Category Archives: Long Term Debt

A Frightening New Look at the U.S. Debt Problem

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Let’s take another look at the Congressional Budget Office’s “An Analysis of the President’s 2014 Budget”.  On May 18, I pointed out that his budget projects a deficit of “only” 2% ten years from now in 2023, which amounts to a $542 billion deficit in that year, quite a large amount.
There is actually a clearer and rather frightening way to look at the continuing buildup of debt over the next ten years according to the President’s budget.  On page 4 of the CBO report, year by year projections are given for each of the following: Debt Held by the Public (on which interest is paid), Gross Domestic Product, Net Interest on the Public Debt, and Net Interest as a Percentage of GDP.  The actual amounts for 2012 are: $11.3 trillion in Public Debt, $15.5 trillion GDP, $220 billion Net Interest and 1.4% Net Interest/GDP.  These figures all steadily increase during the next 10 years with projected values for 2023 being: $18.1 trillion in Public Debt, $25.9 trillion GDP, $782 billion Net Interest and 3.0% Net Interest/GDP.
Here’s what is so frightening.  Right now we’re paying 1.4% of GDP as debt interest but GDP is itself growing at about 2%.  So we at least have a small net growth of .6%.  But the 1.4% interest for 2012 and 2013 is projected to keep growing steadily and reach 3% in 2023 and then to continue on growing indefinitely after that.  This means that either our growth rate continues to steadily increase and hits at least 3% by 2023, and then still goes even higher after that or else our economy will begin to stagnate and go backwards.
We are currently on a perilous course, caused by the enormous accumulation of debt over the past few years, on which we will have to pay interest in perpetuity.  It is an urgent matter to rapidly shrink deficit spending way down close to zero in the next few years.  We need to find more effective ways to boost the economy than the excessive public stimulus which has put us into this dreadful current situation.

Updated Budget Projections from the Congressional Budget Office

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The Congressional Budget Office has just released an update to its February 2013 Budget Projections.  The deficit for 2013 is now projected to be $642 billion, down from the previous $845 billion.  This is good news but its main effect will only be to delay by several months until fall serious negotiations about raising the debt limit again.  The long term outlook has changed very little.  New debt for 2014-2023 is now projected at $6.3 trillion.  The total debt this year will be 76% of GDP and in 2023 it is projected to be at 74% of GDP and rising.  Over the past 40 years total debt has averaged 39% of GDP.
Such a large debt level now and for the indefinite future obviously has very serious negative consequences.  As soon as interest rates return to more typical higher levels, interest payments will rise by hundreds of billions of dollars per year, crowding out much other spending.  We can be sure that a new crisis will occur sooner or later leaving national leaders at that time in a precarious position, unless the debt level shrinks significantly in the meantime.
This means that significant additional deficit reduction is still needed at the present time.  Realistically, it should come from reforming entitlement spending which is becoming an even bigger driver of our continuing debt explosion.  Any national leader who denies the seriousness and urgency of our current frightful fiscal condition should be considered irresponsible and held to account for this failing.
The presently high unemployment rate of 7.5% is no excuse for inaction.  The way to boost the economy, and thereby reduce unemployment, is to encourage more business investment with tax and regulatory reform.  Economic stimulation and deficit reduction are not in opposition to each other.  They can and should be addressed together at the same time.

