S. HRG. 113–229 

BUDGET COMMITTEE MID-SESSION 

HEARINGS FISCAL YEAR 2014 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

February 13, 2013 –The Impact of Federal Budget Decision Families and 

Communities 

February 26, 2013 –The Impact of Federal Investiments on People, 

Communities and Long-Term Economic Growth 

March 5, 2013 –Reducing the Deficit by Eliminating Wasteful Spending 

in the Tax Code 

May 22, 2013 –Supporting Broad-based Economic Growth and Fiscal 

Responsiblity through Tax Reform 

June 4, 2013–Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity 

June 26, 2013 –Investing in Our Future: The Impact of Federal Budget 

Decisions on Children 

July 23, 2013–The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the 

Economy 

July 30, 2013–Containing Health Care Costs: Recent Progress and 

Remaining Challenges 

September 24, 2013 –The Impact of Political Uncertainty on Jobs and 

the Economy 

( 
BUDGET COMMITTEE MID-SESSION HEARINGS FISCAL YEAR 2014 
S. HRG. 113–229 

BUDGET COMMITTEE MID-SESSION 

HEARINGS FISCAL YEAR 2014 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

February 13, 2013 –The Impact of Federal Budget Decision Families and 

Communities 

February 26, 2013 –The Impact of Federal Investiments on People, 

Communities and Long-Term Economic Growth 

March 5, 2013 –Reducing the Deficit by Eliminating Wasteful Spending 

in the Tax Code 

May 22, 2013 –Supporting Broad-based Economic Growth and Fiscal 

Responsiblity through Tax Reform 

June 4, 2013–Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity 

June 26, 2013 –Investing in Our Future: The Impact of Federal Budget 

Decisions on Children 

July 23, 2013–The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the 

Economy 

July 30, 2013–Containing Health Care Costs: Recent Progress and 

Remaining Challenges 

September 24, 2013 –The Impact of Political Uncertainty on Jobs and 

the Economy 

( 
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

PATTY MURRAY, WASHINGTON, CHAIRMAN 

RON WYDEN, OREGON 

BILL NELSON, FLORIDA 

DEBBIE STABENOW, MICHIGAN 

BERNARD SANDERS, VERMONT 

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, RHODE ISLAND 

MARK R. WARNER, VIRGINIA 

JEFF MERKLEY, OREGON 

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, DELAWARE 

TAMMY BALDWIN, WISCONSIN 

TIM KAINE, VIRGINIA 

ANGUS S. KING, JR., MAINE 

JEFF SESSIONS, ALABAMA 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, IOWA 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, WYOMING 

MIKE CRAPO, IDAHO 

LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, SOUTH CAROLINA 

ROB PORTMAN, OHIO 

PAT TOOMEY, PENNSYLVANIA 

RON JOHNSON, WISCONSIN 

KELLY AYOTTE, NEW HAMPSHIRE 

ROGER F. WICKER, MISSISSIPPI 

EVAN T. SCHATZ, Staff Director 

ERIC UELAND, Republican Staff Director 

(II) 
iii 

C O N T E N T S 

HEARINGS 

Pages 

February 13, 2013 –The Impact of Federal Budget Decision Families and 

Communities ......................................................................................................... 1 

February 26, 2013 –The Impact of Federal Investiments on People, Communities and Long-Term Economc Growth ............................................................. 85 

March 5, 2013 –Reducing the Deficit by Eliminating Wasteful Spending in 

the Tax Code ......................................................................................................... 181 

May 22, 2013 –Supporting Broad-based Economic Growth and Fiscal 

Responsiblity through Tax Reform ..................................................................... 273 

June 4, 2013–Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity ....................................... 339 

June 26, 2013 –Investing in Our Future: The Impact of Federal Budget 

Decisions on Children .......................................................................................... 469 

July 23, 2013–The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the 

Economy ................................................................................................................ 555 

July 30, 2013–Containing Health Care Costs: Recent Progress and Remaining 

Challenges ............................................................................................................ 625 

September 24, 2013 –The Impact of Political Uncertainty on Jobs and the 

Economy ................................................................................................................ 719 

STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS 

Chairman Murray............................................. 1, 85, 181, 273, 339, 469, 555, 625, 719 

Senator Session......................................... 4, 84, 184, 276, 343, 445, 473, 559, 628, 722 

Senator King ............................................................................................................ 77 

WITNESSES 

Honorable Gary D. Alexander, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Public 

Welfare .................................................................................................................. 37, 39

Joseph Antos, PhD.,Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement 

Policy, American Enterprise Institute ............................................................ 672, 674 

Jared Bernstein, PhD., Senior Fellow, Center for Board of Governors and 

Policy Priorities................................................................................................. 229, 231 

Jennifer Cari Green, Secretary, Neurosurgery and Plastic Surgery Services, 

Madison Army Medical Center, Representing the Aerican Federation of 

Government Employees ................................................................................... 576, 578 

Anthony P. Carnevale, PhD, Director and Research Professor Georgetown 

University Center on Education and the Workforce ..................................... 107, 109 

Shavon Collier, Parent, Edward C. Mazique Parent Child Center, 

Inc. ..................................................................................................................... 514, 516 

Veronique DeRugy, PhD., Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center at George 

Mason University ............................................................................................. 305, 307 

Thomas Donnelly, Resident Fellow and Co-Director of the Marilyn Ware 

Center for Security Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy 

Research ............................................................................................................ 591, 593 

Stephen L. Ferguson, Chairman, Cook Group, Inc. .......................................... 129, 131 

Salim Furth, Senior Policy Analyst in Macroeconomics Center for Data Analysis, The Heritage Foundation 2, 415 .........................................................

