Not Just Kansas Anymore

Back in 2010, Kansas Governor Brownback and his Republican-controlled legislature initiated a “real-live experiment” in a particular brand of conservative economics. It blew up. And we, who don’t live in Kansas, may get hit by a much bigger explosion.

Experiment Blows Gaping Budget Holes

The Kansas Republicans eliminated income taxes for variously-structured small businesses. They also reduced income taxes for individual filers. This, Brownback said, would attract businesses, grow those there and create many thousands of jobs.

Well, Kansas, which must balance its budget every year, saw income taxes fall about $54 million short of projections — and then $333 million. Brownback filled the holes by shifting money from funds meant for special purposes..

Not enough. So Brownback cut funds for a range of programs, e.g., higher education, Medicaid, in-home services for seniors. And he tried to cut funding for K-12 education by $28 million — an action the Kansas Supreme Court found unconstitutional.

Why should we who don’t live in Kansas or have ties to anyone who does care? Because the Trump administration and leading Congressional Republicans have the same theory in mind for their tax cuts. And they’ll predictably trigger cuts in cuts in programs that benefit low-income people.

Faith in Theory Remains

A theory dating back to the mid-1970s, holds that tax cuts will stimulate so much economic growth that the additional revenues gained under the lower rates will offset the seeming losses, even reap more — because business will invest more, people work more, save and invest more.

It’s now commonly known as supply side economics — or pejoratively trickle down. Note how it favors tax cuts for corporations and well-off individuals, since lower-wage workers already have to earn as much as they can and have little or nothing left over to buy stocks and bonds.

Both the theory and some specific features of Brownback’s experiment underpin what the Trump administration and Congressional Republican leaders have in mind for their promised tax reform.

House Speaker Ryan’s Better Way tax reform plan includes large tax cuts on individuals’ investment income, lower tax rates for all businesses and an immediate, instead of a multi-year write-off on their investments.

The promise here is economic growth — in the labor force, productivity and wages. Though the cuts will be larger than “loopholes” and deductions eliminated, the package will, the plan says, be revenue-neutral, i.e. neither more nor less tax revenues collected.

Ryan cites a fairly recent House rule that requires the Joint Committee on Taxation to use dynamic scoring, rather than beginning with the current revenue baseline and then adding and subtracting estimated gains from increases and losses from cuts.

Last year’s concurrent budget resolution, i.e., the basic blueprint for budgets the House and Senate will develop, directed the Congressional Budget Office to do the same, insofar as it responsibly can.

No one with any basic economic smarts doubts that taxes have some effect on choices that affect growth. JCT and CBO factored these in their pre-dynamic scoring.

But the economists must build and use even more complex predictive models for dynamic scores. These — and so the results — can vary widely. But JCT and CBO  must deliver only one score, rather than a range, with explanations as they used to.

And now Trump’s Director of Office of Management and Budget says that both the budget and the administration’s tax reform proposal will reflect some dynamic scoring, but with a considerably higher growth rate than CBO’s.

The plan, he more recently said, ‘”will pay for itself” with growth — nearly $2 trillion over the first 10 years. The Tax Policy Center, on the other hand, estimates a $6.2 trillion loss in revenues, plus another trillion for interest on the mounting debt.

Devil Isn’t Only in Model Details

White House economists are still hammering out details of the tax reform plan, reportedly consulting with Congressional leaders — Republicans only, one infers.

Two things we know for sure. The business tax part will be “phenomenal” and the speaker, whom I trust need not be identified, believes the whole package “bigger than any tax cut ever.”

But what if, as in Kansas, it results in revenue losses? Edward Kleinbard, a former JCT chief of staff, thinks this likely — in part because the models assume that only individuals (and one assumes businesses) make productive investments. But government spending boosts growth too.

Less of that and the deficit will rise. The dynamic scoring partisans will push for deep cuts in investment programs and/or social insurance, he warns.

