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S. HRG. 110–492

WHAT SHOULD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DO

TO AVOID A RECESSION?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JANUARY 16, 2008

Printed for the use of the Joint Economic Committee

(

(II)

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

[Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress]

SENATE

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York, Chairman

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania

JIM WEBB, Virginia

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

JOHN SUNUNU, New Hampshire

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Vice Chair

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York

BARON P. HILL, Indiana

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

ELIJAH CUMMINGS, Maryland

LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas

JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Ranking Minority

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania

RON PAUL, Texas

MICHAEL LASKAWY, Executive Director

CHRISTOPHER J. FRENZE, Minority Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

MEMBERS

Hon. Charles E. Schumer, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from New York ............... 1

Hon. Jim Saxton, Ranking Minority, a U.S. Representative from New Jersey . 4

Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney, Vice Chair, a U.S. Representative from New York .. 6

Hon. Edward M. Kennedy, a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts ......................... 6

WITNESSES

Statement of Dr. Lawrence Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Cambridge, MA ............................................................................................................ 8

Statement of Dr. Lawrence Mishel, president, Economic Policy Institute,

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 11

Statement of Mr. William W. Beach, director, Center for Data Analysis,

The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC ...................................................... 14

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Prepared statement of Senator Charles E. Schumer ............................................ 34

Prepared statement of Representative Jim Saxton .............................................. 37

Prepared statement of Representative Carolyn B. Maloney ................................ 38

Prepared statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy ........................................... 40

Prepared statement of Senator Dr. Lawrence Summers, former U.S. Treasury

Secretary, Cambridge, MA w/attachment .......................................................... 42

Prepared statement of Dr. Lawrence Mishel, president, Economic Policy

Institute, Washington, DC w/attachment .......................................................... 49

Letter dated January 15, 2007 from Economic Policy Institute and other

organizations to the congressional leadership urging changes in unemployment insurance ....................................................................................... 54

Prepared statement of Mr. William W. Beach, director, Center for Data Analysis, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC .............................................. 56

Chart entitled, ‘‘The Unemployment Rate Jumped in December: Civilian Unemployment Rate 2007’’ ....................................................................................... 61

Chart entitled, ‘‘Real Oil and Gas Prices Approaching Record Highs: Feb.

1991–Nov 2007’’ .................................................................................................... 62

(1)

WHAT SHOULD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

DO TO AVOID A RECESSION?

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2008

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE, Washington, DC.

The Committee met at 9:30 a.m. in room SH–216 of the Hart

Senate Office Building, the Honorable Charles E. Schumer (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.

Senators present: Kennedy and Bennett.

Representatives present: Maloney, Hinchey, Hill, Cummings,

Saxton, English, and Brady.

Staff present: Christina Baumgardner, Heather Boushey, Nate

Brustein, Stephanie Dreyer, Connie Foster, Chris Frenze, Tamara

Fucile, Nan Gibson, Colleen Healy, Israel Klein, Michael Laskawy,

and Jeff Wrase.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. SCHUMER,

CHAIRMAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW YORK

Senator Schumer. OK, good morning, everybody. Thank you all

for coming, and welcome to the first hearing of the new year of the

Joint Economic Committee.

It’s also the first Congressional hearing in 2008 to examine the

most effective ways to stimulate the U.S. economy, which is teetering on the brink of recession.

We’re lucky to have such a distinguished panel, who I will introduce in a few minutes, but I just want to say a special thank you

to Larry Summers, my friend and a former Treasury Secretary.

His willingness to make time here today and think about these

difficult issues during the course of his career, make this Committee, the Congress, and the American people, much better informed.

I also want to thank the JEC’s Vice Chair, Congresswoman

Maloney, from my home State, our Ranking Republican, Jim

Saxton, and Senator Ted Kennedy, who is the longest-serving

Member of this panel.

Now, economists—from former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan

Greenspan, to New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman—are

suggesting that we’re either in a recession already, or on the brink

of recession.

The discussion of economic stimulus is no longer an academic exercise. In fact, real economic stimulus measures, enacted quickly,

could be the last thing between us and a deep or protracted recession.

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The December turndown in retail sales and new concerns that

auto loans and credit card payments could follow the pattern of

mortgage payments and head south, makes quick action on a stimulus package all the more necessary.

Even the current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, said last week

that the economic outlook for 2008 had worsened, and he listed all

of the various forces dragging down the economy.

On Monday, I called Chairman Bernanke personally to get his

thoughts on the economy, and he said that fiscal stimulus is certainly needed, and that he would be generally supportive of the

Congress and the President enacting such a stimulus.

He said that while he wasn’t going to endorse a specific plan, if

an economic stimulus package was properly designed and enacted

so that it enters the economy quickly, it could have a very positive

effect on the economy.

He said that monetary policy, which is obviously important,

should be augmented by a stimulus package.

In some ways, much of the bad news that we’re faced with now

could have been averted. Last year, with the subprime mortgage

crisis staring us in the face, the Bush administration was unwilling

to act to stem that crisis, and refused to consider the possibility

that a recession was on the horizon.

As many economists predicted, the subprime mortgage meltdown

spilled over into the broader housing market, damaged credit markets, and brought us to the precipice of recession.

Because of Presidential inaction to mitigate the effect of the

subprime mortgage meltdown, the economy is now on the edge of

recession.

This Nation desperately needs a strong stimulus package. There

are six key points informing our actions as Democrats as we move

forward on a stimulus package:

First, we want to work with the President to get something done

quickly that will help the economy and middle class American families.

There was much partisanship in last year’s Congress, but the

state of the economy makes it imperative that we put partisanship

aside and enact a stimulus package.

Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid sent a letter to the

President saying they want to work with the White House and Republicans in Congress to achieve a stimulus package, and next

week’s meeting is a good first step toward achieving that goal.

We are prepared and willing to work with President Bush and

our Republican colleagues in Congress to craft a bipartisan, balanced, economic stimulus package.

Second, we must enact a stimulus package that is timely, targeted, and temporary. Economists across the ideological spectrum

agree that to deliver effective stimuli, the Federal Government

needs to act with those principles in mind.

It should be targeted at the middle class, who will bear the brunt

of the economic decline, and who, with dollars in their pockets, will

provide a stimulus to the economy that is much needed.

It should be timely because we can’t introduce policies that won’t

kick in until long after a recession is already upon us.

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It should be temporary because we don’t want to enact stimulus

policies today that permanently burden our children tomorrow.

Third, to be effective, these proposals need to include a combination of both tax cuts and spending stimuli. Direct injections of cash

into the economy through both immediate consumer and government spending are the shots in the arm needed to ward off a recession.

In fact, many economists believe that spending stimuli have a

greater immediate effect on the economy than tax cuts, because the

former guarantee that the dollars authorized will be spent, while

the latter do not.

Both tax cuts and stimulus spending cash infusions are important because they support otherwise declining demand that stems

from rising unemployment and falling household incomes. Monetary policy alone cannot address those necessary goals.

An effective stimulus package that includes both expenditures

and tax cuts in combination with monetary policy is the best way

to avoid a recession.

Fourth, as we create a stimulus package, we must jettison ideological baggage on both sides. The last thing the economy needs

right now is inaction while the parties fight old and ongoing battles.

Renewing the Bush tax cuts, which don’t expire until the end of

2010, should be off the table because they will thwart any chance

of passing a stimulus package.

They are not timely, they are not targeted, and they are not temporary. Some congressional Republicans may be planning to add

these tax cuts to the stimulus package, or even make them the centerpiece of the package.

The President should and must resist attempts to include making his tax cuts permanent part of the package, especially in the

Senate, because they will impede or even kill such a package.

Fifth, on the question of PAYGO, I believe there is a growing

consensus, not unanimous, in the Democratic Caucus, that paying

for the stimulus now would take away from the economic boost

we’re seeking to create. The stimulus, by definition, must have a

net of spending over income.

Sixth and last, the Administration needs to focus on the housing

crisis and declining home values. The housing crisis has been the

epicenter of this potential recession, and the President’s hands-off

approach to the housing crisis, clearly has not worked.

Fortunately, because of the important work of economists across

the ideological spectrum, and, most recently, by the nonpartisan

Congressional Budget Office, we know what works and what

doesn’t work when it comes to economic stimulus.

We know that extending unemployment insurance is one of the

most effective stimulus proposals, because we have deployed it successfully in the past, and it gets lots of bang for the buck.

Lump-sum payments to households in the form of tax rebates or

tax holidays are also very effective.

On the other hand, we know from experience that long-term top

relief for the very top on the economic spectrum, is not a successful

stimulus.

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So, some of the important stimulus measures we’re considering

include the broad-based tax rebates, extending unemployment insurance and food stamps, targeted business tax cuts to stimulate

job creation, and Federal assistance to the States.

In conclusion, it is long past time to scrap the old Bush economic

playbook of tax cuts for the wealthy as the only economic policy,

and replace it with a balanced strategy that lifts the economic fortunes of all American families.

I hope that this hearing today and subsequent conversations

with my colleagues and the Administration, will get us to a bipartisan package the American people deserve as quickly as possible.

Now, given the fact that Dr. Summers needs to leave by 11, I’m

going to limit opening statements, in addition to myself, to Congresswoman Maloney and Congressman Saxton, and I would like

to extend this courtesy to Senator Kennedy because he is Chairman of the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee. He’s

the longest-standing Member of this Committee and he will play a

critical role in his Committee in crafting the economic package.

I invite other Members to submit statements to be included in

the official record.

Congresswoman Maloney.

[The prepared statement of the Senator Charles E. Schumer appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 34.]

Representative Maloney. Thank you. I’d like to thank the senior Senator——

Senator Schumer. Oh, I’m sorry. Congressman Saxton is next.

Representative Saxton. Please go ahead.

Representative Maloney. No, I defer.

Senator Schumer. Congressman Saxton, I apologize.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JIM SAXTON, RANKING

MINORITY, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY

Representative Saxton. Thank you very much. I am pleased to

join in welcoming the witnesses this morning. Thank you, each of

you, for being here.

This is a very important hearing. It’s important not only to those

of us in this room, but it’s extremely important to the American

people, all of whom, of course, take part in our economy.

The recent slowdown in the economy is a serious concern to the

public and to all of us as policymakers, alike.

According to standard measures of performance, such as economic growth and the unemployment rate, the U.S. economy appeared to be doing quite well through the third quarter of 2007.

However, more recent data indicate that the pace of economic

growth slowed sharply in the final quarter of the year. Recent economic data makes clear that there are a number of challenges facing us in the economy.

Residential investment declined at a 20 percent rate in the third

quarter, continuing a longer trend. Housing prices are falling in

many areas of the country, as housing inventory levels rise. Oil

prices are near $100 a barrel and the dollar is falling.

Since last summer, it has become clear that a number of large

financial institutions have invested in mortgage securities of dubious quality. Huge writedowns of assets by Citicorp and Merrill

5

Lynch highlight serious concerns about the value of mortgagebacked securities.

Uncertainty about the extent of bad investments related to

subprime and other mortgages has spread, resulting in sharp declines in the valuation of bank stocks.

Financial markets have become very volatile. The Fed has acted

by reducing interest rates and developing new ways to inject funds

into the banking system.

As a CBO report released yesterday noted, the Federal Government also has in place automatic fiscal stabilizers that have boosted the economy in past recessions, quite substantially. Unemployment insurance, for example, and various other programs which

have been important in past slowdowns have boosted GDP by the

equivalent of up to $350 billion during those downturns, according

to the CBO report.

The actions of a powerful central bank and these automatic stabilizers ensure that a policy response to any severe slowdown is already in place.

Although most economists view Federal Reserve monetary policy

as the best means to stabilize the economy, additional steps may

be considered.

In considering its options, the first thing Congress should do is

to make sure that such actions do not further damage the economy.

For example, policymakers should resist the temptation to use targeting as a rationalization for channeling resources into earmarks

at the behest of special interest groups or others. How all of this

new spending can be reconciled with the Majority’s PAYGO rules

is rather unclear at this point.

Furthermore, as the CBO report notes, infrastructure projects

are not appropriate components of economic stimulus legislation,

because these appropriations will not be expended quickly, but will

be drawn down over time.

There is real risk that a stimulus package will morph into a special interest Christmas tree. As The Congress Daily headline said

yesterday, ‘‘K Street Lines Up for Slices of the Stimulus Pie’’ This

must be avoided.

With politicians designing the economic stimulus package, a positive impact on the economy is far from guaranteed, and so I look

forward to these discussions.

I guess I would just like to add one final note: I agree with much

of what my friend, Senator Schumer, said.

Our one area of disagreement, is this: Because the private sector

drives our economy and because business people and investors are

currently making plans for their economic activities over the next

couple of years, it seems to me that to send the message that we

are automatically going to reject the notion of continuing the tax

cuts that are currently in place past 2010, given expectations on

the part of people who are making plans for their investments

today, would be a very bad mistake. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Representative Jim Saxton appears

in the Submissions for the Record on page 37.]

Senator Schumer. Thank you, Congressman Saxton.

Congresswoman Maloney, our Vice Chair.

6

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CAROLYN B. MALONEY, VICE

CHAIR, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK

Representative Maloney. Thank you very much. I’d like to

thank the Senior Senator from New York, Senator Schumer, and

Senator Kennedy, for their long-term leadership on the economy,

and all of our distinguished panelists.

Since some of you are under a time constraint, I would like

unanimous consent to put my opening statement in the record, so

that we can move forward.

Dr. Summers has said that any stimulus should be targeted,

timely, and temporary, and I’d like to hear from all of the panelists

on what four actions they would take to stimulate our economy? I

am hopeful that the President and Congress can move forward

swiftly with a stimulus package, and I’d like to know also, what

impact this would have on the long-term competitiveness of our

country.

So I yield back my time and place my opening statement in the

record.

[The prepared statement of the Representative Carolyn B.

Maloney appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 38.]

Senator Schumer. Thank you, Congresswoman Maloney.

Senator Kennedy.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, A U.S.

SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS

Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend Senator Schumer for holding these important hearings.

There are a lot of important things that are happening in the country today, but I think this hearing has to be right up there with

all of them, because its implications, in terms of the future of our

economy, are so profound.

I join in welcoming Larry Summers, an old friend, a distinguished public servant, one of the Nation’s preeminent economists.

Larry Mishel, who I have enjoyed working with for many years,

welcome; William Beach, from the Heritage Foundation, I look forward to your testimony, as well.

Americans are increasingly anxious about making ends meet.

Many economists say a recession is coming and that it may be severe. For millions of families, the recession is already here.

They’re seeing their jobs disappear, their savings gone, their

homes at risk—their costs are going up week after week and month

after month.

We’re committed to action to stabilize the economy and relieve

the distress that families are facing. We’ll work with President

Bush, our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress, to pass

an effective stimulus package, but we’ve got to adhere to some core

principles.

First, anything that we do, should be quick and temporary. We

need to get money into workers’ pockets in 2008, to encourage

spending to boost the economy.

What we don’t need, are long-term tax cuts that will drag our

economy down in future years.

Second, our plan should be focused on average Americans facing

tough times. Ninety percent of the benefit of any stimulus package

7

*Senator Bennett’s statement was unavailable at time of publication.

should go to 90 percent of ordinary Americans who work for a living, depend on a paycheck, and struggle to pay their bills. They are

the ones who will make our economy start growing the fastest

again.

Third, we need a robust package of reforms. We can’t just tinker

at the margins. Americans need real help that will make a real difference in their lives, and they need it as soon as possible.

That means additional unemployment benefits to help workers

pay their bills while they look for new jobs. It means transitional

health coverage, so that workers don’t lose insurance if they lose

their jobs.

It means assistance to States that are forced to cut budgets for

critical necessities like Medicaid.

It means emergency heating assistance for families swamped by

soaring costs of energy.

And it also means emergency job training to help workers quickly gain the skills they need for new jobs.

In my State, 76,000 jobs are out there looking for workers. There

are 24 applicants for every slot for training. People are out there;

they want to get the skills; they want to go to work; they can, and

we ought to give them the help they need.

We must increase food stamps so that low-income workers can

feed their families.

Last, but far from least, we should consider the immediate tax

rebate for low- and middle-income families. A rebate makes sense

as another effective way to help jump-start the economy.

We must be careful to reject any attempt to use the current crisis

as a pretext for permanent new tax breaks for wealthy or corporate

America.

In all these efforts, we must be guided by a simple principle: People do not work for the economy; the economy should work for the

people.

If we want an economic recovery that works, if we want real opportunity and sustainable growth, that effort starts and ends with

working families.

Our economy is at a crossroads. We must act carefully to choose

the right path for the future. It’s time to rebuild an economy that

puts working families first.

I’m confident we can do it; I’m certain that we must do it. We

owe the American people our best efforts, and I look forward to

working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to put our

economy back on track. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy appears

in the Submissions for the Record on page 40.]

