| America's independent, non-partisan advocate for overburdened taxpayers. | Home | Donate | RSS | Log in |
|
Blog Contributors
|
BudgetNTU Foundation's FY 2014 Budget Breakdown Recycling policies is a common practice in Washington DC. In conducting NTU Foundation's BillTally research, we find many pieces of legislation that are exact matches to the previous Congress' version. Many Hill offices say the bills are placeholder legislation to show that Members care about a specific issue or see their ideas as the best solution to a local, state, or national problem. However, when it comes to the federal budget, Americans have at least seen some variance in what the President would like to do with your tax dollars. It's not the case for the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget. One of the most startling facts about the Budget is the rosy economic projections made for taxes and other sources of government revenue. While the FY 2010 Budget projected a $512 billion deficit for FY 2013, the latest Budget predicts a $973 billion shortfall. Such billion-dollar deviations (90 percent higher) are not only cause for alarm but puts into question just how optimistic the President should be when putting together his trillion-dollar agenda. On the spending side, which is the focus of the BillTally project, NTUF Director of Research Demian Brady and Policy Analyst Michael Tasselmyer found some peculiar proposals that might or might not add up. Overall discretionary spending falls by three percent up until FY 2016 BUT, when taking mandatory spending into account (the real source of federal spending), spending never decreases. How much? If this Budget was passed, taxpayers would be on the hook for $3.7 trillion this year and continue to grow to $5 trillion by 2021. How does the Administration expect pay for more government? Increase taxes and expect the next President to cut spending. The estate tax, airline security fees, and the so-called "Buffett Rule" are just a few of the new costs imposed on Americans. Yet, it's hard to tell if all those new (and old) taxes would equal the projections outlined in the Budget. If deficit estimates were so off over the course of four years, how can more market distortions and public spending be accurately predicted for the future? Details and answers on NTUF's FY 2014 Budget analysis can be found here. NTUF staff will also be highlighting other parts of the Budget in the following days here on Government Bytes, on Twitter (@NTUF), and in The Taxpayer’s Tab. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
The Late Edition: April 11, 2013 Today’s Taxpayer News! NTU joins a broad coalition of activists in support of a bipartisan effort to reform ineffective and costly fuel mandates. NTUF did a thorough analysis of what President Obama’s 2014 budget means for taxpayers. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
The Late Edition: April 9, 2013 Today’s Taxpayer News! NTU recently joined Citizens Against Government Waste and a host of GOP senators in supporting Senator Marco Rubio’s REFUND Act. Read the full story from The Shark Tank. This National Review article looks at the Senate’s budget proposal, and concludes the numbers just don’t add up. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
Obama's FY 2014 Budget on Social Security
With budget fever gripping the Beltway policy world and state government inner circles, there are plenty of questions and skepticism on what President Obama's FY 2014 Budget will plan for the country's biggest expenses: government-subsidized health care and retirement entitlement programs. Though the budget is due to be released on tomorrow, some details have already come out on what taxpayers can expect and what this all means for the nation's bottom line. In an analysis by the Fiscal Times, many experts predict few surprises and many repeat proposals from the Obama 2013 Budget. I examine Social Security in the first of three posts. Note: Figures are in ten-year windows (not the usual five-year increments under the BillTally project).
Where it's at: According to the Social Security Administration, the regular retiree program has run a deficit (i.e. its expenditures are higher than the Trust Fund's non-interest receipts from withholding taxes) for the past two years and will continue upwards at an annual average of $66 billion between 2012 and 2018. The budgetary outlook could worsen. Deficits will likely increase sharply as the Baby Boomer generation enters retirement and the pool of workers expected to shrink, relative to reitrees. Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute says that the disability portion of Social Security is the real worry because more people have been applying, which has mounted budgetary pressure, so much so that the program may default on benefits by as early as 2016.
What the budget might do:
For better or worse? Much of the focus is not on Social Security but on the other two big programs. This is likely a timely issue where Social Security is seen as at least momentarily solvent and will stay that way long after Medicare is expected to default. Chained CPI and the already proposed measures may temporarily help guarantee retirees benefits for a longer period of time but the program will eventually need serious reform and, like all of these programs, the sooner sustainable reforms occur, the less it will cost taxpayers. However, none of this addresses the disability portion of Social Security, which would need a bailout in a very short amount of time. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
Obama's FY 2014 Budget on Medicaid In this final post, I delve into what President Obama's FY 2014 Budget might do to Medicaid funding. Note: Figures are in ten-year windows (not the usual five-year increments under the BillTally project).
Program update: Using Congressional Budget Office data, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured projects an average eight percent spending increase for each of the next ten years, which is mostly due to the program’s expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Like Medicare, Medicaid costs are also expected to up-tick with many recipients getting older and requiring more costly care more often. So, in the short run, Medicaid and CHIP (the children's version of Medicaid) spending will increase by $638 billion before FY 2023.
