Fiscal Responsibility Quotes

She gave me money to buy condoms, and instead I bought a book of baby names. That’s life. That’s love. That’s fiscally irresponsible.


And that's just the beginning. More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real.

As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.

New Rule: Whenever you think the Tea Party can't get any dumber, they get dumber. Now they're in love with Donald Trump. Because nothing says "We're serious about fiscal responsibility" quite like a billionaire whose corporations have filed for bankruptcy three times.

Fiscal discipline is a vital element of well run city, especially in regard to outstanding municipal bonds.

People have themselves to blame for their decisions; that is undeniable. But don't we have a legal obligation to structure a system that is balanced, not savagely slanted against minorities and the poor? Don't we have a fiscal responsibility to take a commonsense approach to reducing the cost to taxpayers? Don't we have a moral responsibility to offer redemption to someone who has paid his debt instead of unyielding retribution against him and his family?... Aren't we a nation that believes our fellow citizens deserve, at some point, a second chance?

But if racism is pictured as parents asserting their rights as taxpayers & questioning whether the Brown decision applies to "their schools"; if it is shown in calls for more "law & order" & "fiscal responsibility"; if it is demonstrated in the lack of public will to address differentials in resources & services in schools, streets, policing & housing; if it is revealed in the kinds of issues the news media chooses not to cover; if it is illustrated in who stays silent when inequality is brought to light--then it raises questions about where we are today.

I am a conservative. We can define conservatism generally as an approach to governance that values individual freedom, personal responsibility, and moral virtue as a bulwark for that same freedom. We believe in a limited role for government, fiscal discipline, and an understanding that government exists to protect our inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government does not exist to end your suffering; it exists in order to create the proper structure, based on equality and justice, so that you may pursue your own happiness.

The central lesson of the COVID-19 fiscal response is that money is not scarce. Without delay, governments around the world appropriated budgets that dwarfed any other post-war crisis policy.

What with the doctrines that are now widely accepted and the policies accordingly expected from the monetary authorities, there can be little doubt that current union policies must lead to continuous and progressive infl ation. The chief reason for this is that the dominant “fullemployment” doctrines explicitly relieve the unions of the responsibility for any unemployment and place the duty of preserving full employment on the monetary and fiscal authorities. The only way in which the latter can prevent union policy from producing unemployment is, however, to counter through inflation whatever excessive rises in real wages unions tend to cause.

Why do we look to everyone else to see what to do? Why don't we understand that they're all as lost and scared as we are? Why do we look at a random consensus, shaped by opinions and powers that drift like dunes, as an absolute truth? If "normal" could change tomorrow, why are we such slaves to it? And where has "normal" gotten us, anyway? We live in a society that can't stop pollution or environmental destruction, that can't raise educational standards, can't stay healthy and non-obese, can't balance a budget, has no sense of fiscal responsibility, is in an economic tailspin, and is rife with crime and murder and violence. Most people in this "normal" society of ours begin sitting still in a room for six to eight hours beginning in childhood. They continue that for twelve years and then begin sitting still in a different room for another forty years, at which point they hope to retire and sit still in a chair in front of the TV until they die.

The historical record is clear. Each and every time the government substantially reduced the national debt, the economy fell into depression. Could it have been a remarkable coincidence? Thayer didn’t think so. He blamed the “economic myths” that drove politicians to wrestle their budgets into surplus on the flawed belief that paying down debt was both morally and fiscally responsible.45 As we see from the insights of MMT, government surpluses shift deficits onto the nongovernment sector.

Strong back and open heart. This is warrior stance, I tell him. The strong back of fiscal discipline. The strong back of clarity and vision, of drive and direction. The strong back of delegating responsibility and holding people accountable. The strong back of knowing right from wrong. But it’s also the open heart. It’s giving a shit about people, purpose, meaning. It’s working toward something greater than merely boosting your ego, greater than just soothing your worries and chasing your demons away. It’s leading from within, drawing on the core of your being, on all that has shaped you.

Lynum had plenty of information to share. The FBI's files on Mario Savio, the brilliant philosophy student who was the spokesman for the Free Speech Movement, were especially detailed. Savio had a debilitating stutter when speaking to people in small groups, but when standing before a crowd and condemning his administration's latest injustice he spoke with divine fire. His words had inspired students to stage what was the largest campus protest in American history. Newspapers and magazines depicted him as the archetypal "angry young man," and it was true that he embodied a student movement fueled by anger at injustice, impatience for change, and a burning desire for personal freedom. Hoover ordered his agents to gather intelligence they could use to ruin his reputation or otherwise "neutralize" him, impatiently ordering them to expedite their efforts. Hoover's agents had also compiled a bulging dossier on the man Savio saw as his enemy: Clark Kerr. As campus dissent mounted, Hoover came to blame the university president more than anyone else for not putting an end to it. Kerr had led UC to new academic heights, and he had played a key role in establishing the system that guaranteed all Californians access to higher education, a model adopted nationally and internationally. But in Hoover's eyes, Kerr confused academic freedom with academic license, coddled Communist faculty members, and failed to crack down on "young punks" like Savio. Hoover directed his agents to undermine the esteemed educator in myriad ways. He wanted Kerr removed from his post as university president. As he bluntly put it in a memo to his top aides, Kerr was "no good." Reagan listened intently to Lynum's presentation, but he wanted more--much more. He asked for additional information on Kerr, for reports on liberal members of the Board of Regents who might oppose his policies, and for intelligence reports about any upcoming student protests. Just the week before, he had proposed charging tuition for the first time in the university's history, setting off a new wave of protests up and down the state. He told Lynum he feared subversives and liberals would attempt to misrepresent his efforts to establish fiscal responsibility, and that he hoped the FBI would share information about any upcoming demonstrations against him, whether on campus or at his press conferences. It was Reagan's fear, according to Lynum's subsequent report, "that some of his press conferences could be stacked with 'left wingers' who might make an attempt to embarrass him and the state government." Lynum said he understood his concerns, but following Hoover's instructions he made no promises. Then he and Harter wished the ailing governor a speedy recovery, departed the mansion, slipped into their dark four-door Ford, and drove back to the San Francisco field office, where Lynum sent an urgent report to the director. The bedside meeting was extraordinary, but so was the relationship between Reagan and Hoover. It had begun decades earlier, when the actor became an informer in the FBI's investigation of Hollywood Communists. When Reagan was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, he secretly continued to help the FBI purge fellow actors from the union's rolls. Reagan's informing proved helpful to the House Un-American Activities Committee as well, since the bureau covertly passed along information that could help HUAC hold the hearings that wracked Hollywood and led to the blacklisting and ruin of many people in the film industry. Reagan took great satisfaction from his work with the FBI, which gave him a sense of security and mission during a period when his marriage to Jane Wyman was failing, his acting career faltering, and his faith in the Democratic Party of his father crumbling. In the following years, Reagan and FBI officials courted each other through a series of confidential contacts. (7-8)

Bankers are seeking to capture government and make financial policy immune from democratic choice. What promised to be a progressive social democratic Europe half a century ago is turning into a power grab by financial predators. The EU has confronted Greece, Cyprus and other indebted economies with an option of suffering debt deflation or leaving the eurozone. Since Greece’s Syriza coalition took the electoral lead in opposing the financial and fiscal austerity, the creditor response has been to dare Greece to withdraw – and to suffer a transitional financial chaos if it tries to save itself from being crushed by unemployment, bankruptcy and emigration.

The subprime market tapped a segment of the American public that did not typically have anything to do with Wall Street: the tranche between the fifth and the twenty-ninth percentile in their credit ratings. That is, the lenders were making loans to people who were less creditworthy than 71 percent of the population. Which of these poor Americans were likely to jump which way with their finances? How much did their home prices need to fall for their loans to blow up? Which mortgage originators were the most corrupt? Which Wall Street firms were creating the most dishonest mortgage bonds? What kind of people, in which parts of the country, exhibited the highest degree of financial irresponsibility? The default rate in Georgia was five times higher than that in Florida, even though the two states had the same unemployment rate. Why? Indiana had a 25 percent default rate; California, only 5 percent, even though Californians were, on the face of it, far less fiscally responsible. Why? Vinny and Danny flew down to Miami, where they wandered around empty neighborhoods built with subprime loans, and saw with their own eyes how bad things were. “They’d

KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS AND STIMULUS Keynesian economics is based on the notion that unemployment arises when total or aggregate demand in an economy falls short of the economy’s ability to supply goods and services. When products go unsold, jobs are lost. Aggregate demand, in turn, comes from two sources: the private sector (which is the majority) and the government. At times, aggregate demand is too buoyant—goods fly off the shelves and labor is in great demand—and we get rising inflation. At other times, aggregate demand is inadequate—goods are hard to sell and jobs are hard to find. In those cases, Keynes argued in the 1930s, governments can boost employment by cutting interest rates (what we now call looser monetary policy), raising their own spending, or cutting people’s taxes (what we now call looser fiscal policy). By the same logic, when there is too much demand, governments can fight actual or incipient inflation by raising interest rates (tightening monetary policy), increasing taxes, or reducing its own spending (thus tightening fiscal policy). That’s part of standard Keynesian economics, too, although Keynes, writing during the Great Depression, did not emphasize it. Setting aside the underlying theory, the central Keynesian policy idea is that the government can—and, Keynes argued, should—act as a kind of balance wheel, stimulating aggregate demand when it’s too weak and restraining aggregate demand when it’s too strong. For decades, American economists took for granted that most of that job should and would be done by monetary policy. Fiscal policy, they thought, was too slow, too cumbersome, and too political. And in the months after the Lehman Brothers failure, the Federal Reserve did, indeed, pull out all the stops—while fiscal policy did nothing. But what happens when, as was more or less the case by December 2008, the central bank has done almost everything it can, and yet the economy is still sinking? That’s why eyes started turning toward Congress and the president—that is, toward fiscal stimulus—after the 2008 election.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why if all politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices — 545 human beings out of 235 million — are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excused the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered by private central bank. I exclude all of the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislators’ responsibility to determine how he votes. Don’t you see the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes. Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses — provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