Senator Schumer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to

welcome Senator Bennett here, as well. He doesn’t wish to make

an opening statement, but we’ll ask for unanimous consent that his

statement be entered into the record next, and all other statements

will be entered into the record.*

Senator Schumer. It is now my honor to introduce our witnesses. We first have Dr. Larry Summers, who is the Charles Eliot

University professor at Harvard University, the 27th president of

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Harvard University, an eminent scholar, and an admired public

servant.

He’s taught on the faculty of Harvard and MIT, served in a series of senior public policy positions, including as Domestic Policy

Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers; chief

economist of the World Bank, and, of course, Secretary of the

Treasury of the United States.

In 1993, he received the John Bates Clark Medal, given every 2

years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.

Could you still get that?

[Laughter.]

Senator Schumer. Next, Dr. Lawrence Mishel who came to the

Economic Policy Institute in 1987 as EPI’s first research director,

then as vice president and now president. He played a significant

role in building EPI’s research capabilities and reputations.

He’s researched, written, and spoken widely on the economy and

economic policy as it affects middle- and low-income families. Dr.

Mishel received his B.S. from the Pennsylvania State University;

his M.A. in economics from American University; and his Ph.D. in

economics from the University of Wisconsin.

Mr. William Beach is director of the Center for Data Analysis at

the Heritage Foundation. In that role, he is the think tank’s chief

number-cruncher. He oversees Heritage’s original statistical research on taxes, Social Security, crime, education, trade, and a host

of other issues.

Prior to joining Heritage, Mr. Beach held a variety of posts in the

public and private sectors. He’s a graduate of Washburn University

in Topeka, Kansas, holds a Master’s Degree in history and economics from the University of Missouri at Columbia, and is a visiting

fellow at the University of Buckingham in Great Britain.

Dr. Summers, you may proceed. The entire statements of all

three of you will be read into the record and you may all proceed.

We’ll try to limit the statements to around 5 minutes. If you need

a little more, take it.

STATEMENT OF DR. LAWRENCE SUMMERS, FORMER U.S.

TREASURY SECRETARY; CAMBRIDGE, MA

Dr. Summers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to

testify before this Committee.

This Committee has its roots in a post-World War II recognition

that Government can act strongly to tame the business cycle and

respond to the threat of recession, and so it is perhaps fitting that

your first hearing this year address the concern of managing demand in our economy so as to avoid recession.

I want to ask and to try to answer six questions bearing on our

current economic situation and the prospects for fiscal stimulus:

First, is fiscal stimulus desirable at present? Yes.

There was considerable debate a month ago about the prospects

of recession, and I would say some of us who felt a recession was

likely held a strong minority position. Unfortunately, in the last

month, the data stream has virtually all been negative, with a very

weak employment report, very unfavorable retail sales, and reports

from major financial institutions in the last couple of days that

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suggest growing problems in the consumer sector and consumer

credit.

At this point, I think the preponderance of probability is on a

U.S. recession this year. There is the possibility, though not yet the

probability, that a recession could prove long and severe, if a vicious cycle occurs in which credit problems cause economic problems, which cause further credit problems, which in turn exacerbate the economic problems.

Over the next 2 years, the difference between economic performance with and without fiscal stimulus is likely to be several hundred thousand jobs and a loss in the range of one thousand dollars

for the average family.

If fiscal stimulus is successful in preempting a severe recession

that would otherwise occur, the gains would be far larger.

A second question: Why not rely on monetary policy to stimulate

the economy and focus fiscal policy on longer-term issues?

As Chairman Bernanke has certainly recognized, monetary policy

has an essential role to play in maintaining demand and growth

and in combatting financial instability.

However, fiscal policy also has a critical role to play for a variety

of reasons: Fiscal policy is faster and surer, especially in the presence of the kind of financial problems that we have today.

Second, proper fiscal policies can target the innocent victims of

recession and directly promote job creation.

Third, full reliance on monetary policy is problematic in an environment where excessively low interest rates would put the dollar

at risk, could lead to excessive increases in commodity prices, and

could, as we’ve seen, exacerbate the problems of asset bubbles and

moral hazard that contribute to the difficulties that brought us to

this point.

In a situation of such uncertainty, a diversified approach to stimulus is best.

This question: How great is the risk of overheating the economy

and causing inflation? Should we wait further for definitive evidence of recession?

In my judgment, the balance of risks is now unambiguously on

the side of recession and slowdown.

Inflation over the least year, measured exclusive of the transient

factors of food and energy, was 1.9 percent. Thanks to the introduction of indexed bonds during the 1990s, we now have a market

measure of inflation expectations and can look at the difference between nominal bonds and indexed bonds to gauge inflation expectations.

They are low today, relative to where they have been over the

last 2 years.

Any of us who have talked to workers or to business, sense that

this is an environment where people are scared, not an environment where they are pushing to create the kind of wage-price spiral that has given rise to inflation in the past.

Economic cooling is a much greater risk today than economic

overheating. There is sufficient weakness in the economy now to

justify stimulus legislation that will take effect as rapidly as possible.

10

Fourth, how large should a stimulus package be? I have pre- viously advocated a stimulus in the range of $50 to $75 billion.

Given recent data, I now believe that it would be appropriate to

enact a program of this magnitude, as soon as possible, while at

the same time making provision, perhaps with a contingent trigger,

for a second tranche of similar magnitude if the economic data continue to prove negative, as I expect they will. A program of $50 to $75 billion would represent between a third

and a half of a percent of GNP, and would run very little danger

of overheating the economy.

If delivered in the second and third quarters of 2008, this program could have a material impact on consumers and on confidence, more generally. A larger program might be problematic,

particularly if it contains measures that would have impact only

with a delay.

However, because policy has been behind the curve for some

months now, it would be appropriate to design a program in which

further stimulus could take effect without the need for additional

legislative debate and action if the economic situation deteriorated

even more.

The two-tranche approach could involve a trigger based on payroll employment numbers, or, alternatively, a discretionary trigger

based on how the Secretary of the Treasury or another Government

official reads the economic statistics.

Five: What should be contained in a stimulus package? Mr.

Chairman, you were kind enough to repeat my mantra on this

topic. It should be timely, targeted, and temporary.

In my judgment—and here, very similar judgments have been

issued by the Congressional Budget Office—measures that are

most likely to fulfil these criteria include: Across-the-board tax rebates that go to all consumers; adjustments in withholding schedules that benefit all taxpayers to an equal extent; increases in unemployment insurance benefits; and increases in food stamps.

To echo a judgment that you reached, in my judgment, announcements today of future tax reductions—taking effect several years

hence—would have a negative impact because of their effect on projected future budget deficits that would dwarf any positive incentive impacts that they have on investment incentives. Therefore,

they should be avoided.

The question of business incentives naturally arises. My reading

of the evidence suggests that the case for business incentives is not

compelling. The principal inhibitor of business investment is lack

of market demand, not the cost of capital, and the experience with

the 2001 stimulus program is not terribly encouraging.

On the other hand, there is a reasonable argument that temporary investment tax credits or accelerated depreciation schemes,

might pull some investment forward into 2008 and thereby, provide

stimulus.

Though the cost of a business incentive program is not terribly

compelling, if one is enacted, it should be incremental and apply

only to investment above some benchmark, such as two-thirds of

the previous year’s investment or depreciation. This would assure

all the benefits in terms of encouraging the scheduling of investments forward, at only a small fraction of the revenue cost, and

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permit a greater fraction of resources to be targeted to those households that have been most hurt by recession.

On the spending side, the measures most likely to be effective

are temporary increases in benefits, perhaps for the long-term unemployed and food stamp recipients.

I would stress, in general, that the more detailed the efforts to

achieve specific programmatic objectives, whether on the tax side

or the spending side, the greater the risk of delays.

A high burden of proof should be placed on any newly designed

program proposed as a stimulus measure, to demonstrate that it

can have rapid impact.

Should stimulus be paid for within a given budget window? As

you noted, Mr. Chairman, any program in which stimulus was paid

for contemporaneously would vitiate itself because the withdrawals

from the economy would equal the injections.

The more difficult question is, what about paying for stimulus

over a 5 or a 10-year window? Here there is some economic support

because it would reduce any adverse impact on capital costs and

avoid the resulting increase in interest rates.

On the other hand, the need for offsets would likely lead to substantially more protracted discussion and debate over a stimulus

program, which could compromise its ability to be enacted on a

timely basis.

In my judgment, it would not be irresponsible to enact stimulus

without offsets, as long as the stimulus program that was enacted

was unambiguously timely, targeted, and, most important in this

regard, temporary.

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, any economic policy judgment is a

matter of balancing risks. The risks of doing too little, too slowly,

with respect to the recession forces that are gathering, are far

greater than any risk that the political process will do too much,

too rapidly.

I urge the Congress to take prompt action.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Lawrence Summers appears in

the Submissions for the Record on page 42.]

Senator Schumer. Thank you, Dr. Summers.

Dr. Mishel.

STATEMENT OF DR. LAWRENCE MISHEL, PRESIDENT,

ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE; WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. Mishel. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members

of the Committee. I want to thank you for the opportunity to explain why the U.S. economy needs a large economic stimulus to

boost demand for goods and services and to prevent a serious and

protracted loss of jobs, rising unemployment and income loss.

My testimony makes three key points: First, the economy, and

especially the labor market, is in serious trouble and immediate

intervention of sufficient size is needed to prevent a vicious cycle

of job loss and reduced demand.

And, most importantly, we are—I think all forecasters see rising

unemployment this year and next.

We project that if the unemployment rate rises as much as Goldman Sachs has projected it will, then the typical middle class famVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:09 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 041291 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\41291.TXT DianeA PsN: DianeA
12

ily will lose $2,400 over this year and next. That is something we

need to try to ameliorate.

Second, the right stimulus needs the biggest bang for the buck.

The idea of timely, targeted, temporary, I endorse. We think increasing unemployment compensation, providing State fiscal relief,

and issuing targeted tax rebates, fits this.

Third, we also believe that targeting spending toward infrastructure repairs, not our grandfather’s public works programs, but repairs, can be done quickly and efficiently and put more than a million people to work.

In terms of the timeliness of this, the concern with what I’m urging, is that we focus on unemployment. Unemployment is going to

be high this year. It will be high next year.

If there are infrastructure repair programs that are begun this

spring and actually carry over into early 2009, that’s just fine. Unemployment is expected to be over 6 percent in 2009.

Mr. Chairman, the economy has been broken for some time. We

are in the last stages, probably, of the first economic recovery

where the typical middle class family will have achieved less income than they had at the beginning of the business cycle, in this

case in 2000 or 2001.

We’re not here to talk about all the ways the economy is broken,

but to prevent the further damage of rising unemployment and the

income losses that families will face.

Let me return to this first big point about unemployment. You

can either believe there’s a recession, the economy is going to contract—and job growth will contract—and there will be a sharp rise

in unemployment, or you can believe—as I think my friend Bill

Beach here believes—that we’re going to have very slow growth,

very modest job growth, and rising unemployment this year and

next.

The key issue is, there’s going to be rising unemployment. Don’t

focus totally on GDP, the way that brokerage house economists

might. What American working families need are jobs to ameliorate the impact of the higher unemployment.

As I said, Goldman Sachs and others are projecting that even by

the end of this year we will see an unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, and this will put downward pressure on wages and income.

If we don’t see bold action, we’re going to end up with the same

kind of lousy recovery we did at the beginning of this decade where

even after the economy so called was recovering, we had 2 years

of further job losses and rising unemployment. We can’t afford to

do that again.

I want to point out that my Institute, along with some other organizations—the National Employment Law Project, the Coalition

on Human Needs, National Women’s Law Center, the AFL–CIO,

and others—have written a letter to the Congressional leadership,

urging some changes in the unemployment insurance system; that

I would like to enter into the record.

[The letter referenced appears in the Submissions for the Record

on page 54.]

Dr. Mishel. I think everyone agrees—it sounds like—that unemployment insurance is very important in a downturn. It gives

13

money to the people who are the most likely to spend it. It has the

biggest bang for the buck.

Our system is broken, overall, in the unemployment insurance

system. It is definitely broken during recessions when our triggers

don’t really work to give people the extended benefits, and so we

are always too late to do that.

I think it really makes sense to fix this system for all time, to

make an automatic stabilizer better, to send some money to those

long-term unemployed who will not be able to get benefits under

the current system, and to make sure that our unemployment compensation system reaches low-income, part-time workers, and other

people that are now excluded from the system.

We also believe that it’s important to give fiscal relief to the

States, as States who have to balance their budgets in times of recession are forced to raise taxes and cut spending. This only exacerbates a recession.

We can give relief to the States that will prevent them from

doing damage to the economy. In the last recession, there was $20

billion of aid to the States; this time, we recommend $30 billion,

split equally between a general block grant and an increase in the

Medicaid match.

Third, let me turn to infrastructure repairs. At a time when demand by private-sector employers for customers is lacking, it’s a

really good thing to create public investment that will create jobs

and create demand and help break a downward spiral.

Managed wisely, it can be well-targeted and timely, and is definitely temporary if we have a one-time boost for infrastructure repairs, which we believe can be done for bridges, for schools, for

water treatment and sewage plants. Anyone reading about the dilapidated state of our school systems or the many, many deficient

bridges, should be concerned about this.

We have an incredible backlog, and I think that we can get this

money out quickly. For those people who doubt we can get it out

quickly, I looked into one particular school system. I picked New

York City, just as a random city, and noted that they were given

$1 billion to improve school buildings, as part of a court order.

They told us that within 4 months, the entire $1 billion was committed and that it was completed over the next 12 months. I think

this experience can be repeated over and over with deficient

bridges, water and sewage projects, et cetera.

I talked to the head of the National Governors Association yesterday, and he assured me that, as well.

One word on tax policy: I want to agree that we should have a

tax rebate. I think that it is important that it go to all people who

pay taxes—payroll taxes or income taxes.

I want to suggest that, as between well targeted and timely tax

rebates and infrastructure spending, as you said, Mr. Chairman,

all of the infrastructure money is spent. Tax rebates, part of it is

spent; part of it is saved.

Part of tax rebates are spent overseas. Almost all of infrastructure repair is spent domestically.

Given the fact that these are spending needs that we have anyway, we get two things out of it: We get to create jobs—boost the

14

economy, and we get a long-term productivity effect, to boot. Thank

you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Lawrence Mishel with attachments appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 49.]

Senator Schumer. Thank you, Dr. Mishel.

Mr. Beach.

STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM BEACH, DIRECTOR, CENTER

FOR DATA ANALYSIS, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. Beach. Senator Schumer, Congresswoman Maloney, Congressman Saxton, Members of the Committee, I’m very pleased to

be here today. You have my bio from Senator Schumer.

There is an increasingly held view that the U.S. economy is slipping into a sustained period of slow economic growth, perhaps even

recession. The root of that worsening news is believed to be the collapsing housing sector and the financial institutions and practices

that surround residential construction and mortgages.

Further, it is beginning to look as though declines in housing

sales, construction, and mortgage credit industries, in general, will

continue in 2008, as the mortgage default rate—principally on adjustable-rate mortgages increase.

It is estimated that something above 2 million subprime adjustable-rate mortgages will reset to a higher interest rate in the first

few months. The specter of further declines in home prices, more

turmoil in credit markets, and the emergence of secondary adverse

effects in other part of the economy stemming from these price and

credit events, have raised concern about the general economy’s

near-term outlook.

So, what should Congress do? As I will argue later in this testimony, Congress obviously should do nothing to harm the economy.

That’s an obvious point, but worth stating.

It should let the Federal Reserve lead the effort to stabilize economic activity, and it should keep its focus on crafting long-term

pro-growth economic policy.

Congress should take this moment of slow growth to do what it

does best: To set broad economic policy. In this instance, Congress

should concentrate on signaling to investors and workers alike,

that its principal focus will be on improving pro-growth economic

policy, mainly in the areas of tax, regulatory, and spending policy

areas.

Serious work by the Congress in these areas will create greater

predictability for investors and business owners, and assure workers that they will have a better chance of improving their wages

through increased productivity.

How do I see the economy? Larry has basically signalled my testimony, but let me just hit a few points.

While I continue to believe that the U.S. economy’s strength and

robustness are its principal characteristics now, I, too, have concluded that near-term prospects are poor.

For example, the probability of recession has risen in our models,

from 35 to 40 percent, and I could easily see little or zero growth

in GDP when the fourth quarter estimates are published.

15

The decline in residential construction will continue for some

time; consumer and investor spending will slow, and growing inventories—principally in the automotive sector—will become a drag

on the economy, for inventory buildup in the third quarter actually

explains some of the large 4.9 percent growth rate we saw then.

