Category Archives: New York Times

Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer is Fiscally Irresponsible!

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I am a candidate in the May 15 Nebraska Republican Primary for the U.S. Senate against the incumbent Deb Fischer because she is ignoring our enormous and out-of-control national debt.  In fact, she is doing much worse than just ignoring it; she is actively making it much worse.  For example:

  • Fischer voted for the new tax law which increases our debt by $1 trillion over ten years even after new growth is taken into account.  The main features of the new law are excellent but need offsets to avoid losing tax revenue.

  • The budget just approved by Congress and signed by President Trump, for this year and next, will increase the debt by $300 billion. It means that the deficit for FY 2018 will be $800 billion followed by $1.2 trillion for FY 2019 (see first chart).  In FY 2027, just ten years away, the annual deficit is projected to increase to $2.1 trillion (see second chart).

  • On Senator Fischer’s watch, for the six Fiscal Years 2014 – 2019, the new debt is likely going to be $4.5 trillion (just add up the totals for these years in the chart above). This means that by the end of her six year term in office, 20% of our entire debt of $22.5 trillion, will have been accumulated while she was in office!

Conclusion. The national debt now $20.5 trillion and growing rapidly, is by far our biggest long term problem. We badly need representatives in Congress who will stop ignoring this awful problem and start doing something about it.  That is why I am a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

The Key to Solving our Healthcare Cost Problem

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My last three posts: here, here, and here, are concerned with the high cost of American healthcare and how this is so closely tied in with our very large and badly out-of-control national debt. In particular, three giant American companies: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase are forming an independent healthcare company to try to hold down healthcare costs for their combined one million employees in the U.S.


Dr. Elizabeth Rosenthal, an MD and editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News, points out that this new company may help its own members but end up hurting the rest of us:

  • Previous efforts along the same line by Safeway and Boeing have held down costs for the companies own employees but are too small scale to have had broader impact.
  • The new company, much larger in size, may be able to negotiate lower prices from labs and hospitals for its own members. But then these same labs and hospitals will charge more for everyone else.

Moreover, in general, employer based healthcare insurance has lots of problems:

  • It diminishes incentives to reduce costs by insulating workers from the full price of their benefits.
  • It discourages changes that could displease even a small number of workers, thereby creating incentives to minimize disruption.
  • The pervasiveness of employer health insurance makes it more difficult for individuals to buy health insurance on their own, thus discouraging entrepreneurship.

Conclusion. Given the inherent flaws in employer provided health insurance, it is unlikely that more innovation by individual companies, or groups of companies, will lead to an overall solution to the exorbitant cost of American healthcare.
The solution lies in a different direction: ending or at least modifying the ACA’s employer mandate.  See here for details.  More later!

The GOP Tax Plan: Bad Economic Policy and Bad Fiscal Policy

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It is a very good idea to cut the top corporate tax rate to 20% or so from its current 35% level. This will make the U.S. competitive with other developed countries and encourage our multinational companies to bring their foreign profits back home for reinvestment in the U.S.  It will also encourage other foreign companies to set up shop in the U.S.
My last post, however, strongly criticizes the current GOP tax plan, now in Conference Committee, because it will add $1 trillion to our already huge debt:

  • Current national debt, at 77% of GDP (for the public part on which we pay interest) is the highest it has been since right after WWII, and is already predicted by CBO to keep getting worse, without major changes in current policy. When interest rates eventually return to more normal and higher levels, interest payments on the debt will skyrocket. And this will continue indefinitely, eventually leading to a new fiscal crisis, much worse than the Financial Crisis of 2008.

This means that the GOP tax plan, by adding an additional $1 trillion to our debt, is terrible fiscal policy. But the situation is even worse than this.  It is also bad economic policy:

  • Economic growth is finally becoming robust.  We now have had two quarters in a row of 3% growth. In 2015 median household income grew by 5.2% with another 3.2% added in 2016. Blue collar wages are beginning to take off (see chart).  The overall unemployment rate has dropped to 4.1%. Even the unemployment rate for Americans age 25 and older, without a high school diploma, has dropped to 5.2% (see second chart).

Conclusion. The last thing our economy needs right now is the artificial stimulus caused by a deficit-financed tax cut. It is likely to overheat an already hot economy and thereby ignite inflation which will force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates much faster than would otherwise be necessary.

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Responding to Economic Trends

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In my most recent posts I have been making the case that

  • The American economy is in basically good shape with a low unemployment rate of 4.2% and the likelihood of somewhat faster growth in the near future.
  • Income inequality and poverty are real problems, see here and here, but there are reasonable and effective ways to address them.
  • Rapidly accumulating debt is by far our most critical unsolved problem which is all the more frightening because our polarized political system does not seem capable of addressing it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has just released its projections of what the U.S. economy will look like in 2026.


The highlights are:

  • More dominated by the service sector amid the continuing erosion of manufacturing jobs (see two charts below).

  • More polarized in both earnings and geography (see top and bottom charts).

  • More tilted towards jobs which require at least a bachelor’s degree (see bottom chart).

