Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


FUNDING THE FEDS….Via Matt, Pete Davis reports on a lunch talk yesterday from spending guru Alice Rivlin:

Her most striking remarks were how forcefully she warned that we should undertake long-term deficit reduction measures now. Without them we will face rising interest rates before the economy has enough time to recover as foreign purchasers of U.S. Treasury debt balk at buying a lot more of it. She boldly asserted “Now is an excellent time to fix Social Security and Medicare.”

….Rivlin predicted we will need a new revenue source to cope with our long-run deficit problem, a value-added tax. I’m biased on this subject. I formulated House Ways and Means Chair Al Ullman’s VAT proposal in 1979. There’s no way to protect the poor and the elderly from such a tax, and it could become quite a money machine for a lot of government spending I would prefer to avoid. Rivlin has promoted a VAT for a long time because it is a more efficient tax and because it would harmonize our trade with the rest of the world, almost all of which has a VAT.

I have a lot of sympathy for Rivlin’s view. Here are a few random comments to add to what she says:

  • I’m all for fixing Social Security now if it will get the issue off the table once and for all. It’s a distraction. What’s more, the fixes needed are fairly minor and doing it while Democrats have a big majority is good timing. But — although the fixes can be legislated now, they should be scheduled to phase in slowly starting around ten years from now. The last thing we should be doing is pouring more money into the trust fund right now.

  • If we’re looking for a new revenue source that won’t hit us in the pocketbook immediately (while we’re in a recession), but will provide a medium and long-term funding source, how about passing cap-and-trade? Even if we move full speed ahead, the machinery takes a while to implement, which means it won’t start up until 2012 or so. And even if part of the revenue is rebated to low-income families, it still provides a steady and growing revenue stream after that.

    Oh, and it helps to keep us from destroying our planet, too. Just a little side benefit.

  • I’m a big fan of using a VAT (in addition to the payroll tax and other existing funding) to fund national healthcare. Economically, it’s a pretty good tax; it can be made progressive if it’s properly implemented; and it’s a universal tax for a universal program. More details here.

  • I am, oddly enough, not really in favor of vastly increased funding for other social programs. Some increased funding is OK, but it should be kept under pretty strict scrutiny — and not just on the generic grounds that all spending ought to be monitored carefully to make sure it’s effective and pruned away when it’s not.

    Here’s why. I’m obviously more open to high government spending than most conservatives, but even liberals think there’s a limit to how much of the economy ought to be under government control. Speaking for myself, I’d put that limit at 40-45% of GDP. Somewhere in the low 40s, anyway. Currently, total government spending (state/local/federal) is in the low 30s, which means we can afford to increase spending by about 10% of GDP. I figure that changes to Social Security will eat up about 2% of GDP and funding a true national healthcare plan will eat up around 7-8%. That doesn’t leave room for very much more, and even reductions in defense spending only give us another point or so to work with. So we should be pretty careful with other long-term spending commitments.

That’s my take, anyway. This is a pretty good time to be talking about these changes, even if they don’t get phased in immediately. We desperately need credible plans for future reductions of our current account deficit (which is tied to the federal deficit), and this is a good time to do it even if the plans don’t get phased in immediately. I expect Obama to kick off a rollicking discussion of this stuff later this year.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate