The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported in early May that for the month of April 2015 the Federal government ran a budget surplus, taking in more in taxes than it laid out in expenditures. Don’t be fooled by one month, especially when it was a month when people filed and pay their taxes. Government deficits and growing debt are on the horizon for as far as the human eye can predict.
Yes, for right now the trillion-dollar-a year budget deficits that marked the first years of the Obama Administration have abated. For 2015 through 2017, the CBO projects that Washington’s budget deficits will be “only” in the range of $468 billion and $489 billion per year.
But after that, given current “entitlement” legislation for such programs as Social Security, Medicare and ObamaCare, the annual budget deficits will start rising again after 2017, and will be over a trillion dollars once more in 2025.
The CBO calculates that by 2025 these more “modest” annual budget deficits will cumulatively add over $7.5 trillion to the existing $18.3 trillion of Federal government debt, for a total a decade from now of almost $26 trillion. This will be more than a 40 percent increase in the Federal government’s debt over the coming ten year period.
The per capita government debt burden for every American in 2015 is estimated to be about $58,000. In ten years, in 2025, based on demographic estimates of U.S. population growth, that per capita debt burden will have increased to nearly $78,000, for an almost 35 percent increase, while the U.S. population will have only increased by around 8 percent over the decade.
The Government’s Burden Equals What is Taxed and What is Borrowed
Does it matter that the government funds part of its expenses through deficit financing instead of simply raising taxes to cover all of its expenditures? Noble prize-winning free market economist, Milton Friedman (1912-2006), was adamant that what mattered was what government spent, not how it raised the money to pay for it:
“Keep you eye on one thing and one thing only, how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax . . . If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should keep your eye on is what government spends, and the real problem is to how down government spending as a fraction of your income, and if you do that, you can stop worrying about the debt.”
If the government taxes the citizenry, the dollars collected and the real resources those dollars have buying power over in the marketplace are transferred from private sector hands to the hands of Uncle Sam, who then decides for what they will be used.
But this is no less the case when the government borrows dollars in financial markets to cover part of its expenses in excess of collected taxes. Instead of a private borrower borrowing those dollars and using the real resources those dollars can buy in the marketplace for investment, capital formation or other purposes, the government borrows them and uses the real resources that can be bought with them for its own political-oriented goals and ends.
Either way, the total amount of the income and resources of the society transferred out of private hands and into the hands of the government is represented by the total spending by that government, even if part has been taxed and part has been borrowed.
Friedman once asked the question: Which is preferable, a situation under which the government taxes and spends $800 billion with a balanced budget; or a situation in which it taxes $400 billion and borrows $100 billion for a total of spending of $500 billion, with a budget deficit?
In terms of the total extraction of wealth and income from the members of society by government, clearly its siphoning off $500 billion is preferable to it taking and using $800 billion of the resources and products produced through the peaceful and productive efforts of the citizen-taxpayers, Friedman reasoned.
America’s Former Balanced Budget Fiscal Rule, and Its Benefits
However, while it may be true that whether the government taxes or borrows the taxpayer-citizens are poorer by that total amount, it is nonetheless the case that government following a balanced budget rule versus a budget deficit expedient has a huge political difference on the institutional ease or difficulty of government growing over time.
Many years ago, Noble Prize economist, James M. Buchanan (1919-2013), and his colleague, Richard Wagner, wrote a book onDemocracy in Deficit (1977). They pointed out that during the first 150 years of the United States, the Federal government followed what they referred to as an “unwritten fiscal constitution.”
There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires the government to annually balance its budget. Such a balanced budget “rule” for managing the government’s spending and taxing was considered a way to assure transparency and greater responsibility in the financial affairs of government.
It was argued that a balanced budget made it easier and clearer for the citizen and the taxpayer to compare the “costs” and “benefits” from government spending activities.
Since each dollar spent by the government required a dollar collected in taxes to pay for whatever the government was doing, the citizen and taxpayer could make a more reasonable judgment whether they considered any government spending proposal to be “worth it” in terms of what had to be given up to gain the supposed “benefit” from it.