The Seventh Central Pay Commission was appointed in February 2014 by the Government of India (Ministry of Finance) under the Chairmanship of Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur. The Commission has been given 18 months to make its recommendations. The terms of reference of the Commission are as follows:  1. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure including pay, allowances and other facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, having regard to rationalisation and simplification therein as well as the specialised needs of various departments, agencies and services, in respect of the following categories of employees:-  (i) Central Government employees—industrial and non-industrial; (ii) Personnel belonging to the All India Services; (iii) Personnel of the Union Territories; (iv) Officers and employees of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department; (v) Members of the regulatory bodies (excluding the RBI) set up under the Acts of Parliament; and (vi) Officers and employees of the Supreme Court.   2. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure, concessions and facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, as well as the retirement benefits of the personnel belonging to the Defence Forces, having regard to the historical and traditional parties, with due emphasis on the aspects unique to these personnel.   3. To work out the framework for an emoluments structure linked with the need to attract the most suitable talent to government service, promote efficiency, accountability and responsibility in the work culture, and foster excellence in the public governance system to respond to the complex challenges of modern administration and the rapid political, social, economic and technological changes, with due regard to expectations of stakeholders, and to recommend appropriate training and capacity building through a competency based framework.   4. To examine the existing schemes of payment of bonus, keeping in view, inter-alia, its bearing upon performance and productivity and make recommendations on the general principles, financial parameters and conditions for an appropriate incentive scheme to reward excellence in productivity, performance and integrity.   5. To review the variety of existing allowances presently available to employees in addition to pay and suggest their rationalisation and simplification with a view to ensuring that the pay structure is so designed as to take these into account.   6. To examine the principles which should govern the structure of pension and other retirement benefits, including revision of pension in the case of employees who have retired prior to the date of effect of these recommendations, keeping in view that retirement benefits of all Central Government employees appointed on and after 01.01.2004 are covered by the New Pension Scheme (NPS).   7. To make recommendations on the above, keeping in view:  (i) the economic conditions in the country and the need for fiscal prudence; (ii) the need to ensure that adequate resources are available for developmental expenditures and welfare measures; (iii) the likely impact of the recommendations on the finances of the state governments, which usually adopt the recommendations with some modifications; (iv) the prevailing emolument structure and retirement benefits available to employees of Central Public Sector Undertakings; and (v) the best global practices and their adaptability and relevance in Indian conditions.   8. To recommend the date of effect of its recommendations on all the above.

The one great exception to this pattern has been Poland, the region’s largest state. The country has weathered the recent global financial crisis exceptionally well and is the only European state that has avoided a recession since 2008. Benefiting from close integration with Germany, it has tried hard to be viewed as a leader of fiscally responsible northern Europe.

Tea Party Patriots, Inc., as an organization, believes in Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. is a non-partisan grassroots organization of individuals united by our core values, which derive from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights as explained in The Federalist Papers. We recognize and support the strength of a grassroots organization powered by activism and civic responsibility at a local level. We hold that the United States is a republic conceived by its architects as a nation whose people were granted “unalienable rights” by our Creator. Chief among these are the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The Tea Party Patriots stand with our Founders, as heirs to the Republic, to claim our rights and duties which preserve their legacy and our own. We hold, as did the Founders, that there exists an inherent benefit to our country when private property and prosperity are secured by natural law and the rights of the individual. As an organization we do not take stances on social issues. We urge members to engage fully on the social issues they consider important and aligned with their beliefs.

Even for a country where corruption is taken for granted as a part of daily life, the revelations have stunned citizens — for uncovering a wholly new criminal ring smack in the heart of the capital, and for the staggering array of charges involving politicians across the spectrum. The inquiry has blossomed into a national scandal and a reminder that virtually no corner of Italy is immune to criminal penetration. It has also raised fresh questions about Italy’s ability ever to reform itself and fulfill the demands for fiscal responsibility demanded by its eurozone partners. The widespread and unchecked corruption of public money revealed by the inquiry has helped bloat Italy’s national debt to one of the highest levels in Europe. Mr. Carminati and his associates are accused of infiltrating contracts for a wide assortment of tasks including garbage collection and park maintenance. The charges cover a gamut of activities — vote rigging, usury, extortion and embezzlement. Rome’s chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone, told Italy’s anti-Mafia commission Thursday that new operations were imminent.

Paul Krugman warns of the cumulative consequences of defunding education: Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual—a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis—its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington—deals a severe blow to education across the board.

the school leadership team should specifically: • Build consensus for the school’s mission of collective responsibility • Create a master schedule that provides sufficient time for team collaboration, core instruction, supplemental interventions, and intensive interventions • Coordinate schoolwide human resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including the site counselor, psychologist, speech and language pathologist, special education teacher, librarian, health services, subject specialists, instructional aides, and other classified staff • Allocate the school’s fiscal resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including school categorical funding • Assist with articulating essential learning outcomes across grade levels and subjects • Lead the school’s universal screening efforts to identify students in need of Tier 3 intensive interventions before they fail • Lead the school’s efforts at Tier 1 for schoolwide behavior expectations, including attendance policies and awards and recognitions (the team may create a separate behavior team to oversee these behavioral policies) • Ensure that all students have access to grade-level core instruction • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 2 interventions for students in need of supplemental support in motivation, attendance, and behavior • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 3 interventions for students in need of intensive support in the universal skills of reading, writing, number sense, English language, motivation, attendance, and behavior • Continually monitor schoolwide evidence of student learning

MANAGING GOD’S MONEY Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine. Proverbs 3:9–10 This concept of fiscal responsibility was not lost on me as governor of Alaska. That’s why I used my line-item veto to cut spending by almost 10 percent. I rejected a pay raise. (As mayor, I took a voluntary pay cut.) I invested billions of dollars in state savings. I forward-funded education. See, I knew the resources were not mine to squander and that I had to do right by the people who hired me. Alaska reaped the benefits of that fiscal responsibility: during my tenure, both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s upgraded Alaska’s credit rating. Our politicians in Washington should be so wise with taxpayer dollars because what’s good for an individual, family, and state is also good for a nation; God’s principles apply across the board. Wasteful spending that robs the American people—like $500,000 to study shrimp on a treadmill, or subsidizing the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Senator Harry Reid’s state of Nevada—doesn’t seem to qualify as the fiscal responsibility this Scripture describes. And funding Planned Parenthood certainly does not honor God—fiscally or morally. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action What’s in your hand is not yours. It’s a loan. God expects you to be obedient and wise with what He’s allowed you to manage. Today, honor Him for His blessings and pray America does the same.

