March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024 April 2024 May 2024 June 2024 July 2024 August 2024 September 2024 October 2024 November 2024 December 2024 January 2025 February 2025
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
News Every Day |

DOGE Must Rethink Federal Spending: Prioritize Reducing Responsibilities v. Starving the Beast Through Tax Cuts

The U.S. federal government has a debt problem.  At $36.2 trillion (or about 125 percent of GDP), this burden is already so great that it cannot be paid back any time soon and would take decades of concerted efforts to do so. Further, it is abundantly clear that this is a spending problem, not a revenue problem. But what are we to do about this?

One answer floated about is to trim waste from the federal government.  To accomplish this, Donald Trump proposed creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).  This represents an opportunity to halt runaway (and potentially unconstitutional) federal spending and to finally take budget deficits seriously.

However, DOGE does not yet have a specific plan. Several targets have been bruited: addressing wasteful spending, especially for DEI tasks that are not central to an agency’s mission; auditing federal departments and agencies to find wasteful or diverted spending; ending remote work for federal workers; simplifying the tax code; reducing red tape and regulatory compliance costs; and setting up a hotline, inviting citizen watchdogs to submit their favorite regulations for DOGE scrutiny, supported by the relevant chapter in the CFR (code of federal regulations) and a summary of negative effects.

Beyond its vagueness, it’s not clear what DOGE can or will actually do.  Mr. Musk has already explained that entitlements (about 70 percent of the federal budget) are beyond the DOGE purview.  Likewise, it’s unlikely that a Trump administration would touch defense spending (13 percent of the budget), beyond trimming some waste at the margin.  That’s already almost 85 percent of the $6.8 trillion (FY2024) budget that DOGE will not touch.

The proposed spending cuts bring up an old debate about federal spending; since the days of Ronald Reagan, economists and deregulatory warriors have pondered the question of how best to address rampant federal spending.

Starve the Beast of Resources: A Failed Approach

One answer, popularized by the likes of Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Grover Norquist, is the so-called “starve the beast” approach. By enacting tax cuts, the thinking goes, Congress will be forced by budgetary pressures to reduce its overall spending, to be more frugal and wise with the money it spends, and to discipline itself from overreaching into areas best left to the private sector.  Friedman summarized this approach by comparing it to cutting the allowance of “spendthrift children.”

This has intuitive appeal. Just as a household cannot spend money it does not have, neither can, the thinking goes, the federal government.  This sort of approach was tried by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.  The result, however, was not a reduction in federal spending.  It was an increase in annual deficit spending and a massive increase in the overall federal debt. This result is only surprising if one does not take into serious consideration issues in political economy.

The problems with starving the beast of resources are twofold.  First, the federal government has the ability to issue debt to paper over any budgetary shortfalls. This gives rise to the now-too-familiar debates about government “shutdowns” versus raising the debt ceiling or otherwise getting a new budget resolution passed by some deadline. According to the U.S. Treasury, Congress has voted to raise the debt ceiling 78 times since 1960; on June 3, 2023, Congress voted to suspend the debt ceiling altogether until Jan. 2, 2025.  Thus, while we may think that we can simply stop spending by lowering the amount of money Congress has, the reality is that as long as policymakers can issue debt, this constraint is nullified.

The second problem is more deeply rooted and pernicious: the breakdown in what James Buchanan and Richard Wagner referred to as “that old-time fiscal religion.” In many ways, Americans now see federal spending as a result of political jockeying for political largesse, and completely divorced from taxes.  It would appear that few Americans care about deficits and the national debt.  Some contend that this is because half of Americans don’t pay federal income tax and that, for these people, there is simply no reason to worry about federal spending, the annual deficit, or the debt, because federal services are, essentially, free.

As Peter Calcagno and Edward López demonstrate in a forthcoming book, norms about deficits have changed over the past 30 to 40 years.  They conclude that the combination of informal norms and increasing federal “responsibilities” have created “increased demand for federal expenditures while creating budgetary commons, thus imparting strong motivations to spend through deficit finance in normal times.”

Starving the Beast of Responsibility

Starving the government of resources and hoping that the ensuing lack of funds will impel it to eschew runaway spending ignores reality and is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse.  Instead, we must first tackle the issue directly by starving the beast of responsibility. This will require serious and fundamental discussions about the nature and role of government in the first place.

We must reckon with the questions of what the federal government should be responsible for and how it is allowed to go about fulfilling those responsibilities. Then, we must compare this to the list of responsibilities the federal government has assumed.  In doing so, we would likely find a plethora of examples of responsibilities that have been ceded to the federal government — which it has no business attempting to meet.  After identifying those, we must purge them from the federal budget and wind down the organizations tasked with meeting these superfluous responsibilities.  Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution would be a good place to start.

