Category Archives: Debt and deficits

Listening to Eeyore in boom times

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There’s been a lot of supposedly good economic news lately, which means someone needs to be that guy – the Eeyore guy. Eeyore is needed to balance out the Tiggers.

In case your “Winnie the Pooh” is a little rusty, Eeyore is the pessimistic donkey who sees the cloud in every silver lining. Tigger is the optimistic, enthusiastic tiger who bounces around and is pretty full of himself.

I bring up those two characters in light of this week’s announcement that Arkansas state government is enjoying a $44.2 million surplus this fiscal year with one month to go, and has collected about $160 million more than last year.

That’s good news, and it comes amidst a prosperous national economy – indeed, a global one. We are now in the midst of the nation’s second longest economic expansion on record, though records don’t go back far. This expansion began in June 2009 in the bottom of the Great Recession. If we make it to July 2019, it will become the longest.

But economies that go boom eventually go bust, and so will this one. In the foreseeable future, the expansion will run out of steam and then we’ll be in a slowdown, or something bad will really shock the system like the banking crisis of a decade ago. Continue reading →

A pledge to reject debt and protect future taxpayers

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan BydlakBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Members of Congress shouldn’t be signing pledges. They take an Oath of Office to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office,” and that should be enough.

But if they’re going to sign a pledge not to raise taxes, they ought to sign another one promising to hold down spending. And if they’re going to abide by the first, they should abide by the second.

Forty-six senators and 208 House members have signed Americans for Tax Reform’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” promising not to raise taxes. According to the organization’s website, all six members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation have signed it. It’s been a powerful force in American politics. Signers have been reluctant to do anything that might be perceived as violating it, such as letting fuel taxes rise with inflation to pay for highways. In the meantime, Congress enthusiastically has cut taxes, as all six members of Arkansas’ delegation voted to do in December.

Continue reading →

A sham vote, and why it happened

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendmentBy Steve Brawner

© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The U.S. House of Representatives last week played politics with a serious issue. You should not be disappointed if your congressman participated. You should only be disappointed if he brags about it.

And then more importantly, you should ask yourself why it happened.

Continue reading →

Dark days for deficit hawks

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawksWhat label do you assign yourself politically? Liberal? Conservative? Something else? Some of us consider ourselves to be “deficit hawks.” And for us, these are dark days.

For deficit hawks, reducing the federal budget deficit is a top priority, even amidst all the other priorities that clamor for attention. Some of us believe that if something is worth having, then it’s worth paying for ourselves rather than sticking our grandchildren with the credit card bill.

There obviously aren’t many of us in the nation’s capital. The national debt, which was $5.7 trillion on Sept. 30, 2000, surpassed $21 trillion on March 14. It has almost quadrupled in less than 18 years.

That $21 trillion divided by 327 million Americans equals $64,348 per each of us – as of 6 p.m. Monday afternoon. By the time you read this, all of those numbers will be bigger. Continue reading →

Let 16-year-olds vote so they can defend themselves – against us

vote, Mark Moore, 16-year-oldsThe legal voting age since 1971 has been 18. Maybe that should be the maximum instead of the minimum, at least for a few election cycles.

I write that at age 48 after observing young people lately interact with the world created by supposedly responsible voting-age adults.

Exhibit A is the students at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who escaped from a mass killer while 17 of their classmates and educators didn’t. The killer, a clearly troubled 19-year-old, had purchased his military-style weapon almost as easily as he later purchased a drink at Subway after his rampage ended.

We adults refuse to do much about this. So the students are. Continue reading →