Robert Greenstein, President, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities............... 20, 21 

Simon Johnson, Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship Sloan School 

of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Senior Fellow, 

Peterson Institute for International Economics 1, 404 ..............................
Page

iv 

Edward D. Kleinbard, Professor of Law, University of Southern California 

Gould School of Law......................................................................................... 186, 189 

Mark N. Klett, President and Chief Executive Officer, Klett Consulting 

Group, Inc. 2, 564 .......................................................................................

Bruce Lesley, Director, First Focus .................................................................... 475, 478 

Michael Linden, Managing Director for Economic Policy, Center for American 

Progress............................................................................................................. 278, 282 

Adam Looney, PhD., Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institute..................................................................................................................... 297, 300 

David R. Malpass, President, ENCIMA Global, LLC........................................ 140, 142 

Tara Marks, ADA, OHIO........................................................................................... 7, 10 

Allan H. Meltzer, PhD., Carnegie Mellon University Professor of Political 

Economy, Tepper School of Business 4, 756 ........................................

David Muhlhalusen, PhD., Research Fellow in Empirical Policy Analysis The 

Heritage Foundation ........................................................................................ 520, 522 

Patrick Murray, Arlington, VA ............................................................................... 14, 16 

Len. M. Nichols, PhD., Director and Professor Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics, College of Health and Human Services, George Mason 

University.......................................................................................................... 630, 634 

Magaret Nimmo Crowe, Interim Executive Director, Voices for Virginia’s Children.................................................................................................................... 508, 510 

Kavita Patel, MD, MS, Fellow and Managing Director, Engelberg Center 

for Health Care Reform, The Brookings Institute ......................................... 652, 655 

Hunter R. Rawlings, III, PhD., President, Association of American University ..................................................................................................................... 100, 102 

Russell Roberts, PhD., Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Standard University ..................................................................................................................... 245, 247 

Honorable Polly Trottenberg, Under Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department 

of Transportation.................................................................................................. 92, 95 

Baker Spring, F.M. Kirby, Research Fellow in National Security Policy, THe 

Heritage Foundation ........................................................................................ 583, 585 

Chad Stone, PhD., Chief Economist, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities .................................................................................................................... 741, 743 

Lawrence H. Summers, President Emeritus and Charles W. Eliot University, 

Professor, Harvard University......................................................................... 346, 348 

Honorable Robert O. Work, Chief Executive Officer, Center for a New American Security ..................................................................................................... 568, 570 

Robert L. Woodson, Sr., President, Center for Neighborhood Enterprise ....................................................................................................................... 50, 52 

Mark Zandi, PhD., Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics .................................. 724, 726 
(1) 

THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL BUDGET 

DECISIONS ON FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:31 a.m., in Room 

608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, chairman 

of the committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Stabenow, Sanders, Whitehouse, Warner, Coons, Baldwin, Kaine, Sessions, Johnson, Ayotte, and Wicker. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and 

Marcus Peacock, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. Good morning. This hearing will come to 

order, and I want to thank our witnesses today, who I will introduce shortly. I want to again welcome my Ranking Member, Senator Sessions, and all of our colleagues who are joining us here 

today. 

Yesterday, we heard from the Congressional Budget Office Director, Dr. Doug Elmendorf, on the budget and economic outlook. His 

testimony and answers to our questions provided an extremely 

helpful look at the issues facing this community at the macro level. 

And based on what he said about our fragile economy, it is very 

clear to me the highest priority of this committee should be broadbased economic growth and job creation as we work to responsibly 

tackle our deficit and debt challenges. 

But as we work to put together our pro-growth, pro-middle class 

budget resolution over the coming weeks and months, I feel very 

strongly we cannot just limit ourselves to discussions of numbers 

and charts and trajectories, though those are important. We need 

to make sure we are hearing from the families and communities 

across the country who are impacted by the decisions that we make 

here in 

Washington, D.C. They need to have a seat at the table. Their 

values and priorities need to be represented and their stories need 

to be heard. 

That is what today’s hearing is about, and I am going to work 

every day over the coming weeks and months to make sure families 

across our country are heard loud and clear in a budget process 

that is too often limited to politicians and bureaucrats. 

But before I ask others to share their stories today, I wanted to 

start off by sharing mine, not because my story is unique—it is not, 
2 

similar stories are told by millions of families across our country— 

but because it has shaped who I am and how I approach this issue, 

and I think stories like it have a place in this conversation. 

I was born and raised in a small town, Bothell, Washington, in 

a big, loving family with six brothers and sisters. I was one of the 

oldest and we were all very close. My dad ran a small five-anddime store on Main Street and everyone in my family worked and 

helped out at that store. We did not have a lot, but we never felt 

very deprived. 

But when I turned 15, things started to change dramatically. My 

dad, who was a World War II veteran, was diagnosed with multiple 

sclerosis. In a few very short years, his illness got so bad that he 

could not work anymore, and my mom, who had stayed home to 

raise seven kids, had to take care of him, but she also needed to 

get a job so she could support our family. She found some work, 

but it did not pay very much, and not enough to support seven kids 

and my dad, who had growing medical bills, and suddenly we found 

ourselves as a family having fallen on very hard times. 

