It’s true that the fiscal cliff poses a significant threat to the economy if left completely unaddressed deep into 2013. But although the two most well-known components of the cliff (which is better described as a “fiscal obstacle course”) are the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the sequestration cuts, neither scheduled change poses nearly as large a danger to the economy in the immediate future as a failure to raise the debt ceiling.

Last year, President Obama allowed congressional Republicans to hold the economy hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling until their demands to cut spending were met. Obama eventually agreed to cut roughly $2 trillion in spending, including $800 billion from the discretionary spending caps and $1.2 trillion from the sequester (which includes discretionary and some mandatory spending). This set a dangerous precedent that the minority party could use the debt ceiling to extract policy concessions from the majority.

FULL ANALYSIS FROM EPI: Budget battles in the lame duck and beyond

Appearing to recognize this dangerous precedent, the president has now proposed defusing the debt ceiling by allowing any president to raise the debt ceiling, with only a two-thirds vote in Congress able to prevent the increase. This is a positive development, as are Read more

The American public wants Congress to get the economy moving and create jobs. Rightly so, given 7.9 percent unemployment and 23 million workers underemployed. So why is Speaker of the House John Boehner focused on something else? Why, for example, does he support continuing the Bush tax cuts for the very rich, which do almost nothing to boost the economy, and oppose continuing Emergency Unemployment Compensation for the long-term unemployed, which is a proven job creator, in addition to being financial life support for millions of families?

Extending just the upper-income Bush tax cuts would boost GDP growth by 0.1 percentage point, increasing nonfarm payroll employment in 2013 by only 102,000 jobs—far less than one-tenth the impact of continuing the temporary ad hoc stimulus measures. Continuing EUC would do three times as much in terms of GDP growth and support 300,000 to 400,000 jobs. In terms of jobs created per dollar of budget deficit, EUC is more than five times as effective as the Bush income tax cuts for the wealthy. Combine them with the Bush estate tax cuts and they are one-seventh as effective as EUC. Read more

Business groups and their allies, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and various non-profit advocacy organizations, have been arguing for years—without real evidence—that the United States is losing a race to attract the world’s best and brightest young scientists, engineers, computer techies and mathematicians. In a report entitled, Immigration of Foreign Nationals with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Degrees, Ruth Wasem of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently reviewed the statistics regarding these highly skilled migrants and concluded: “The United States remains the leading host country for international students in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields.” The United States has been and continues to be extraordinarily welcoming to foreign students, and especially to those in the STEM fields. CRS reports that the number of foreign graduate students in the STEM fields increased by 50 percent since 1990:

“The number of full-time graduate students in science, engineering, and health fields who were foreign students (largely on F-1 nonimmigrant visas) grew from 91,150 in 1990 to 148,923 in 2009, with most of the increase occurring after 1999. Read more

Here’s some reading material for you from items EPI’s research team skimmed through today:

• “Why sane bargaining looks strange” (Washington Post)
• “As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price” (New York Times)
• “Lines Blur as Texas Gives Industries a Bonanza” (New York Times)
• “No more false equivalence. Both sides are not equally to blame.” (Washington Post)
• “Understanding The Fiscal Cliff (in 2 minutes, 30 seconds)” (Robert Reich)
• “Everyone’s talking about tax reform. But no one really knows what it would do.” (Washington Post)

Here’s some good content that EPI’s research team browsed through today:

• “Tax Burden Is Lower for Most Americans Than in the 1980s” (New York Times)
• “No, Dems don’t need to compromise up front” (Washington Post)
• “In rare strike, NYC fast-food workers walk out” (Salon.com)
• “Putting pollution controls on Mill Creek power plant to create hundreds of jobs” (Louisville Courier-Journal)
• “Will Tim Geithner Lead Us Over or Around the Fiscal Cliff?” (Robert Reich)

The leaked document that purports to show the Obama administration’s opening bid for resolving the “fiscal cliff” is deeply encouraging, on many fronts—as detailed by Andrew Fieldhouse. Given how strong a proposal it is, and how in-line it is with many of the principles for fiscal policy that we have laid out in the medium– and long-run, it seems churlish to raise any note of criticism. It needs to be said, however, that as good as this proposal is, it still does not look like strong-enough medicine to solve the most pressing problem of sluggish economic growth and chronic joblessness in the coming years.

To be sure, if adopted it would turn fiscal policy from dangerously contractionary to supportive of growth in the next couple of years. And the most basic contours of their proposal, as Andrew notes, are actually very much in line with the proposed strategy we recently outlined.