The New York Times and Fiscal Austerity

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The New York Times is devoting a lot of space recently to debunking the Republican’s supposed campaign to inflict fiscal austerity on the United States.  My May 10, 2013 blog entry responded to an NYT article on May 9 entitled “Emphasis on Deficit Reduction Is Seen by Economists as Impeding Recovery”.  Now they’re at it again!  Today there’s an Op Ed entitled “How Austerity Kills”, by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu.  The authors state that “Recessions aren’t necessarily deadly.  But harsh spending cuts are”.
It needs to be pointed out over and over again, as often as necessary until it sinks in, that the current year’s federal budget does not represent a cut.  In 2012 actual expenditures were $3,538 billion while the 2013 federal expenditure budget, as estimated three months ago (in February 2013) by the Congressional Budget Office, is $3,553 billion.  This represents an increase of $15 billion from last year’s (2012) expenditures to this year’s (2013) estimated expenditures.  Holding down budget increases from one year to the next, at a time of enormous deficits, is exactly what our elected representatives ought to be doing.  If Mr. Stuckler and Mr. Basu want to argue that the sequester adjustments represent a poor way of holding back on large spending increases, then many Republicans, including myself, would agree with them.  Let’s definitely reduce spending increases in a more intelligent way!
But the larger issue is the question of austerity itself.  We’ve now had four years in a row of trillion dollar deficits and this year’s deficit is predicted by CBO to be $845 billion.  CBO projects deficits of $616 billion for 2014, $430 billion for 2015, and then annual deficits which start growing again (under current policy) and returning to the trillion dollar level by 2023.  This represents $7 trillion in additional debt by 2023 beyond the $6 trillion in debt already accumulated in the last five years.  To continue on this projected path is the height of irresponsibility!  And for the New York Times to refer to this amount of excessive spending as austerity is ludicrous, simply ludicrous!

Is Emphasis on Deficit Reduction Impeding Recovery?

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The New York Times reported on May 9, 2013 that “Emphasis on Deficit Reduction
Is Seen by Economists as Impeding Recovery”.  According to the reporter, “Tax increases and especially spending cuts, the critics say, take money from an economy that still needs stimulus now, and is getting it only through the expansionary
monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.  … In all of this time, the president has fought unsuccessfully to combine deficit reduction, including spending cuts and tax increases, with spending increases and targeted tax cuts for job-creation initiatives in areas like
infrastructure, manufacturing, research and education.”
The $845 billion deficit for the current year, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, hardly represents austerity, and is in fact a massive stimulus.  The president says that he wants “sensible” deficit reduction, but simply offsetting sequester
spending cuts and higher taxes on the wealthy with other spending increases and
targeted tax cuts as above, really amounts to no deficit reduction at all.
Most observers agree that it is entitlement spending, especially for Medicare and Medicaid, which is the main driver of the national debt.  Serious deficit reduction will not be achieved by further whittling away at discretionary spending, as wasteful as
some of it is.  The president has proposed changing the way the Consumer Price Index is computed, by switching to a “chained CPI” which will save the federal government about $30 billion per year.  This is a worthwhile change to make but represents a relatively modest savings by itself.
If the Democrats want to spend more money on “investments” and other forms of
fiscal stimulus, to try to speed up the recovery, they will have to get on board with serious reform of health entitlements.  The rapidly exploding national debt is a far too serious and urgent problem to ignore any longer.  The president might say that it should be addressed in a sensible manner, but postponement is no longer a sensible option.

Why is American Health Care So Expensive?

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In the May 5, 2013, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat “What Health Insurance Doesn’t Do”, discusses a recent Oregon Medicaid experiment which shows that the Medicaid program improves health outcomes only slightly even though it does help people avoid huge medical bills.  As Mr. Douthat goes on to explain, the Oregon result offers a valuable suggestion for how to make American health care overall much more efficient and less costly.
The problem is that our health insurance system does not function like any other type of insurance.  All other types of insurance such as for house or car protect only against actual disasters like a house burning down and not routine maintenance repairs which affect all of us on a regular basis.  In other words, health insurance could and should be restricted to very expensive treatments such as for cancer, for example.  Routine health problems, which affect everyone over a lifetime, even including end of life care, can and should be paid for with mechanisms such as health savings accounts, which can be rolled over from one year to the next.
A more elaborate discussion of the inefficiency of American health insurance, and how to fix it, is provided by David Goldhill in the NYT on February 17, 2013 “The Health Benefits that Cut Your Pay”, and also in his new book on health care referenced therein.
Clearly the cost of health care is a huge fiscal and economic issue for our country.  Health care entitlements, such as Medicare and Medicaid, are the main drivers of the national debt.  The rapidly growing cost of Medicaid is also a huge problem at the state level because it is crowding out support for other essential major programs such as education and infrastructure improvements.  The cost of private health care paid by employers holds back wage gains and is a major factor in the growing income inequality in American society.
It is time for Americans to demand action on health care costs from our national political leaders.  It is a problem which affects almost all of us and therefore should be amenable to a bipartisan solution in Congress.  We need to get this message out much more strongly!