The trade-off, was explicit and clear: any additional dollar of government spending on some program or activity required an additional dollar of taxes, and therefore, the “cost” of one dollar less in the taxpayer’s pocket to spend on some desired private-sector use, instead.
Or if taxes were not to be increased to pay for a new or expanded government program, the supporter of this increased spending had to explain what other existing government program or activity would have to be reduced or eliminated to transfer the funds to pay for the new proposed spending.
There was an exception to this balanced budget rule, and that was a “national emergency such as a war, when government might needed large amount of extra funds more quickly than they could be raised through higher taxes.
But it was also argued that once the national emergency had passed, the government was expected to manage its finances to run budget surpluses, taking in more than it spent each year. The surplus was to be used to pay off the accumulated debt as quickly as possible to relieve current and future taxpayers from an unnecessary and undesirable burden.
Amazingly, in retrospect, this actually was the fiscal rule and pattern followed by the United States government throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century until the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The Keynesian Call for Budget Deficits to “Stimulate” the Economy
However, starting with the 1930s, this unwritten fiscal constitutional was permanently overturned as part of the Keynesian Revolution. It was argued that the government should not balance its budget on a yearly basis. Instead, the government should balance its budget “over the business cycle.” Government should run budget deficits in “bad” years (recession or depression) and run budget surpluses in “good” years (periods of “full employment” and rising Gross Domestic Product).
This new “rule” of a balanced budget over the business cycle became a generally accepted idea for fiscal policy among many economists and government policy makers.
However, there has been one major problem with this alternative conception of the role and method of managing government spending and taxing: During the 70 years since the end of the Second World War in 1945, the U.S. government has run budget deficits in 58 of those years and had budget surpluses in only 12 years.
Hence, as Buchanan and Wagner referred to it, “democracy in deficit.”
With the elimination of the balanced budget “rule” as the guide for fiscal policy, it has been possible for politicians to create the economic illusion that is it possible to give voters “something for nothing” – a “free lunch.”
The Fiscal Illusion of Giving Voters Partly “Something for Nothing”
Politicians have been able to offer more and more government spending to special interest groups to obtain campaign contributions and votes in the attempt to be elected and re-elected to political office.
They can offer benefits in the present in the form of new or additional government spending, but they no longer have to explain where all the money will come from to pay for it. The “costs” of that deficit spending is be paid for by some unknown future taxpayers in some amount that can be put off discussing until that “some time” in the future.
Thus, politicians can supply benefits in the present – “now” – to targeted groups whose votes are wanted on election day, and avoid answering how the money will be paid back (with interest) because that can be delayed until the future – a period later in time, years ahead, when someone else will hold political office and will have to deal with the problem.
It is not as if the danger from unrestrained government borrowing was never warned about before John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) made deficit spending a “virtue” in the name of “stimulating” the economy in his famous book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).
Warnings about Deficits and Government Debt from Long Ago
The famous Scottish philosopher, historian and economist, David Hume (1711-1776), expressed the danger in his essay, “Of Public Credit” (1741), over two hundred and fifty year ago:
“It is very tempting to a minister [in the government] to employ such an expediency, as enables him to make a great figure during his administration, without overburdening the people with taxes, or exciting any immediate clamors against himself. The practice, therefore, of contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused, in every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent to given a prodigal son a credit in every banker’s shop in London, than to empower a statesman to draw bills[borrow money], in this manner, upon posterity.”
And almost 150 years ago, the American economist, Dudley Baxter (1827-1875), very clearly contrasted the incentives at work on those running for and holding political office when the institutional rule is a balanced budget versus deficit spending and accumulated debt in his book, National Debts (1871):
“When money is raised by taxation within the year for which it is needed, the amount that can be raised is limited by the tax-enduring habits of the people, and must be as small as possible in order not to provide discontent [among the voters]. By the same reason it must be spent economically, and made to go as far as possible.
