Forget, if possible, the politics and just consider the policy dilemma facing the federal government related to all the speculation over the looming “fiscal cliff” come January 2013 if additional federal action is not taken.
About a year ago, following a divisive debate over extending our debt ceiling authorization by Congress, the president and Congress reached a compromise to establish a bipartisan committee to propose long-range policies to deal with our economic turmoil. Ultimately that supercommittee failed to reach agreement as well.
As a result, automatic tax increases and spending cuts are now to take place in January 2013 unless Congress and the president change current law. And, of course, Congress is now struggling with what changes to make to avoid what many call the fiscal cliff that will befall us in January 2013.
The essential elements of current law are to rescind the Bush tax cuts for all Americans. That action will raise about $150 billion per year in new federal revenue. As well, automatic and across-the-board spending cuts, particularly for the Defense Department, will reduce federal spending by a large amount.
Taken together — tax increases and spending cuts — the Congressional Budget Office estimates that about $500 billion will be “taken out of the economy” in 2013 alone. The CBO further estimates that such economic policy will inevitably reduce economic growth in America and drive the economy back into a recession, a “double dip recession,” sometime in late 2013. Of course no one wants that to happen.
However, if such revenue increases and spending cuts are not applied, our annual deficits and an increase in national debt will continue to rise each and every year by historical amounts as well. Very few folks want that to happen, either.
It is all well and good for economists to take one side or the other and predict bad things if one or the other course of action is taken. What we would like to hear however are some economists telling us, based on the principles of economics, not politics, the course of action to avoid both calamities yet be able to increase our economic growth and reduce unemployment significantly.
Voters can be expected to make political decisions. But our current dilemma seems to us to be much more an economic dilemma. How can we ask untrained economists (voters) to make such choices at the ballot box? We need technical help at this point, in our view, and do not hear much of such advice coming forth from the professional economics community.
All we hear for now is more politics.
Opinion
Our View: Economic dilemma
- Opinion
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Our View: Spying on us
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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Our View: Pass on the legacy
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Our View: Big Brother looms large
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Our View: Disgraceful military assault
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Elliott Denniston, guest columnist: Right-to-work laws only hurt workers
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Your View: Food drive efforts
Branch No. 366 of the National Association of Letter Carriers along with the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, the American Postal Workers Union and the U.S. Postal Service would like to thank all the area communities that participated in the 2013 Stamp Out Hunger food drive.
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Your View: More about tax credit
The Globe’s editorial in “Our View” (May 10) may have left readers with a few inaccurate impressions.
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Other Views: Sickening disparity
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Carol Stark: America in need of more 'momisms'
Several years ago, I attended a writing workshop where one of the sessions was called “Tell it to Mom.”
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Our View: Keep learning
Donna Maus, a biology teacher from St. Mary’s Colgan High School in Pittsburg, Kan., told a group of top students, their parents and their teachers something we think everyone needs to hear.
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