It’s funny. I guess Duncan wasn’t in the mood to listen to my request that progressives engage in less all spending is good spending analysis, since he retorted with exactly that rhetoric. I understand his point and it will take a small bit of argument to explain why I disagree with it. Duncan says, in his typical way, that we’d be better off paying people to dig and fill ditches or build and explode bombs than we are letting them languish in an economy that simply doesn’t have enough jobs. In the abstract, he is correct. But let’s make this a little more concrete.
One point I made that Duncan ignored was that $1.74 billion of these cuts came from appropriations that were made for the 2010 Census but which were not spent. Kudos to the Commerce Department for coming in so under budget, by the way. How’s that for government efficiency?
In any case, I mentioned the Census money because it’s an example of a huge chunk of money that was not removed from the economy when it was slashed from the budget. That money was going to sit in some drawdown account for the next eight years until we started gearing up for next constitutionally-mandated accounting of our citizenry in 2019. You might remember seeing employment-level reports last year that gave you numbers that included and excluded temporary Census workers. We hired a ton of people on a temporary basis to walk door-to-door and conduct the Census. It gave a temporary boost to the employment numbers.
Now, thinking of Duncan’s ditch-diggers, and ditch-fillers, and bomb-makers, and controlled bomb-exploders, we could just as easily use them to do something less idiotic. We could have them conduct another census. They could do a census every year for the next nine years. It wouldn’t be the real Census; the one that matters. But it would help us more closely track the changes in our demographics. Sociologists might be thrilled with all the data. It would do the exact same thing for the economy and the unemployment rate as Duncan’s plan, but we’d get something marginally more valuable out of it.
But what would happen? We’d get a bunch of people who are reliant on temporary jobs that have little intrinsic value. We’d delegitimize the ‘real’ census by aggravating and confusing people with fake surveys, and they’d be less willing to cooperate when we needed them to cooperate. And we’d open ourselves up to deserving and undeserving ridicule that would delegitimize our greater political goals.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. What seems sensible in the abstract may not be worth it in the real world. All spending is not good spending. Some spending is simple waste. Other spending is political foolishness. Spending in one area can make it harder to spend in another area. Do you think the big earmarkers wish they’d never authorized that Bridge to Nowhere? It was a bridge too far, and it came back to bite them in the ass and put all their projects at risk.
It is unlikely that hiring people to dig and fill ditches would work out for the best even though it would make a certain amount of short-term sense. I know Duncan likes to make short-hand arguments. And I do understand his overall point, and I agree with it. But all spending is not good spending.
Aren’t you guilty of the same rhetorical overreach?
That $39B didn’t come from a line in the budget conveniently labeled “government fraud and waste.” The Census funding isn’t representative of the broader package.
What would have been a better use of that 1.5B? Simply cutting it, or rolling it into the Pell grants program for example? What’s the point of talking about “winning the future” if you aren’t actually willing to advance that argument in a practical manner beyond an occasional speech?
It’s not entirely unrepresentative of it either. Perhaps a fifth of the cuts fall into that kind of category of either being surplus or being unwanted.
But my point is not that the cuts are painless or even that they are the right place to start trimming the budget. My point is that you don’t want to start arguing that government spending is good by definition and cuts are bad. That’s the mirror image of the teabagger argument. It’s fine for a kind tit-for-tat rhetorical war, but it’s sloppy inaccurate thinking, and it would be soundly rejected by the electorate, especially after being laundered through the Mighty Right-Wing Wurlitzer.
To spread some money around and pump the economy in an organic, homegrown way, we have to see that productivity is not a friend.
Definition of productivity : “we did it without you.”
I never put my cart back at the store. I put a can back – not malisciously – but I put it back wherever if I change my mind. Sorry, I think “keep the people working!”
This doesn’t apply to manufacturing or construction, but it does serve for retail and service.
Blog owners who get in pie fights over nonsense drive me nuts.
Atrios’s key point:
And the difference is in asking “good” in terms of what. In terms of getting jobs going in an economy like the one we are in right now, all spending even the frigging wars we are fighting is good spending. And the whole rhetoric surrounding the budget cuts is that not only will they cut the deficit, they will create jobs. That is patent nonsense in the short term, and from now until November 2012 is the short term.
In reality, the private sector has squandered more money with a single derivative “invention” than the federal government is in hock for.
Should we spend wisely? Yes, that’s why I’m for raising teacher pay and lowering Congressional pay.
But in the short term, spending cuts of this magnitude will dampen the job recovery that is moving pretty much sideways. The amount of savings that President Obama has made is beside the point in talking about appropriations. As is how well (waste, fraud, abuse) that money is used. Both of those affect the flexibility that the President has not to significantly curtail services of the government. But the dollar demand impact on jobs is pretty straightforward.
In case you haven’t noticed, the private sector is rife with temporary jobs that have little intrinsic value. And people scramble to get hired because the supply of jobs that do something of intrinsic value is rapidly diminishing.
There is enough public sector work of intrinsic value going undone that could receive funding that the dig-and-fill ditches and bomb-and-repair countries work could be avoided entirely. Besides, that never was proposal, it was an offhand observation about the effects of government spending. A real world example from the private sector is spending money on PR instead of engineers to stop an oil spill and then coming back and hiring folks to clean up the oil spill; both of those activities contribute jobs that are intrinsically useless. What happens on K Street are jobs that are intrinsically useless.