That said, we expect GDP growth in 2008 to remain around 2

percent, and monthly employment growth averaging 75,000 jobs.

This is slow growth; this is not recession.

The reason I believe we avoid recession in 2008 is due, in large

part, to the substantial contributions to GDP from exports. While

domestic demand is expected to grow by a paltry 9⁄10 of a percent

over the next two quarters, exports are forecasted in our models to

expand by 10 percent.

Recent U.S. export growth stems from the lengthening above

trend growth in world GDP, largely due to economic strength in

Europe and the long-awaited emergence of China and India in the

top tier of industrial economies.

What should Congress do, given the slow growth? I’m only going

to talk about tax policy. I do, in my written testimony, have mortgage markets regulation and long-term spending, as well, and I direct you to that.

On tax policy, what can we do to decrease risk? Risk is part of

the problem here, because investors—the people who drive the

economy, that create the jobs, that buy the equipment, that improve the productivity, which causes wages to rise—have seen a

signal of increasing taxes.

Among the first things Congress can do to address the current

slowdown, is to pronounce definitively, one way or the other on the

tax increases scheduled for 2009 and 2011. There are projects, new

businesses, and expansion of existing businesses, that would be undertaken today, if Congress signalled that taxes would be lower in

3 years.

Since nearly all major capital undertakings last beyond this 3-

year period, it is likely that making all or most of the Bush tax reductions, in some fashion permanent, would stimulate economic activity today, as well as in 2011.

I am probably not the only one here today who knows of businesses that are preparing now for higher taxes in 2011. They are

preparing themselves by reducing their riskier projects and providing for stronger cashflows in 2010.

It is altogether possible that there are projects being canceled

today, that would otherwise go forward today, if taxes were not

scheduled to rise in 2011.

The present speech of policymakers is as important as the policy

actions they take. The decisionmakers in business and investment

are watching Washington as closely as ever to discern the direction

that Congress will take when responding to this crisis.

If that direction includes tax increases, then investors will find

more favorable economies to support; and business owners will, as

much as they can, locate their expanded activities in places with

more favorable tax regimes.

Thus, Congress should signal today what it plans to do on taxes

today and in 2 and 3 years. For my part, I urge the Congress to

make permanent the key provisions of the 2001 and 2003 tax law

16

changes. Maintaining lower tax rates on labor and capital income

will encourage both labor and capital to work harder now when we

need that greater activity.

In addition, we know from past experience that accelerating the

tax depreciation of capital equipment and buildings, or 1-year expensing of business purchases that otherwise would be depreciated

over a longer period of time for tax purposes, can help during periods of slow growth.

This was certainly the record in the last slump.

Demand side stimulus, tax rebates, child tax credit, 10 percent

tax record have done little in fact to change the course of sluggish

economies, and that record is now fairly complete.

The tax rebates of 2001 did little to stimulate the economy or

move it from a prolonged sluggish growth trend. Indeed, the contraction in investment, and thus job creation, did not begin to improve until after the 30 percent partial expensing in the 2002 Act

and the 50 percent partial expensing in the 2003 Act, which also

cut the tax rates on dividend and capital income.

I am all in favor of temporary tax cuts, especially in this area.

If you look at businesses and how they behave when you put in

front of them bonus depreciation, especially if it is targeted in industries that have poor job performance, they eat those tax cuts up.

There is almost an infinite elasticity on this point.

So I will join with everybody at this table and with what I have

heard here in supporting a stimulus package, or in writing about

it, that includes the right kind of pro-growth tax policies.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Beach appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 56.]

Senator Schumer. Thank you, Mr. Beach.

I want to thank all of our witnesses for both interesting and, as

you can see, divergent testimony. The first question I have is for

Dr. Summers:

I would just like you to elaborate. You mentioned, and as you can

see from the panel and from some of the discussions here on this

side of the table, one of the major issues, I think we can come fairly

close to reaching a consensus on what should be, for what kinds

of stimuli should be used under the temporary, targeted, and timely rubric.

The biggest problem I see, the biggest hurdle, is what are we

going to do about the permanent tax cuts that some think we

should enact—as you do, Mr. Beach, and my friend Jim Saxton,

and many of us think, both from a policy, but more importantly

from an immediate stimulus point of view, don’t help.

Now you went a step further, Dr. Summers. You said that they

might actually—extending these tax cuts might have a negative

impact overall on creating growth in the short term in overcoming

recession. Could you just elaborate on that a little bit?

Dr. Summers. Sure, Mr. Chairman. If you imagine that the tax

cuts were extended today, what would the effect be? That would

not change tax behavior—it would not change the tax law in 2008,

or 2009, or 2010. It would only change tax law in 2011, and there

would be two principal consequences of that change.

17

The first, and in my judgment larger, consequence would be an

increase in the projected deficit over the subsequent decade and beyond, which would be measured in the multiples of trillions of dollars. This would translate into a projected increase in the magnitude of the National Debt in the trillions of dollars, which in turn

would translate into a lower level of national saving and a shortage

of capital long after any recession we have now was over.

That would lead to higher capital costs measured in both longterm interest rates equity prices, because of the impact of the expected deficit on the supply and demand for capital and because of

the increased risk premiums that would result.

Because markets look forward, the impact would be higher capital costs not just in the future, but today. That would be reflected

in every mortgage rate, in every company’s stock price. In my judgment, this would be the primary effect.

There is, to be sure, a second effect—which was the one that Mr.

Beach emphasizes and the one that Congressman Saxton spoke of.

To the extent that businesses contemplating an investment today

place substantial value on the tax law as they expect it to prevail

in 2011, the anticipated tax cuts might encourage them to invest

more.

In my judgment the first effect is far greater than the second effect, in no small part because I think the primary question investors ask themselves today is why should we make an investment

today when the product demand isn’t there?

So I think in the current recession environment, the whole set

of issues around cost of capital is very much secondary. Maybe it

is easier to put a plant in place today than it would be to put a

plant in place 2 years from now, but if I do not have any use for

the output that is going to come from that plant, there is no reason

to build it today.

No conversation that I have had with leaders of organizations

that invest in large scale suggest to me that their investment decisions today are driven, to any important extent, by what they think

the corporate tax rate is going to be in 2011, much less what they

think their own tax rate is going to be on any dividend payment

they receive.

Senator Schumer. Thank you. Another quick question. Do you

think we should, in this stimulus package, try to deal specifically

with the housing crisis in certain ways? Or should that be apart

from it?

Dr. Summers. I think it is a question more of legislative tactics

than anything else. I think further action with respect to housing

is a good idea. If you can do it all quickly in one package, so much

the better. If the housing component is controversial, and putting

it together with a stimulus package will delay the passage of stimulus, then I think you are better off keeping them on separate

tracks.

Senator Schumer. Thank you, Dr. Summers. My time has expired.

Ranking Member Saxton.

Representative Saxton. Thank you.

18

Dr. Summers, I listened intently to your testimony and quite

frankly it is very impressive, particularly with regard to the concept of targeting and timeliness.

With regard to targeting, I assume that your notion would be to

target—or the correct notion, I should say, would be to target expenditures in such a way that they would give what I would call

the most bang for the buck——

Dr. Summers. Yes.

Representative Saxton [continuing]. Of economic growth.

As I understood your testimony, you are targeting—you mentioned food stamps and unemployment insurance, and Dr. Mishel

mentioned infrastructure repair. More recently, Senator Schumer

mentioned issues that had to do with other sectors of the economy.

Here is my question: As we sit here, as Members of Congress, there

are going to be suggestions that come here to us from sectors

throughout the economy as to what would give the most bang for

the buck, and this Congress—the House and the Senate—will

make decisions about what is the most bang for the buck.

And I can assure you that after 24 years here, I know there will

be no shortage of ideas about how to do that, and that the political

process will work to put in place something that the institution

compromises on which will be different from what you say, or different than Dr. Mishel says; and I am wondering how we get

around that problem which I see as a major impediment to a fiscal

stimulus?

Dr. Summers. I think it is a very fair question. I think the reason why I emphasized relatively across the board tax rebates was

because I thought they had the potential of avoiding what would

otherwise me more devisive sectoral debates.

If this becomes the vehicle for everyone’s particular agenda, then

I think the process becomes that much more complicated.

In the name of being timely, I do think you should try to reach

an agreement that is as across-the-board as possible. So while

there are certain tax measures, or certain spending measures that

seem to me to be particularly constructive, from the point of view

of the long-run health of the economy, I have resisted the temptation to include them in my testimony, not because I am in doubt

about whether they are good ideas, but because it seems to me that

if everybody includes their preferred measures, you are going to

have a very difficult process.

I also think that it is important to recognize that economics is

about demand and supply, and they each have their day. At a moment like the present—when the principal risk is recession—the

main problem is not that the economy has got various bottlenecks,

but that the economy has got a lack of demand.

And so the priority should be to stimulate demand. Much of our

longer-term policy thinking relates to the supply issues, whether it

is education—as I would tend to emphasize—or whether it is reductions in top marginal tax rates, as others would tend to emphasize.

Unfortunately, because of these gathering recession pressures,

the constraints on our economy over the next couple years are less

likely to be about supply than they are about demand. And that diagnosis should frame the discussion.

Representative Saxton. Thank you.

19

Let me just very quickly ask Mr. Beach: Would the prospect, Mr.

Beach—in your opinion—would trillions of dollars of tax increases

after 2010 undermine investment and economic growth?

Mr. Beach. Yes.

Representative Saxton. A short question and a short answer.

Thank you.

Senator Schumer. And your time has expired.

Congresswoman Maloney.

Representative Maloney. Thank you.

Dr. Summers, how important is it that we enact a stimulus package that does not worsen our long-term economic outlook, but

boosts our competitive position in the world economy?

Dr. Summers. Two things, Congresswoman.

One, with respect to measures that would be adverse to the longterm fiscal outlook—I tried to address that in answering Congressman Saxton’s question—but I would go in a slightly different direction with this and say I think it is very important for the long run

that we avoid a recession, if possible. Because avoiding recession

may be very difficult, we should focus on mitigating one to the

maximum extent possible.

This is necessary because it seems to me, if you think about all

of our country’s medium-term and long-term objectives—whether it

is the ability to address issues like health care, like income security, or like education—over the medium term, they depend on how

strong our economy will be. They depend on what our budget outlook will be a couple of years from now, and that outlook will be

very adversely affected if we have a serious recession.

The degree to which the United States is vulnerable in the global

economy, at this moment of indebtedness, is going to be very sensitive to how strong our economy is, and how attractive we are as

a place for others to invest. These two issues will depend very

much on the seriousness of any downturn.

The attractiveness of the American model in the world—what my

Harvard colleague Joe Nye has referred to as our ‘‘soft power’’—is

going to depend very much on how well our economy is functioning.

If you think about our ability to maintain support for an engaged

internationalism, which I think is terribly important to do on a bipartisan basis in a rapidly changing global economy, it is going to

be much easier to do that in the context of a strong economy that

is producing benefits for middle-class families, rather than a deteriorating economy where economic insecurity is increasing.

So I think you hit on a crucial issue: There is enormous potential

suffering that we can mitigate by responding to the threat of recession, but far beyond that, there are very large stakes for whatever

the agenda of the country is going to be with new leadership beginning in 2009. I’m not talking about a Democratic agenda, or a Republican agenda, because whatever the agenda is, we are going to

be in a much better position to accomplish it with an expanding

economy than with a declining economy. The decisions we make in

the next several months will affect very much how the agenda is

framed a year or a year-and-a-half from now.

Representative Maloney. In this recession—or economic downturn—do you think it will be short and shallow, or deep and long?

Dr. Mishel.

20

Dr. Mishel. I think that it is a dangerous thing to predict the

future. And I think the comfort zone that we all agree on is, unemployment is going to be high in 2009. So that all the issues before

us are: Let’s do something to mitigate that. And I think that is the

bottom line, and I think a lot of the technical talk about how deep

is it going to go and will we actually see declining output doesn’t

matter.

Think about unemployment and what it does to families. Think

about the people that are going to lose wages and jobs, the kids

that will not be able to go to college, the people that are going to

move around so the kids will be displaced from schools. I mean,

just think about the permanent damage that is done as people lose

income and suffer extended unemployment.

That is what I think Congress needs to focus on.

Representative Maloney. What timeframe do you believe is too

late to have a proper stimulus on our economy? Anyone.

Dr. Mishel. I will just—well, I think we should implement something as soon as we can. And we would try to get a lot of the expenditure, both taxes or spending, implemented and going this

year. But it could last into next year.

And I think as the other Larry has been saying, you know we

can keep our eye out for whether we need to do more, but I think

we should do something now. Keep our eye open. Anything that impacts the economy this year and early next year is well worth

doing.

We are so far from having to worry about overheating the economy I just do not understand what the issues are.

Mr. Beach. Let me just have a quick word on that. You are already beginning to have an effect on the economy by holding hearings and having these debates. Your speech, if I could just say, is

important to how people plan.

And you do not need to have definitive evidence of a recession

to act. We know that there is a slowdown. We are all predicting

a slowdown. And the mere prediction of the slowdown is in a sense

going to be self-fulfilling because people will now be more cautious.

So there is right now a window for action. If you wait awhile and

you do not signal what you are going to, on taxes, the legislative

process is slow, so you are going to have to do something that will

pass through quickly, you will miss the opportunity.

The credit markets are probably going to self-correct in some respects, wiping out businesses and taking care of borrowers. There

is an action period and it is now. We know from 2001, when the

action was taken in an appropriate fashion, that there was some

bump-up in GDP. It wasn’t a very effective move, but we know that

that was a bump-up, so that moved now.

Dr. Summers. Congresswoman——

Mr. Beach. Go ahead.

Dr. Summers. [continuing]. It is an Olympic year. Gold medal

for legislation in the first quarter with impact in the second and

third quarter.

Silver medal for legislation in the second quarter that fully has

its impact during this year.

And because this is a different kind of Olympics, no medal if the

legislation——

21

Representative Maloney. Well said.

Dr. Summers. [continuing]. Does not happen in the second

quarter and have its impact this year.

Senator Schumer. Thank you.

Representative Maloney. Thank you.

Senator Schumer. Senator Bennett.

Senator Bennett. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to all of the witnesses. First, Dr. Mishel, I endorse absolutely what you say about infrastructure. I cannot escape some

historic context here.

I remember when we were passing the Highway bill. We were attacked as spenders, big spenders—drunken sailors; some of that

language is still out there in the campaign rhetoric.

I voted for the Highway bill with great enthusiasm, even though

I am a conservative Republican who is supposed to be concerned

about fiscal responsibility, because I recognized exactly what you

are saying here, not only because of the economics, but because our

infrastructure is crumbling, as witnessed in Minneapolis.

And I am very interested that a lot of people who were saying,

‘‘Gee, you are spending far too much money! You are a bunch of

drunken sailors up there who have lost control.’’ When the bridge

collapse said, ‘‘You did not spend nearly enough money on the infrastructure! What’s the matter with you?’’

Well that is the life we live here in the political world. But I

think there is no question but what spending now on an infrastructure that is crumbling is the right thing to do. And if PAYGO requires that I vote for an increase in the gasoline tax, I will do it.

Which signals that I am never going to run for President of the

United States.

[Laughter.]

Senator Bennett. But I am interested in all of this conversation

about unemployment and labor, because the reality is that we

have, in various sectors of the economy, severe labor shortages

right now that cannot be filled. This is not a single labor market

where you either have a job or you do not have a job.

I will give you the anecdotal evidence. TVA is trying to rebuild

certain facilities in the Tennessee Valley, infrastructure long since

needed. They cannot find welders. They cannot find welders in

Tennessee. They cannot find welders anywhere in the country.

They are advertising nationwide for welders to come work there,

and for a variety of reasons that particular trade has dried up and

people do not want to do it.

In my home State of Utah where unemployment is around 3 percent—having risen to that level from 2.6—the employers say: Our

major problem is that we cannot find labor in a whole series of industries.

Now Utah may be an anomaly, but you do not have a single national labor market that is either filled or unfilled based on what

the Congress does. And we could do serious damage to the economy, if in the name of trying to get the overall number changed,

we do things that are not targeted to the reality out on the ground.

Mr. Beach, you say in your testimony you know others in the

room who—let me read it exactly because it caught my eye. By the

way, I think there is a misprint in your testimony because you

22

have the question: What can increase risk? Didn’t you want to say

‘‘decrease’’ risk?

Mr. Beach. Well, I am shocked that I made a mistake in my testimony, but I will go and take a quick look at that.

Senator Bennett. OK. But you say, ‘‘I am probably not the only

one here today who knows the businesses that are preparing now

for higher taxes.’’

Secretary Summers, I can introduce you to some people who will

give you a different answer than the one you say you get from the

people you talk to. I was in Senator Schumer’s city talking to a

group and said that the tax cuts are probably not going to be made

permanent. Given the political situation, I do not see any chance

that they will be.