“But when the money is raised by loans, it is limited only by the necessity of the interest [payment] not to be too large for the taxable endurance of the people, or provoking their discontent. Hence the limits of borrowing are about twenty times larger than the limits to taxation, and an amount that is monstrous as a tax, is (apparently) a very light burden as a loan. In consequence, borrowing is freed from the most powerful check that restrains taxation . . .
“When a loan is obtained the reason for economical expenditure is equally wanting, and borrowed money is commonly expended with much greater profuseness, and even wastefulness, than would be the case with taxes.”
Keynesian Economics served as an additional and powerful rationale for politicians to do what they like to do: spend other people’s money. In the process, it pushed aside the warnings of those like David Hume and Dudley Baxter, and many other economists, who understood clearly the dangers of unrestricted government authority to both tax and borrow.
The Moral Dimension of Government Debt Financing
There is an additional moral dimension to the issue of government deficit spending and its resulting accumulation of debt. This was a theme especially addressed by economist, James M. Buchanan.
Normally, when a private individual or enterprise undertakes debt financing of some portion of his current expenditures, the legal obligation to pay back the contracted principle and interest falls upon the borrower. If he defaults or passes away before repayment of all that had been borrowed, creditors have a lien on the borrower’s positively valued assets.
The “benefits” of having the use of a greater sum of money in the present than his own income would enable him to spend, imposes on the borrower a “cost” of an obligation to pay back the loan out of his future income and assets. The cost and the benefit are linked together within the same person.
It is not the same, Buchanan argued, with government deficit spending and repayment of accumulated debt:
“If I borrow $1,000 personally, I create a future obligation against myself or my estate in the present value of $1,000. Regardless of my usage of the funds, I cannot, by the act of borrowing, impose an external cost on others. Unless I leave positively valued assets against which my debts can be satisfied, my creditors cannot oblige my heirs to pay off their claims.
“By contrast, suppose I ‘vote for’ an issue of public debt in the amount of $1,000 per person. I may recognize that this debt embodies a future tax liability on some persons, but I need not reckon on the full $1,000 liability being assigned to me. If I leave no positively valued assets, the government’s creditors can still enforce claims on my progeny as members of the future-period taxpaying group.
“Further, the membership in the taxpaying group itself shifts over time. New entrants, and not only those who descend directly from those of us who make a borrowing-spending decision, are obligated to meet debt, interest and amortization charges.
“In sum, the institution of public debt introduces a unique problem that is usually absent with private debt; persons who are decision makers in one period are allowed to impose possible financial losses on persons in future generations. It follows that the institution [government] is liable to abuse this and overextend its borrowing practices. There are moral and ethical problems with government deficit financing that simply are not present with the private counterpart.”
Government debt is a way to impose part of the cost of what special interest group voters and politicians want “today” on those who “tomorrow” will have to be taxed to pay back the borrowed money.
Even if a current recipient of such governmental deficit spending largess is, himself, one of the future taxpayers, he is usually likely to have received a greater benefit than his personal portion of the future tax burden. Suppose that he is a farmer, for instance, who receives “today” $100,000 from the government for not growing a crop. When “tomorrow” comes and taxes have to be raised to pay back that $100,000 to the creditors who lent that sum to the government, that particular farmer’s additional tax burden will be a small fraction of that total amount.
To continue with the same example, many farmers who may have benefited from agricultural price-support programs decades ago have passed away. The burden of paying back whatever portion of that farm price support spending originally financed by deficit spending now falls upon others who even may not have been born at the time the recipient received this special privilege from the government.
What is the ethics, James Buchanan asked, of a fiscal system under which incentives exist and come into play that enable the current generation of taxpayers and recipients of government programs to shift part of the burden to pay for them to future generations? Is that a culturally and economically healthy legacy to leave to our children and grandchildren?
The Importance of Balanced Budgets and Debt Limits
This is why it would desirable to incorporate a balanced budget amendment into the U.S. Constitution. It would not guarantee that government did not tax and spend more. But it would impose a greater clarity and transparency to the fiscal dimension of government decision-making that would make it far more difficult for those offering other people’s money in exchange for votes to do so without having to also explain who would be paying for the favors and privilege given to some, and how much they would have to pay.