FULL ANALYSIS FROM EPI: Budget battles in the lame duck and beyond

But, as our own paper noted, both our strategy and the Obama administration’s proposal start with the presumption that measures that are strong enough to reliably solve the crisis of joblessness in the near term are totally outside the bounds of political realism. Read more

President Obama’s opening bid for negotiations resolving the “fiscal cliff” has surfaced, and the contours are both familiar and sound. The Washington Post and an unofficial outline drafted by Republican aides both suggest that the administration has essentially proposed its budget request for fiscal 2013. And the president’s latest budget offers a solid framework for navigating the fiscal obstacle course, as it would substantially moderate the pace of deficit reduction while making a responsible down payment on longer-term deficit reduction. Relative to current policy, the contours are shaping up roughly as follows:

• Allow the upper-income Bush tax cuts to expire (+$850 billion)
• Restore the estate and gift taxes to 2009 parameters (+$120 billion)
• Curb tax expenditures (+600 billion)
• Stimulus spending (-$50 billion)
• Extend emergency unemployment benefits (-$30 billion)
• Extend or replace the payroll tax cut (-$110 billion)
• Continue AMT patch, “doc fix,” and tax extenders (-$240 billion)
• Defer sequestration (?)

Most critically, the Obama framework includes a variation of his American Jobs Act, proposing increased near-term government spending on infrastructure and state fiscal relief while maintaining the ad hoc stimulus set to expire at year’s endRead more

Last week, President Obama’s vestigial campaign sent out an infographic touting his plan to address the fiscal cliff. This plan would end the upper Bush tax cuts and cut spending by more than $3 trillion, including the cuts already signed into law since early 2011, and preserve nondefense public investments in areas like education and infrastructure.

FULL ANALYSIS FROM EPI: Budget battles in the lame duck and beyond

There’s an irony in that the cuts already signed into law were never actually supported by the president, who only relented when the House GOP threatened to shut down the government (the spring 2011 appropriations showdown) and collapse the economy (the summer 2011 debt ceiling showdown). He was right then, because these cuts—particularly the half that come out of the domestic discretionary budget—are horrible policy. Domestic (non-security) discretionary spending is the portion of the overall budget that not only delivers the primary source of investment in our nation’s future, but also provides vital services to people in need, protects Americans from corporate abuses and environmental degradation, and keeps the government itself operating. (The nondefense budget includes all of non-security plus homeland security, veterans affairs, nuclear weapon security, and foreign affairs.) Bottom line, it’s important stuff. And yet over the last year, the president has begun touting the fact that his budget brings the non-security portion of the budget down to record low levels—“the lowest level since President Eisenhower,” as the president is fond of saying—as if this is somehow a good thing. Read more

In a year of professional sports lockouts, teacher strikes, and disappearing Twinkies, we’ve heard a lot about the “labor dispute.” The phrase implies unreasonable labor demands and stalled collective bargaining negotiations and has frequently provided cover for businesses that have failed to adapt to changing economic conditions. The Hostess bankruptcy is the latest example of workers bearing the blame for years of bad management and myopic business strategy. The language used to describe these events is indicative of the vilification of workers —from Detroit, to Irving, Texas, to Washington, D.C. Yet, in so many of these cases, labor is neither the provocateur nor the problem.

When Hostess executives (who recently treated themselves to 30–300 percent pay increases) proposed a plan to slash employee compensation by 30 percent, it wasn’t in response to labor demands. When the workers refused to accept management’s proposed compensation cuts, it was resistance to extortion, not a labor dispute. Employees sticking together to protect the compensation they’d earned, following recent sacrifices to the tune of at least $110 million, wasn’t “big labor” picking a fight or wanting more. Read more

In a recent blog post, we made the point that the debate over the “fiscal cliff/obstacle course/austerity crisis” is fixated on the too-modest goal of avoiding outright recession in the coming year, rather than actually pushing the U.S. economy back to full economic recovery. This latter goal—actually ending the economic slump that began with the Great Recession in late 2007—is obviously politically unrealistic (which, by the way, should be sign one of just how deranged D.C. policymaking has become), but we should be clear that it’s the right thing to do.

FULL ANALYSIS FROM EPI: Budget battles in the lame duck and beyond

The U.S. economy has already forfeited literally trillions of dollars in national income by not pushing the economy back to full health after the Great Recession. Knock-on effects of this policy failure include damage to future potential income from economic “scarring;” to put it simply, allowing productive economic resources (both people and capital) to sit idle and atrophy is exceptionally inefficient. A less important knock-on effect of this continuing slump is that it will predictably cause future projected budget deficits to balloon. Yet far too many self-proclaimed deficit hawks among D.C. policymakers seem strangely unconcerned about this particular driver (continued economic weakness and unemployment) of future budget deficits, and too many are instead advocating near-term fiscal contraction that will further delay recovery.

The U.S. economy is running $973 billion (5.8 percent) below potential economic output—what the economy could produce with higher (but noninflationary) levels of employment and industrial capacity utilization. Cumulatively, these output gaps imply that the U.S. has forgone roughly $3.6 trillion of national income over 2008—2011, projected to hit $4.6 trillion by the end of 2012.

Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) economic baseline shows output gaps persisting into 2018: Under current law, another $3.5 trillion worth of cumulative output gaps are projected over 2013–2017. These forecasts are likely overstated in the near term, as Congress probably won’t actually allow all the fiscal contraction baked into current law to actually come to pass. Still, CBO’s current economic forecast indicates a decade-long economic slump, in which the United States will forgo $8.1 trillion of national incomeRead more