They were absolutely stunned. They said, ‘‘Do you mean to say

that all our taxes are going to go up? Back to where they were?’’

I said, ‘‘Yes, that is exactly what the political landscape looks

like.’’

They said, ‘‘Good heavens! Number one, we have got to immediately tell Congress how stupid that is. And Number two, if in fact

that is the case, Senator, we have got to recalibrate all of our

plans.’’ Now that conversation was a year ago.

So let us not assume that 2010 is so far in the future, and we

do not really need to worry about it, and it is not affecting decisions today. Anybody who makes the calculation that we are going

to take our present circumstance where we have probably the highest corporate tax rate of any developed country in the world and

see that go up so that we have the dubious distinction of being

even higher, that that is not going to have an impact on the economy and that somehow that can just be fed into a computer and

spill out numbers about deficits two decades from now is frankly

not the kind of long-term economic thinking I think we need to do.

Now reactions from all of you to that particular tirade.

Senator Schumer. That’s good, because your time is up, Senator.

Senator Bennett. All right. I apologize.

Senator Schumer. OK.

Dr. Summers. Senator Bennett, I think it is a balance-of-risks

question, and clearly the impact of what happens on the tax cut

would depend on how people thought about whether it was going

to be paid for and what they think the impact would be on the

long-run deficit.

I guess I am very struck by the experience of the 1990s, which

I think was pretty powerful in demonstrating that putting deficit

problems behind us exerted a very potent positive impact on the

economy through its impact on capital costs. This positive impact

occurred despite very strong warnings from many of the kind of

people you are describing, who cautioned that the measures enacted in 1993 were certain to lead to a serious recession and a period of very slow economic growth.

So I think we probably do not see eye to eye. I recognize that the

effects you are describing are present; I just think they are substantially exceeded by the adverse fiscal impact. And in any event,

I think the worst risk here would be if that debate paralyzed us

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with respect to the measures that could otherwise be agreed on to

provide stimulus to the economy in the short run.

I think if anyone were to have the idea that making the tax cuts

permanent should be part of the stimulus, taking that position

would on my assessment be tantamount to opposing stimulus. As

you recognized, I do not think there is any conceivable chance that

these two measures will happen in the next several months.

I think the decision is going to have to be made as to whether

one is serious about the stimulus issue, and if so, that requires deferring any discussion around extending the tax cuts.

Senator Schumer. Senator Kennedy.

Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You know, just to get back to the reality, when we look at where

we are in terms of—as this chart over here shows—on the problems

of December’s unemployment, if you look at what has happened in

a number of parts of the country in terms of home heating oil—

would you put that chart up, please—40 percent since the last

year.

[The charts entitled, ‘‘Unemployment Rate Jumped in December’’

and ‘‘Real Oil and Gas Prices Approaching Record Highs’’ appear

in the Submissions for the Record on pages 61 and 62 respectively.]

If you look at what is happening to American families who face

losing their homes, this has gone up 181 percent from 2005.

If you look at the bankruptcies that have taken place just from

2006, this is up 40 percent. These are economic indicators. And

they have triggered—for Mr. Beach saying, as well, we have got a

window now. Action, period.

The results of all this are, people out there are suffering. And I

think the enormous value that we have from this panel is the recommendation and suggestion that there are a number of things out

there that can really help people that are being adversely impacted

by this—however you want to describe it—this recession.

We should get about the business of getting something simple

and quick that has been tried and tested and is going to have the

greatest impact on those people that are hurting. I think that is

what I am hearing from this panel. I think the recommendations

have been enormously constructive.

I think Larry Summers and the response to the earlier question

about giving out the medals just reminds us about the urgency. I

do not know whether there is anything further that he would want

to say on it, but I also am enormously impressed by what Dr.

Mishel has mentioned: That even if we are able to get the economy

moving in a more positive direction in terms of growth, we are

going to have a lot of people that are going to be unemployed, and

they are going to be hurting. They are going to be hurting.

I would just like to come back to that for a minute, if you can,

for the panel. You have given us a sort of prescription about how

we need to address the economy, but how are we going to lessen

the impact on real people, on working families, people that have

been the most adversely impacted up to now and are being adversely impacted while we are having this hearing here?

We could do one thing on the economy. We have something else

with regards to the impact on real people. Dr. Mishel mentioned

the changes in the unemployment compensation. These are people

24

who are paid into the unemployment compensation and now are

facing adversity. And instead of being able to get out what they

have paid in, are still being shortshrifted.

That is a suggestion, and certainly one if we go the route of the

unemployment compensation, but what, in addition to what you

have said here, do you think would be valuable for this Committee

to understand to lessen the impact on the people that are going to

be really suffering through this period, even if we are able to get

the economy moving back in a positive direction?

Maybe we will start with Dr. Summers, and then Mr. Beach.

Dr. Mishel. Well I would like to point out that the higher unemployment has its effect, not only on those people who become directly unemployed. And over the course of a year, you may have

6 percent unemployment, but 14, 15 percent of the workforce may

be unemployed at some point during the year. But it is also the effect of the higher unemployment that lowers wage growth.

And so many working families will lose income because of that.

And my friend Larry had an estimate of a loss for average families

of $1,000, I think, this year. Mine is very similar with an additional loss next year of another $1,400 on top of the original $1,000.

And so we also need to deal with those——

Senator Kennedy. Just describe that. What does that mean,

the loss, to a family? What does that mean in real terms?

Dr. Mishel. That a middle class family who may have income of about $52,000, that as a result of the higher unemployment their

incomes are going to be $1,400 less this year than what they were

in 2007. And there will be a further deterioration in 2009.

So to me that is a pretty big deal.

Senator Kennedy. That is across the country? Is that

across——

Dr. Mishel. On average across the country, yes. And I think it

is going to affect everybody who lives in markets where unemployment is going to rise. And it is going to disproportionately affect

those people who are at the bottom.

Listen, when we get 6 percent unemployment in this country, the

minority communities are experiencing 12 percent unemployment.

Communities who you could say live permanently in a recession

are in a very, very deep recession.

But to move to the discussion about the unemployment insurance

system that I know you are very interested in, I think it is really

important for us to get on the table now—because we have done

it so late in past recessions—to have some extended benefits for 20

weeks beyond the regular 26 weeks for all States.

And to be able to have in very high unemployment States even

longer extended benefits and perhaps even a $50 per week benefit

increase across the board. Unemployment Insurance benefits are

very low, and we know these people are going to spend it. We know

they are hurting. So that is a very easy thing for Congress to do.

And I also want to agree with my friend Larry that we should

be thinking about stimuli that involve existing vehicles. No new

programs. No changes in fundamental legislation. Let’s use existing

vehicles. It can be done for infrastructure. It can be done for unemployment insurance, food stamps, et cetera.

Senator Schumer. Thank you.

25

Dr. Summers. Could I add two things, quickly?

Senator Schumer. Yes.

Dr. Summers. One, Senator, I was struck by someone I spoke

with recently who lives in New Hampshire and works in Massachusetts. You know, it is one thing for farmers to watch the weather

report very nervously wanting to know what the weather is going

to be, but it is another thing for people whose work does not have

anything to do with farming to watch the weather report very nervously because whether they are going to be able to afford to heat

their house all winter depends upon just how potent global warming is this winter.

I think that is an indicator of the kind of distress that becomes

much more likely when you have a recession.

If you look at policy in historical context over the last 25 or 30

years, in a variety of ways we have much lower marginal tax rates

than we did 30 years ago. In many ways that is a positive thing

because of some of the other changes we have made, such as welfare reform. As a side effect of these other changes we have made—

I would say mostly desirable changes—one adverse consequence

has been that there is a little less automatic stabilization than

there used to be.

Automatic stabilizers can be a useful policy tool because they

kick in automatically as the economy declines. I think it would be

worth some reflection, not just on what measures we can do right

now, but on what automatic stabilizers might be useful. For example, we could reform unemployment insurance so that we have got

a systematic set of formulae that extend benefits automatically

when the unemployment rate goes down.

Similar kinds of changes could be useful with respect to other

benefit programs. When the economy goes down and oil goes up,

whatever the right size of the heating oil assistance program was

2 years ago, it should be bigger now.

So I think it would be profitable to consider some mechanisms

for generating a little bit of automaticity that would lead to even

more rapid responses in the future than is ever going to be possible

through legislation.

Senator Schumer. Thank you.

I am going to try now to keep us within the 5-minute rule because we must end at 11:15 and I want to give everybody a shot.

Congressman English.

Representative English. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have been concerned for months about a softening economy. I

have been meeting privately with close to a dozen respected economists out of both the Government and private sector. What has

struck me is there appears to be universal agreement that the

economy is now slowing down, particularly based on the latest reports.

Many economists that I have met with recommend proactive

stimulus, regardless of whether there is a technical recession—and

certainly as somebody who represents Northwest Pennsylvania, I

appreciate that whether or not it is technically a recession, it certainly feels like one, particularly when we slide below a 1 to 2 percent growth rate.

26

I would think this is not the time for partisan politics, but there

are some legitimate philosophical concerns here that hopefully

should not get in the way of our stepping in on behalf of working

families now and acting quickly.

I would like to think there is a lot of common ground here. I

would hope that we would have the courage to embrace a progrowth stimulus package that would help jump-start the economy

by helping job creators, as well as easing the financial burden on

workers.

I think we need to extend full expensing and bonus depreciation

for business investment, and limit the reach of the corporate AMT.

I would also like to extend unemployment benefits, repeal the income taxes on UC, increase the child tax credit, and provide a modest rebate for low-income families. I am not sure, Dr. Summers,

that all of that could fit within your $50 to $75-billion parameters,

and I am doubtful that we can recreate the miracle of the fishes

and loaves.

But I guess I am more concerned about doing too little than

doing too much. I also think that Congress should provide stability

to the financial markets by making clear that the tax reforms enacted in 2001 and 2003 are not going to be allowed to expire. And

I certainly would rather do that, rather than threaten tax increases

of historic proportions, as were contemplated in recent budgets.

I think that if we are serious about stimulus, I think we should

avoid over-promising, but also I think we should avoid some of the

PAYGO rhetoric which seems to be hobbling action on the other

side of the aisle.

I would hope in our discussion about infrastructure investment

and handouts to States and certain programmatic tinkering, that

we are not contemplating a stimulus package along the style that

the Japanese embraced during the 1990s. That clearly did not

work.

You will remember, Dr. Summers, when you were at the Treasury, the Japanese experience with that sort of stimulus really did

not take them in the right direction.

Now Mr. Beach, you have talked I think eloquently about the impact of pending tax increases on calculations within the economy.

Do you feel that the talk about tax increases, which has proliferated in Washington over the months leading up to our recess,

has contributed to the threat of a slowdown? And do you believe

that some of the tax reforms floated out there by some of our

friends, particularly in my Chamber, have potentially contributed

to the atmospherics which seem to be slowing growth?

Mr. Beach. Well, anecdotal evidence here is what we have. We

do not have the statistical evidence yet, but I can affirm that based

on conversations I have had and observations I have made.

I have also begun to suspect, and some research is now beginning to come in, that stock market volatility may be due to the

threat of the increase in taxes as chief financial officers rebalance

portfolios to produce cash-flows in 2010.

So, yes, I think that the discussions in the House recently on the

Ways and Means bill which was I think a large tax increase may

have contributed to uncertainty about the future.

27

Representative English. Dr. Summers—I know I am almost

out of time—but you had mentioned the idea of a discretionary

trigger being wired into stimulus.

Certainly we have discussed both programmatic stimulus and tax

stimulus here. Are you comfortable with the idea of including discretionary triggers in the Tax Code? And doesn’t that also potentially have unintended consequences?

I just wanted—I would like you for the record, because of the

standing you have up here, to maybe offer your perspective on that.

Senator Schumer. You just have to do it briefly.

Dr. Summers. I don’t think, Congressman, that there would be

any significant adverse impact to a provision that would allow the

Secretary of the Treasury over a 6-month period to certify that in

his judgment recession had become more likely than not, and that

an additional round of uniform rebates would go into effect.

Dr. Mishel. But not supply side tax provisions——

Dr. Summers. But I think, in general, we have a separation of

powers, and pursuant to this separation, Congress legislates the

tax cut. I think the exercise of discretion over a circumscribed set

of measures and over a circumscribed interval, so as to provide for

a better cyclical response might produce more accuracy than a

quantitative trigger in terms of a 3-month move, but the discretion

would need to be very much circumscribed.

Senator Schumer. Congressman Hinchey.

Representative Hinchey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, gentlemen, very much for being here with us

today. I think we have all benefited greatly from the insightful testimony and the very interesting responses to questions that you

have provided us. I am very, very grateful to you.

Dr. Summers, I wanted to thank you also for that mention you

made of the Gold Medal, which I think is very interesting in this

particular context. The price of gold is now, what, something above

$900 an ounce.

Dr. Summers. Yes.

Representative Hinchey. Which has gone up a lot more rapidly even than the price of energy, including the price of gasoline,

which indicates that a certain amount of investment capital is now

focused on something that is a lot more secure than it might be in

other places, putting more and more of that investment capital into

gold.

I think that, in and of itself, is an interesting situation.

As you pointed out, I think the economy that we are dealing with

is essentially a demand economy. It is an economy that is based on

demand. Roughly 70 percent of the gross domestic product of our

country is based upon consumer demand and consumer spending.

So in the context that we are dealing with what I think frankly,

is a recession at this moment—I think we have seen a downturn

in the economy continue over the course of roughly the last year,

and I think it is pretty clear now that we are in the early stages

of a recession.

And so if that is true, we need to begin to deal with this very

aggressively in the ways that you have suggested. And I think that

most of that has got to do a little with tax cuts, having those tax

cuts focus on middle income, low or middle income people, blue and

28

white collar working people. They are the ones that are going to

generate the stimulation of the economy with whatever money they

get.

They need to have additional spending ability. If you look at

what has been happening to working people over the course of

many, many years now, the unemployment insurance has not been

what it should be. The minimum wage is not what it should be.

People who are working are not getting the kind of wages or the

kind of benefits that they deserve. People who are in a situation

where they get unemployment insurance for which they have to

contribute in the context of their job, for them the cost of that unemployment insurance has gone up something in the neighborhood

of $1,500 over the course of the last year or so.

So working people are really in distress here. And I think that

we have to focus on the demand aspect of this economy and provide

as much help as we can for these working people.

One of the ways that you talked about, both Dr. Summers and

Dr. Mishel, was about investment in the basic infrastructure.

When you mentioned schools, Doctor, I was reminded of how the

Clinton administration tried to get a substantial investment, public

investment of capital into upgrading schools, which have not been

upgraded in decades across this country. Many of them are in desperate condition. Those are the kinds of things that I think we

should be engaged in.

We are facing what I think is potentially a very dangerous situation, not just with inflation, but with the value of the dollar dropping as dramatically as it has, and with the price of energy and

food going up so substantially, making the inflation rate not 2.3

percent, but something in the neighborhood of 4.3 percent. That

means we’ve got to have a large focus on this situation, which is

likely, not just on inflation, but on something that confronted our

economy back in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, a situation of

stagnation of the economy down-turning and costs going up, resulting in ‘‘stagflation.’’

I think that is one of the words that we have to put in our minds

as we deal with this complex set of issues that confront us right

now—and I would appreciate what you think of that and how you

think we ought to handle it in that context.

Dr. Summers. I would make two comments: First, how can we

tell our kids that their education is the most important thing for

their future and for our society’s future, and then ask them to sit

in classrooms all day, where the paint is chipping off the walls.

How can we ask them to go work in chemistry labs, as we do all

over this country, where the kids have to step out of the classroom

three times during the experiments because they are sick and nauseated, because the ventilation system doesn’t work? How can we

ask our children to do these things and then talk about how we’ve

got to produce more scientists?

There’s plenty to argue about—how we should fund it, how

quickly it should be implemented, and what its role is as part of

stimulus—but it is hugely important. It was hugely important 8

years ago that we do something about infrastructure, and it’s more

important today,.

29

‘‘Stagflation’’ is a big issue. Part of the reason why a balanced

program of fiscal and monetary stimulus, is, in my judgment, a better idea than relying only on monetary policy, is because it’s less

likely to be inflationary for a variety of reasons, particularly due

to commodity prices.

Senator Schumer. Thank you.

Congressman Hill.

Representative Hinchey. Is my time up?

Senator Schumer. Yes, plus 22 seconds.

Congressman Hill.

Representative Hill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m a Blue Dog

Democrat in the House, and budget deficits and fiscal discipline is

something that’s very important to me. I think, in terms of the

long-term health of the economy, it’s very important.