We know from experience that a rising deficit will prompt a wide range of cuts — both safety net and investments that give low-income people opportunities to earn more, e.g., by gaining more education and marketable skills, better public transportation, renovated neighborhoods that attract businesses.

These all give their children a better chance to do better too.

When Republicans balked at raising the debt ceiling in 2011, the Obama administration brokered a deal. Congress then passed the Budget Control Act — a two-part spending reduction measure.

We first had across-the-board cuts for both defense and non-defense programs that depend on annual appropriations, then caps on each, which Congress and the President later agreed to temporarily modify.

And look what’s happened.

As I’ve said before, programs generally need more funding just to sustain a steady state because costs rise — rent that housing vouchers subsidize, food and beverages that nutrition aid programs pay for* teaching materials, salaries and operating costs in public education programs, from pre-K through college, etc.

But funding for non-defense programs is now 16% lower in real dollars than in 2010. Title I funding targeted to high-poverty schools has remained basically flat, notwithstanding its current Every Child Succeeds Act name.

The Child Care and Development Block Grant — the largest source of federal subsidies for lower-income families serves fewer children in an average month than in any year since 1998, according to the latest official figures.

The Community Development Block Grant, which Trump wants to eliminate, lost $6 million last year alone. Local housing authorities are shy well over $26.5 billion needed to repair and/or renovate deteriorating public housing units merely to avoid further losses, estimated at 10,000 a year.

These are only examples I can readily recall in enough detail and find links for. We will surely have a plethora with those phenomenal tax cuts.

* Most nutrition assistance programs administered by the Agriculture Department must receive enough funding for everyone eligible. This is not true, however, for WIC or two programs that supply food directly, rather than as a cash-equivalent or a reimbursement.

What Do Our Federal Income Taxes Pay For?

We who didn’t request an extension (gloat) have filed our federal income tax returns. There’s a lot of chatter about where our taxpayer dollars go — even a Congressman who tells his constituents that they don’t pay his salary.

We do, of course. But more generally, what do we pay for? The National Priorities Project answers again this year. So I put what I owed into its online tool and converted the dollars into shares, since these would be the same for everyone.

Here’s what I learned.

The same shares would be true for everyone who owed income taxes. Only the actual dollars would differ.

The single largest share of my income taxes went for healthcare programs — 29%. About 80% of this helped pay for Medicaid and Medicare (one of its three funding streams).

Next largest share to the military — roughly 24%. Only about 20% of this went for personnel costs of any sort.

NPP also itemizes, for the interested, what the Pentagon pays for nuclear weapons and to Lockheed Martin, whose trouble-plagued F-35 fighter plane has cost us nearly $4 billion. An email from NPP tells me that we pay over six times more to Lockheed than what we spend on all foreign aid.

Third share went for interest on the debt — 13%. You may recall that Congressional Republicans used the government’s urgent need to borrow more so it could pay what it owed as a lever to force down spending through sequestration and the budget caps. And that they later actually shut down the government in hopes of defunding Obamacare.

Doubtful they’ll access their tax receipts. But the bill that simply suspended the debt ceiling expired a little over a month ago. And some are warning of another skirmish.

My fourth largest share paid for unemployment and labor programs — 7.5%, presumably everything federal agencies spend to get people into — or back into—the workforce.

This same share supports what the Labor Department contributes to unemployment insurance benefits when times are especially hard and the rules it issues and enforces to protect workers from workplace health hazards and wage theft. The latter now include updated overtime pay requirements, but may no longer, coming sometime next year.

Then veterans benefits — about 6%. This includes, among other things, payments veterans receive when they’re disabled while serving, the GI bill, home loans and pensions for low-income surviving spouses. Most of the rest of this share goes to the problem-riddled Veterans Health Administration.

Next come food and agriculture — nearly 5%. Here’s where we find, among other things, SNAP (the food stamp program) and the Agriculture Department’s other nutrition aid programs.