Where is the deserving ridicule that would delegitimize the greater political goals of the Republican Party. Wait. Rewarding work that is intrinsically useless is the the political goal of the Republican Party.
A reassertion of a standard Keynesian view in one sentence does not qualify as “Duncan’s Plan”.
The bridge to nowhere would produce jobs in Alaska; fundamental intuitive Keynesianism is why a nitwit like Sarah Palin was so for it before she was against it. The political scandal was should folks on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina be paying taxes to build an overpriced bridge to a community of 400 in Alaska when they are isolated without ferry service.
More specifically the scandal was a process issue–earmarks. Should a community be considered for infrastructure development with federal funds in a formula-allocated appropriation or as the special pleading for an earmark by a particular member of Congress seeking re-election. That is a political process not an economic argument.
All spending might not be good spending, broadly considered, but cuts in intrinsically useful spending right now is stupid on both economic and general grounds.
Yes, obviously you can formulate Duncan’s point so that it is less concise and more accurate, which is why I said I basically agree with the overall point he is trying to make. Also, I’m mot having a pie fight with Duncan. I’m just defending my point.
The point that $39 billion in cuts from the FY2010 baseline is going to create jobs? It’s not true. It sets up failure. And it does not prevent the next shutdown extortion. Nor does it strengthen the President’s hand in negotiating that next hostage situation.
The overall budget does not need to be cut. But there is a huge amount of defense spending and tax credits and other items that could be cut so that the funds could go to states to help save the jobs of teachers and first responders and other public service workers. What is happening in Washington DC is not happening in a vacuum.
I mean this in the best way (if you study the history). Obama’s economic policies this year are exactly the same as those of Herbert Hoover, and the states are fifty little Hoovers. Hoover to a great extent was backed into it too. His instinct was to provide relief at the very least, having successfully organized relief effort in World War I. As Secretary of Commerce, he organized relief during the Mississippi Flood of 1927. But he relied on the voluntary sector to provide relief in the Great Depression, not wanting government to be involved until the situation deteriorated in 1932.
I now have every expectation that the FY 2012 appropriations will be closer to the Ryan budget outline than to the President’s own budget that made pre-emptive cuts. And I have every expectation that the kabuki will play out the same way but around the debt ceiling increase. And the end result will be the permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
The only good thing about these cuts is that they postpone slightly the date at which that debt ceiling is reached.
These cuts are obviously not going to help stimulate the economy and they’ll have little overall effect on the deficit. Did I say anything different?
But I do disagree with you that this doesn’t position Obama better for the next go-round. First, there’s the Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome; the GOP can’t keep making effective accusations that the deficit hasn’t been cut when the president just made the biggest one-year cuts ever. Second, the public will not want to be stressed repeatedly with the threat of a shutdown. Each time the GOP tries it, the higher the political cost for them. Obama met them half way in acknowledgment of them winning the argument last November. Now it’s on to the next election.
This is the same Duncan who posts: Somebody should do
something?
The question is who should do what?
The public works jobs are a pipe dream. The Repubs will never go for it.
Public works jobs take time to set up. No instant benefit.
The private sector has to be the main employer.
Before the Nov. election, Obama tried twice to get the offshore tax reversed and the Republicans refused.
That would have helped ease the offshoring of jobs.
The large companies holding onto large amounts of cash and making their stock price the most important thing to them wouldn’t be helped by the gov’t spending money.
Duncan has never explained in detail how things work with gov’t spending on painting Philly roofs white or ditch digging. He has no idea what is involved in this.
There are the contracts for the work. Who bids for the contracts? What criteria are used to award specific contracts?
What type of worker is needed to do these jobs? If a worker gets badly hurt, what happens to that person?
There is the insurance liability for those who work on those projects. How does that get paid?
Cutting military spending is good.
Cutting fancy weapons systems that don’t work is good.
Removing redundancy in federal agencys is good. That would save money.
When you get down to brass tacks, the change that is occurring is that the Wall Streeters are no longer respected. Big Business isn’t trusted like it used to be.
New businesses need to start to replace the the greedy old businesses. The ACA will go a long way to doing that.
Green energy will help.
Duncan has no answers and I am tired of his snide comments about the Obama Administration.
It is up to the people of this country to get things going.
Sitting back and saying Obama has let us down is infantile irresponsibility.
I also seriously doubt that Duncun would out in the hot sun digging those ditches or up on those broiling roofs painting them white.
You are wrong. I think Duncan knows exactly that it will never happened as long as the Pukes are in control of the House. His point is that you don’t hear any of the Democratic bobbleheads on TV talking about it, much less any of the politicians.
You missed my point entirely.
Duncan wrote and I am paraphrasing, that it would be fine to dig holes and fill them back up. What is it that you don’t get that Duncan is talking about Other People doing the labor?
He is sitting in a comfy chair and not worried about being able to pay the rent.
It’s not about what he meant, it’s about what he wrote.
He has written somebody should do something numerous times. That is claptrap.
No, it isn’t. It’s about employing people. Giving them jobs. So they can stay in their homes.
Fair assessment of the deal.
http://roadkillrefugee.posterous.com/who-won-the-budget-battle-obama-or-boehner
Booman, check out the American Community Survey. Perhaps the Census Bureau is not a good example of expenditures that have little or no purpose in the present time frame.