President Obama’s budget proposal

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Chris

The President has released his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2014. The President’s proposal as well as multiple others are summarized in graphical form here. (It’s a nice graphic. The overall length of the bar indicates spending. The projected deficit/surplus is indicated by the position of the bar.)

Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has a good summary of Obama’s proposal here. An excerpt:

The budget contains a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases that would replace the sequestration cuts and achieve the important goal of stabilizing the debt over the next decade… The budget is designed to protect the still-weak economy from the effects of premature deficit reduction — by both including short-term investments to address infrastructure needs and by phasing in some of the deficit reduction measures that would replace sequestration in order to allow the economy to continue its recovery…

That would be a welcome change from the current budget path. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if sequestration remains in effect, it will cost the economy 750,000 jobs by the end of this year.

As it stands, the package makes tough policy choices while largely adhering to the principle… that deficit reduction should not increase poverty or inequality. Nevertheless, the budget’s substantial spending cuts, both in entitlements and discretionary programs, would have real-world consequences for millions of individuals and families….

Politically speaking, I had thought that the White House should not put these concessions in its budget, as distinguished from offering them in bipartisan negotiations if and when Republicans agreed to dedicate substantial savings from curbing tax credits, deductions, and other preferences (known as “tax expenditures”) to deficit reduction.

There’s the thing, Obama came to the table with what would be an acceptable compromise proposal. The Republicans aren’t going to compromise with him. Boehner and McConnell’s statements last year that they’d want Chained CPI as a condition for considering tax increases? Just words. Boehner and McConnell are disingenuous shits. They weren’t ever going to consider tax increases. Why on Earth does Obama lead with a compromise position that will be summarily rejected? What does he think that’s going to accomplish? I am at a loss to understand…

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Social Security Disability

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Chris

Interesting Q&A at Wonkblog between Ezra Klein and Chana Joffe-Walt, “I thought I knew what being disabled meant, and I don’t.” Klein’s intro:

Over the weekend, “This American Life” and “Planet Money” ran a story by Chana Joffe-Walt looking at the extraordinary growth of America’s disability insurance system. Joffe-Walt visited Hale County, Ala., where one-in-four residents is on disability, looked at the lawyers who specialized in winning disability cases against the government (and getting paid by taxpayers for it), and spent time with a young child whose disability check has become the key to his family’s survival.

The result is a detailed, nuanced, and discomfiting look at a social insurance program that has become a catch-all for the failures of both our economy and our safety net. It’s worth reading, or listening to, in full. I spoke with Joffe-Walt on Wednesday. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Full disclosure: Based on listening to her reports on NPR in the past I don’t have a high opinion of Joffe-Walt as a reporter but, that said, the Q&A she does with Klein is instructive. It’s worth reading. (I haven’t listed to the This American Life/Planet Money story yet but I intend to.)

At the end of their Q&A Klein links to Brad Plumer’s interview with Harold Pollack. Pollack offers some important complementary information and a critique of the This American Life/Planet Money story.

Finally, here’s Jared Bernstein from two months ago with some hard numbers on Disability rolls, Disability Rolls and the Makers/Takers/Fakers Nonsense. Spoiler alert: Disability applications have shot way up over the past decade – more people do apply when jobs are harder to find – but the approval rate has gone way down at the same time. When you take age into account the award rates have grown very modestly, i.e., much of the growth in the absolute number of awards can be attributed to an aging population. (That’s not to downplay the growth but recognize it for what it is.)

UPDATE 3/30/13:

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