The Long Run vs. the Short Run

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In a New York Times column on May 3, 2013, “Not Enough Inflation”, Paul Krugman writes that since we are now in a liquidity trap, where business is sitting on hoards of cash, what we need is more inflation.  A higher rate of inflation would encourage more borrowing and spending and make it easier to pay down debt.  Inflation is low because of the economy’s persistent weakness which prevents workers from bargaining for wage increases and forces business to hold down price increases.  He goes on to say that what we also need right now is “more stimulus, monetary and fiscal, to reduce unemployment” and that “the response from people who consider themselves wise is always that we should focus on the long run, not on short-run fixes”.  I think that Mr. Krugman has overstated his case as he so often does.
On May 4 the NYT “Off the Charts” columnist Floyd Norris shows that “Business Investment Rebounds Even as Recovery Drags”.  He looks at data for our four most recent recessions which shows that while consumer spending is growing slowly in our current recovery, and government spending (federal, state and local) is way down, business investment has been quite strong.  This is especially significant because the Stanford economist, John Taylor, has pointed out the amazingly strong inverse correlation between business investment and the unemployment rate.  (See also his more recent blog on February 4, 2013.)  This is a strong indication that the unemployment rate will continue to drop and perhaps even more quickly in coming months.
In summary: business investment in growing robustly, consumer spending is growing steadily, and quantitative easing (monetary policy) is just about maxed out.  Government spending is down but this is primarily because state and local governments have to balance their budgets.  So there is really only one policy lever left to further stimulate the economy, i.e. federal spending.
However this is where the long run matters at least as much as the short run.  With the national (public) debt currently at 76% of GDP and growing, it is simply too risky to let it go much higher.  In fact it is only prudent to begin reducing it as soon as possible.  Absent an unforeseen national emergency this must be our first priority.

Whither the American Economy? II

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In today’s Wall Street Journal the columnist Holman Jenkins, with “The Reinhart and Rogoff Distraction”, writes that “Washington has signally failed to enact confidence-building and growth-inducing reforms that would make its fiscal and monetary stimulus seem less reckless and more like part of a coherent therapy.  The real problem is the incentive of voters and their representatives to stonewall any serious adjustment to the status quo….Hardly has the time been riper for another reform spasm like the Carter-era deregulation efforts, Reagan’s tax overhaul, … The ill-timed Obama campaign to magnify the perversities of our health-care system epitomizes a failure of political leadership to do its part to make the global monetary Hail Mary come off.”
The Republican House can slam on the brakes to try to slow down excessive federal spending but there is not much else it can do by itself.  The Democratic Senate is showing that it can address important but less central issues like Gun Control and Immigration Reform.  But only the President can provide game changing leadership on our fundamental economic and fiscal problems.  His political base of liberals and minorities does not want either spending cuts or reduction in tax rates.  So he proposes spending increases, small adjustments to entitlements, and tax increases on the wealthy.  This amounts to a political posture in order to appear to be addressing important issues without really engaging on them.
What has Obama accomplished?  He has shown that a liberal can be elected President  but can’t govern effectively from the left.  What is the likely outcome?  A stagnant economy with a slowly dropping unemployment rate from now until 2016 when we’ll have our next chance to vote for a reform agenda.  Eventually our rapidly growing national debt will lead to a new fiscal crisis, much worse than the Great Recession which we’ve just been through.  However it probably won’t happen until sometime after 2016.  So Obama is temporarily off the hook, so to speak, but he’ll still catch much blame later on.
Oh well, what is life without challenges!

Whither the American Economy?