Marx enfatiza que el capitalista explota al obrero por la diferencia que existe entre el valor de cambio y el valor de uso de la mercancía trabajo, y es crítico a esa ganancia del capitalista, pero no abordó, porque no podía imaginarlo, que las empresas estatales operan igual sobre la base del valor de cambio y de uso del trabajo obrero, porque de lo contrario son deficitarias y no aportan al erario fiscal. Marx tampoco pudo imaginar el nivel que alcanzaría la productividad del capitalismo del siglo XX (y qué decir de la del siglo XXI), la que pudo brindar a los obreros «explotados» una calidad de vida inmensamente superior a la de los obreros «no explotados» de las empresas estatales del socialismo, y menos pudo imaginar el déficit democrático de un estado monopólico. En mis jornadas de trabajo voluntario en las empresas tomadas en el Chile de la Unidad Popular o en las empresas de «propiedad del pueblo» de Alemania Oriental y Cuba, comprobé algo decepcionante para un joven idealista: como en rigor nadie era dueño de la fábrica o la tierra, porque eran estatales, nadie trabajaba en forma seria y responsable.

They target the socioeconomic characteristics of a people (poverty, lack of mobility, illiteracy, etc.) and then soak the new laws in “racially neutral justifications—such as administrative efficiency” or “fiscal responsibility”—to cover the discriminatory intent.

The economic theory propounded by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s dwelled heavily on the role of governments vis-à-vis cycles. Keynesian economics focuses on the role of aggregate demand in determining the level of GDP, in contrast with earlier approaches that emphasized the role of the supply of goods. Keynes said governments should manage the economic cycle by influencing demand. This, in turn, could be accomplished through the use of fiscal tools, including deficits. Keynes urged governments to aid a weak economy by stimulating demand by running deficits. When a government’s outgo—its spending—exceeds its income—primarily from taxes—on balance it puts funds into the economy. This encourages buying and investing. Deficits are stimulative, and thus Keynes considered them helpful in dealing with a weak economy. On the other hand, when economies are strong, Keynes said governments should run surpluses, spending less than they take in. This removes funds from the economy, discouraging spending and investment. Surpluses are contractionary and thus an appropriate response to booms. However, the use of surpluses to cool a thriving economy is little seen these days. No one wants to be a wet blanket when the party is going strong. And spending less than you bring in attracts fewer votes than do generous spending programs. Thus surpluses have become as rare as buggy whips.

We treat healthcare as a commodity and not a right, which has led to poor social responsibility and fiscal irresponsibility, very far away from its roots as a social service.

As of July 2017 public spending per capita had fallen by 3.9%.[58] But this figure obscures the the fact that the government is allocating proportionally less of its budget to public services. Per person, day-to-day spending on public services has been cut to about four-fifths of what it was in 2010.[59] Public sector employment was slashed by 15.5% between September 2009 and April 2017, a reduction of nearly one million jobs, primarily affecting women, who make up around two-thirds of the public sector workforce. Overall, £22bn of the £26bn in ‘savings’ since June 2010 have been shouldered by women.[60] Lone mothers (who represent 92% of lone parents) have experienced an average drop in living standards of 18% (£8,790). Black and Asian households in the lowest fifth of incomes are the most affected, with average drops in living standards of 19.2% and 20.1% – £8,407 and £11,678 – respectively.[61] The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) has said that the cumulative scale of cuts to welfare are “unprecedented”, with real per capita welfare cap spending in 2021-22 projected to be around 10% lower than its 2015-16 level.[62] The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government initially aimed to eliminate the deficit – the difference between annual government income and expenditure – by 2015. But weaker-than-expected economic growth forced the government to push the date back to 2025. The government tried to spin this as a generous easing of austerity, but it was merely giving itself several years longer to take on the deficit. In December 2017 the OBR said that GDP per person would be 3.5% smaller in 2021 than was forecast in March 2016. Contradicting the government, the OBR said the deficit would not be eliminated until 2031. The Institute for Fiscal Studies added that national debt – then standing at £1.94 trillion, with an annual servicing cost of £48bn – may not return to pre-crisis levels until the 2060s. Pressure on the public finances, primarily from health and social care, is only going to increase. In all of the OBR’s scenarios, spending grows faster than the economy. With health costs running ahead of inflation, the National Health Service (NHS) – already suffering from a £4.3bn annual shortfall – requires a 4% minimum annual increase in funding to maintain expenditure per capita amid a growing and ageing population.

As many countries in Europe experience growing fiscal strains as a result of low fertility and an aging population, active family policies are likely to become more important—not just as a response to political demands, but also as an economic imperative. The key for the success of such policies in today’s world is not that they subsidize families with children—a strategy that, as noted, has met with limited success when attempted—but rather that they empower women to pursue careers without having to sacrifice family. This means spending on high-quality, full-time child care, and the creation, or subsidization, of flexible, general skills jobs in the public sector.