Also, in an altogether different mode, the subsidies Congress gives to farmers — mostly big agribusinesses — to cushion them against price drops, insure them against other business risks and more.

Government next — 4.2%. NPP breaks out only three pieces, all enforcement — and two clearly aimed at ramped-up actions against undocumented immigrants and would-be’s.

But we’ve got to assume, I think, that this line item includes spending for all non-military personnel and activities, including Congress members’ salaries — $174,000 this year, plus benefits.

Transportation gets a 3.2% share. Everything the Transportation Department does gets some share of this share. including controlling air traffic and, as all flyers know, vigilantly trying to keep us from hijacking or blowing up planes.

Education gets a 2.8% share, according to NPP’s analysis. I’d put it at 3.2% because NPP classifies Head Start and related programs as community spending.

It’s true that Head Start and Early Head Start for younger kids do more than ready them for kindergarten, e.g. screen them for health and developmental problems, link families to needed services. But their primary aim is starting low-income children off on as level a playing field as possible.

Wherever you put it, Head Start’s share is far from the largest NPP breaks out. That distinction goes to Pell grants, work-study and other forms of federal aid for lower-income college students. These rolled together receive a larger share than federal aid to elementary and secondary schools — 35 %, as compared to 27%.

And I’d be remiss not to note that the National Endowment for the Arts, which Trump wants to eliminate, gets less than .002% of education’s share, as NPP calculates it — and roughly a tenth of that for everything our federal government uses our income tax dollars for.

Shifting Head Start and EHS, as I have, leaves housing and community with a 1.7%, rather than a 2.1% share.

Here we have everything the Department of Housing and Urban Development spends to help make housing affordable for lower-income people, shelter and temporarily house those who are homeless and make lower-income neighborhoods better places to live, e.g., by attracting businesses and thus job opportunities, providing needed services.

The money goes to local communities as grants. The largest of these is the Community Development Block Grant — another program on the Trump hit list because it’s “not well-targeted to the poorest populations and “has not demonstrated results.”

Followers already know what I — and many others — think of that line of argument.

Energy and environment get a 1.6% share of our income taxes. Seems it’s likely to shrink to an even smaller fraction, what with Trump’s seeking a 31% cut in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, crippling its ability to fulfill its legal responsibilities for protecting us from range of environmental health hazards, including climate change.

Lastly, we have, in rank order international affairs and science. These together get about 2.8% of the total.

Say you don’t like the way the budget apportions your federal income tax dollars. NPP has a tool that lets you reallocate them — and gives you trade-offs.

These are mostly shifts from the $528.5 billion Defense Department budget, which NPP has long viewed as excessive. Interesting to see what even small nicks could do for lower-income people.

DC Mayor Bowser Won’t Halt Triggered Tax Cuts to Gain Needed Funding

Just finished my annual dialogue with my tax preparation software. So as always, my thoughts turn to the tax laws that determine what I have to pay. A sweeping federal tax reform is much in the news. And I’ll probably have things to say about that.

But I’ll start with the automatically triggered tax cuts Mayor Bowser has decided to let alone in her proposed budget, styled “DC Values in Action: A Roadmap to Inclusive Prosperity.”

These because they don’t hinge on new legislation. And they push down spending because the District, like most states must balance its budget every year.

As you may know, the triggered tax cuts reflect recommendations made by the Tax Revision Commission in 2014. It didn’t recommend triggering them whenever a certain revenue projection exceeded the version the budget was built on.

That was the work of DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who folded them, ranked according to his preferences into the final version of the legislative package that accompanied the Fiscal Year 2015 budget.

A last minute thing. Other Councilmembers had no chance to consider them — perhaps didn’t even know they were there.

The triggered tax cuts have already reduced revenues by $102 million — none a one-time loss. The rest will all kick next fiscal year, unless the Council decides to instead recoup about $100 million.