Now, fortunately for all of us, we lived in a country where the 

government did not just say, tough luck. It extended a helping 

hand. Because our nation honored the commitment it made to the 

veterans who had served it, my dad got some of his medical care 

through the VA. But for some time, for a few months, my family 

had to rely on Food Stamps. They were meager, but they kept food 

on our table at a very critical time. 

To get a better paying job, my mom needed some training. Fortunately, at the time, there was a government program that helped 

her attend Lake Washington Vocational School, where she worked 

very hard and got a two-year degree in accounting and eventually 

a better job. 

My twin sister, my older brother, and I were able to stay in college through all of that because of student loans and support from 

what later came to be called Pell Grants. And all of us kids were 

able to stay in school because we were lucky enough to have strong 

local public schools. 

My family got by with a little bit of luck and we pulled through 

with a lot of hard work. And while I would like to say we were 

strong enough to make it on our own, I do not think that is really 

true. Today, my family may have been called takers, not makers. 

Others may have said the programs we used to keep our heads 

above the water were immoral. Presidential candidates may have 

told their donors we were in the 47 percent who could not be convinced to take personal responsibility or care for our lives. 

But I know the support we got from our government was the difference between seven kids who might not have graduated from 

high school or college and the seven adults we have grown up to 

be today, all college graduates, all working hard, all paying taxes, 

and all of us contributing back to our communities. In my book, the 

taxpayers got a pretty good return on their investment. 

Now, I do not think government can or should solve every problem. People do need to take responsibility for their actions. Families need to take care of each other. Private businesses need to 

drive our economy. And communities and religious organizations 

need to play a strong role. 
3 

But America has always come together as a nation to stand with 

families like mine, to invest in our people and our communities, to 

plan for the future and to build the most robust middle class the 

world has ever seen. 

So that is the prism that I view our nation’s budget through and 

it is what guides me as I work in the Senate and on this committee 

to impact the choices that we make. I rely on my story, my experiences, and the experiences of people in communities across the 

country, people like Katyanne Zink, a young woman who is in this 

room today. I just had a chance to talk with her a few minutes ago. 

She grew up in low-income neighborhood in New Hampshire with 

parents who did not go to college themselves but who desperately 

wanted the best for their children. She had a great public school 

teacher who helped guide her into a TRIO program, and only because of Pell Grants and student loans was she able to go to college, earn her degree in nursing, and give back to her community 

as an urgent care nurse in her home State. She is a proud homeowner, as well. 

Our witnesses today also have stories to share with this committee about the impact of Federal budget decisions. Tara Marks 

will be sharing her story about the support she received to get back 

on her feet after circumstances pulled her and her son out of middle class life. 

Patrick Murray is an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran who will 

tell us about the opportunities he was able to access after he sacrificed so much for our country. 

Also, Robert Greenstein from the Center on Budget and Policy 

Priorities will share his expertise on how budget decisions impact 

the lives and the opportunities of families throughout our country. 

And Senator Sessions will introduce his witnesses in a minute. 

He is invited to make his opening statement. But I also want to 

thank Secretary Gary Alexander from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare and Robert Woodson, Senior, from the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise for joining us here today. 

Two weeks ago, I also rolled out an online platform called ‘‘My 

Budget’’ for members of the public to share their stories and ideas 

and priorities with me and the committee. I have already received 

over 2,000 responses, and I encourage everyone watching today to 

go to our site at budget.senate.gov/democratic to weigh in, because 

as we work to write our pro-growth budget resolution, I am going 

to make sure it represents the values and priorities of the people 

we represent. That is the most important thing we can do here on 

this committee. 

When I go back to my home State of Washington, my constituents tell me they want a budget that works for people like them. 

They want their government to be there when they need some support and to help make sure they have the opportunity they deserve 

to succeed and do better for themselves and their families. In other 

words, they want what my family had, what Katyanne and Tara 

and Patrick and millions of others had. 

Yes, our constituents want us to take responsibility and tackle 

our deficit and debt, and they certainly do not want to hand the 

bill to their kids. But they want that to be done in a balanced and 

fair way that does not sacrifice jobs and opportunity and broad- 
4 

based economic growth. And at a time when so many families are 

still fighting their way back from the hit they took in the great recession, when so many workers are still struggling to find work, 

stay in their homes, and put food on the table, and when our tax 

code remains riddled with loopholes and giveaways for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, I think most families agree 

that while every program should be examined and made more efficient if it is not working as well as it should, and we certainly 

should make sure we are weeding out fraud and abuse in defense 

as well as domestic programs, it does not make sense to focus exclusively on slashing programs that help the neediest, especially 

the ones that have expanded to support struggling families and 

that will shrink to their historical norms once we get this economy 

back on track. And I think Americans agree, it is absolutely wrong 

to call on the middle class and seniors and most vulnerable families to bear the burden of deficit reduction alone. 

That is how I view this issue, as we work to replace sequestration in a balanced way over the coming days, and I have to say, 

it was disappointing this morning to hear from a number of Republicans that they did not want to replace sequestration and avoid 

those devastating cuts that are coming at us. So I hope that we can 

change that and work to replace those cuts at a time when our 

country is really struggling financially. 

This is how I am approaching the pro-growth, pro-middle class 

budget resolution that we will be working on in the weeks ahead, 

and I think this committee hearing will be very instructive in that. 