Think about it. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in America, has an estimated net worth of $110 billion. How many fewer cars, swimming pools, tennis courts, or luxury vacations will Bezos purchase after 2 percent of his wealth is taxed away? The answer is not many. A small, annual tax on a fraction of his net worth isn’t going to crowd out much of his spending. When it comes down to it, he’s more of a saver than a spender. Billionaires save their wealth in the form of financial assets, real estate, fine art, and rare coins. A wealth tax might make the infrastructure bill appear fiscally responsible, but it makes a lousy offset if the government wants to increase spending in an economy that doesn’t have much available slack.

Sticking with the $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, MMT would have us begin by asking if it would be safe for Congress to authorize $2 trillion in new spending without offsets. A careful analysis of the economy’s existing (and anticipated) slack would guide lawmakers in making that determination. If the CBO and other independent analysts concluded it would risk pushing inflation above some desired inflation rate, then lawmakers could begin to assemble a menu of options to identify the most effective ways to mitigate that risk. Perhaps one-third, one-half, or three-fourths of the spending would need to be offset. It’s also possible that none would require offsets. Or perhaps the economy is so close to its full employment potential that PAYGO is the right policy. The point is, Congress should work backward to arrive at the answer rather than beginning with the presumption that every new dollar of spending needs to be fully offset. That helps to protect us from unwarranted tax increases and undesired inflation. It also ensures that there is always a check on any new spending. The best way to fight inflation is before it happens. In one sense, we have gotten lucky. Congress routinely makes large fiscal commitments without pausing to evaluate inflation risks. It can add hundreds of billions of dollars to the defense budget or pass tax cuts that add trillions to the fiscal deficit over time, and for the most part, we come out unscathed—at least in terms of inflation. That’s because there’s normally enough slack to absorb bigger deficits. Although excess capacity has served as a sort of insurance policy against a Congress that ignores inflation risk, maintaining idle resources comes at a price. It depresses our collective well-being by depriving us of the array of things we could have enjoyed if we had put our resources to good use. MMT aims to change that. MMT is about harnessing the power of the public purse to build an economy that lives up to its full potential while maintaining appropriate checks on that power. No one would think of Spider-Man as a superhero if he refused to use his powers to protect and serve. With great power comes great responsibility. The power of the purse belongs to all of us. It is wielded by democratically elected members of Congress, but we should think of it as a power that exists to serve us all. Overspending is an abuse of power, but so is refusing to act when more can be done to elevate the human condition without risking inflation.

Offshore tax havens are nothing but legalized tax fraud and the fiscally responsible thing, and the just thing, to do is to eliminate them.

What does a center-right party in America stand for? Once this was easy to answer: fiscal sanity, free trade, being strong on Russia, personal responsibility, the Constitution. Now? Can anyone honestly define what the Republican Party stands for beyond “owning the libs”? Whatever that means.

The devices the Republicans used are variations on a theme going back more than 150 years. They target the socioeconomic characteristics of a people (poverty, lack of mobility, illiteracy, etc.) and then soak the new laws in “racially neutral justifications—such as administrative efficiency” or “fiscal responsibility”—to cover the discriminatory intent. Republican lawmakers then act aggrieved, shocked, and wounded that anyone would question their stated purpose for excluding millions of American citizens from the ballot box.12

trouble. After all, you have just picked up a book on the fiscal crisis by a certified

America is a great country—the greatest,

Such comparisons with the mid-century heyday of Keynesianism no doubt help to capture the drama of the moment. They express the wish of many, on the left as well as the right, to return to that moment when the national economy was first constituted as an integrated and governable entity. As the interconnected implosion of demand and supply demonstrated, macroeconomic connections are very real. But as a frame for reading the crisis response in 2020, this retrofitting risks anachronism. The fiscal-monetary synthesis of 2020 was a synthesis for the twenty-first century.5 While it overturned the nostrums of neoliberalism, notably with regard to the scale of government interventions, it was framed by neoliberalism’s legacies, in the form of hyperglobalization, fragile and attenuated welfare states, profound social and economic inequality, and the overweening size and influence of private finance.

I stand for limited government, fiscal responsibility, personal freedom, personal responsibility, so the Republican Party will support me.

One of the great lessons of the past five centuries in Europe and America is this: acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state. It’s always been the case and there is no reason why it should be different with the COVID-19 pandemic. Historians point to the fact that the rising fiscal resources of capitalist countries from the 18th century onwards were always closely associated with the need to fight wars, particularly those that took place in distant countries and that required maritime capacities. Such was the case with the Seven Years’ War of 1756-1763, described as the first truly global war that involved all the great powers of Europe at the time. Since then, the responses to major crises have always further consolidated the power of the state, starting with taxation: “an inherent and essential attribute of sovereignty belonging as a matter of right to every independent government”.[66] A few examples illustrating the point strongly suggest that this time, as in the past, taxation will increase. As in the past, the social rationale and political justification underlying the increases will be based upon the narrative of “countries at war” (only this time against an invisible enemy).