Some of the cuts, would benefit lower and moderate-income residents, though not those with incomes so low they already don’t owe income taxes, once they’ve taken all now allowable exemptions, credits and the like. Nor, of course, those who’ve no taxable income at all.

These cuts include a further increase in the standard deduction, which a very large percent of DC filers with incomes less than $75,000 choose because they don’t have more costly specific deductions like interest on a mortgage or real property taxes high out-of-pocket medical expenses. (The District relies on the federal government’s Schedule A for these.)

The other of this sort is a multi-part increase in the personal exemption, which applies to all filers and their dependents, except apparently those whose incomes exceed $275,000.

But the surplus also triggers a second increase in the threshold for the estate tax, bringing it to $5.49 million if left by an individual and twice that for a married couple — the same as in federal law.*

Why the District should aim to mirror a tax giveaway to heirs of the very most prosperous that Congressional Republicans insisted on as part of the deal that pulled us back from the fiscal cliff is a mystery.

Additional cuts in the business franchise tax, coupled with a further cut in the business income tax are, at the very least questionable.

Sure, we want profit-making businesses in the city — a source of jobs, among other things. But a recent survey indicates that the taxes they must pay are a relatively minor factor in their decisions on whether to locate here or elsewhere.

Topping the list is the ready availability of workers with the knowledge and/or skills they need. One could do a lot to help residents qualify for and get jobs with the potential loss of $35.7 million.

Advocacy organizations of various sorts have already flagged a wide range of shortfalls in the Mayor’s proposed budget. We’ll have a fuller accounting from the DC Fiscal Policy Institute fairly soon — and undoubtedly more from other concerned nonprofits too.

I’d thought to cite examples, based on the Mayor’s prosperity promise and my own topmost concerns. But even summaries made this post far longer than my somewhat flexible maxim. So I’ll return to them shortly.

Yet I don’t want to leave the impression that the Mayor’s budget shortchanges her low-income constituents in every way.

The most significant example of how it would benefit them is the funding she proposes to begin the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families time limit reforms recommended by diverse working group the Department of Human Services convened.

This will not only save roughly 6,500 families from losing all their benefits when the new fiscal year begins — and more as time goes on.

It will preserve those benefits for all children and all parents who’re meeting their work preparation and/or job requirements until they’ve found jobs or otherwise gained enough income to put them over the eligibility cut-off.

Cash benefits being as low as they are — and will be — the initiative in and of itself hardly shares the non-inclusive prosperity reflected in the District’s tax revenues. But it does save very poor families from the most dire poverty.

And the non-cash benefits — free training and, in some cases, formal education, no-cost child care and transportation — give parents a chance to move from welfare to decent-paying work and, in the process, improve their children’s future prospects.

* The thresholds were somewhat lower when the Council adopted the triggers, but the legislation refers to raising the threshold “to conform to the federal level.” And the federal level rises with the inflation rate.

UPDATE: I’ve learned that the Mayor’s budget doesn’t altogether reflect the working group’s recommendations. They would significantly protect children if their parents had their benefits cut for not complying with their work requirements by allocating 80% of the family grant to them.

The Mayor would split the grant 50-50. As a practical matter, this might not make much difference. The parents will have the same amount to spend, and it will surely go for the same basic needs. We will need to see how the Mayor justifies her split, assuming she or a Department of Human Services official is asked.

Clinton Unveils Anti-Poverty Reforms to Child Tax Credit

Clinton firmed up her agenda for children and families last week with a plan to reform the Child Tax Credit. Her announcement headlines it as a “middle class tax cut,” but it would deliver needed income support to poor and near-poor families with children, especially the very young.

We can see that Clinton attends to progressive advocates and members of Congress who attend to them. Basically, she’s borrowed from bills previously introduced in Congress, which borrowed from a proposal by the Center for American Progress.

They all would make the CTC available to working parents who can’t claim it now and deliver the greatest benefits to those with children in their early years.