What’s projected:
What this means: Given the Affordable Care Act’s broad expansion of Medicaid, it is difficult to say whether these reforms would mean real savings for taxpayers or if they could even stem the tide of high costs that are likely to occur. The Fiscal Times credited these three measures with a $25 billion savings but they are uncertain, conditional, and perhaps overly optimistic. Just as with Medicare, the full amount of savings do not make up for the projected growth in outlays and more fundamental reform (or revenue increases) are required. 5 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
Obama's FY 2014 Budget on Medicare In part two of three, I take a look at the predictions of the President's FY 2014 Budget in how it might affect Medicare. Note: Figures are in ten-year windows (not the usual five-year increments under the BillTally project). Current status: Via the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), health care costs for disabled and senior Americans will continue to rise, so much so that the program could be insolvent by 2027. From 3.7 percent of GDP in 2011, the Medicare Hospital Insurance and Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds will continue to grow in obligations to approximately 6.7 percent of GDP by 2086 (73 years from now). We're talking trillions of dollars in projected obligations that traditional funding methods, a mix of payroll taxes and regular government spending. Possibilities for FY 2014:
Bottom line: Even if all of the savings realized, the structural problems of Medicare outweigh many proposals, even ambitious ones. Though streamlining payment processes and taking more money away from drug companies could help to offset some current deficits, taxpayers need trillion-dollar solutions to the economy’s biggest single expense program. On the other hand, by requiring drug companies to pay more to the government, prescription prices may increase. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
Halfway There: A Mid-Year Budgetary Review Six months into Fiscal Year 2013 (which began on October 1, 2012), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its "Monthly Budget Review" on Friday with some comparisons showing how the United States' fiscal situation looked at this point last year. Through March, CBO projected a 6-month deficit nearly $178 billion less than was recorded at the same point last year. The projection is largely due to an increase in tax revenues -- total outlays are only projected to be $46 billion less than in 2012, but revenues were $132 billion higher. Individual income tax receipts jumped 14.7%, while a combination of tax hikes on some income brackets, and the expiration of the payroll tax cut in January lead to an $85 billion increase in tax receipts withheld from workers' paychecks.
Federal outlays were about 2.5 percent lower over the first half of Fiscal Year 2013 compared to the first half of Fiscal Year 2012. At $315 billion, defense and military spending saw about a 6 percent decrease compared to the $335 billion the government had spent at the halfway point last year. Within the broad "Other Activities" category, relief efforts in the wake of natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy and severe drought conditions lead to an increase in outlays at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Agriculture, respectively. These were offset by a decrease in payments to Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, and a decrease in TARP funding. Overall, spending decreased slightly in some areas. However, major entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare all saw growth in payments of at least 5 percent. Increased tax revenues still seem to be driving any modest deficit reduction seen so far.
As the April 15 individual income tax filing deadline nears, the IRS reported a decrease in the number of tax returns it had received compared to this point last year. Interestingly, nonwithheld receipts of individual income taxes were $14 billion higher than at the same point last year. CBO attributed that increase to taxpayers shifting income they otherwise would have received in 2013 to late 2012 instead, in order to avoid paying higher tax rates effective at the start of the new calendar year. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
The Late Edition: April 3, 2013 Today’s Taxpayer News! NTU’s Brandon Arnold discusses corporate tax reform and the one year anniversary of the U.S. having the highest corporate tax rate of any industrialized nation. Read the full story in the Washington Times. The State of California’s taxing and spending approach to budgets is catching up with it --- to the tune of a nearly $23 billion dollar deficit for fiscal year 2011-2012, according to the Sacramento Bee. 1 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
Made It in America, Government Gives You Millions
Throughout the last two years of budget negotiations, debt ceiling fights, and the supposedly economy destroying sequestration, legislators have pointed to government grants as an easy way to cut down on spending. Yet indiscriminate across-the-board cuts in one form or another have occurred without eliminating what many Americans feel are real cases of government waste. Here’s just one government grant that we could do without: the Department of Commerce’s Make it in America Challenge. From a 2012 summary, $40 million of federal tax dollars will be made available to levels of state and local governments as well as nonprofit organizations in the form of up to 15 projects, each at $4 million maximum allotments. Grants will be used to “encourage insourcing, either through on-shoring of productive activity by U.S. firms, fostering increased foreign direct investment, or incentivizing U.S. companies to keep their businesses and jobs here at home, as well as train local workers to meet the needs of those businesses.” Funds will be provided through the existing budgets of:
The Make it in America Challenge would also accept additional appropriations from Congress, which would likely require new spending. However, as the program is set up, budget outlays would not increase. Many problems can come out of having the government pay for businesses to re-shore or pay to prevent those firms from leaving the country. Living in Ohio for years, I saw this first hand. Companies were given tax or other deals to stay in the Buckeye State but when the terms expired, the companies responded to incentives and expected an equal or better deal to remain in the state. When the state could’t or refused to comply, the company left for a better business environment (sometimes for better deals, more consistent or lower tax rates, or more competitive labor markets). In other words, the act of giving individual businesses (at times, picking winners & losers) results in unintended consequences that left the state worse off. Now, potentially expand Ohio’s example to the entire nation. Some companies could not afford to leave for better fiscal pastures (think your local hair stylist or car mechanic) but with e-commerce expanding fast, many corporations would leave or threaten to leave without a government handout. This is not an example of businesses, or even capitalism, being evil. It’s a situation where people seek scarce resources and jump on opportunities. We all do the same thing picking store brand canned goods because of the lower price or use a coupon to get $10 off an oil change. What would be better is to allow companies to move about freely (domestically or internationally) to encourage greater tax competition and competitiveness across all boarders. That starts with having a freer marketplace. By allowing firms to succeed and fail because of their own choices and workers to have earned success by taking less out of their paychecks, the economy will grow and erase the need for government handouts. Plus, saving $40 million is no small feat. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
The Late Edition: March 27, 2013 Today’s Taxpayer News! Lee Schalk spoke out against the planned $250 million Columbia Pike streetcar system at the Arlington County budget hearing last night. Read more form the Clarendon Patch. ObamaCare just gets better. According to HuffPo, the law will cause medical claims costs to jump an average of 32% per individual policy. 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Sign up for NTU Action Alerts
|
|