So I thank again all of our witnesses and Senators who are here 

today, and with that, I will turn it over to Senator Sessions for his 

opening remarks. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. It is a delight 

to be with you and I appreciate your leadership. 

This is an important hearing. I am glad we are having it. We 

need to take another opportunity now, since 1996, to review our 

safety net programs and see how they are working and see if we 

can make them better. We know that welfare now makes up 83 

programs that amount to as much as $750 billion a year. That larger than Medicare, Social Security, and the Defense Department 

budgets. 

I would just say on the question of sequestration, half of the cuts 

fall on one-sixth of the Federal budget. That is the Defense Department. That is the hardest hit agency by far. I think it is doing 

damage to that Department. Republicans in the House have twice 

passed legislation—to alter the sequester, find other areas of the 

budget that received no cuts, and fix it. So we favor fixing the sequester, but we do not favor increasing spending or increasing 

taxes. We just raised taxes. 

We have a great American tradition of helping those in need, but 

we also have a great American tradition of self-reliance and independence and we want to encourage both of those, and Federal policy should do both of those. 

So we are going to hear from Secretary Alexander from Pennsylvania who really has a first-hand experience as a manager in the 
5 

various Federal welfare programs and he will show how we have 

drifted away from the reforms in 1996 to now a complex welfare 

bureaucracy that tends to penalize work and promote dependency. 

Bob Woodson from the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise came 

down to one of Alabama’s poorest counties with his group and had 

some fabulous ideas to help poor people improve their lives. Thank 

you for your contributing to Alabama, Dr. Woodson, and I was 

pleased to have a visit with you when you were there and get your 

understanding. And I know how deeply you care about poor people, 

how deeply you care about helping them advance and move out of 

poverty and dependency and we look forward to hearing you and 

appreciate your lifetime of service in that regard. 

In his State of the Union Address, the President suggested last 

night again that Republican policies are focused on protecting the 

rich and not sufficiently on helping those in need, but I do believe 

that his policy agenda is not being helpful. I believe his policy 

agenda has the tendency to not create the kind of growth and upward mobility that we absolutely must have in America. He talked 

again and again about helping people, suggesting that we should 

extract more wealth from the economy and hand it to people and 

that this would somehow help them. Sometimes, as you indicated, 

Madam Chairman, this is critical. People’s lives are in turmoil. 

They are in danger. They have problems. And it can be a life-saving event for them to have Federal benefit programs. But I do not 

think it amounts to an economic stimulus. I do not think it 

amounts to the kind of growth we want. It is a temporary assistance that is part of our tradition and we will continue. 

So our goal is to rescue Americans that are being entrapped in 

the world of dependency. That is happening today. Some people 

might deny that, but I think anybody that works in this area and 

really cares about poor people have seen this tendency. It was lessened with the 1996 Act, but it is returning full force. 

Our goal is to help more of our fellow citizens find good-paying 

jobs sos that they can support themselves and their families, jobs 

that will allow them to progress, advance, and get themselves promoted. Our goal is to strengthen human networks of family, charity, and community. 

In 1965, economist James Tobin wrote, quote, ‘‘It is almost as if 

our present programs of public assistance had been consciously 

contrived to perpetuate the conditions they are supposed to alleviate.’’ If there is much truth in that, and I think there is, that is 

a real serious charge. History, I think, has proven him too correct. 

Since President Johnson’s Great Society, the Federal Government has spent $15 trillion on the War on Poverty, yet poverty remains largely unchanged and has even increased during the last 

several years. During the last several years, we have also seen an 

historic surge in Federal poverty spending. Welfare is now the single largest item in the budget. 

It is time to return, I think, to the moral principles of the 1996 

welfare reform. That reform was guided by the principle that, over 

time, unmonitored welfare programs were damaging not merely to 

the Treasury, but to the recipient. Today, like 1996, opponents of 

reform labeled any attempts to change the way these programs operate as cruel, uncaring, as dangerous. But what is actually cruel 
6 

and uncaring is to oppose reforms that will help lift millions of 

Americans out of poverty. 

Consider the results of the 1996 reform. There were so many dire 

predictions at that time. But Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institute reported this. ‘‘Until the mid-1990s, never-married mothers 

seldom worked outside the home, had poverty rates of over 60 percent, and were at least five times more likely than married couples 

to be poor. Between 1996 and 2000, after the passage of the bill, 

the percentage of never-married mothers in jobs increased by about 

a third, while the poverty rate for those mothers and their children 

declined by about a third. For the poorest of the poor, this large 

improvement based on their own efforts was unprecedented. Since 

then, two recessions have reduced these gains somewhat, yet even 

in the worst recession since the depression, more are employed and 

they are less poor than they were before the 1996 law.’’ 

So, unfortunately, the gains in 1996 have been slipping away 

from us. Welfare spending has increased every year, regardless of 

whether the economy was growing or declining. Welfare spending 

has continued to go up. Based on CBO data, welfare spending is 

projected to increase 80 percent over the next decade. Let me repeat. Spending on means tested Federal aid will increase another 

80 percent over the next ten years. Including State contributions, 

we already spend a trillion dollars a year on Federal means tested 

poverty programs, more than any other program in the Federal 

budget. 

Converted to cash, if you spent that money—we spend enough 

money on welfare to mail every household in poverty a check for 

$60,000 a year. Can anyone honestly say this huge sum of money 

is all being wisely and effectively spent, that no improvements are 

needed? 