We just recently passed, as you know, an AMT bill that threw

PAYGO rules out the door, and here we are getting ready to do it

all over again with this fiscal stimulus package, and I’m troubled

by it, to be honest with you.

Now, there’s been a great deal of discussion about the need for

a stimulus package to be adopted, and that we ought to temporarily delay PAYGO rules, but all of you are so matter of factly convinced that this stimulus package is needed.

I looked at and read from a lot of different economists who are

not convinced that it is needed. And it is going to contribute to the

budget deficit.

Where is the empirical, historical evidence that past stimulus

packages have contributed to the rebounding of our economy, particularly in the years 2001 and 2003?

Mr. Beach. Amen. I happened to bring along today, some

graphs, which I’m happy to leave the Committee. They are from

the——

Senator Schumer. Without objection, they will be entered into

the record.

[The graphs referred to appear in the Submissions for the Record

on pages 61 and 62.]

Mr. Beach. They’re from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and

they go directly to your point. There are stimulus packages that

work; there are stimulus packages that sound good, but are empty.

And the ones that we have tried, where we have stimulated demand, just haven’t delivered as much as one would have hoped for

them.

On the other hand, those that are targeted on the investment

side, building new plant and equipment to create jobs and improve

incomes, and, thus, through improving incomes, stimulate demand,

tend to perform very, very well.

If you’re going to suspend PAYGO rules, do it for programs that

have a proven record of success, rather than ones that don’t have

a proven record of success. And it doesn’t cost you a thing today

to signal what you’re going to do on taxes in 3 years.

That doesn’t even qualify for the PAYGO rules, and your speech

is important. I am very concerned about spending.

Spending is a drag on the economy, if it is for non-productive

purposes or purposes which have less productive purposes than

30

similar money used for private concerns and you’re right to be concerned about it.

I would hope that Congress would find a way to get this done

without having to depart from a discipline in the signal which was

so important at the beginning of this year, that Democrats and Republicans are really going to be serious about spending.

Dr. Mishel. Representative Hill, I understand your concern for

fiscal responsibility and I salute it. I would point out that all efforts to pass balanced budget amendments, PAYGO rules, always

have, and for good reason, exceptions for a recession and a downturn.

And the reason is for what Larry Summers said, that if you put

money into the economy through some kinds of spending or tax

cuts and take it away in others, you end up not having an effect.

So if we do something that is temporary, that is a one-time thing

and doesn’t build into higher deficits forevermore, it makes a lot of

sense.

I would also add that at this point, we have a deficit that’s about

1 to 1.5 percent of GDP, which is actually a little bit higher than

I would like at the end of a recovery, but it’s not very large by historical circumstances, and I think that given what families are facing with higher unemployment and wage losses, that I think, to

me, the concern should be on, as Larry says, mitigating the rise of

unemployment, as long as we don’t build in a permanent hole in

the budget. I would suggest that would be a way to think about

this.

Dr. Summers. Here’s the problem: This is a case where preemption is probably a good idea. If you wait until it’s absolutely 100-

percent definite that we’re in a recession, by the time your stimulus takes effect, it’s going to be too late.

You know, I’ve followed the economic debate pretty closely, and

I’ve been part of it. It makes a big difference, whether you’re reading things that are dated January 14 or whether you’re reading

things that are dated January 2 because the data is really quite

consistently coming in negative.

I don’t think the risk is very great that this is going to be unnecessary, though I wish I had a different view.

The fiscal prudence certainly is a big part of it, and in the best

of all worlds, you’d be legislating measures in the out years that

would offset anything that was done in the in years.

I think that’s a reason to focus on keeping whatever you do timely, targeted, and temporary, and to be serious about imposing that

kind of condition.

But let me be very clear, stimulus is not going to pay for itself.

On the other hand, to the extent that stimulus is responsive to

reigning in the recession, that’s got a quite significant positive effect on the health of the economy, which feeds through into the

budget over the longer term.

Senator Schumer. Thank you.

Last, but not least, Congressman Cummings.

Representative Cummings. Dr. Mishel, you used a term that

I found so interesting. You talked about there are people in a permanent recession.

31

You know, yesterday, I saw something that was just so interesting. They were doing the election coverage up there in Michigan,

and I saw a fellow who had been out of a job for 21⁄2 years. He said

he was putting in 10 applications a week.

And he couldn’t move, either. He had a house. I think maybe his

wife was working. I don’t know, but the money was coming from

somewhere.

And, you know, I said to myself, you know, this man is getting

hit at least twice. He can’t move, because he’s worried about the

price of his house which had dropped so far. Therefore, he was trying to wait it out, as to allow an opportunity for the price of his

home to increase or gain value.

But at the same time, he didn’t have a job. And I was just thinking, I was just thinking about some of the things that you and Dr.

Summers have said. Is there such a thing as throwing good money

after bad?

In other words, I think your organization talks about $100 bil- lion, Dr. Summers talks about $50 to $75 billion to include in the

overall stimulus package. Is there some point where you don’t go

high enough, and it does not do any good? Are you following me,

gentlemen?

Dr. Mishel. Yeah. Our economic rebound plan actually rec- ommends 1 percent of GDP which is $140 billion. I think Larry,

who started out half that size, is now saying that we may need

that much, and be ready to do it.

And I think that, you know, when you talk to people from the

financial sector, or other people who talk as if they’re looking into

a deep, dark abyss, and if you don’t throw a big lifeline to the economy, they’re wondering, why bother? So you really do have to do

something to scale.

And I know those stories that you’re talking about with the man

in Michigan, and it’s a shame that our policies over the years

haven’t really done anything to address the kind of issues that that

man faces.

And I would actually say that I wish we could also be talking

about a policy of job creation in communities that always experience high unemployment, because whether or not we come out of

a recovery or not, those communities are still going to need jobs.

I think we should be going even so far as direct government job

creation, because those communities do live in a permanent recession, and they need training and they need access to jobs, so I applaud your attention to this.

Representative Cummings. Dr. Summers, how urgent is urgent? In other words, I think all of you said that we need to get

a stimulus package to the American people quickly; we don’t have

to have a lot of arguments over. However, how urgent is urgent—

because you know how this place runs up here?

Dr. Mishel. Start meeting tomorrow.

Dr. Summers. If the legislation is on the President’s desk and

signed within the next 2 months, you’ve done great. If the legislation is passed and on the President’s desk and signed before you

recess for Memorial Day, you’ve done OK. If there is no legislation

before Memorial Day, but it comes before July 4th, you’re passing.

But if the legislation comes after that, it might or might not have

32

been worth the bother, and the main opportunity to help has been

lost.

Representative Cummings. So if you’ve got a preference between things like unemployment—dealing with those people that

are closer to the permanent recession—or dealing with the tax cuts,

I take it that you all have a preference there?

Mr. Beach. I don’t think you’re actually legislating for the recession or the slowdown right now, because I think you should be

looking past it.

It’s probably going to be slight, anyway. You know, it started in

March, and it was over in November of 2001. The bill was signed

in May; it took effect over the Summer, but really none of the effect

really was there until late in the year.

So, in a sense——

Representative Cummings. You know, I wish you could tell

that to the people I represent. They would not agree with that, because a lot of them fall within that permanent recession class, unfortunately.

Dr. Mishel. May I suggest also that he’s suggesting—he’s talking about GDP. And your own forecasts would say that the unemployment rate at the end of this year is going to be about 6 percent.

You said it was 5.5 percent for the year as a whole.

So, it’s not about when the economy actually contracts and when

it stops contracting; it’s how long people are going to experience

high unemployment. I would hope you would agree with that, Bill.

Representative Cummings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Summers. Real quick, as Senator Schumer suggested earlier, I’m no longer young. I’ve watched the economy, and I’ve

watched Washington for at least a little while now, and I think the

risks here of too little too late are far, far, far greater than the

risks of too much, too soon.

Senator Schumer. And on that note, we’ll conclude. I just want

to say that the one consensus we seem to have among the witnesses, is that we should do this quickly.

There may be differences on what we should do. When I spoke

to Chairman Bernanke the other day, that was his greatest concern, as well. So we’ve tried to set a good trend in this Committee.

We were supposed to finish by 11:15. I know you have deadlines,

and we came pretty close.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:22 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

(33)

Submissions for the Record

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS, CHARLES ELIOT UNIVERSITY

PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

I am grateful for the opportunity to testify before this committee at this important

juncture. I have submitted for the record a speech I delivered recently on the current state of the economy and the broad range of policy questions it presents. Here

I address the main issues at stake in the debate over fiscal stimulus for the American economy and provide my views as of this moment. The best policy response

may change as we receive new economic data and our understanding of the current,

highly volatile economic situation improves.

1. IS FISCAL STIMULUS DESIRABLE AT PRESENT?

Yes. Following recent economic reports particularly the last employment report

and yesterday’s retail sales data, my judgment, like that of many economists, is that

a recession is more likely than not. At this point this is or is very close to being

a consensus judgment. Even if there is not an officially defined recession, there is

almost certain to be a significant slowdown in the economy that will feel like a recession in many parts of the country and to many businesses and families.

Fiscal policy measures that succeed in increasing spending will mitigate the severity of the coming downturn and accelerate the eventual recovery. Crucially they

will also provide insurance against the possibility of a scenario unfolding like that

in Japan in the 1990s where an economic downturn becomes very severe and

lengthy because a vicious cycle starts with credit problems hurting the real economy, in turn exacerbating the credit problems with the cycle continuing.

Over the next 2 years the difference between economic performance with and

without fiscal stimulus is likely to be several hundred thousand jobs and a loss in

the range of $1000 for the average family. If fiscal stimulus is successful in preempting a severe recession that would otherwise occur, the gains would be far

larger.

2. WHY NOT RELY ON MONETARY POLICY TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY

AND FOCUS FISCAL POLICY ON LONGER TERM ISSUES?

As Chairman Bernanke recognized in his most recent speech, monetary policy has

an essential role to play in maintaining demand and growth as well as in combating

financial instability. In the current context however it is best complemented by fiscal policy for a variety of reasons: (i) in normal times fiscal policy is faster acting

than monetary policy, and given the financial problems it may be even more true

today. (ii) proper fiscal policies can target the innocent victims of recession and can

directly promote job creation (iii) full reliance on monetary policy could easily mean

lowering interest rates to levels that would be problematic for the dollar, commodity

prices, future asset bubbles and moral hazard (iv) in a situation where policy impacts are uncertain it is most prudent to rely on a diversified set of stimulus measures.

3. HOW GREAT IS THE RISK OF OVERHEATING THE ECONOMY AND

CAUSING INFLATION? SHOULD A DECISION ON FISCAL STIMULUS

AWAIT DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE THAT THE ECONOMY IS IN RECESSION?

The balance of risks is now on the side of recession rather than inflation. Inflation

measured by personal consumption expenditures excluding food and energy was 1.9

percent over the last year. Measures of inflation expectations as inferred from

Treasury indexed bonds are close to their lowest point in the last 2 years. Moreover,

in a climate of great uncertainty about workers’ jobs and firms’ profit margins inflation pressures are more likely to diminish than increase. Increases in inflation that

have been observed recently reflect to a significant extent the impact of developments in oil as well as other commodity markets as well as declines in the dollar.

Even if they are not reversed, these markets are unlikely have as large an inflationary impact in the future as in the recent past.

The major problem with past stimulus efforts is that the stimulus has come too

late. If stimulus is to be timely, it should be delivered promptly. By the time it is

conclusively established that a recession has started, policy is likely to have been

substantially delayed from what would have been optimal.

There is sufficient weakness in the economy to justify stimulus legislation now

with provision for rapid implementation. As discussed below, consideration should

43

be given to providing for a second tranche of stimulus that would be implemented

if/when clearer evidence of economic weakness appears.

4. HOW LARGE SHOULD A STIMULUS PACKAGE BE?

I have previously advocated stimulus in the range of $50–$75 billion. Given recent

data, I now believe that it would be appropriate to enact a program of this magnitude as soon as possible and to make provision—perhaps with a contingent trigger

for a second tranche of about the same magnitude. Sizing a stimulus package cannot be reduced to hard science. A program of $50– $75 billion would represent .35%-.55% of GDP and would run very little danger of

overheating the economy on any plausible scenario. If delivered in the second and

third quarters of 2008 it could have a material impact on consumers and on confidence more generally. A larger program particularly if it contained measures that

would have their impact only with a delay would on current evidence risk an imprudent pattern of expanding the budget deficit at a future time when growth had been

restored.

However, policy has been behind the curve for some months now. So it would be

appropriate to design further stimulus that could take effect without the need for

new legislation and debate if the economic situation deteriorated either as Congressional debates continue or after legislation takes effect. The two tranche approach

could deliver stimulus in the range of 1 percent of GDP if the situation warranted.

One reasonable trigger would be changes over a quarter in payroll employment as

suggested by Martin Feldstein. An alternative or supplement would give the executive branch the right to trigger the second tranche of stimulus based on their assessment of economic conditions.

5. WHAT SHOULD COMPRISE A STIMULUS PACKAGE?

As with any potent medicine, stimulus if misadministered could do more harm

than good by increasing instability and creating long run problems.

A stimulus program should be timely, targeted and temporary.

Timely stimulus requires both that Congress and the President act quickly and

that measures be chosen which can be implemented rapidly and then which will

have their ultimate impact on spending in short order. This puts a premium on simple measures that work through existing modalities such as adjustment of withholding schedules or tax refunds or enhancements of benefits. It calls into question

the wisdom of designing new programs or using approaches where Federal spending

is not injected fairly directly into the economy but is instead only transferred to

other units of government that historically have spent out new funds only gradually.

Targeted stimulus requires that funds be channeled where they will be spent rapidly and where they will reach those most in need. This also argues for use of simple

changes in withholding schedules, or tax refunds as well as for change sin benefit

formulas. In general targeting in both the sense of assuring maximum spending and

fairness are likely both to be achieved by measures that target those with low incomes and whose incomes have sharply declined.

Temporary stimulus is necessary if stimulus is not to raise questions about the

country’s long run fiscal position. If stimulus were not credibly temporary, it would

likely raise long term interest rates and increase capital costs offsetting its positive

impact. Moreover if stimulus is not temporary, the risks that it will continue even

after the economy recovers and lead to inflation or very high interest rates is greatly

increased. Stimulus should be designed so that its proximate impact on consumer or

government spending is all felt within a year of enactment and in any event by the

end of the first quarter of 2009. It is important also that no measures be enacted

on a temporary basis that will generate overwhelming political pressures for their

extension if fiscal credibility is to be maintained.

On the tax side these considerations suggest the desirability of across the board

equal tax cuts or refunds for all taxfilers Measures which reduce taxes in proportion

to taxes currently paid or that disproportionately favor upper income taxpayers or

recipients of capital income are likely to be far less effective as such taxpayers

spend much less of new income than low and moderate income taxpayers. Measures

which commit today to reduce future taxes relative to current law are likely to be

counterproductive because of the fiscal doubts they raise and because they do not

provide liquidity now at the moment when consumers are facing the need to cutback

spending.

My reading of the evidence suggests that the case for business tax cuts is not compelling. The principle inhibitor of business investment right now is lack of market

demand not the cost of capital. And the experience with the 2001 stimulus program

44

is not very encouraging with respect to the efficacy of business incentives as stimulus. On the other hand a temporary investment tax credit or accelerated depreciation scheme might pull some investment forward from future years into 2008. To

maximize the bang for the buck such a program should be incremental and apply

only to investment above some benchmark such as 2/3 of previous investment or depreciation.

On the spending side the measures most likely to be effective are temporary increases in benefits perhaps for the long term unemployed and food stamp recipients.

Such increases can be implemented quickly and go to people who will spend them

fast. The more detailed efforts are made to achieve specific programmatic objectives

through increased spending, the greater the risk of delays. A high burden of proof

should be put on any new spending program proposed as a stimulus measure to

demonstrate that the spending will be rapid.

6. SHOULD STIMULUS BE PAID FOR WITHIN A GIVEN BUDGET WINDOW?

Fiscal stimulus to an economy in recession operates by increasing demand in an

economy that is constrained by lack of demand. If it is paid for contemporaneously,

its point is largely lost as there is no net stimulus to demand because money injected in one area is withdrawn in another.

As long as a fiscal stimulus program is temporary and does not create expectations of future spending or tax cuts it does not make a large economic difference

whether or not it is offset by specific future fiscal actions. Including offsets in a 5

or a 10-year window would magnify the impact of fiscal stimulus a little bit by reducing any adverse impact on capital costs because it would avoid any increases in

long run debt levels. And the need for offsets might operate to prevent fiscal stimulus from being extended or allowed to grow excessively.

