Category Economy

Don’t Worry About the Revenue in Sen. Mike Lee’s Tax Plan

Danny Vinik Leave a comment

Utah Senator Mike Lee unveiled a very promising tax plan yesterday. Like all Republican plans, it cuts rates, broadens the base and simplifies the tax code. But it also has a number of other very progressive elements and Lee says it is expected to take in revenues of approximately 18-20% of GDP. Overall, it’s a very intriguing plan and has rightfully been praised around the internet today.

But a couple of people have pushed back on the revenue amount. Business Insider’s Josh Barro, who titled his piece “Here’s a Republican Tax Plan that Doesn’t Suck,” calculated the amount he would pay under Lee’s tax plan and to his surprise, found himself receiving a tax break:

The question is, who pays more to offset those tax cuts? Lee hopes his plan would collect 18 to 20% of GDP in revenues, meaning it’s not a big tax cut overall. And as with a lot of Republican tax plans, he may have trouble hitting that target.

At first glance, it looks like his plan would raise taxes on affluent people without children. But I’m such a person, and when I ran Lee’s plan against my 2012 taxes I found I would have gotten a $1,400 tax cut. His plan raises my top marginal tax rate from 28% to 35% but more than offsets that because most of my income only gets taxed at 15%

Slate’s Matt Yglesias calculated his own tax liability under Lee’s plan too and found a similar result, leading him to describe it as “like smoke and mirrors.” The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson isn’t sure how Lee gets to a revenue-neutral tax plan as well and recommends that the freshman senator tax capital gains as ordinary income.

Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter how much revenue this tax plan raises. What matters is the structure of it and that Lee is aiming for revenues between 18-20% of GDP. Once the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Tax Policy Center, Brookings and any other organization score the plan, we’ll have a better idea about how much revenue the plan actually raises and the distributional impact of it.

But we now know that Lee is interested in reforming the tax code in a way that helps the middle class. His plan also isn’t hugely regressive like all of the flat tax plans other Republicans have promoted. If the score comes back with revenues below Lee’s estimate, then he has to tinker with the rates or possibly add a third bracket. He could follow Thompson’s advice and tax investment as ordinary income. If he wanted to really be aggressive, he could lobby for a carbon tax.

There are plenty of ways Lee could increase the revenue totals in his plan. As it gains steam, how he does so will be vital. But right now, the important part is that Lee is putting forward an honest, smart plan that has huge potential. It’s been a long time since a Republican Senator has done that – especially someone as conservative as Lee is. He deserves credit for that.

The Fed’s Non-Taper Is All About Credibility

Danny Vinik 9 Comments

In a surprising move today, the Federal Reserve announced that it was not going to taper its bond-buying program. The Fed has been purchasing $85 billion worth of assets every month – $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion of long-term Treasuries. For months now, investors and journalists had expected the Fed to begin to decrease those amounts in today’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcement. At 2 pm when the September FOMC statement came out, everyone was proven wrong:

 However, the Committee decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained before adjusting the pace of its purchases. Accordingly, the Committee decided to continue purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month

The stock market, bonds and gold all soared on the news of continued easy money while the dollar crashed. Why was everyone so sure that the Fed was prepared to taper today? It all goes back to the June FOMC meeting when Chairman Ben Bernanke first hinted at tapering. The Fed also upgraded its economic forecasts and in the press conference, Bernanke repeatedly emphasized the improvement in the labor market.

“If the incoming data are broadly consistent with this forecast, the Committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of purchases later this year,” Bernanke said. “And if the subsequent data remain broadly aligned with our current expectations for the economy, we would continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around mid-year.”

Interest rates on the 10-year Treasury note skyrocketed while stocks and gold both fell. The market took it all to mean that easy money was coming to an end soon.

Except that wasn’t what Bernanke or the Fed was trying to say. They were trying to say that if economic data continues to come in positively, then the Fed will scale back its bond-buying program. But only if the economic data is good. From the June FOMC Statement:

The Committee will closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments in coming months. The Committee will continue its purchases of Treasury and agency mortgage-backed securities, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate, until the outlook for the labor market has improved substantially in a context of price stability. The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes.

