Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Mark Thoma finds Alan Greenspan wanting the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act PAYGO restrictions back:

Economist's View: Budget Deficit Legerdemain....

The positive short-term economic outlook is playing out against a backdrop of concern about the prospects for the federal budget over the longer run. ...[T]he latest projections... suggest our budget position will substantially worsen in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken. As I recently testified, the necessary choices will be especially difficult to implement without the restoration of procedural restraints on the budget-making process.... Reinstating a structure like the one formerly provided by the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 would signal a renewed commitment to fiscal restraint and help restore discipline to the annual budgeting process.... I do not mean to suggest that the nation's budget problems will be solved simply by adopting a new set of budgeting rules. The fundamental fiscal issue is the need to make difficult choices among budget priorities....

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home