On the other hand, if it delayed the process of coming to a conclusion on fiscal

stimulus or generated so much disagreement that timely legislation could not be enacted a requirement of offsets would have serious adverse consequences. A judgment

on offsets is ultimately political—depending on the economic advantage of the extra

discipline offsets bring relative to the disadvantage of the extra complexity and

delay that their negotiation would require.

RISKS OF RECESSION, PROSPECTS FOR POLICY (BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: STATE OF

THE U.S. ECONOMY)

I am speaking here today because I believe that our current economic situation

requires a comprehensive program of measures to contain the fallout from problems

in the financial and housing sectors and to assure sufficient policy support for economic growth over the next several years. Perhaps because of a failure to appreciate

the gravity of our current situation and the problems our political process has in

responding quickly and collaboratively to emergent threats, such a comprehensive

program is neither in place nor in immediate prospect.

No economic projection put forward with anything like complete confidence should

ever be trusted. The current consensus suggesting that growth is likely to be slow

over the next several quarters and that the odds of a technically defined recession

are in the 40 percent range is troubling enough given that it means rising unemployment and budget deficits, likely falls in real family incomes and a downturn in

plant and equipment spending.

For the last year, the economic consensus, and the policy actions that have flowed

from it, has been consistently behind the curve in recognizing the gravity of the

problems in the housing and financial sectors and their consequences for the overall

economy. This continues to be the case. In my view it is almost certain that we are

headed for a period of heavily constrained growth, quite likely that the economy will

experience a recession as technically defined and distinctly possible that we are

headed into a period of the worst economic performance since the stagflation of the

late 1970s and recessions of the early 1980s.

The late Rudi Dornbusch was fond of remarking that in economics ‘‘things take

longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you

thought they could.’’ So it has been recently. The related but distinct patterns of

excessive valuations in housing markets and excessive complacency in credit markets were pointed out for years by experienced observers. The cracks took longer to

appear than many expected and have now proven to be far more structurally damaging than almost anyone supposed.

Economic downturns historically come in two categories. For most of the post war

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eral Reserve in the name of fighting inflation. This was the story in 1958, 1971,

1974 and 1982 as sharp increases in credit costs drove the economy into downturns.

Before World War II, and in recent years as inflation has come under control, expansions have ended as a consequence of the workings of the financial system,

sometimes in conjunction with oil shocks. After a period of optimism, asset prices

expand beyond fundamental values, credit expands, investors embrace financial innovations that allow greater leverage so as to better take advantage of rising asset

values. At some point the party ends, asset prices fall, financial structures that once

looked impregnable become vulnerable, confidence collapses, propensities to consume and invest fall off, and the economy turns down.

Experience suggests that downturns driven by falling asset prices and credit problems tend to be recognized relatively slowly and to be quite protracted. Two extreme

examples are the American experience after 1929 and Japan’s experience in the

1990s after the 1989 asset price collapse. Our last two recessions associated respectively with the bursting Savings & Loan real estate bubble and the NASDAQ collapse revealed gaps of several years between asset price peaks and the restoration

of satisfactory rates of economic growth. Nationally housing prices peaked less than

a year ago, and credit spreads reached their minimum levels only about 6 months

ago.

History’s caution that situations like our current one are likely to surprise on the

downside for a considerable time and prove quite protracted is confirmed by forward

looking indications regarding the economy.

• 300,000 home foreclosures were initiated in the first half of last year. The vast

majority of them involved mortgages that had not yet reset. Even with recent policy

changes up to 1 million foreclosures are expected over the next 2 years.

• The new and relatively crude futures markets that exist are predicting that

peak to trough national housing prices will fall by 24 percent according to an index

that has only declined 6.6 percent from its peak so far. Already prime mortgages

are defaulting at the same rate sub-prime mortgages defaulted 3 years ago.

• Freely traded shares in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are suggesting

that the value of commercial real estate if marked properly to market may be down

by as much as 20 percent and the rate of transactions in commercial real estate has

declined by more than half over the last year.

• The most important driver of U.S. economic growth over the past 7 years has

been consumption which has outstripped GDP growth. The combination of a near

zero personal saving rate, lost housing wealth, reduced availability of credit, reduced real incomes caused by rising oil prices, a falling dollar and rising food prices

and increased uncertainty constitute a perfect storm depressing consumer spending.

• Even looking out 5 years the spread between safe liquid Treasury borrowing

rates and the rates at which major financial institutions borrow is at well above

normal levels. The debt of some of our countries largest and most prominent financial institutions is trading at levels suggesting a market judgment that their odds

of defaulting on their debts over the next five years approach one in ten.

Of course it is possible that improved trade performance coming from the falling

dollar, the working through of the Fed’s monetary policy actions and typical American resilience will carry us through the next year robustly. But this is not where

the preponderant probability lies.

Economic policymaking is about balancing risks. I have already suggested that

the probability of subpar growth exceeds the chance that growth will be robust.

There is an additional crucial point as well. The adverse consequences of policy

choices that fail to deal with a potential recession and fail to stimulate the economy

and that do not allow for financial repair far exceed the adverse consequences of

over-insuring against an economic slowdown.

Consider the costs if we experience even in a relatively mild recession:

• Losses of close to $5,000 in income for the average family of four quite heavily

concentrated among the disadvantaged who are inevitably last hired and first fired

along with cutbacks in Medicaid, child welfare and other social safety net programs

as state budgets contract.

• A several hundred billion dollar increase in our national debt and a significant

reduction and a substantial cutback in investment in plant and equipment, education and R&D

• Hundreds of thousands more foreclosures and greatly increased risks to the financial system.

• Greatly complicated international relations as the our downturn slows the rest

of the world economy, the American economic model is called into question, protectionist pressures rise, and the dollar’s centrality to the international financial system is called into question

46

Of course if a downturn turns into more than mild recession, the risks are that

much greater.

Against these risks, what do those who counsel against what they see as imprudent activism worry about? They fear that stating the need for strong action will

somehow undermine confidence by laying the problem bare. And they worry that inflation might tick upwards or that those who have made financial errors will be insufficiently punished.

I only hope that history will see these as the main economic problems faced by

whoever is elected President of the United States in 2008.

It is the great irony of financial crisis that the very measures that could have prevented crisis are counterproductive in a time of crisis. Of course it would have been

better to have had more fear on the part of lenders, less rampant liquidity, and

higher saving 2 years ago when imbalances were building. But that is not what we

need now.

The most urgent priority for policy over the next several months is containing the

incipient economic downturn. I am convinced this is possible without giving rise to

either excessive complacency in the future or accelerating inflation. I want to briefly

sketch what would seem to me on current information to be the appropriate evolution of policy in a number of areas. Of course as data comes in and alternative

measures are debated, any particular combination of policies might look less and

less appropriate. I will have served my purpose if I have advanced the debate by

contributing an example of an ambitious policy program.

MONETARY POLICIES AND THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

One former economist official whose advice I sought in preparing these remarks

referred to recent events as ‘‘adjusting for raised expectations, the greatest failure

of risk management in financial history.’’ This is too apocalyptic. But it is suggestive

of the extent to which major financial institutions are unsure of their own and their

counterparties creditworthiness.

In normal times the spread between the rate at which the Treasury borrows and

the LIBOR rate at which banks lend each other money for 3 months is typically well

under half a percentage point. Currently it is about 2 percentage points. In the

United States and Europe large and persistent spreads have also opened between

the policy rates of central banks and the lending rates at which banks make credit

available to each other and to firms and households.

In this environment the dominant risk is a downward spiral in which financial

problems curtail credit and spending thereby reducing economic activity, which in

turn exacerbates the financial problems, creating a vicious spiral. Once in progress,

such a spiral may prove very difficult to arrest. It is much more important to establish credibility that policy is ahead of the credit crunch spiral than to reassure yet

again that it is not behind the inflation curve.

I say this not because I am unconcerned about inflation. The achievement of price

stability over the last generation is one of the most important factors contributing

to improved economic performance. It is a matter of balancing risks. With workers

and firms as insecure as they are today, I see little risk of the kind of wage-price

cycle that has set off inflation in the past. Data on indexed and nominal bonds suggest that despite what has happened to oil prices and to the dollar there has been

no increase in the expected price level several years out. Moreover, failure to contain

a credit spiral could cost the economy years of satisfactory economic performance.

If I am wrong and policy creates undue inflation pressures, they can be removed

at a much less perilous moment.

So far the Fed has responded by cutting its policy rates by a full percentage point

and with a number of programs to make liquidity available to banks. The seriousness of the problems is suggested by fact that liquidity provision has not yet made

a large dent in the spread between bank and government borrowing rates. While

reductions in policy rates have translated directly into lower lending rates, it appears that half or more of their impact has been offset by increases in the spread

between policy and lending rates. This means that the apparent easing in monetary

policy in recent months has been much greater than the actual easing.

What does this suggest going forward? First it suggests that policymakers should

consider focusing attention not on their traditional policy rate but on targeting some

more meaningful indicator of the cost of credit to households and businesses (such

as 3 month LIBOR). In this way, increases in credit risks will not automatically

translate into de facto tighter policy as they do today.

Second, assuring full transparency with respect to the valuation of assets and the

recognition of losses and liabilities should be the top regulatory priority. The Japanese experience taught painful lessons about the dangers of government support

47

and encouragement for measures that seek to rearrange balance sheets so as to

avoid facing painful realities. Wherever possible assets should be marked to market,

not to model, and liabilities should be explicitly recognized.

Third, regulatory policy needs to focus on assuring that financial institutions raise

adequate amounts of capital to maintain their activities, even if this is painful for

existing shareholders. If a bank is at the point of indifference between reducing the

size of its balance sheet and raising capital by issuing shares or cutting dividends,

the broader economy is not. Policy in recent months has devoted considerable attention to destigmatizing and indeed encouraging borrowing in one form or other from

the Fed. In the months ahead it will be equally important to destigmatize the raising of capital and indeed to insist that institutions raise enough capital to allay

credit risks and permit the resumption of normal lending activities.

FISCAL POLICIES

The success of the Clinton 1993 budget plan in setting off a virtuous circle of

growth, reduced deficits, lower interest rates and still more growth—along with a

growing sense that short-run stabilization policy is the job of the Fed—have reinforced the economics profession’s growing aversion to the use of fiscal policy to stabilize the economy.

Yet, if economic data over the next several months come in as I fear they will—

with increasing signs of recession—several considerations suggest that the policy response should include fiscal as well as monetary stimulus for several reasons.

If policymakers are able to act quickly and effectively, fiscal policy can work more

rapidly than monetary policy, which has about a lag of a year between the change

in the Federal funds rate and its maximum impact. Moreover, the efficacy of monetary policy may well be diminished by capital constraints that limit the ability of

banks to lend or by creditworthiness constraints that limit the ability of businesses

to borrow. As important, the extent to which monetary policy can be prudently used

in the current environment is limited by concerns about the dollar as well as about

the bubble creating effects of very low interest rates. Finally certain problems—such

as the impact of mass foreclosures on affected communities—are not easily amenable to monetary policy.

Fiscal stimulus is critical but could be counterproductive if it is not timely, targeted and temporary. Gene Sperling’s Bloomberg column this week makes these

points strongly. To respond to an incipient downturn, fiscal policy has to have its

impact in a timely manner. It has to be targeted to assure that increased government borrowing translates directly into increased spending and demand. And, critically, it has to be temporary so that its effects are not offset by higher long-term

interest rates. Indeed from the point of view of stimulus, the optimal package is one

that raises spending and the deficit in the short run while reducing the deficit in

the long run and thereby reducing long term interest rates.

Any actual fiscal stimulus program would have to be worked out in the context

of events as they unfold and should be walled off from longer term policy considerations where actions to assure long term fiscal sustainability are essential.

It is reasonable to suggest that stimulus approaching $50–$75 billion—roughly in

the range of 1⁄2 of 1 percent of GDP—is likely to be appropriate. The largest part

of this stimulus should come in the form of tax cuts distributed equally among all

taxpayers and recipients of tax refunds. Other elements of a stimulus package

should include extension of unemployment insurance benefits given that long term

unemployment is already at recession levels, temporary step-ups in food stamp benefits which can be executed and have effect very quickly, and tax measures to eliminate from taxation the so-called income that homeowners receive when they are

foreclosed, a step that has just been passed by Congress.

In the context of a legislative stimulus program, consideration also should be

given to steps that can be taken to help contain energy and food prices. Such measures both raise consumers’ purchasing power and reduce inflation concerns. These

might include reform of the strategic petroleum reserve to assure that the government stops the practice of accumulating especially scarce oil products at times when

markets indicates that current supply is selling at a large premium, and adjustments in policies promoting ethanol to assure that they do not drive up food prices.

HOUSING AND MORTGAGE MARKET POLICY

Probably the single most important thing economic policy can do for homeowners

is to minimize the risk of recession or the severity of recession if it comes. With the

bursting of what now can clearly be seen as a pervasive bubble, and the drying up

of important segments of the mortgage market, the last thing that the housing marVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:09 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 041291 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\41291.TXT DianeA PsN: DianeA
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ket needs is a recession that would reduce incomes of homeowners and potential

purchasers. That is why the aggressive fiscal and monetary policies I have just discussed are so important.

But it is also true that problems in the housing sector are an important reason

for recession fears and they need to be addressed. The recent teaser-freezer (which

freezes the initial teaser rate of some sub-prime mortgages) is a useful step that

addresses that relatively small minority of subprime mortgage holders who on the

one hand appear very unlikely to be able to get a new mortgage and on the other

hand appear very likely to be able to carry their existing mortgage. It is a constructive step but I know of no credible estimate suggesting that it will reduce annual

mortgage payments by more than about $5 billion.

It is a perhaps appropriate component of a much broader strategy that recognizes

the core problems posed by the sharp decline in housing prices. While the issue of

resets is an important one, a much more fundamental problem needs to be addressed. Consider a homeowner who purchased a home for $250,000 putting nothing

or next to nothing down implicitly relying on appreciation of the house to service

the mortgage. That homeowner finds himself today with a home worth perhaps

$220,000 and with the capacity to service perhaps $200,000 worth of mortgage even

before any rate reset. If the house is foreclosed, its value will probably decline to

$150,000 and adversely affect the neighbors as well.

The best outcome for both borrower and lender is a write down in the value of

the mortgage that allows it to be serviced and at the same time prevents a mutually

costly foreclosure just as Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code prevents the liquidation

of overly indebted but viable companies. It is deals of this kind in the subprime,

alt A, and prime space that need to be negotiated if families are to be saved the

agony of foreclosure and lenders are to maximize their recoveries.

The answer may lie in bankruptcy law reform, standard templates for mortgage

restructuring or other means. Various tax and regulatory obstacles to shared appreciation mortgages in which lenders reduce monthly payments in return for a share

in a house’s appreciation when it is sold should be removed. Until there is recognition that many individuals who cannot meet their original mortgage obligations are

nonetheless the highest value occupants of their homes, we are not going to fully

respond to the problems in the housing sector.

Additional steps that should be taken in the next several months include:

• the provision of Federal assistance to those who are foreclosed in locating new

rental housing and to communities that wish to purchase foreclosed homes and convert them into rental properties. • support for an adequate supply of mortgage credit. Proposed increases in the

availability of FHA guarantees are a positive development though they are manifestly insufficient to assure an adequate flow of mortgage capital across the entire

housing spectrum.

• The Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,

should be granted significant temporary increases in their portfolio limit so that

they can perform their market stabilizing function at the time it has been most

needed in two generations. They should also be freed on a temporary basis from punitive capital requirements and the conforming loan limit should be increased to

about $600,000.

It is of course possible that developments in the housing sector will prove less serious than I fear and that not all of these measures will have been necessary. How

serious a problem will this be? A substantial fraction of the originators of subprime

mortgages have gone bankrupt. If I read the political winds correctly, those who remain will face greatly enhanced regulation. The concern that too many homeowners

will learn from these events that it is a good idea to excessively lever up their

homes seems less than paramount at this point. On the other hand, if policy remains behind the curve families in communities across the country will bear the

brunt of the errors.

CONCLUSION

While it has not been my topic this morning, I trust that extensive efforts will

be made to learn from painful experience. Most obviously and visibly there is the

need to protect vulnerable people from the kind of predatory lending practices that

have been all too common in recent years. Recent experience also suggest the need

for reevaluation of traditional approaches to monetary policy, the regulation and

provision of liquidity to different types of financial institutions, the role of the rating

agencies and much else.

It has always seemed to me that those of us involved with finance bear great responsibility. There is the great importance of well functioning capital markets and

49

1See S&P, ‘‘Broadbased, Record Declines in Home Prices in October According to the S&P/

Case-Shiller Home Price Indices’’ at http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/

CSHomePricelReleasel122622.pdf 2 Reuters, ‘‘Countrywide says foreclosures highest on record’’ January 9, 2008, at http://

www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7211734.

the credibility of the currency. Much more important is the reality that when the

economy is successfully managed people’s fortunes are determined by their own

choices and efforts. When the wrong economic policy choices are made people’s lives

can be wrenched apart as they lose their jobs or their homes or their ability to provide for their family because of complex forces entirely beyond their control.