In lieu of adding such an amendment to the Constitution, it is imperative that the Congress does not give up its authority to raise the Federal debt limit. While raising the debt limit has become more or less a rubber stamp after a number of congressmen make some verbal objections to more government borrowing, the fact is if Congress were to ever have sufficient pressure from voting constituents to say, “NO,” that very act would impose a balanced budget on the Federal government. Since once Uncle Sam had reached the hard debt limit, he would only be able to spend what he had taken in taxes.
This, combined with a strong educational and political campaign to reawaken the principles and ideals of individual liberty and limited government can bring the seemingly the unlimited growth in the size and scope of government to a halt.
Once halted, then a repeal and retrenchment drive can begin to reverse that size and scope of Big Government so to restore a society of freedom grounded in individual rights and economic liberty.
Sorry, but, how quaint an understanding about governments and money.
The government and the taxpayers are both merely USERS of the private bankers’ money system, meaning all the money is issued for use by the private bankers and all this bantering about the back and forth transfers thereof are meaningless.
Meaningless, to get your attention.
We first must BORROW it into existence.
Why are y’all not complaining about that fact?
The government-user taxes $500 of its budget from taxpayer-users and borrows another $500 from its taxpayer-users.
What’s the difference, really?
Interest??.
If you wanna stop this crap(deficits and debts), then start listening to Adair Turner and Martin Wolf about who should be creating national media.
Whenever you’re ready.
Thanks.
Joe, I see you have an objection. But what objection exactly?
I see there is an inbuilt assumption in the script that on average, people will repay their debts. I do not see that something about how they borrow enters into this, other than the obvious objection that it may create credit cycles in the private sector as well as in the government sector.
This does not mean that government sector credit cycles should continue.
In the case of the USA there can be an ongoing government deficit as long as the rest of the world continues to be willing to pick up the tab.
To get out of that, the Dollar devalues and leaves the debtors with egg on their faces.
To get out of the debt incurred on future generations, a future government will simply confiscate savings and write off the debt.
One way to do that is to print QE money and buy up that debt. This takes interest rates down and robs savers. Same thing.
Edward, thanks for asking.
My reply is general, and not directed to anything you said here.
My objection, if you will, is trotting out all of these vacuous references to government spending as if any government ‘spending’ can be a national economic ‘burden’, when the only thing the government can do is to ADD a turn of velocity, and economic growth, to that provided by the existing money supply.
The private banks create and issue all the money, except coins and sometimes banknotes, depending on national money statutes. Therefore, the private banks are responsible for ALL that happens in a national economy.
But government haters claim that government, as a user of the currency, creates a burden on the economy by taking away money from taxpayers (and then, ironically, spending it right back on to, guess who(?), those same taxpayers.
It’s absurd, except for the wealth distribution effects of national fiscal policies.
The government doesn’t take ANYTHING away from the national economy.
If the government spent NOTHING, then the national economy would shrink by the amount of government spending.
In the US we have a $17 Trillion national economy, but without the government’s $4Trillion ‘turnover’ of the existing money supply (either by taxing or by borrowing this use), we would have a $13 Trillion national economy. Same operative for the UK ……. FCS. How would the libertarians like all that unemployment? Fine, I guess.
What I would be looking for would be some convincing analysis in terms of the broad public-versus-private “productivity of capital” (in terms of jobs and incomes), and then a deeper look, within each of those sectors, to see if we need some ‘priority uses’ of capital to meet our national economic objectives (inflation-free full employment)
Financialization would come out LAST, yet when bankers create the money, financialization is the primary result.
Stop bitching about government.
Start bitching about bankers and finance.
Oh, excuse me, they’re merely “private” profit-seekers, phuquing up everything.
Especially, the corruption of our governments.
Like I said, the only real, viable solution for achieving those national economic objectives is to remove from the banks the money-creation and issuance powers, and restoring them to an accountable public money operation, as called for by Positive Money.
Thanks, Cobden.