Spending on Food Stamps has more than quadrupled since 2000, 

and the Federal Government actively promotes Food Stamps to 

those who say they do not need them. The USDA created a Spanish 

language radio ad in which an individual is pressured to enroll 

against her will. She protests, ‘‘I do not need anyone’s help. My 

husband earns enough to take care of us.’’ Eventually in the video, 

she succumbs and signs up. 

This is only one of many controversial promotions where individuals are pressured, actually, to enroll, even if they insist they do 

not want or need the program. One recruitment worker was even 

given an award for overcoming ‘‘mountain pride’’ and had language 

to use to try to encourage people who say they do not need it to 

overcome their pride and get them to accept these benefits. 

The agency laments that communities loose out when people do 

not choose to go on Food Stamps. Quote, ‘‘Each five dollars in new 

SNAP benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community. Everyone wins when people take advantage of benefits to which they are entitled.’’ Well, it does not increase the economy like that. I mean, how silly is that? We could 

just give everybody everything and the whole economy would boom, 

I suppose. 

So, clearly, we need to think more about the social and economic 

consequences of encouraging people to accept welfare if they do not 

want it and do not need it. If they need it, we want them to have 
7 

it. No longer can we measure and should we measure compassion 

by how much we spend on poverty, but how many people we lift 

out of poverty. I think that is what Mr. Woodson has given his life 

to. 

One consequence of the massive surge in welfare spending has 

been the creation of a growing penalty for working. Experts have 

dubbed this the welfare cliff. Welfare recipients reach a point, actually reach a point where every additional dollar earned can result 

in more than a 50 percent reduction in net income through lost 

benefits and taxes. CBO estimated that for every dollar in additional earnings through work, many households on welfare stand 

to lose 50 cents to either taxes or lost Federal benefits. With a high 

penalty to earning more by working, CBO finds that a strong incentive is created to, quote, ‘‘put in fewer hours or be less productive.’’ 

A paper presented to the American Enterprise Institute by Secretary Alexander, from whom we will hear, found that because of 

the stacking of welfare benefits, many individuals receiving welfare 

stand to lose financially by increasing their income. That is an actual analysis that we need to examine. In one example, a study 

demonstrated how a single parent with two children earning 

$29,000 would have a net income, including welfare benefits, of 

$57,000. Therefore, the individual would need annual earnings to 

jump from $29,000 to $69,000 pre-tax to maintain the same standard of living. 

Madam Chairman, I grew up in the country. I recently had some 

work done on the little house I grew up in. It had 900 square feet. 

It seemed bigger at the time. It never had central air and heating. 

The fireplace was where we had our heating. My father ran a country store and later struggled with a small farm equipment dealership. I was taught to work hard. They did their best. Pell Grants 

did help me in college. I grew up with people who did not get to 

go to college, had less money than we did, and I think I understand 

something about human beings who work hard and try to do the 

right thing and how to help them improve. 

So I guess I just would say, let us work together, bring our values to the table, and see if we cannot make this system work better 

for America. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

We will now turn to our witnesses and then we will turn it to 

questions from our Senators. 

I am going to begin with Tara Marks, if you want to share your 

comments. 

STATEMENT OF TARA MARKS, ADA, OHIO 

Ms. MARKS. Good morning, Chairwoman Murray and Senators of 

the Budget Committee. I want to thank you for allowing me to 

speak about the impact Federal programs have had on my family. 

I know from personal experience the importance of SNAP and 

other Federal programs that provide a safety net. SNAP and WIC 

were there for me and my son Nathan when we needed help. I 

never thought I would need to ask the government for help putting 

food on the table. I am thankful that these programs were available so that I could focus on getting us out of poverty. 
8 

While I was pregnant with Nathan, his dad and I decided I 

would be the stay-at-home parent. The arrangement was working 

well until his father abruptly left me and my eight- month-old 

baby. He took everything. I knew that I needed to go back to school 

so that I could someday provide for the two of us and raise Nathan 

not in poverty. Student loans, Pell grants made that education possible. 

We lived on credit cards and the grace of God for many months. 

I started having trouble affording food. The trips to the grocery 

store became a game of what can I afford. I only had a few dollars 

per trip, so I began eating smaller portions so that Nathan could 

have nutritious meals. This was not a question of availability of 

food, but affording it. I did not live in a food desert, I lived in a 

food mirage. 

One weekend in particular was just awful. That was the weekend I knew I had to ask for help. I picked Nathan up from day 

care, and as I was driving home, I thought out loud, what is for 

dinner? I knew the pickings were slim, but I did not realize how 

little we had in the house. When we got home, I had to ration food. 

I realized I had just enough in the house for Nathan. Nathan ate 

and I did not. 

I was studying for an exam, but was distracted by my hunger. 

I had not been eating well for months, so the absence of food that 

weekend caused me to pass out. Come Monday morning, I was so 

lightheaded that I had trouble maneuvering through rush hour 

traffic. I cried the entire car ride. Once we arrived at the day care, 

I swallowed my pride and asked for help. I was put in touch with 

a local food pantry. I was told that I should apply for SNAP benefits because I had no income. 

The first time I applied for SNAP, after waiting for hours, I was 

urged by the caseworker to withdraw my application. I felt as if the 

message was, I did not deserve food. 