If you read it literally, that statement clearly indicates that the Fed will react to labor market conditions in determining whether or not to taper. But the market parses every single word Bernanke says and it soon became conventional wisdom that a taper was coming. Dallas Fed Bank President Richard Fisher and Minnesota Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota both tried to walk back Bernanke’s statement and assert that a taper was not necessarily coming.

It didn’t matter.

But today, the Fed proved everyone wrong who parsed the statement and everyone right who read it literally. Subsequent jobs reports have been underwhelming, the Fed reduced its economic forecast today and the federal government is threatening to blow up the economy. If you listened to all of Bernanke’s comments and read the FOMC statement without overthinking it, you wouldn’t have been surprised by today’s announcement. The Fed said it would only begin tapering if the underlying economic data improved. But it worsened so the Fed shouldn’t have been expected to reduce its bond-buying. Yet, journalists and investors alike assumed that the Fed was still set on tapering, despite the underwhelming economic data.

With its announcement, the Fed was not trying to correct anything Bernanke said. It was trying to correct the market’s blind reading of the Fed’s statements. “Don’t just read that we’re going to taper. Read the caveats as well and take them into account.” Markets had assumed that when Bernanke mentioned tapering, it was set in stone that it would begin today. They did not believe for a second that poor economic data could delay it. Despite attempts to walk back Bernanke’s comments, the Fed could not credibly convince investors that it was not necessarily going to taper in September. By surprising the market and adjusting its policy based on labor market conditions, the Fed regained its credibility today.

It’s All About Obamacare

Danny Vinik Leave a comment

Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein penned a piece this morning that misses the main reason why we are rapidly heading towards a government shutdown. Klein compares the current negotiations over the continuing resolution to the ones that took place in 2011 and sees two main differences:

1) In 2011, the White House knew whom to deal with. Back then, House Speaker John Boehner actually did seem reasonably in sync with his party on these issues, and so the White House was able to negotiate with Republican leadership on a deal. Today, the relevant negotiations are happening in the Republican Party, with GOP leadership trying to fight conservatives who want to shut down the government, and no one knows who actually has the power to cut and close a deal.

2) In 2011, the White House was willing to deal. The White House believed, in its gut, that Republicans had been given a mandate in the 2010 elections to extract exactly the kind of concessions they were demanding. In addition, the White House believed President Obama would be a likelier bet for reelection if he could cut a “grand bargain” with the newly resurgent Republicans, taking their key issue away from them.

This year, it’s the White House that won the last election, and so they see no popular legitimacy behind Republican demands. In addition, they are deeply, fervently committed to the proposition that they will never again negotiate around the debt ceiling, as that’s a tactic history will judge them harshly for repeatedly enabling. So even if Boehner could cut a deal on the debt ceiling, the White House isn’t open to negotiating.

Both of those points are correct, but they obscure the fact that for House Republicans, these fiscal fights are all about Obamacare. That’s been the key all along.

There is an inherent contradiction in the Republican belief that Obamacare will be an unmitigated disaster and their desperate, politically suicidal attempts to defund the law. If the law is going to catastrophically fail, the Republican Party should have no problem waiting for that to happen and use it to take back the Presidency and Senate in 2016. If they really believe it will be such a disaster, then they shouldn’t threaten a government shutdown over it. But House Republicans are making that threat and many are willing to follow through on it. That indicates that Republicans are worried that Obamacare will succeed and that’s why yesterday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said, “this short-term budget represents our last chance to stop it.”

In fact, the Republican Pary’s last chance to stop the law was the 2012 election. This fight is over and Obama has won. He’s not going to delay the law or defund it, but House Republicans are so against it that they will do anything to stop it. As Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) said today, “Obamacare is worth throwing yourself on the sword.”

The GOP doesn’t care about cutting spending, approving the Keystone XL pipeline or cutting taxes. Right now, it’s all about Obamacare.

Two year ago, the White House and Republicans could negotiate with each other because both had something the other wanted and were willing to compromise (barely). The same is true today, but the White House will never, ever defund the law and House Republicans will not accept any deal that doesn’t do that.

That’s what really makes the 2013 showdown different from 2011.