In principle – and after Nehru – in practice, the choice came to be posed simply: either democracy had to be curtailed, and the intellectual, directive model of development pursued more vigorously (one of the supposed rationales offered for the Emergency of the mid-1970s); or democracy had to be maintained along with all its cumbersome constraints, and the ambition of a long-term developmental project abandoned. The striking point about the seventeen years of Nehru’s premiership was his determination to avoid this stark choice. Any swerve from democracy was ruled out; the intellectual arguments had, however, to be upheld. The claims of techne, the need for specialist perspectives on economic development, were lent authority by the creation in 1950 of an agency of economic policy formulation, insulated from the pressures of routine democratic politics: the Planning Commission. Discussions of national progress were by now being formulated in the technical vocabulary of economics, which made them wholly unintelligible to most Indians. The task of translation was entrusted to the civil service, and as the algebra of progress moved down the echelons, it was mangled and diluted. The civil service itself provoked deep ambivalence among nationalists: mistrusted because of its colonial paternity, but respected for its obvious competence and expertise. In the 1930s Nehru had called for a radical transformation of the Indian Civil Service in a free India, though by the time independence actually arrived he had become decidedly less belligerent towards it. It was Patel who had stood up for the civil servants after 1947, speaking thunderously in their favour in the Constituent Assembly. But by the early 1950s Nehru had himself turned more wholeheartedly towards them: he hoped now to use them against the obstructions raised by his own party. The colonial civil-service tradition of fiscal stringency was preserved during the Nehru period, but the bureaucracy was now also given explicitly developmental responsibilities.

He tried to influence the pace and scope of his philanthropies, not their contents, and ensure measured, fiscally responsible growth.

That the New Deal should have been bigger, sooner, is a conclusion of long standing: John Maynard Keynes told Roosevelt he needed to approximately double the rate of “direct stimulus to production deliberately applied by the administration” in 1934, at a time when Roosevelt had reduced such expenditures in response to political pressure just like the kind that later came from Grassley or King.29 Roosevelt soon moved in the direction that Keynes suggested, getting the so-called big bill—amounting to nearly $5 billion—from Congress and allowing him to create the WPA to employ Americans nationwide under the direction of Harry Hopkins. But a few years afterward, once recovery seemed well under way, Roosevelt again cut relief spending—again in response to political pressure. For many economists—including Keynes—that premature reduction in fiscal stimulus was the cause of the 1937‒1938 recession.30 Only after making that fiscally cautious error did the Roosevelt administration adopt a deliberately Keynesian budget. Soon afterward, mobilization for war began.31 In 1941 Hopkins took a new job, directing Lend-Lease operations; Congress approved nearly $50 billion for the program—an order of magnitude more than the “big bill” that created the WPA.32 So when Grassley says the war ended the Depression, he is not stating an argument against the New Deal: he is stating an argument for a bigger New Deal, an argument that New Dealer Harry Hopkins at WPA should have had a budget more like World War II–era Harry Hopkins at Lend-Lease.33

With the first banks opened on Monday, the afternoon brought another request from Roosevelt. Stating that he needed the tax revenue, he asked Congress that beer with alcohol content of up to 3.2 percent be made legal; the Eighteenth Amendment did not specify the percentage that constituted an intoxicating beverage. Congress complied. The House passed the bill the very next day with a vote count of 316–97, pushing it to the Senate. Wednesday brought good cheer: The stock market opened for the first time in Roosevelt’s presidency. In a single-day record, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained over 15 percent—a gain in total market value of $3 billion. By Thursday, for increased fiscal prudence, the Senate had added an exemption for wine to go with beer, but negotiated the alcohol content down to 3.05 percent. Throughout the week, banks were receiving net deposits rather than facing panicked withdrawals. Over the following weeks, the administration developed a sweeping farm package designed to “increase purchasing power of our farmers” and “relieve the pressure of farm mortgages.” To guarantee the safety of bank deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created. To regulate the entire American stock and bond markets, the Exchange Act of 1933 required companies to report their financial condition accurately to the buying public, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission. Safety nets such as Social Security for retirement and home loan guarantees for individuals would be added to the government’s portfolio of responsibilities within a couple of years. It was the largest peacetime escalation of government in American history.

Fiscal responsibility is key to financial strength, enabling efficient financial navigation during market uncertainty with purpose and prudence.

German domestic economic policy contributed to worsening the debtors’ crisis. Wage restraint was largely responsible for the weakness of its internal market, which didn’t absorb the potential exports her neighbours needed to balance their current accounts. Furthermore, the restraint resulted in low inflation within Germany, making it extremely difficult for its troubled neighbours to regain competitiveness through internal wage and price deflation. In this situation any basic economics textbook would have recommended that Germany relax its wage/fiscal restraint, allow some inflation and expand its domestic demand to help other Union members in difficulty. To the contrary, the German trade surplus continued its unstoppable rise and the burden of adjustment fell entirely on the shoulders of the debtors.

Patrick Marsh's remarkable ability to manage and maintain budget surpluses throughout his career as a city manager underscores his financial acumen and responsible fiscal management.

Those “socialists” must do badly at encouraging growth in an entrepreneurial-competitive capitalist economy. – They’re fiscally irresponsible and will saddle future generations with outrageous debt. – Because liberals moralize, that means they cannot be the pragmatic ones. Would it surprise you that these truisms all run diametrically opposite to fact? Or that almost none of our side’s pols or pundits have glommed onto that response?

Our law firm was founded on the principles of efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and collaboration. We know that time is money and we take our commitment to efficiency very seriously. While our qualifications, experience, and technology are comparable to that of our large firm counterparts, we deliver value by keeping our overhead low and by leveraging technology, including the latest document management software to allow our lawyers to collaborate seamlessly. Passing the cost saving on to you.