I continued to receive food from the local pantry. I was very 

grateful. But the food was very limited and I could only receive it 

twice a month. I managed, but wanted to pick out ingredients for 

recipes given to me by my grandmother. I wanted Nathan to grow 

up enjoying Sunday dinners like I did as a child. 

One day at a parenting meeting, a woman from Just Harvest, a 

local anti-hunger organization, spoke to us about SNAP. She offered to help me with the application. I went back to DPW and this 

time I was given SNAP benefits. I cannot put into words the feeling of relief that came over me. I felt like a more responsible mom. 

I knew I could now provide meat and fresh produce for Nathan. 

I still remember that first trip to the grocery store. I was able 

to hand-pick tomatoes, apples, bananas, and other produce. Because of SNAP, I was a part of the regular food purchasing economy once again. I could shop just like other mothers. I am immensely grateful for SNAP, but I have to agree with the recent Institute of Medicine study. SNAP benefits are crucially valuable, but 

not enough to get most families through the month. 

I was able to lift Nathan and myself out of poverty by finishing 

school. SNAP was a critical factor in my success. SNAP benefits allowed me to focus on school. I no longer stressed over purchasing 

food. I graduated from community college, went on to receive my 
9 

Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. I worked for Just Harvest as a CoDirector of Policy and Communications. I am married today with 

a wonderful supportive husband and three healthy children, Nathan, 12, Christian, eight, and Tatum is four. My husband is working and I am currently a law student in Ohio. Through the help 

of Stafford loans, I plan to graduate in 2015. 

I do not like thinking about those earlier days. For the longest 

time, I would not tell anyone that I went hungry or that I received 

SNAP benefits. When I told Nathan I did not eat to ensure that 

he would not go without, he hugged me and said, ‘‘I would have 

shared my food, Mama.’’ I asked him if I could share our story. He 

nodded his head and said, ‘‘No mama should ever go hungry.’’ 

I know that my experiences of hunger and poverty are not 

unique. There are many who fall on tough times and rely on SNAP 

to put food on the table. 

In conclusion, I am very thankful that SNAP was there for us. 

I urge the committee and the Congress to take stories like mine 

into account as you put together your budget. I ask the Congress 

to continue to invest in life-saving programs that families like mine 

all across the country can get the support they need to get back on 

their feet, back on track, and back into a job. They were there for 

me when I needed it most and they should not be cut now when 

so many others are struggling in this tough economy. 

I am here to keep my promise to Nathan. I am asking you to 

fund SNAP and protect it from cuts so that no other mama, child, 

dad, or grandparent goes hungry. 

On behalf of my family and many other families, I thank you for 

your time and consideration. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Marks follows:] 
10 

Testimony of 

Tara Marks 

Before the 

u.s. Senate Committee on the Budget 

"The Impact of Federal Budget Decisions 

On Families and Communities" 

February 13, 2013 
11 

Good morning Chairwoman Murray and Senators of the Budget Committee. 

I want to thank you for allowing me to speak about the impact federal programs for the 

middle class and low-income families have had on my family. I know from personal 

experience the importance of SNAP and other federal programs that work to provide a 

safety net for people in need. In particular, SNAP and WIC were there for my son, Nathan 

and me when we needed help to have food in our home. 

I never thought that I would ever have the need to ask the government for help putting 

food on our table. I never thought that I would be so poor that food would be out of reach 

for me. But it all happened. I am thankful that these programs were available for me and 

my son so that I could focus on getting us out of poverty. 

While I was pregnant with Nathan, his dad and I decided that I would be the stay at home 

parent. I was so excited to be there for every second of my son's life. When Nathan was 

born I left my job to stay home with him. The arrangement was working out just as 

planned until his father abruptly left me and my eight-month-old baby. He took all our 

money with him. I no longer had any income so I had to rely on savings and credit cards. 

Soon I was not able to afford our lifestyle and I had to make many changes. Nathan and I 

had to move from our comfortable home to government housing. The day we moved in, I 

decided that I was going to get us out as soon as possible. I did not want Nathan to grow up 

in poverty. I knew that I needed to go back to school so that I could someday provide for 

the two of us without help. 

We lived on federal student grants and loans, including Pell Grants, credit cards and the 

grace of God for many months. As my credit card balances were increasing, my cash was 

decreasing. I started having trouble affording food. The trips to the grocery store became a 

game of what can I afford. I stopped buying meat and fresh produce because I only had a 

few dollars per trip. I began eating smaller portions so that Nathan could have nutritious 

meals. Then the time period between meals became longer for me. Sometimes I would eat 

one meal a day and other times, I would not eat at all. I knew that our situation was getting 

worse, and I did not know what to do. This was not a question of availability of food, but a 

question of affording it. I did not live in a food desert; I lived in a food mirage. I had many 

grocery stores around me but I could not afford to go in and shop. 

One weekend in particular was just awful. That was the weekend that I knew I had to ask 

for help. I picked Nathan up from daycare just like any other Friday afternoon. As I was 

driving home I thought out loud, "What is for dinner?" I knew that the pickings were slim, 

but I did not realize how little we had in the house. When we got home I did something I 

only had heard about, I rationed food. I realized that I had just enough food in the house for 

Nathan. Nathan ate and I did not. 
12 

I was studying for an exam but was distracted by my hunger. As I pointed out earlier, I had 

not been eating very well for months so the absence of food that weekend caused me to 

pass out. Come Monday morning I was so light-headed that I had trouble maneuvering 

through rush hour traffic. I cried the entire car ride. I had to pull over twice to gain my 

composure. Once we arrived at the daycare, I swallowed my pride and asked for help. I 

was put in touch with the local food pantry and was able to get immediate help from the 

daycare. I was told that I should apply for SNAP benefits because I had no income. 

