Tag Archives: Senate Budget Committee

When Will the Senate Budget Committee Majority Ever Learn About Sector Financial Balances?

By Joe Firestone

There are two words that describe the Republicans’ Senate Budget Committee’s proposed budget: “dishonesty” and “austerity” for most Americans. Let’s deal with the dishonesty part first. In due course, the austerity will be apparent.

The Senate Budget Committee’s statement, entitled “A Balanced Budget That Supports Economic Growth and Expands Opportunity for Hardworking Americans,” claims to support stronger economic growth, and provide greater opportunity. We might well ask “how much growth” “growth for whom” and “opportunity for whom?”

Certainly not for me and thee, since the Senate budget projects substantially decreased Federal outlays over the decade 2016 – 2025, compared to the CBO baseline budget. This decreased Federal spending comes from:

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Maya MacGuineas: The Profound Fiscal Irresponsibility of Resistance to Facts

Just as every Spring we can count on the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF) to do a supportive press release when the CBO issues one of its budget outlook 10 year projection reports, we can also count on being treated to public statements by Maya MacGuineas joining in the Peterson Army choir, warning about the coming debt crisis, and singing about the glories of deficit and debt reduction. And this while completely ignoring the real and sad consequences of deficit and debt reduction policies throughout the world since the crash of 2008, as well as previous applications to Latin American, Asian, and the nations of the disintegrated soviet empire, most notably Russia itself. Let’s look at Maya MacGuineas latest effort; her testimony to the Senate Budget Committee.

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Podcast: A conversation with Mike Norman

Earlier today, I appeared on Mike Norman’s podcast for a long conversation about how I became interested in MMT, my recent blog series on Bruce Bartlett’s testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, and a discussion of how the history of the platinum coin’s rise to public consciousness. The conversation was a lot of fun, since Mike and I both tend not to mince words. The podcast is posted on his site and is also below.

The “Debt Crisis” According to Bruce Bartlett: Generational Accounting

This is the last post in my analysis and commentary on Bruce Bartlett’s testimony to the Senate Budget Committee. There’s one very significant issue left to discuss, and that is the issue of fiscal gap and generational accounting and whether it should be institutionalized in legislation. I’ll begin this post with that discussion and then end the series with my overall evaluation of his effort.

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The “Debt Crisis” According to Bruce Bartlett: Household Analogy, Inflation, Savings, and Taxes

In the first two parts of this series of commentaries on Bruce Bartlett’s testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, I’ve reviewed the first 8 paragraphs in his statement. These points debunked various concerns of those who think the United States has a serious “debt crisis” it must handle before it takes on trivial problems such as its unprecedentedly high level of wealth inequality, lack of true full employment at a living wage, roughly 30 million people still lacking health insurance, one of the worst infrastructure systems in the developed world, transitioning from fossil fuels and ending climate change, creating a first class public educational system from pre-K through graduate school, ending the student loan crisis, creating a single standard of law for all, including the various categories of violators categorized as too big to prosecute by recent Administrations, and ending the student loan debt crisis, just to name a few.

However, what was noticeably missing from the variety of arguments given in his eight paragraphs was a recognition that the United States is a fiat sovereign nation and that this fact has serious implications for most of the subject matter Bruce Bartlett covers in his statement. In this post I’ll continue my analysis of his statement to explore the extent to which his views correspond to Modern Money Theory (MMT).

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The “Debt Crisis” According to Bruce Bartlett: Capital Investment, the “Debt Burden,” Fiat Currency, and the Debt Limit

This is the second in a blog series of commentaries on Bruce Bartlett’s recent statement to the Senate Budget Committee. The first post in the series discussed a number of his comments on aspects of the “debt crisis,” a crisis he and I both believe doesn’t exist. I discussed a number of his reasons for doubting the severity of any debt problem and related each of them to the capabilities of the United States as a fiat sovereign.

In this post, I’ll cover the issues related to capital investment, the debt burden, fiat currency, and the debt limit. I’ll begin with Bruce Bartlett’s statement on how capital investments ought to be treated in the budget.

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The “Debt Crisis” According to Bruce Bartlett: Fiat Sovereignty

Today, I’d like to offer the first of three commentary posts on Bruce Bartlett’s recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. Bruce Bartlett is a long-time veteran of the fiscal policy wars. He initially became known as a supply-side free market economist working for Ron Paul and then Jack Kemp in the 1970s. Later, he served as a senior policy analyst in the Reagan Administration, and then in the Bush 41 Administration as the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department. Since then he’s worked at conservative think tanks and as a well-known writer on economic policy and politics, becoming increasingly critical, first of the Bush 43 Administration and then of the increasingly rightward trend of the Republican Party. Today I think Bruce Bartlett is best characterized as a fiercely independent voice still respected in conservative circles, and also, among progressives such as Jamie Galbraith and Stephanie Kelton, but never afraid to call balls and strikes on any Administration or Congress as he sees them.

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