–Deficit neutral vs. revenue neutral: This is really important and while the distinction is straightforward, I’m seeing some confusion out there. The R’s get this and they’re clearly, though subtly, shifting their rhetoric from rev neutrality to deficit neutrality. To pass their tax cuts under budget rules that allow them to evade a Senate filibuster,… Read more
Archive for the ‘Fiscal Policy’ Category
A few links: eroding norms and the limits of presidents re the economy
I’ve had a couple of WaPo posts out to which I’ve been meaning to link. This first one, on the warp speed of norm erosion in the Trump era, has the interesting feature that its shelf life was vastly shortened by the Mooch getting the bootch later in the very day I posted. Of course,… Read more
One more point about the KS legislature’s KO (Kansas Override) of supply-side tax cuts
I’ve been citing the KO–the Kansas legislature’s override of Gov. Brownback’s veto, thus pulling the plug on the state’s failed experiment with supply-side tax cuts–ever since I heard about it, as have many others. The story raises welcome hopes that moderate R’s might be waking up to the fiscal reality that many constituents value public goods… Read more
Politically motivated attacks on the CBO from team Trump?! I’m shocked…
Over at WaPo, but I suspect OTE readers will have thoughts to add on this one. I myself often mix it up with CBO re assumptions/results. Recall a set of pieces on both their minimum wage and overtime rule scores. But I very much value their integrity and their critical role as our non-partisan score… Read more
Catching up on some links…
…to stuff in faraway lands. EG, here’s a piece in the NY Daily News wherein I argue that for all the voices proclaiming that Trump’s really nasty and thoroughly mathematically challenged first budget is “dead-on-arrival” in the Congress, that’s unfortunately not quite accurate. Why not? Because “virtually every priority in Trump’s budget is one that Republicans… Read more