Jim Cramer’s Mad Money is one of the most popular shows on CNBC, a cable TV network that specializes in business and financial news. Cramer, who mostly offers investment advice, is known for his sense of showmanship. But few viewers were prepared for his outburst on August 3, 2007, when he began screaming about what he saw as inadequate action from the Federal Reserve: “Bernanke is being an academic! It is no time to be an academic. . . . He has no idea how bad it is out there. He has no idea! He has no idea! . . . and Bill Poole? Has no idea what it’s like out there! . . . They’re nuts! They know nothing! . . . The Fed is asleep! Bill Poole is a shame! He’s shameful!!” Who are Bernanke and Bill Poole? In the previous chapter we described the role of the Federal Reserve System, the U.S. central bank. At the time of Cramer’s tirade, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor of economics, was the chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors, and William Poole, also a former economics professor, was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Both men, because of their positions, are members of the Federal Open Market Committee, which meets eight times a year to set monetary policy. In August 2007, Cramerwas crying outforthe Fed to change monetary policy in order to address what he perceived to be a growing financial crisis. Why was Cramer screaming at the Federal Reserve rather than, say, the U.S. Treasury—or, for that matter, the president? The answer is that the Fed’s control of monetary policy makes it the first line of response to macroeconomic difficulties—very much including the financial crisis that had Cramer so upset. Indeed, within a few weeks the Fed swung into action with a dramatic reversal of its previous policies. In Section 4, we developed the aggregate demand and supply model and introduced the use of fiscal policy to stabilize the economy. In Section 5, we introduced money, banking, and the Federal Reserve System, and began to look at how monetary policy is used to stabilize the economy. In this section, we use the models introduced in Sections 4 and 5 to further develop our understanding of stabilization policies (both fiscal and monetary), including their long-run effects on the economy. In addition, we introduce the Phillips curve—a short-run trade-off between unexpected inflation and unemployment—and investigate the role of expectations in the economy. We end the section with a brief summary of the history of macroeconomic thought and how the modern consensus view of stabilization policy has developed.

Soros (2013) notes that the euro crisis has already transformed the EU from a free association of states enjoying equal rights to a more or less enduring relationship between debtors and creditors. The creditors risk losing a good deal of money if a member states leaves the union, while the debtors are forced to accept conditions which can only aggravate their economic depression, and place them in a subordinate position for an indefinite period of time. In this way the euro crisis threatens to destroy the EU itself. According to the American financier these are the consequences of the fatal flaw of the European monetary union: in creating the ECB as a fully independent central bank the member states indebted themselves in a currency which they cannot control. As a consequence, when the risk of a Greek default became concrete, the financial markets reacted by reducing the status of all heavily indebted members of the euro zone to that of developing countries with large debts in foreign currencies. In this way, these members of the euro zone were treated as if they alone were responsible for their present condition. The correct response to this situation, Soros concludes, would be the creation of Eurobonds and a banking union, together with the necessary structural reforms. However, Germany refuses to choose between the two alternatives: either accept the Eurobonds or leave the euro zone. On the other hand, a solution of the crisis would also require a level of centralization of the economic and fiscal policies of the member states that is, most likely, politically unfeasible. Thus the end of monetary union appears to be only a question of time, while the position of the major German parties – pro monetary union but against Eurobonds – is clearly contradictory.

The legitimacy crisis sparked by the crisis of monetary union is aggravated by the refusal of the larger member states to accept their share of responsibility for the present predicament. A convenient theory has been advanced in order to justify this hypocritical stance. The theory, as summarized by Fritz Scharpf (2011: 21–2), runs something like this: if successive Greek governments had not engaged in reckless borrowing the euro crisis would not have arisen; and if the Commission had not been deceived by faked records, rigorous enforcement of the Stability Pact would have prevented it. So, even though the more ‘virtuous’ members are now unable to refuse to help the ‘sinners’, such conditions should never be allowed to occur again. Such arguments, which in the ‘rescuer’ countries still dominate debate about the origins of the crisis, are used to justify the disciplinary measures discussed in the preceding pages. The emphasis is on continuous, and rapid, reduction of total public-sector debt; on the European supervision of national budgeting processes; on greater harmonization of fiscal and social policy; on earlier interventions and sanctions; and on ‘reverse majority’ rules for the adoption of more severe sanctions by ECOFIN. As most experts agree, however, the received view on the causes of the euro crisis is only partly correct for Greece and completely wrong for countries such as Ireland and Spain. At any rate, it should not be forgotten that Greece was admitted in 2001 as the twelfth member of monetary union in spite of the fact that all governments knew that Greek financial statistics were unreliable.

the California case, the rhythms of tax reduction are strong indicators of structural change and, as table 3 demonstrates, show how the Keynesian state’s delegitimation accumulated in waves, culminating, rather than originating, in Tom Bradley’s 1982 and 1986 gubernatorial defeats. The first wave, or capital’s wave, is indicated by the 50 percent decline in the ratio of bank and corporation taxes to personal income taxes between 1967 and 1986 (California State Public Works Board 1987). Starting as early as 1968, voters had agitated for tax relief commensurate with the relief capital had won after putting Ronald Reagan in the governor’s mansion (Mike Davis 1990). But Sacramento’s efforts were continually disappointing under both Republican and Democratic administrations (Kirlin and Chapman 1994). This set in motion the second, or labor’s, wave, in which actual (and aspiring) homeowner-voters reduced their own taxes via Proposition 13 (1978).25 The third, or federal wave, indicates the devolution of responsibility from the federal government onto the state and local levels, as evidenced by declines of 12.5 percent (state) to 60 percent (local) in revenues derived from federal aid. The third wave can be traced to several deep tax cuts the Reagan presidential administration conferred on capital and the wealthiest of workers in 1982 and again in 1986 (David Gordon 1996; Krugman 1994). The sum of these waves produced state and local fiscal crises following in the path of federal crisis that James O’Connor ([1973] 2000) had analyzed early in the period under review when he advanced the “welfare-warfare” concept. As late as 1977–78, California state and local coffers were full (CDF-CEI 1978; Gramlich 1991). By 1983, Sacramento was borrowing to meet its budgetary goals, while county and city governments reached crisis at different times, depending on how replete their reserves had been prior to Proposition 13. Voters wanted services and infrastructure at lowered costs; and when they paid, they tried not to share. Indeed, voters were quite willing to pay for amenities that would stick in place, and between 1977–78 and 1988–89, they actually increased property-based taxes going to special assessment districts by 45 percent (Chapman 1991: 19).