The BLS report has several ramifications for public policy as follows:

  • Improved educational outcomes are needed all along the line: K-12 basic and vocational, training programs for the many skilled jobs going begging and also more low-cost college programs.
  • More low-skill immigrants, not fewer, are needed to take on the expanding number of low-wage jobs, such as caring for the growing numbers of elderly, which Americans are not willing to do.

Conclusion. These economic trends towards more earnings and geographical polarization could easily make our current political polarization even worse than it already is. This means it is all the more important to make sure that we keep speeding up economic growth, better address income inequality and poverty and get our gargantuan debt problem under control.

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Which Is Worse: Republican Hypocrisy about Debt or Democratic Complacency about It?

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My recent posts about the American Idea have argued that our country has a great future before it.  We have a strong and prosperous economy and are the world’s leading innovator.  Furthermore there are clear cut and effective ways to address the income inequality and poverty which hold back many Americans from fully sharing the benefits of our remarkably successful society.
But there is one huge problem our political system is ignoring which will lead to a major crisis if left unattended much longer.


I am referring, of course, to our gargantuan:

  • National Debt, now sitting at 77% of GDP (for the public part on which we pay interest), the largest it has been since the end of WWII. It is predicted by the Congressional Budget Office to keep steadily getting worse without major changes in current policy. Right now all of this debt is essentially “free money” because interest rates are so low.

Republicans are very good at deploring the debt but quick to forget about it, when it gets in the way of cutting taxes.  Note that:

  • Economic growth is created by tax cuts but only 10-20% of the lost revenue from tax cuts is offset by new growth.

Democrats, on the other hand, don’t take the debt seriously, except when arguing against Republican tax cuts. Debt deniers claim that the risk of government overspending is inflation, not bankruptcy. What they don’t understand is that

  • Interest rates will return to more normal (and much higher) historical levels eventually and, when this happens, interest payments on the debt will skyrocket by hundreds of billions of dollars every year. This will crowd out all sorts of spending on popular domestic programs. It is likely to lead to a new fiscal crisis, much worse than the Financial Crisis of 2008.

Conclusion. For all of our nation’s great strengths, we are in a very serious fiscal pickle, with no clear cut path of orderly resolution. Realistically our debt problem cannot be wound down without committed Presidential leadership and this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

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Avoiding the Extremes on Either Side

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Not only is Washington politics already hyper-partisan, but both parties are continuing to move to even greater extremes, see here and here.
Here are two examples of extreme positions now being espoused by major elements of one or the other of the two parties:

  • Single payer healthcare. The failure of the GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act this past summer means that (the goal of) universal healthcare is here to stay. The ACA expands access to healthcare but does nothing to control costs. Single payer, Medicare for All, would control costs but then we end up with socialized medicine. The only way to establish a cost efficient free market healthcare system is to remove, or at least limit, the tax exemption for employer provided care and to set up high deductible catastrophic care supplemented by health savings accounts to pay for routine expenses. This would compel everyone to pay close attention to the cost of their own healthcare.
  • Tax cuts instead of tax reform. Tax reform, i.e. lowering both corporate and individual tax rates, paid for by closing loopholes and shrinking deductions, is an excellent way to speed up economic growth and thereby create more and better paying jobs. But it is imperative to do this in a revenue neutral manner, i.e. without increasing our annual deficits. Our debt (the public part on which we pay interest) now stands at 77% of GDP, the highest it has been since the end of WWII, and is predicted by the Congressional Budget Office to keep getting larger without major changes in public policy.

Conclusion. The U.S. badly needs a more cost efficient healthcare system and a simpler and more efficient tax system. But there are right ways and wrong ways to do both of these things.  Single payer healthcare and (unpaid for) tax rate cuts are the wrong way to proceed.  In each case, no action at all is much better than getting it wrong.

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New Urgency in Deficit and Debt Control

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The general theme of this blog is major fiscal and economic issues facing the U.S. such as slow economic growth and huge debt. But our currently low unemployment rate of 4.4% and several trends, here and here, suggest that economic growth may already be starting to pick up.
This means that our huge debt, now 77%, for the public part on which we pay interest, the highest it has been since right after WWII, is now one of the very biggest problems facing our country.
Consider:

  • The only practical way to “solve” our debt problem (so to speak) is for each year’s annual deficit to be less than economic growth for that year. When this happens, then the debt will decrease as a percentage of GDP. If this pattern were to hold year after year, then debt would continue to shrink. This is exactly what happened from 1946 until about 1980 but since then the pattern has reversed and the debt has increased. It has grown especially fast since the financial crisis in 2008 (see chart).
  • The Fiscal Year 2017 deficit is $700 billion out of a total GDP of $20 trillion, which computes to 3.5% of GDP, well above the 2% annual growth of GDP for the 2017 FY. This means that our debt got worse in 2017.
  • Congress has already approved $15 billion in disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey. Now the White House is asking for $29 billion more ($12.8 billion for new disaster relief, especially for Puerto Rico, and $16 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program).  Congress has also approved a big increase in the Defense Budget, to $700 billion, for the 2018 FY.
  • Congress will soon be approving a budget for 2018 and then start working on a tax reform package. Given the likely increases in both military spending and disaster relief described above, it is now even more important for the new budget to show overall spending restraint and for the tax reform package to be revenue neutral.