CAP argues that those families’ needs are greatest — a combination of relatively low earnings, student debt and the costs of necessary things for babies, e.g., cribs, diapers.

One might add the costs of child care, which are extraordinarily high for infants and toddlers. They’re probably a bigger stretch for parents who’ve no student debt because they, at best, finished high school.

Low earnings alone surely justify the inclusion of a more robust CTC in an anti-poverty agenda — optimally, one that would boost the credit for all minor-age children.

The poverty rate for children under six was 17.3% last year, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. But it was 15.6% for older children. Their parents would fare better under Clinton’s plan too, though not as much better.

Her plan would do three major things. First, it would make the CTC available from the first dollar earned, rather than the first after $3,000 — a change that progressives have advocated for years.

Second, it would selectively increase the rate at which the CTC phases in. It’s now 15% of earnings over the threshold to claim it, up to a $1,000 per child maximum. Clinton would triple the rate for children under five.

And third, she’d double the maximum parents could claim for those kids.

So, for example, a single mother who has an infant and a toddler and works full time at the federal minimum wage would get $4,000, instead of about $1,800, i.e., less than the current full credit for the kids.

Now, the CTC, as you may know, is a refundable credit, like the heftier Earned Income Tax Credit. So if a parent owes less than zero when she claims it, plus deductions and the EITC, she gets a check (or the equivalent) from the Internal Revenue Service.

The refunds help account for the credit’s anti-poverty impact — and its potential. The CTC lifted about 3.1 million people, including some 1.7 million children over the poverty threshold in 2013, the Center on Budget reports.

An additional 13.7 million, including about 6.8 million children were less poor than they’d have otherwise been.

Clinton’s proposals would lift about 1.5 million more people out of poverty, the Center estimates. This figure includes roughly 400,000 children under five.

And about 5.2 million people, including 1.1 million young children in deep poverty, i.e., at or below half the applicable threshold, would also gain income. Still poor, but less so.

Not only poor families would benefit. Eligibility for the CTC would apparently plateau at the same maximum adjusted gross income and then phase out at the rate current law sets.

So a single parent with two children could get some tax reduction until her income exceeded about $115,000. A cut-off about $45,000 higher if she married and filed jointly.

The CTC, however, benefits primarily lower and moderate-income working families. It still would. But the Center for Tax Justice finds that eliminating the threshold and tripling the phase-in rate would deliver the greatest benefits to families in the bottom fifth.

The Center on Budget’s analysis indicates a tilt toward families way down in that fifth. About 77% of the people the CTC expansions would benefit are poor, according to its estimates.

The reforms would cost the federal government an estimated $208.7 billion over the first 10 years, if they became law this year, which, of course, they won’t.

The revenue losses would be a miniscule fraction of the federal budget, which was somewhere around $3.9 trillion for just last fiscal year.

And Clinton’s total tax plan would offset the CTC reforms many times over. The Tax Policy Center estimates revenue gains at about $1.4 trillion over the same 10 years its CTC estimate covers. More than 90% of the increase would come from the very wealthiest households.

So we’re highly unlikely to see the whole package pass in the next Congress. But say — oh, let’s say — that Clinton becomes our next President.

Might we see the CTC expansions or something like? Dylan Matthews at Vox thinks not, unless the Democrats win a majority in the House. Jordan Weissman at Slate views all Clinton’s tax proposals as DOA unless Democrats gain control of the Senate too.

I’m inclined to feel more hopeful. Democrats got the current CTC threshold converted from temporary (and expiring) to permanent as part of a big, urgently-needed budget deal.

That won’t be the last near-crisis because Congress tends to put off politically difficult decisions until the last minute. And a whole lot of decisions have become politically difficult as rifts within, as well as between the parties have grown.

Grasping at straws, it may seem. But I do think the CTC expansions have a chance. And I hope that when an actual bill emerges, they provide more relief for families with older children, as Clinton suggests they might.