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Paul Krugman, writing in today’s New York Times, ”The Story of our Time”, says that “this is a time for above-normal government spending, to sustain the economy until the private sector is willing to spend again”.  On the other hand, Bill McNabb, the Chairman and CEO of the Vanguard Group, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Uncertainty is the Enemy of Recovery”, says that “there is…most significantly, uncertainty about U.S. fiscal policy and the national debt.  Until a sensible plan is created to address the debt, America will not fulfill its economic potential”.
So there you have it, our country’s two premier outlets for news and opinion putting forward contrasting views of what needs to be done to restore vitality to the world’s leading economy.  Do we ramp up government spending indefinitely in order to increase demand, paying little if any attention to the size of the national debt, until hopefully, before too long, private industry is willing to increase spending and investing for the future?  Or do we instead concentrate on establishing those policies which will directly and immediately give business leaders confidence that political leaders are willing to make the tough decisions needed to get our fiscal house in order?
This question is indeed the story of our time.  Getting the answer right will determine our country’s (and the whole world’s) fate for many years to come.

The Deficit Deniers Should Do the Math

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Barron’s Gene Epstein recently had a column entitled “The deficit deniers should do the math”.  He presents a chart from the Census Bureau showing that the percentage of the U.S. population age 65 and older, now 22.6% of the total of working age Americans, will hit 30% by 2023, ten years from now, and 36.6% by 2040.
Right now there are 4.4 people of working age supporting each senior citizen.  By 2040 this ratio will fall to 2.7 working age individuals supporting each senior.  If we’ve got trillion dollar annual budget deficits now, how in the world will we pay for Medicare and Social Security in 2040 when there will be so many more seniors to support?
The Congressional Budget Office predicts that, under current trends, budget deficits will fall to about $400 billion in the next few years and then begin to rapidly increase after that.  The Deficit Deniers conclude that the problem therefore isn’t urgent and so we can safely postpone action until the economy is more fully recovered before we start to worry about the deficit.  This is very short sighted indeed.
We’ve had an anemic 2% annual growth recovery so far from the recession which ended four years ago.  What if the recovery continues to limp along without picking up steam?  We’ll still have the same demographic time bomb to deal with a few years from now, and we’ll be in no better shape to deal with it then than we are now.
With a President and Senate Democratic majority unwilling to address our urgent economic (7.6% unemployment) and fiscal (enormous annual deficits) problems in a serious manner, without demagoguery, the outlook for progress is grim indeed.

How Can American Health Care be Reformed?

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The total cost of health care in the United States is roughly 18% of Gross Domestic Product, almost twice as much as for any other country in the world.  It is common knowledge that health care entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid are huge budget busters for the federal government and are a big reason why it is so difficult to get government spending deficits under control.  But the cost of private health care is also increasing rapidly and is a big contributor to the stagnation of middle class income in recent years.  In other words, the exorbitant cost of health care has a negative effect on the entire American standard of living and the problem is just getting worse and worse.
Everyone who is concerned about this problem should read David Goldhill’s new book: “Catastrophic Care:  How American Health Care Killed my Father – And How We Can Fix It” and can start with his article in the September 2009 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. He has an approach which should appeal to liberals and conservatives alike.  All American citizens would be covered from cradle to grave but “health care is fundamentally best left to the market to maximize innovation, quality and efficiency”.  The basic principle is that insurance would only be used to cover real risk rather than the certainties of life such as routine illness and the infirmities of old age.
This ideal is accomplished with a “Balanced Health System: health accounts, health loans, and catastrophic insurance with a very high deductible”.  Of course it will be complicated to switch over an entire health care system to a new operating framework.  Of course there are thousands of details to work out.  Of course there will be strong criticism of any such concrete recommendation for radical change.
The point is that our current system is unsustainable.  Do we change it in a deliberate, rational manner or do we rather delay until a fiscal crisis of some sort occurs?  It is encouraging that our national leaders are working together on such issues as immigration reform and stricter gun control.  But our economic and fiscal problems are much worse and more urgent than these social issues.  We need leaders who have the vision and capability to move us forward on addressing our most fundamental problems.