Conclusion. Let’s hope that Congress gets the message about the new urgency of our debt problem and acts accordingly!

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Fundamental Principle for Tax Reform II. What to Avoid

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In my last post I made the case that the two fundamental principles for effective tax reform are:

  • Faster economic growth, to create more jobs and bigger pay raises.
  • Revenue neutrality, since more debt at this time is just too risky.

And then I went on to suggest the specific changes in the tax code which would achieve these goals:

  • Reducing the corporate tax rate to approximately 20%.
  • Full expensing for business investment replacing depreciation spread out over many years.
  • Simplification of rules for individuals such as fewer tax rates and fewer credits.
  • Achieving revenue neutrality by eliminating as many deductions as necessary to pay for the above tax rate cuts.

There are different ways to accomplish all this and I recently described one attractive plan put together by the Tax Foundation. The Republican Congressional Leadership (Big Six) has proposed a different plan which has been analyzed by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.  Unfortunately CRFB concludes that this plan will cost $2.2 trillion over ten years in lost revenue.  But it could be modified in the following ways to become revenue neutral:

  • The mortgage interest deduction is maintained but limited to one dwelling and $500,000, down from the current limit of two homes and $1 million.
  • The tax exemption for employer provided health insurance is limited. This not only increases tax revenue but also forces the 150 million Americans who receive health insurance from their employer to take an active role in holding down the cost of healthcare.
  • Drop the proposal of establishing a maximum “pass through” rate of 25% for business owners. Any such proposal would be subject to wide spread abuse. Businesses would be benefitting from the full expensing provision above and their owners should pay taxes at the same rates as everyone else.
  • Keep the estate tax until annual deficits are greatly reduced. It only brings in $20 billion per year but every little bit helps.

Conclusion. These common sense changes in the Big Six plan would make it revenue neutral and still capable of achieving a significant boost to the economy.

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How to Achieve Sensible Tax Reform

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Experts across the political spectrum agree that the U.S. tax code is a huge mess and needs to be reformed as well as simplified.  It is also generally accepted that lower tax rates will lead to faster economic growth.
As Congress turns its attention to tax reform, Senate Democrats have stated the basic principles which they would like to see included in any changes which are made:

  • Increase the wages of working families. This could be accomplished by lowering tax rates for all individuals across the board, paid for by eliminating (or at least shrinking) many of the personal deductions in the tax code. The approximately two thirds of all taxpayers who do not itemize deductions would then receive a tax cut, equivalent to a wage increase.
  • Promote domestic investment and improve middle class job growth. Lower tax rates will give businesses and entrepreneurs a bigger incentive to invest in business expansion and therefore grow the economy faster and create more new jobs.

  • Modernize our outdated business and international tax system. Our corporate tax rate at 35% is the highest in the developed world and, at the same time, produces below average revenue (see chart). Another reform would be to adopt business expensing (immediate tax write-off for new investment). Again, all such changes should be paid for by eliminating loopholes and shrinking deductions.
  • Any rewrite of the tax code must be deficit neutral. As important and valuable as tax reform is, it has to take into account our country’s most fundamental problem: our huge and rapidly growing national debt and therefore end up being deficit neutral overall.

Conclusion. The above principles, stated by the Senate Democrats, represent a sound approach to reforming the U.S. tax system. I hope that the Republicans are willing to recognize the validity of these proposals and include the Democrats in developing a bipartisan tax reform plan.

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The Need to Put Medicaid on a Budget

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The GOP healthcare plan, both the House version and the Senate version, are highly imperfect. Yet they each do one thing which is badly needed. They put Medicaid on a budget. The current open-ended Medicaid program, whereby each state is reimbursed by the federal government for a percentage of its costs (the average is 53%), would be replaced by an annual per-capita payment which would increase only at the rate of inflation. It is estimated that the new per-capita budget would reduce federal Medicaid payments by about 25% after 10 years.


In order to get the federal debt under control, all three major entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, must be reined in and the current GOP plan would start doing this for Medicaid.
Reining in spending like this will force states to alter the way they regulate and administer Medicaid and the New York Times columnist Ron Lieber points out some of the challenges which will arise if Medicaid has to operate more efficiently:

• Nursing homes. One third of people who turn 65 will eventually end up in a nursing home. Furthermore, 62% of nursing home residents cannot pay for nursing homes on their own. The average annual cost of a semi=private room is $82,000.
• Home and community-based care. Medicaid is required to pay for nursing homes and may also pay for home and community-based care which is much less expensive and lets seniors stay in their own homes.
• Optional services for low-income people and the disabled. Optional services besides long-term home care include dental care for adults, therapy for disabled children at school, prosthetic limbs and prescription drugs.

Conclusion. Changing Medicaid from open-ended funding to a strict federal budget which grows at the rate of inflation will put a large burden on state Medicaid administrators and require some difficult tradeoffs to control spending. But this is absolutely essential as a first step towards controlling the rapid increase of entitlement spending.

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