The first time I applied for food stamps, after waiting for hours, I was urged by the 

caseworker to withdraw my application. I felt as if the message was that I didn't deserve 

food. 

I continued to receive food from the local pantry. ! was very grateful, but the food from the 

pantry was very limited and I could only receive a food box twice a month. I managed but 

longed for the day that I could make a meal of my choosing. I wanted to pick out 

ingredients for recipes given to me by my grandmother. I wanted Nathan to grow up 

enjoying Sunday dinners like I did as a child. 

One day at a parenting meeting at Nathan's daycare a woman from Just Harvest, a local 

anti-hunger organization, spoke to us about SNAP. I told her that I tried to apply but 

withdrew my application. She explained the process and guidelines to me. She offered to 

help me with the application. I went back to DPW and this time I was given SNAP benefits. 

I cannot put into words the feeling of relief that came over me. I felt like a more 

responsible mom. I knew I could now provide meat and fresh produce for Nathan. 

! still remember that first trip to the grocery store. I was able to hand pick the tomatoes, 

apples, bananas and other produce to fill the hanging basket in my kitchen. Because of 

SNAP, I was a part of the regular food purchasing economy once again. I could shop just 

like other mothers. I am immensely grateful for SNAP, but I would be remiss if I did not 

say, given this wonderful opportunity today, what the Institute of Medicine (10M) study 

last month also said: SNAP benefits are crucially valuable but not enough to get most 

families through the month. 

I was able to lift Nathan and myself out of poverty by finishing school. SNAP was a critical 

factor in my success. Having SNAP benefits allowed me to focus energy on school so that I 

could support us. I no longer stressed over purchasing food. I graduated from community 

college with two associate degrees and was the student speaker at commencement. I went 

on to receive my bachelor's and master's degrees. I worked for Just Harvest, the local antihunger program that helped my family, as the Co-Director for Policy and Communications. I 

am married today with a wonderful, supportive husband and three healthy children; 

Nathan 12; Christian 8; and Tatum 4. My husband is working and I am currently a law 

student in Ohio. Through the help of Stafford Loans, I plan to graduate in 2015. 
13 

I do not like thinking about those earlier days. For the longest time I would not tell anyone 

that I went hungry or that I received SNAP benefits. I was scared I would be judged. 

However, I did tell Nathan about those tough times and he cried. When I told him that I did 

not eat to ensure he would not go without, he hugged me and said "I would have shared my 

food, mama." I smiled and reassured him that I made that decision and he was only two 

years old at the time. I asked him if I could share our story. He nodded his head and said, 

"No mama should ever go hungry." He reminded me that I needed to help others because so 

many people helped us when times were tough. 

I know that my experiences of hunger and poverty are not unique. There are many families 

- all kinds of families and individuals - that fall on tough times and rely on SNAP to put 

food on the table. SNAP helps families every day. 

I am very thankful that it was there for us. I urge the Committee and the Congress to take 

stories like mine into account as you put together your budget. I ask that Congress continue 

to invest in life-saving programs so that families like mine all across the country can get the 

support they need to get back on their feet, back on track, and back into a job. They were 

there for me when I needed it most, and they shouldn't be cut now when so many others 

are struggling in this tough economy. I am here to keep my promise to Nathan. I am asking 

you to fund SNAP - and protect it from cuts - so that no other mama goes hungry. And, of 

course, it is not just mamas, but children and dads and grandparents. I am asking you to 

protect these federal programs so that no child in America has to sit at an empty table at 

dinner time. 

On behalf of my family and others similarly situated, I thank you for your time and 

consideration. 
14 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Pat Murray. 

STATEMENT OF PATRICK MURRAY, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA 

Mr. MURRAY. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, 

members of the committee, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share my experience and concerns as a retired Marine 

and student veteran. 

I grew up in Rhode Island and joined the Marines at 19 years 

old while going to the University of Rhode Island. I had two goals 

in life that both revolved around service, to join the Marines like 

my grandfather and afterwards to become a firefighter like my father. I had taken all the certifications, passed all the tests, and gotten hired on the North Kingstown Fire Department for their January 2006 class. That would have to wait, because I was deploying 

to Iraq in December 2005. 

On September 4, 2006, while on patrol in Fallujah, the vehicle 

I was in hit an IED. I was severely wounded in the blast, resulting 

in the amputation of my right leg above the knee. I spent the next 

year recovering from my injuries and learning how to perform dayto-day tasks with a new prosthetic leg at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. At Walter Reed, I quickly realized that my career as 

a fireman was over before it had even begun. 

While in the hospital, I met a peer mentor, Bob Nillson. Bob is 

a former Marine who served in Vietnam, so we quickly bonded 

through our shared experiences. He helped me realize that I had 

to change my direction in life and guided me towards a career with 

Turner Construction Company, where for the next five years I was 

part of the team that built the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital. 

Turner also gave me the opportunity to occasionally visit Walter 

Reed as a peer mentor myself. This experience helped me realize 

what I really wanted to do. I was fortunate to have enough help 

and assistance in overcoming my difficulties after losing my leg. I 

wanted to help veterans in similar circumstances, and in order to 

do that effectively, I was going to need a college degree. 