The economy is at as critical a juncture as it has been in many years. Policy must

balance risks at a highly uncertain moment. The lives of millions of people who will

never think about countercyclical policy, moral hazard, lending facilities or the Federal funds rate may be profoundly affected by the policy choices made in this city

in the next few months. I hope they will be made both urgently and wisely.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. LAWRENCE MISHEL, PRESIDENT OF THE ECONOMIC

POLICY INSTITUTE

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I am Lawrence Mishel, President

of the Economic Policy Institute. Thank you for this opportunity to explain why the

U.S. economy needs a large economic stimulus to boost demand for goods and services and to prevent a serious and protracted loss of jobs and rising unemployment.

My testimony will make three key points:

1. Because the economy, and especially the labor market is in serious trouble, immediate intervention of sufficient size is needed to prevent a vicious cycle of job loss

and reduced consumer demand and spending.

2. The right stimulus will have the biggest bang for the buck, which comes from

increasing unemployment compensation, providing state fiscal relief, issuing targeted tax rebates, and direct Federal spending on low-income families through such

means as increases in food stamps.

3. Infrastructure spending, especially school repair and maintenance, can be done

quickly and can efficiently put a million people to work. But even if it takes a year

or more to employ large numbers of workers on infrastructure projects, the impact

will be timely and important in counteracting rising unemployment and the kind

of glacially slow job creation we saw following the 2001 recession.

The economy has been broken for some time, and the economic growth we have

seen has not reached the vast majority of families. This will probably be the first

business cycle where, at the end of the recovery (last full year being 2007), the typical family will have lower incomes than they did at the start of the downturn (2000,

the last full year of recovery). Fixing this disconnect between growth and the pay

and incomes of the vast majority of Americans requires a policy agenda on health

care, retirement, labor policy, trade policy, and work/family policy that is much

more substantial than what we will be talking about today. The focus today should

be on offsetting the rising unemployment and the corresponding income losses that

families will shortly face.

1. THE ECONOMY AND JOB CREATION NEED A BOOST

The economy is taking hits from all sides. December’s declining retail sales figures

show that consumers are already hurting. Housing prices declined by a record 6.7

percent on an annual basis, according to the most recent S&P/Case-Shiller Home

Price Index, and given the record inventories of unsold homes, they are expected to

fall further.1 Home foreclosures are on the rise: the largest U.S. mortgage lender,

Countrywide Financial Corp., reported that foreclosures and late payments rose to

their highest Ievels on record in December 2007.2 And, over the next 6 months, the

number of adjustable rate mortgage re-sets will exceed those that occurred in all

of last year.

Let me be clear that we need to keep our eyes on rising unemployment and weak

job growth and not on technical issues of whether output (GDP) actually contracts.

Even slow but still positive economic growth can lead to sharply rising unemployment from job losses or very modest job gains. Job growth slowed over the past year,

and that weakness has shown up in the unemployment rate, which jumped to 5 percent in December, significantly higher than the 4.5 percent unemployment rate in

the second quarter of 2007. A jump of this size is usually the sign of a recession,

and analysts at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs believe that a recession has alVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:09 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 041291 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\41291.TXT DianeA PsN: DianeA
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3See BBC News, ‘‘Recession in the U.S. has arrived’’, January 8, 2008, at http://

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7176255.stm

ready begun.3 Goldman Sachs projects that the unemployment rate will reach 6.2

percent by the end of 2008, which will put additional downward pressure on wages

and incomes, further reducing consumer demand.

If the economy is to avoid a cycle of declining consumer demand that fuels more

job losses, which in turn reduce consumer demand, Congress must act quickly. If

bold action isn’t taken, we are likely to see a repeat of the 2001 recession and the

years of jobless recovery that followed it. EPI released a plan last week, which I

have submitted as an attachment, that provides $140 billion of stimulus—1 percent

of GDP—which would begin to reverse our economic course by creating an additional 1.4 to 1.7 million jobs.

The stakes are high. In the last recession, the economy received only a mild boost

from the 2001 tax legislation, primarily from a provision that provided a $300 rebate to most taxpayers. The bulk of the legislation was vastly misdirected and provided, little immediate stimulus. The consequences were a sustained rise in unemployment and no job growth until late in 2003: job growth, wages, and incomes all

stagnated well beyond the ‘‘official’’ end of the recession.

2. UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION EXTENSIONS AND STATE FISCAL

RELIEF SHOULD BE THE HEART OF ANY STIMULUS STRATEGY

The Democratic leadership has announced that any intervention should be ‘‘timely, targeted, and temporary,’’ and I agree. Targeted should mean targeted where it

can be most effective as stimulus, and it is a fact that all so-called stimulus is not

equal. In fact, the key to maximizing its effect is to put money into the hands of

consumers who will spend it most quickly and to create jobs, breaking the cycle of

job loss and falling consumer demand. The fastest, most efficient way to get an infusion of money into the economy quickly is direct government spending on people

who need help.

Estimates by the U.S. Department of Labor and by Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com rank unemployment compensation at the top of the list of possible stimulus choices, increasing demand by $1.73 to $2.15 for each dollar. By contrast, Zandi

finds that tax cuts—of all possible cuts—rank lower, and reducing the estate tax

ranks lowest of all possible stimulus choices.

High ‘‘Bang-for-the-Buck’’ stimulus:

Extend unemployment benefits ............................................................. $1.73

Provide state fiscal relief ........................................................................ $1.24

Enact a one-time uniform tax rebate .................................................... $1.19

Increase Child Tax Credit ...................................................................... $1.04

Lower ‘‘Bang-for-the-Buck’’ stimulus:

Adjust Alternative Minimum Tax exemption levels ............................ $0.67

Reduce marginal tax rates ..................................................................... $0.59

Increase tax breaks for small business investment ............................. $0.24

Cut taxes on dividends and capital gains ............................................. $0.09

Reduce estate tax .................................................................................... $0.00

Extend unemployment benefits

Along with the National Employment Law Project, the Coalition on Human

Needs, National Women’s Law Center, the AFL–CIO, and many unions, we strongly

recommend immediate creation of a 1–year emergency unemployment compensation

program with 20 weeks of supplemental benefits in all states and 13 additional

weeks in ‘‘high unemployment’’ states (those with a 3-month average unemployment

rate of 6.0 percent); a $50 per week benefit increase; and additional administrative

funding. Congress should not wait for further damage to the economy before making

these changes: unemployment is already 0.7 percent higher today than it was when

the recession began in 2001, and the percent unemployed for 27 weeks or more is

higher than when the 2001 recession officially ended (17.5 percent vs. 13.9 percent).

These changes would cost about $8 billion over 12 months. We also recommend Federal funding for modernization of state unemployment systems, including extension

of benefit eligibility to low-income workers (by using each employee’s most recent

work history); to workers who are only available for part-time work; and to workers

who leave their jobs for compelling family reasons.

51

State fiscal relief

During times of recession, state budgets are hit particularly hard. Reductions in

tax receipts and cyclical increases in state spending put pressure on budgets—and

since most states have balanced budget requirements, they are forced to either reduce spending or increase taxes in times of decreased economic activity. These actions perversely add to economic troubles by decreasing the total demand for goods

and services, and thus intensify a recession. As such, direct Federal assistance to

states can help prevent these outcomes and stimulate the economy. In the last recession, Congress provided $20 billion in aid to the states, split between general revenue sharing and a temporary increase in the Federal match for Medicaid. The

same kind of assistance should be provided to the states once again, with $30 billion

split equally between a general block grant and an increase in the Medicaid match.

There is mounting evidence that states are already feeling the pinch. Twenty-four

states are either facing a shortfall for fiscal year 2009 or are expecting problems

in the next year or two. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

just 13 of these states face a combined $23 billion shortfall.

3. INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIRS

At a time when softening demand is leading many private-sector employers to

think about cutting back, public investments that create jobs directly can create demand and help break a downward economic spiral. Managed wisely, Federal investment in infrastructure can be both well-targeted and timely. America’s unmet needs

are enormous and growing. The state of disrepair in America’s public schools, for

example, is a disgrace that impedes both teaching and learning. GAO and the National Center for Education Statistics agree that deferred maintenance has created

a backlog of more than $100 billion in needed repairs in U.S. public schools, and

the situation worsens every year. We recommend that Congress distribute $20 billion for school repair and maintenance through existing formulas to school districts

across the country.

The benefits of this ought to be obvious. School repair and maintenance work is

highly labor intensive. A $20 billion investment should create about 280,000 jobs,

most of them construction jobs doing roofing, electrical wiring, carpentry, painting,

and masonry that would employ many of the more than 200,000 construction workers laid off over the past year—and the thousands more who will lose their jobs in

the coming months as the economy stumbles. The benefit in terms of improved

learning and the safety of students and teachers as schools are brought up to safety

codes is reason enough to make the investment.

Those who doubt that the money would be spent well and quickly need only look

at the recent experience of New York City. In 2005, New York’s schools were given

$1 billion to improve school buildings as the result of a court order. Within 4 months

the entire $1 billion was committed to projects that were completed over the next

12 months. City officials assure us that they could easily spend another $1 billion

just as quickly, and a summary of the NYC schools’ several billion dollars of unfunded infrastructure needs is attached to my testimony.

State and local officials in every jurisdiction we contacted, including Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, and California, affirm that the school maintenance needs are so

well known and pressing that no time will be wasted trying to figure out what to

do with the funds.

The replacement and/or repair of deficient bridges or critically important sewage

treatment systems can also be timely and effective as economic stimulus. Almost

every economist agrees that the Federal Reserve should act to lower interest rates,

but the impact of that action won’t be felt for as long as a year or more. Recent

experience shows that when there is the will to get working, there is a way. Work

on the I–35 bridge replacement in Minneapolis began in October 2007, just 2

months after the collapse, and is scheduled to be completed at the end of this year.

Similar projects begun in mid-2008 would continue throughout 2008 and early 2009,

when the job creation and economic stimulus they provide would still be badly needed, if the last recession is any predictor.

There are several key advantages of infrastructure spending as part of a stimulus

package. Unlike tax rebates, all of the money will be spent and none will be saved—

perhaps 50 percent or more of a tax rebate will be saved (which does not boost demand). Another advantage is that infrastructure spending has barely any leakage

to imports—all the spending boosts domestic activity. In contrast, about 10 percent

of consumer spending is for imports, boosting other economies not ours. Last, an advantage of spending on infrastructure relating to schools, water, bridges, and other

areas is that we need to do this anyway: we get a short-term boost to demand and

a long-term boost to productivity (and well-being).

52

The economy failed to add a single net new job until two and a half years after

the 2001 recession began. The nation must do better this time, and we recommend

that a total of $40 billion be spent on infrastructure maintenance, repair, and replacement to ensure a strong recovery. These are needed investments that should

be accelerated to impact the economy now, when it would make the most difference.

TAX POLICY

A final word on tax policy. Tax cuts can be an effective stimulus, but only if done

on a temporary and ‘‘downscale’’ basis. Tax reduction should be targeted to those

who are most likely to spend it immediately. Low- and moderate-income taxpayers

are those who will face the most immediate budget squeeze due to the recession,

and thus most likely to spend any extra money received through changes in tax policy. An effective way to add a broad-based boost to consumption in order to quickly

generate economic activity and job growth is to provide an immediate, one-time, refundable rebate to anyone who has paid either payroll or income taxes for 2007.13

A total expenditure of $65 billion would yield approximately $350 or more per individual, and $700 per married couple.14 Basing the tax rebate on payment of either

payroll tax or Federal income taxes ensures that the rebate will effectively target

low- and moderate-income taxpayers, many of whom do not pay Federal income

taxes.

Thanks you very much for allowing me to participate in this hearing. I look forward to your questions.

53

54

JANUARY 15, 2007

The Honorable HARRY REID, Senate Majority Leader

S–221 Capitol Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable MITCH MCCONNELL, Senate Minority Leader

S–230 Capitol Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable NANCY PELOSI, Speaker of the House of Representatives

H–232 Capitol Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable JOHN A. BOEHNER, House Minority Leader

H–204 Capitol Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

DEAR SENATOR REID, SENATOR MCCONNELL, REPRESENTATIVE PELOSI AND REPRESENTATIVE BOEHNER: We are writing to express our strong support for prompt

congressional action on economic stimulus legislation that will provide extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for the families and communities hard hit by

the nation’s distressing economic downturn and address outdated rules that limit

the program’s economic stimulative impact. As Mark Zandi, one of the nation’s leading economic forecasters, noted after the release of the December jobs and employment report, ‘‘the economy is on the edge of a recession, if we are not already engulfed in one.’’

That action is needed now is obvious. Today’s job market is already far weaker

than it was in March 2001, when the last recession began. Then, the nation’s unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, and the total number of jobless workers had grown

400,000 over the preceding 12 months. In contrast, 900,000 more workers are unemployed today compared to 1 year ago, and the latest unemployment rate (December

2007) was up significantly to 5 percent.

Unemployment is also exacting a harsher toll today as jobless workers struggle

for longer periods of time to find work, and already inadequate UI benefits—on average, only $285 per week, or one-third the average weekly wage—are stretched

even thinner by the rising costs of basic necessities. In December 2007, the average

unemployed worker had been jobless for 16.5 weeks, compared to 12.8 weeks in

March 2001. Meanwhile, gas costs ($3.10 a gallon this month) are up 80 cents from

a year ago, and the cost of a gallon of residential heating oil has risen 98 cents (to

$3.40) in just 1 year. USDA also predicts that food prices will experience their largest increases in years, as retailers pass on higher energy costs to consumers.

The economy’s steadily worsening condition and the resulting hardship on working families demand that Congress not repeat its mistake from earlier this decade,

when it waited until 3 months after the recession officially ended to enact the Temporary Extension of Unemployment Compensation program (TEUC). According to a

major study of past Federal extensions, each dollar of unemployment insurance benefits boosts the nation’s Gross Domestic Product by $2.15, while also saving over

130,000 jobs. Congress’s belated response to the last recession compromised the

stimulative effect of the TEUC — and another two million workers lost their jobs

before the TEUC program was enacted. Indeed, the jobs market rebounded far more

slowly, and more weakly, after the last recession than during any other business

cycle during the past 60 years. Thus, to help prevent a similarly weak recovery,

Congress should act quickly and realistically in response to the current downturn

to extend and improve UI benefits.

Congress can further enhance the stimulative value of extended UI benefits by simultaneously addressing systemic UI failures that deny benefits to many jobless

workers because of outdated eligibility rules that have not kept pace with the

changing labor market. Only 38 percent of unemployed workers now collect UI benefits. According to the Government Accountability Office, low-wage workers are twice

as likely to become unemployed, but only one-third as likely as higher wage workers

to receive unemployment benefits. Over a decade ago, a bi-partisan Congressionally

chartered commission recommended reforms to accommodate these concerns.

Incorporating many of the commission’s recommendations, the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed legislation providing incentive grants for states to modernize their UI programs as part of the Trade and Globalization Assistance Act. A

similar measure, the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act, has strong bipartisan support in the Senate (S. 1981). Absent Congressional action to include

these reforms in a stimulus package, however, substantial numbers of workers will

remain ineligible for UI benefits of any sort, hurting them and the economy overall.

55

Accordingly, we urge Congress to adopt the following unemployment insurance

policies to stimulate economic growth and help millions of jobless families regain

their footing during the uncertain economic times.

• In light of the rapid rise in unemployment, a program of federally funded extended benefits should take effect without delay and it should last for at least 1

year, with states provided appropriate funding to properly administer the program.

• Recognizing the growth in long-term unemployment, jobless workers who remain unemployed after exhausting their state benefits should qualify for a maximum of 20 weeks of federally funded extended benefits. During the 1991 and 1975

recessions, when long-term unemployment was not nearly as high as it is today,

Congress provided up to 26 weeks of basic extended benefits (in contrast, Congress

provided only 13 weeks of extended benefits in response to the 2001 recession, and

the jobs recovery was especially weak).

• Consistent with the 2002 TEUC program and most other recent Federal extensions, Congress should provide an extra 13 weeks of federally funded UI benefits

to states suffering from especially high levels of unemployment.

• With costs for basic necessities (including gas and home heating fuel) reaching

record levels, while average weekly UI benefits remain egregiously low (just $285

a week), Congress should also supplement Federal extended UI benefits by $50 per

week.

• To help states respond effectively to the recession and provide benefits to

300,000 low-wage workers who fail to qualify for the UI program in more than half

the states, the stimulus legislation should incorporate the incentive funding program of the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act (S. 1871).

