created-jobs-under-obama.html The Romney ad’s claim also makes no reference to the horrible economic conditions President Obama inherited. To deny his efforts to prevent greater economic turmoil is to deny reality.
But then acknowledging reality would mean admitting policies under the previous Republican administration led to the current economic uncertainty.
As Stephen Colbert once said, “It is a well known fact that reality has a liberal bias.” Unfortunately too many citizens pretend what they do won’t make any difference, so they can watch crappy reality TV without guilt.
If you plan to vote, do your homework.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
What about that deficit?
I’ve heard a lot about the deficit and our national debt the last five years. And I’m tired of people trotting out the canard about how irresponsible we’d be if we “ran our household budget like the government budget.” Even President Obama has made this terrible comparison. It’s apples to oranges, to use another cliché.
First and foremost, do we get to print money and set interest rates? I think not. Yet our government can do these things to respond to economic conditions.
Second, how many of us can make it through life without acquiring debt to pay for an education, automobile or house? I congratulate you if you have the resources to simply write a check. But for most of us, this type of debt is reasonable and manageable if we are employed and sensible with our dollars.
But government debt is a completely different beast because government controls monetary policy and government spending is actually independent of government debt. Counterintuitive, isn’t it?
Next, look at history. Deficits simply reflect current economic activity. Because our economy is depressed, our deficit is larger. When economic activity increases, we’ll see the deficit drop.
How to increase economic activity? Well, employing people would help, but we’ve not seen our “job creators” pony up money to expand and hire. Instead, they’re hoarding their money or investing elsewhere.
History shows that in situations like the present, government spending to support people via employment and social programs helps get the economy going. Of course in the 30s, direct employment programs were also effective. And for all you folks who believe World War II, and not FDR’s social programs, ended the Depression, I’d note the war created government spending -- just on the war effort.
Right now Europe is tumbling into a double-dip recession because in their single-minded focus on debt, they have cut spending to the bone. Austerity rules, and it’s creating instability, not growth.
America, particularly our Congress, needs to take note. To keep our economy moving, government is the only entity large enough to take appropriate action.
And as Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes, stabilizing our economy involves other factors, most notably rising health care costs. “In the long run, the single largest contribution to deficit reduction will need to come from slowing the rate of growth of health care costs throughout the U.S. health care system, in the public and private sectors alike. A slower rate of health care cost growth will produce substantial budgetary savings in areas ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the tax exclusion for employer-based health coverage,” he writes.
So the whole thing is complicated and simple sound-bite solutions like a balanced budget amendment or cutting social programs or cutting taxes won’t work.
Develop a better understanding of government debt and the deficit by reading -- instead of listening to TV talking heads.
Start with “Deficit Dogma Debunked” by Marshall Auerback at: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/deficit_dogma_debunked/. Then dig deeper with Greenstein’s article, “A Framework for Deficit Reduction: Principles and Cautions” at: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3435.
First and foremost, do we get to print money and set interest rates? I think not. Yet our government can do these things to respond to economic conditions.
Second, how many of us can make it through life without acquiring debt to pay for an education, automobile or house? I congratulate you if you have the resources to simply write a check. But for most of us, this type of debt is reasonable and manageable if we are employed and sensible with our dollars.
But government debt is a completely different beast because government controls monetary policy and government spending is actually independent of government debt. Counterintuitive, isn’t it?
Next, look at history. Deficits simply reflect current economic activity. Because our economy is depressed, our deficit is larger. When economic activity increases, we’ll see the deficit drop.
How to increase economic activity? Well, employing people would help, but we’ve not seen our “job creators” pony up money to expand and hire. Instead, they’re hoarding their money or investing elsewhere.
History shows that in situations like the present, government spending to support people via employment and social programs helps get the economy going. Of course in the 30s, direct employment programs were also effective. And for all you folks who believe World War II, and not FDR’s social programs, ended the Depression, I’d note the war created government spending -- just on the war effort.
Right now Europe is tumbling into a double-dip recession because in their single-minded focus on debt, they have cut spending to the bone. Austerity rules, and it’s creating instability, not growth.
America, particularly our Congress, needs to take note. To keep our economy moving, government is the only entity large enough to take appropriate action.
And as Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes, stabilizing our economy involves other factors, most notably rising health care costs. “In the long run, the single largest contribution to deficit reduction will need to come from slowing the rate of growth of health care costs throughout the U.S. health care system, in the public and private sectors alike. A slower rate of health care cost growth will produce substantial budgetary savings in areas ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the tax exclusion for employer-based health coverage,” he writes.
So the whole thing is complicated and simple sound-bite solutions like a balanced budget amendment or cutting social programs or cutting taxes won’t work.
Develop a better understanding of government debt and the deficit by reading -- instead of listening to TV talking heads.
Start with “Deficit Dogma Debunked” by Marshall Auerback at: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/deficit_dogma_debunked/. Then dig deeper with Greenstein’s article, “A Framework for Deficit Reduction: Principles and Cautions” at: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3435.
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