If we can do so, the amount of resources (read: taxes) that are necessary to fund federal operations will fall precipitously.  The Founders clearly understood the importance of a limited government and deliberately set up a system of governance in which both the size and scale of government would be limited.

Overall, making the federal government more efficient at the things that it does is not enough to actually limit government or to promote fiscal responsibility. Instead, we must reduce the scale of government activity by starving it of responsibilities.  In doing so, greater efficiency will necessarily follow, as the government sheds responsibilities it ought not to have in the first place, and retains responsibilities that it ought to have and that can be done more effectively (and efficiently) by the government.

READ MORE from David Hebert and Nikolai Wenzel:

Saving Us From Scheming Landlords? Biden DOJ Sues Real Estate Tech Company RealPage

From GDP to Reality: Putting the $35 Trillion Debt Into Perspective

David Hebert is a senior research fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research. Nikolai Wenzel is a professor of economics at Universidad de las Hespérides and an associate research faculty member at the American Institute for Economic Research.

The post DOGE Must Rethink Federal Spending: Prioritize Reducing Responsibilities v. Starving the Beast Through Tax Cuts appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Блоги

В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»

Prem star’s brother hasn’t paid penny towards our daughter despite living in six-bed £2.9m mansion, says his furious ex

What Two Hosts of 'SNL' Committed Murder? 'SNL50' Joke Explained

Asian flag carrier to launch more flights from the UK this summer to bucket list destinations

Don't let AI phantom hackers drain your bank account

Ria.city






Read also

DOGE says it has saved government $55B so far

Today in Sports – Anthony Davis scores 52 points, breaks NBA All-Star Game record that stood 55 yrs

ECHL Glance

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

Prem star’s brother hasn’t paid penny towards our daughter despite living in six-bed £2.9m mansion, says his furious ex

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

How Man Utd could line up in the CHAMPIONSHIP with top stars sold as Rio Ferdinand fears they won’t win another game



Sports today


Новости тенниса
ATP

Рублёв обыграл Бублика и вышел во второй круг турнира ATP в Дохе



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Энергетик или яд: что известно о загадочной смерти двух свердловских футболистов



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Балаковский пловец вошел в пятерку лучших на Кубке России по подводному спорту


Новости России

Game News

YouTuber The Swedish Maker wears a Meta Quest 3 VR headset for his entire woodworking project and miraculously emerges with all fingers intact


Russian.city


Москва

Ответственность за чистоту площадок для мусора передадут региональным операторам


Губернаторы России
Спартак

"Спартак" объявил об уходе Зиньковского в аренду в "Крылья Советов"


Турниры по хоккею и карате состоятся в Нагорном районе

Интервью художников Сергея Сонина и Елены Самородовой

В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»

В Московском регионе почти 9 тысяч самозанятых формируют будущую пенсию самостоятельно


Мама Моргенштерна* трогательно поздравила рэпера с днем рождения архивным видео из его детства

Карди Би проводит время с новым возлюбленным. Кто он?

Тимати похвастался дорогостоящим подарком родом из нулевых: «Удивительная история»

Новосибирцы исполнят музыку The Beatles и Чайковского в Швейцарии


Рублёв обыграл Бублика и вышел во второй круг турнира ATP в Дохе

Касаткина вновь приблизилась вплотную к топ-10 рейтинга WTA

Роман Сафиуллин покинул турнир ATP-500 в Дохе, проиграв Алексу де Минору

Медведев обошел Джоковича в рейтинге ATP и стал шестой ракеткой мира



В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»

В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»

5,8 тыс. семей Московского региона направлены выплаты из материнского капитала

В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»


Владимир Кузьмин поздравит женщин с 8 марта большим весенним концертом

В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»

Спасибо за теплый прием: В Туле с аншлагом прошел благотворительный концерт «Культура в помощь Донбассу»

Тамбовские судебные приставы победили в отборочном этапе Чемпионата ФССП по комплексному единоборству


«Хорошо, что не чиновник»: в КНИТУ-КАИ встретили и.о. ректора

Интервью художников Сергея Сонина и Елены Самородовой

Гидрометцентр спрогнозировал в Москве длительный снегопад

«Мы не только слушали, но и слышали друг друга»: Лавров о переговорах в Эр-Рияде



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Мариинка

В Петербурге пройдут зимние гастроли балетной труппы Приморской сцены Мариинки



News Every Day

Don't let AI phantom hackers drain your bank account




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости