The Budget Outlook: Updates and Implications

[54anickel]

http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/views/papers/gale/20040129.pdf

snip>
Faced with difficult choices, policy-makers often resort to one of three options: invoke the benefits of economic growth, delay action, or resort to budget gimmicks. However appealing they may seem to politicians, none of these options would address the underlying problem.

snip>
Given the facts above, the temptation to turn to budget gimmicks may prove overwhelming. Policy makers and the public should be especially aware of at least four tricks:
(a) policies that significantly raise long-term deficits;
(b) policies that can reduce short-term deficits but significantly raise long-term deficits -- the President’s proposals to make the 2001-3 tax cuts permanent and to create Lifetime Saving Accounts and Retirement Saving Accounts, for example, fit into this framework;
(c) policies that shift attention away from long-term fiscal challenges -- for example, focusing on a 5-year budget window; and
d) policies that allow politicians to ignore budget issues -- such as not reinstating budget rules that require spending and tax changes to be self-financing.

[KoKo]

1. It's so complicated.......OyVey! Whatever they are concocting......

makes one's head hurt. All we know is that Grover Norquist and his aim to put the Gov't in his bathtub...is running the "whole show" for this "Regime." So, "bar the door" they will take it all and they will be lying and "cooking numbers" all the was to that door......

[54anickel]

2. Ya, and it's dated 1/29 so I don't know if Shrubs latest foobar numbers

for Medicare are in there. Then there's todays announcment of needing more $$$ for the "war". But what's a few billion here or there when you're talking trillions of dollars?