For America’s working families, recent instability caused by the volatile housing,

credit and oil markets has exacerbated the already severe economic strains associated with globalization and the ongoing loss of good jobs in manufacturing and other

sectors. Absent quick and effective action by Congress, workers, employers and the

economy overall will endure substantial hardship. Economists broadly agree that extending benefits under the nation’s unemployment system is an efficient strategy to

stimulate the economy, create and preserve jobs, and provide needed assistance to

struggling families.

The proposals outlined above will go a long way to help the families and communities hardest hit by unemployment and prevent an even more serious recession. We

urge their prompt adoption.

Respectfully submitted,

AFL–CIO, Kelly Ross, Legislative Representative, (202) 637–5075

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees

Coalition on Human Needs

Economic Policy Institute

International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron

Workers (Ironworkers)

International Association of Machinists

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Leslie Miller, Communications Department, (202) 624–8734

International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Workers of

America (UAW)

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

National Employment Law Project, Christine Owens, Executive Director,

(212) 285–3025 x 304

National Women’s Law Center, Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security, (202) 588–5180

OMB Watch

Service Employees International Union

The United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe

Fitting Industry (Plumbers)

UNITE/HERE

56

PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. BEACH, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR DATA

ANALYSIS, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC

Senator Schumer, Congresswoman Maloney, Senator Brownback, Congressman

Saxton, and members of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, I am

William Beach, Director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. It is an exceptional pleasure to testify before you today on the state of the

economy and potential efforts by Congress to alleviate financial and economic

stresses. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.

OVERVIEW

There is an increasingly held view that the U.S. economy is slipping into a sustained period of slow economic growth, perhaps even recession. The root of the worsening economic news is believed to be the collapsing housing sector and the financial

institutions and practices that surround residential construction and mortgages.

Further, it is beginning to look as though declines in housing sales, construction,

and the mortgage credit industry will continue in 2008 as the mortgage default rate

(principally on adjustable rate mortgages) increase. It is estimated that something

above two million sub-prime adjustable rate mortgages will reset to a higher interest rate during the first few months of 2008.

The specter of further declines in home prices, more turmoil in credit markets,

and the emergence of secondary, adverse effects in other parts of the economy stemming from these price and credit events has raised concern about the general economy’s near-term outlook. Many analysts believe that evidence of widening economic

difficulties could be seen in last month’s employment report, which contained a

much reduced increase in non-farm payrolls from months prior. Others see evidence

of emerging macroeconomic difficulties in a relatively poor Christmas retail season

and in the increasingly poor revenue results of many major state governments.

As everyone on this Committee must know, comparatively definitive evidence of

a recession ‘‘near miss’’ or an actual recession will not be available for a long time,

perhaps over a year. This slow accumulation of data renders the policymakers job

particularly hard. Do policymakers rally behind an economic stimulus package that

aims at avoiding a recession when we may not be heading into one at all, or do we

frame a recession stimulus package that assumes we entered a period of negative

growth sometime in November? Or, do we operate from the wise counsel of former

CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin that economic growth of positive or negative .4

percent is hardly a difference that a struggling family will appreciate.

So, just what should Congress do? As I will argue later in my testimony, Congress

obviously should do nothing to harm the economy, it should let the Federal Reserve

lead the effort to stabilize economic activity, and it should keep its focus on crafting

long-term, pro-growth economic policy. Congress should take this moment of slow

growth to do what it does best: set broad economic policy. In this instance, Congress

should concentrate on signaling to investors and workers alike that its principal

focus will be on improving pro-growth economic policy, mainly in the areas of tax,

regulatory and pending policies. Serious work by the Congress in these areas will

create greater predictability for investors and business owners and assure workers

that they will have a better chance of improving their wages through increased productivity. Efforts to enhance the long-run may very well have immediate, short-run

benefits as economic decisionmakers reduce the risk premium they place on starting

new businesses or expanding existing enterprises.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE STATE OF THE ECONOMY?

While economic data generally is collected well after the fact of economic activity,

current, admittedly incomplete data indicate that the economy entered a period of

significantly slower growth during the fourth quarter of last year. Indeed, the data

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1 A host of commentators have given their views on the economic future, but I would direct

the reader first to a very recent speech by Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve

System, on the economic outlook and recent turmoil in financial markets. See Bernanke, ‘‘Financial Markets, the Economic Outlook, and Monetary Policy,’’ speech before Women in Housing

and Finance and the Exchequer Club, Washington, D.C., January 10, 2008:

www.gederalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke2008110a.htm (January 11, 2008).

may support the argument that problems in the housing sector and related credit

markets have now affected a wider array of economic sectors and interests.

The story in the mortgage industry is becoming well known and settled. Most analysts would agree that an excessive inventory of new housing faced declining demand for housing in 2006 as the Fed raised rates to reduce inflation risks. At roughly the same time, the delinquency rates for highly leveraged mortgages, principally

sub-prime, began to rise, largely because many borrowers had taken payments they

could not afford. Some lenders did not follow traditional underwriting practices that

have been crafted to assure that borrowers have enough income to service their

mortgage.

The decline in demand produced drops in new and existing home prices, which

exacerbated the sub-prime delinquency rates: as home prices fell, the incentive for

a sub-prime borrower to stay in a mortgage lost some of the allure that stemmed

from the belief that the underlying house would continue to grow in value, thus justifying a loan that might be too great a financial burden otherwise. Further worsening the macroeconomic picture is the seemingly relentless upward trend in petroleum prices, which briefly touched $100 a barrel on futures markets this month.1

All of these factors have combined to make a grumpy lot out of economic forecasters. Let me give you my views.

While I continue to believe that the U.S. economy’s strength and robustness are

its principal characteristics, I, too, have concluded that near-term prospects are

poor. For example, the probability of recession has risen in our models from 35 to

40 percent, and I could easily see little or zero growth in GDP when the fourth quarter estimates are published. The decline in residential construction will continue for

some time, consumer and investment spending will slow, and growing inventories,

principally in the automotive sector, will become a drag on the economy (where inventory buildup in the third quarter explains some of the large 4.9 percent growth

rate).

That said, we expect GDP growth in 2008 of around 2 percent, and monthly employment growth averaging 75,000 jobs. This is slow growth, but not a recession.

The reason I believe we avoid recession in 2008 is due in large part to the substantial contributions to GDP from exports. While domestic demand is expected to grow

by about .9 of a percent over the next two quarters, exports are forecasted to expand

by 10 percent. Recent U.S. export growth is stems from the lengthening, above trend

growth in world GDP, largely due to economic strength in Europe and the longawaited emergence of China and India to the top tier of industrial economies.

Economic policymakers need to focus on the economic trouble spots and the portions of the U.S. economy that are doing quite well. The temptation will be to see

the glass as half empty. For example, now would be the wrong time to insulate the

U.S. from global economic forces by restricting or regulating international trade.

Moreover, now would be the wrong time (and one can’t think of a right time) to Federalize private mortgage contracts or freeze contracted mortgage interest rates when

the vast majority of such contracts are functioning well and when a key institutional

factor to our current economic strength is the rule of law in the operation of contracts.

WHAT SHOULD CONGRESS DO?

These cautions, however, should not discourage Congress from acting to support

stronger economic growth. I recommend that Congress address economic policies in

three interrelated areas, all of which affect near and long-term economic performance: 1) tax policy, 2) mortgage markets regulation, and 3) long-term spending.

Nearly every significant, general slowdown in economic activity is a good time for

congressional policymakers to ask, are we doing everything we can to support longterm economic growth? That is, slowdowns are good times to get back to policy fundamentals and make certain that everything Congress can do to allow the economy

to grow has been done.

I am convinced the Congress is not the best policymaking body for addressing the

short run challenges of the economy. That role is better played by the Federal Reserve System. So much of what Congress does is tied to the budget and appropriation processes, which take time to reach legislative results. Moreover, the Members

of Congress frequently do not have the time or background for keeping up with fiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:09 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 041291 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\41291.TXT DianeA PsN: DianeA
58

2Matthew Knittel, ‘‘Corporate Response to Accelerated Tax Depreciation: Bonus Depreciation

for Tax Years 2002–2004,’’ OTA Working Paper 98 (May, 2007), Office of Tax Analysis, US Department of Treasury.

nancial markets, the ebb and flow of economic data, and the actions of economic institutions the way the Fed does or even the economic agencies of Federal and state

governments. These institutional factors explain why congressional action often occurs after the need for action has expired, and why the actions it takes often are

not as targeted as they need to be.

However, there are areas of economic policy where congressional action can by

timely and targeted, though it may not intend to be short-range in focus at all.

Those areas involve the reduction of investment risk.

Investors are driven, in general, by comparative rates of return when making investment decisions between various opportunities. If two business opportunities are

possible, but one has a better rate of return than the other; then the investor will

go with the superior opportunity . . . the one with the higher rate of return. Suppose, though, that outside factors intervene (a flood, war, regulatory changes) and

this otherwise superior investment now carries more risk than the inferior one. The

investor discounts the rates of return for the greater amount of risk and, if the rate

of return on the first opportunity is still superior, the investor goes with that same

opportunity. If, on the other hand, the risk is too great to go with the otherwise

superior opportunity, the investor may take the more cautious approach of avoiding

risk and placing funds in the opportunity with the otherwise lower rate of return.

Tax Policy: What can increase risk? Many factors, of course, but public policy commonly looms large. Tax increases, especially if they land on capital, increase the cost

of capital and lower investment returns. When investors are uncertain about whether taxes will go up or stay the same, they still can act as though taxes have risen

if they judge the risk of an increase to be nearly equal to an actual increase. And,

rising uncertainty can have the effect of driving down investments in riskier undertakings.

Thus, among the first things Congress can do to address the current slowdown

is to pronounce definitively on the tax increases scheduled for 2009 and 2011. There

are projects, new businesses, and expansion of existing businesses that would be undertaken today if Congress signaled that taxes would be lower in 3 years. Since

nearly all major capital undertakings last beyond this 3-year period, it is likely that

making all or most of the Bush tax reductions permanent would stimulate economic

activity today as well as in 2011.

I am probably not the only one here today who knows of businesses that are preparing now for higher taxes in 2011. They are preparing themselves by reducing

their riskier projects and providing for stronger cash-flows in 2010. It is altogether

possible that there are projects being canceled today that would otherwise go forward if taxes were not scheduled to rise in 2011. At times like the present, the

speech of policymakers is as important as the policy actions they take. The decisions

makers in business and investment are watching Washington closely to discern the

direction Congress will take in responding to this crisis. If that direction includes

tax increases, then investors will find more favorable economies to support and business owners will, as much as they can, locate their expanded activities in places

with more favorable tax regimes.

Thus, Congress should signal today what it plans to do on taxes in 2 or 3 years.

For my part, I urge the Congress to make permanent the key provisions of the 2001

and 2003 tax law changes. Maintaining lower tax rates on labor and capital income

will encourage both labor and capital to work harder now when we need that greater activity.

In addition, we know from past experience that accelerating the tax depreciation

of capital equipment and buildings or 1-year expensing of business purchases that

otherwise would be depreciated over a longer period of time for tax purposes can

help during periods of slow growth. This was certainly the record in the last slump.2

Demand-side stimulus (tax rebates, child tax credit, and the 10 percent tax bracket) did little to change the course of the sluggish economy. The tax rebates of 2001

did little to stimulate the economy or move it from a prolonged sluggish growth

trend. Indeed, the contraction in investment and thus job creation did not begin to

improve until after the 30 percent partial expensing in the 2002 act and the 50 percent partial expensing in the 2003 act, which also cut the tax rates on dividend and

capital gain income. Congress has enacted depreciation and expensing stimulus

plans under Republican and Democrat majorities.

Mortgage Market Regulation: Just as working on better, more pro-growth tax policy for the long run can have immediate, short-run benefits; so too can supporting

long-term recovery in the mortgage and credit markets. Well functioning financial

59

3For more on what Congress should do, see David C. John and Alison Acosta Fraser, ‘‘HOPE

NOW: One Step to Resolve the Subprime Mortgage Crisis’’, WebMemo no. 1742, The Heritage

Foundation, December 13, 2007; and Ronal D. Utt, ‘‘H.R. 3915 Would Impose New Burdens and

Limits on Moderate Income Borrowers,’’ WebMemo no. 1703, The Heritage Foundation, November 14, 2007.

markets are central to long-term growth in jobs, incomes, and general output. Clearly, the current credit crunch points to the widespread difficulties that flow from extensive violation of traditional lending practices and excessive supplies of credit.3

So, what should Congress do? Four principles should be in policymakers minds

when framing a policy response to this crisis.

1. Any action should respect private property. When lenders are faced with a high

frequency of defaults, they commonly negotiate new terms with borrowers rather

than face extensive defaults or delinquencies. We see these negotiations going forward now. Congress should not act in a fashion that arbitrarily abrogates or alters

these contracts. It should not empower bankruptcy judges to negotiate new mortgages. It especially should not pass legislation or support administrative actions

that freeze interest rates. Such actions would set a dangerous precedent of legislative interference in private contracts that could be more extensively utilized sometime in the future.

2. Congress should not extend new subsidies to the housing sector. An efficient

mortgage credit industry is central to the country’s economic future. Clearing out

poorly run and unethical mortgage companies needs to happen swiftly and thoroughly, and this side of the market correction is visible everyday in the financial

news. It also is important that the under- and non-performing loans be refinanced

or restructured in a way that serves the long-term interests of borrowers and lenders alike. Federal subsidies to lender or borrowers would only lengthen the correction and distort the costs that the market needs to absorb and discount.

3. Lightly reform mortgage credit regulations. If Congress and the administration

encourage the private renegotiation of at-risk, sub-prime mortgages, then the sector

with the most to gain (or lose) will be resolving the sub-prime problem. Congress

should review existing regulations to determine the contribution of either ambiguity

in law or failure of enforcement to the turmoil in mortgage markets. It might also

be good to review the administration’s proposed regulations of Freddie Mac and

Fannie Mae.

4. Congressional actions should be temporary and limited. Whatever Congress

does on the regulatory side, those actions should be targeted to the problem, temporary in duration, and supportive of private resolution of the non-performing portion of the nation’s mortgage portfolio.

Increase confidence in the U.S. economy by addressing long-term spending challenges. While the attention of most policymakers will be on immediate responses to

the current slowdown, everyone should attend to a factor that’s increasingly important to confidence in the U.S. economy: the seeming unwillingness of Congress to

seriously address the enormous financial challenges from entitlement spending.

Many investors and organizations that play key roles in the future of the U.S. economy are worried about long-term growth given the fiscal challenges posed by Social

Security’s and Medicare’s unfunded liabilities. The Financial Times recently reported that the lead analyst for the US at Moody’s warned that the credit rating

agency would downgrade U.S. treasury government debt if action was not soon

taken to fix entitlements.

Thus, at a time when the economy is slowing and the speech as well as the actions of Congress can affect economic activity, policymakers should take concrete

steps to that will announce their intention to address unfunded liabilities in these

important programs. While reforms in these programs may be beyond what this

Congress’s can do, it is possible to signal change by reforming the budget rules.

Currently, the Federal budget functions as a pay-as-you-go system, with a very

limited forecast of obligations and supporting revenues. We just do not see in the

official budget what may happen over the next 30 years. The 5 and 10-year budget

windows do not permit Members or the general public to sense the obligations that

are coming beyond that 10-year time horizon.

A good first step in addressing the long-term entitlement obligations of the United

States would be to show these obligations in the annual budget. This could be done

by amending the budget process rules to include a present-value measure of longterm entitlements. Such a measure would express in the annual budget the current

dollar amount needed today to fund future obligations. Such a measure has been

endorsed by a number of accounting professionals, including the Federal Accounting

Standards Advisory Board.

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4See Stuart Butler, ‘‘Solutions to Our Long-Term Fiscal Challenges,’’ Testimony before the

Committee on the Budget of the U.S. Senate, January 31, 2007.

A solid second step would be to convert retirement entitlements into 30-year

budgeted discretionary programs. Such a move recognizes that mandatory retirement funding programs for millionaires that crowd out discretionary spending programs for homeless war veterans make no sense at all. If we are to contain entitlement spending and reform the programs driving those outlays, then a paradigm

shift likely will be required. Recognizing Social Security and Medicare as discretionary programs helps force attention on changes that will assure their survival

well into the 21st Century.4

The Heritage Foundation is a public policy, research, and educational organization operating under Section 501(C)(3). It is privately supported, and receives no

funds from any government at any level, nor does it perform any government or

other contract work.

The Heritage Foundation is the most broadly supported think tank in the United

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supporters representing every state in the U.S. Its 2006 income came from the following sources:

Individuals ............................................................................................................ 64%

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own independent research. The views expressed are their own, and do not reflect

an institutional position for The Heritage Foundation or its board of trustees.

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