The legislation, essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies, tax changes, also rules of corporate governance, and deregulation. Alongside of this began the very sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drives the political parties even deeper than before into the pockets of the corporate sector. The parties dissolved, essentially, in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair or some position of responsibility, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector, increasingly the financial sector.

The panic of 2007–2009 had hit Western Europe hard. Following the Lehman shock, many European countries experienced output declines and job losses similar to those in the United States. Many Europeans, especially politicians, had blamed Anglo-American “cowboy capitalism” for their predicament. (At international meetings, Tim and I never denied the United States’ responsibility for the original crisis, although the European banks that eagerly bought securitized subprime loans were hardly blameless.) This new European crisis, however, was almost entirely homegrown. Fundamentally, it arose because of a mismatch in European monetary and fiscal arrangements. Sixteen countries, in 2010, shared a common currency, the euro, but each—within ill-enforced limits—pursued separate tax and spending policies. The adoption of the euro was a grand experiment, part of a broader move, started in the 1950s, toward greater economic integration. By drawing member states closer economically, Europe’s leaders hoped not only to promote growth but also to increase political unity, which they saw as a necessary antidote to a long history of intra-European warfare, including two catastrophic world wars. Perhaps, they hoped, Germans, Italians, and Portuguese would someday think of themselves as citizens of Europe first and citizens of their home country second.

[Fiscal prudence] means spending wisely, reducing waste, collecting sufficient taxes to pay for the public goods and services we want, keeping budgets in relative balance over time, and keeping debt coming down, at least during reasonably good times.

Tomorrow's outcome for our nation is dependent upon how we act today to create the outcomes we desire for our country. Individual accountability is each of our responsibilities if we want to rebuild, renew and restore the great values that made America a global super power and light of hope to the rest of the world. Each of us is either part of the problem or the solution.

Before you and I think of all the reasons he would not tell us to do these things, we need to think about this question first: is he Lord? Are you and I looking to Jesus for advice that seems fiscally responsible according to the standards of the world around us? Or are we looking to Jesus for total leadership in our lives, even if that means going against everything our affluent culture and maybe even our= affluent religious neighbors might tell us to do?

Prior to the opening up of the economy in 1980, the government relied on the artificially protected profits of SOEs to pad its budget. When economic reforms were introduced, SOE profits plummeted and government’s revenues fell precipitously to around 10 percent of GDP until the major fiscal reform in 1994 which introduced new valued-added and consumption taxes. The restructured fiscal system has steadily increased government revenue, which is currently around 22 percent of GDP, but it has also created an imbalance between the central and local governments. While the local governments were left responsible for funding more than 70 percent of government expenditures, they only collect about half of the tax revenue.24

These policies would come back to haunt Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse. Instead of the vigorous, countercyclical fiscal, monetary, and debt relief policies called for in the wake of a 1929-scale crash, Europe’s institutions promoted austerity reminiscent of the post–World War I era. The debt and deficit limits of Maastricht precluded strong fiscal stimulus, and the government of Angela Merkel resisted emergency waivers. Germany, an export champion, which in effect had an artificially cheap currency in the euro, profited from other nations’ misery. Germany could prosper by running a large export surplus (equal to almost 10 percent of its GDP), but not all nations can have surpluses. The European Central Bank, which reported to nineteen different national masters that used the euro, had neither the tools nor the mandate available to the US Federal Reserve. The ECB did cut interest rates, but it did not engage in the scale of credit creation pursued by the Fed. The Germans successfully resisted any Europeanizing of the sovereign debt of the EU’s weaker nations, pressing them instead to regain the confidence of capital markets by deflating. Sovereign debt financing by the ECB went mainly to repay private and state creditors, not to rekindle growth. Thus did “fortress Europe,” which advocates and detractors circa 1981 both saw as a kind of social democratic alternative to the liberal capitalism of the Anglo-Saxon nations, replicate the worst aspects of a global system captive to the demands of speculative private capital. The Maastricht constitution not only internalized those norms, but enforced them. The dream of managed capitalism on one continent became a laissez-faire nightmare—not laissez-faire in the sense of no rules, but rather rules structured to serve corporations and banks at the expense of workers and citizens. The fortress became a brig. There was plenty to criticize in the US response to the 2008 collapse—too small a stimulus, too much focus on deficit reduction, too little attention to labor policy, too feeble a financial restructuring—but by 2016, US unemployment had come back down to less than 5 percent. In Europe, it remained stuck at more than 10 percent, with all of the social dynamite produced by persistent joblessness.

And would you like to do that, Bertie?” asked the psychotherapist. Bertie nodded. Dr. St. Clair scribbled a note on his pad. Fantasies of escape, he wrote. But why Iceland? 50. A Fiscally Responsible Boy For some reason unknown