Would have been better if we had some revenue increases, but when the other side is willing to take us all over the cliff, you get what you can and we didn't do badly with this bill. The fact that emo progressives and teabaggers are pissed is good. When both of those two groups are unhappy, you know you're on the right track.
SILVER LININGSBackloadedMost economists would agree, now is a bad time to cut government spending. We're already seeing the contractionary effects of the end of the stimulus, and this just reinforces those.
The good news is that the near term cuts are quite small. Only about two percent of the nearly $3 trillion in savings outlined in this plan occur in the first year, and they don't all come from social programs. They also come from defense spending and other domestic programs. So its near-term impact on the economy will be pretty small. Of course, if the economy doesn't recover soon, the out year cuts will turn out to be very painful.
EnforcementAs explained at length on Sunday, most of the projected savings from this plan will come from a new Congressional committee, tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction, either from entitlement cuts, or tax increases or both. If that committee gridlocks, or Congress doesn't pass its recommendations, or President Obama vetoes that package, it will trigger automatic, broad cuts to both defense and domestic programs. Most of that will come from defense spending and from Medicare
providers. The bad news is, there's no tax revenue in the triggers, so no guarantee anywhere that the truly wealthy will have to contribute to deficit reduction. The good news is, the breakdown of this enforcement mechanism is fairly progressive, given that it's all cuts. It amounts mostly to a two percent cut for Medicare providers, and a whopping $500 billion in defense cuts over 10 years.
Programs for the poor and for veterans and Social Security and Medicaid are all cordoned off. The added bonus here is this means influential defense hawks, and the interests that back them, will do whatever they can to force the committee to pass a bipartisan fiscal plan, even if it means picking a fight with anti-tax Republicans. The other added bonus is that these "sequestered" cuts won't take effect until 2013 -- the same time the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire.The Bush Tax CutsThis plan contains zero guarantees that taxes will be raised -- more on that below.
But it's unexpectedly compatible with the White House pledge to let at least some of the Bush tax cuts expire, particularly those benefiting the wealthiest American. Here's why: When the new fiscal committee convenes, it will have free reign to look at both entitlement cuts and tax increases. The problem is that tax increases are scored by the Congressional Budget Office against "current law," which assumes the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts. So if the committee tries to end the tax cuts for the top earners, but make the rest of them permanent, it will score as a big tax cut and thus a budget buster. Not something a committee tasked with deficit reduction will want to touch. But that means the committee will have to look at other revenue raising options -- loopholes and expenditures that have nothing to do with the Bush tax cuts, say, or a new millionaire's tax bracket. But that also means the Bush tax cuts will survive this process in a way that almost guarantees they'll be set to expire at the end of 2012. That gives Democrats a lot of leverage if they want to pick a fight over those cuts with Republicans next year. History suggests they'll chicken out. But perhaps they won't.
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http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/the-four-big-problems-with-and-four-silver-linings-around-the-debt-limit-deal.php?ref=fpa
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