I always had the itch to go back to college and finish my undergraduate degree, but before the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, it was not financially possible. I had to stay near 

Washington, D.C., because this is where I had access to my prosthetic care. As some of you may know, changing doctors is difficult. 

Changing prosthetists is even harder. I understand other programs 

would have helped me get through school, but without the Post-9/ 

11 G.I. Bill living stipend, I could not afford to live independently 

in this area and focus on finishing my degree full time. 

In September, I started classes at Georgetown University and 

made the Dean’s List in my first semester. My second semester has 

just started and I am on track to graduate in about two years, 

where after that I could pursue a career in veterans’ advocacy. 

So why is my story important to the Budget Committee? I am 

here today as an example of a veteran whose life plans were 

changed because of my military service. But thanks to a variety of 

programs available to me, I was able to adapt and overcome. I can 

return to school in order to better myself and those around me. 
15 

When I arrived at Walter Reed, I knew my life had changed forever. Fortunately, thanks to programs funded through this committee, whether through the National Defense Authorization or the 

VA military construction budget, transitioning service members in 

situations like mine have the tools to succeed and I have the opportunity to sit here before you today and share my story. 

Offering veterans the tools to properly transition back to civilian 

life, furthering their education, and ultimately their careers, is a 

benefit not only to the individual veteran but to our country as a 

whole. Continuing to make these programs a priority fulfills our 

commitment to the men and women who volunteer to serve in 

harm’s way. Do not get me wrong. We understand the risks associated with serving in the military during a time of war. But knowing that the country is prepared to care for us when we come home 

is critical to morale and the overall welfare of our voluntary military. 

I want to go beyond the cliche that these programs are a cost of 

war. Nobody denies that. But these programs are also an investment into proven leaders. Just look at my grandfather’s generation. 

The late Senator Inouye wanted to become a surgeon, but lost his 

arm saving his buddies in World War II. The country invested in 

veterans like him who overcame life-changing injuries and found 

other ways to serve the country they loved. I am confident that my 

generation can do the same. But as our troops come home from Afghanistan, we have to continue to support them in every way possible. 

I recognize this committee has difficult decisions to make on the 

fiscal future of our country. We need to continue investing in programs like peer mentorship, physical and mental health care, and 

education programs like the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. I also recognize 

there is room for improvement in some of the existing services. 

There needs to be a serious upgrade in the quality of VA employees 

that are providing service to our veterans, and there needs to be 

significant improvement in the military and VA’s recordkeeping 

system. 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, members of the 

committee, thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to answering any questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Murray follows:] 
16 

STATEMENT OF 

PATRICKD. MURRAY 

BEFORE THE 

BUDGET COMMITTEE 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

WITH RESPECT TO 

The Impact of Budget Decisions on Families and Communities 

WASHINGTON, D.C. FEBRUARY 13,2013 

Chainnan Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and members of the committee, thank you for the 

opportunity to share my experiences and concerns as a retired Marine and a student-veteran. 

I grew up in Rhode Island and joined the Marines at nineteen years old while going to 

school at the University of Rhode Island. I had two goals in life that both revolved around 

service, to join the Marines like my grandfather, and afterwards become a fireman like my father. 

I had taken all the certifications, passed all the tests and had gotten hired on the North Kingstown 

Fire Department for their January 2006 class. But that would have to wait, because I was 

deploying to Iraq in December 2005. 

On September 4, 2006, while on patrol in Fallujah, the vehicle I was in hit an lED. I was 

severely wounded in the blast resulting in the amputation of my right leg above the knee. I spent 

the next year recovering from my injuries and learning how to perfonn day-to-day tasks with a 

new prosthetic leg at Walter Reed Anny Medical Center. At Walter Reed, I quickly realized that 

my career as a fireman was over before it even began. 
17 

While in the hospital, I met a peer mentor, Bob Nillson. Bob is a former Marine who 

served in Vietnam, so we quickly bonded through our shared experiences. He helped me realize 

that I had to change my direction in life and guided me towards a career with Turner 

Construction Company, where for the next five years, I was part of the team that built the Fort 

Belvoir Community Hospital. Turner also gave me the opportunity to occasionally visit Walter 

Reed as a peer mentor myself. This experience helped me realize what I really wanted to do. I 

was fortunate to have enough help and assistance in overcoming my difficulties after losing my 

leg. I want help veterans in similar circumstances. In order to do that effectively, I need a college 

degree. 

I always had the itch to return to college and finish my undergraduate degree, but before 

the Post-9/ll or Bill, it was not financially possible. I had to stay near Washington DC because 

this is where I had access to my prosthetic care. As some of you may know, changing doctors is 

difficult enough; changing prosthetists is even harder. I understand other programs would have 

helped me get through school, but without the Post-9l1l GI Bill living stipend, I could not afford 

to live independently in this area and focus on finishing my degree full time. 

In September I started classes at Georgetown University and made Dean's List in my first 

Semester. My second semester just started and I'm on track to graduate in about two years, when 

I can pursue a career in veterans' advocacy. 

So why is my story important to the Budget Committee? I am here today as an example 

of a Veteran whose life plans were changed because of my military service, but thanks to a 

variety of programs available to me, I was able to adapt and overcome. I could return to school in 

order to better myself and those around me. 
18 

When I arrived at Walter Reed, I knew my life had changed forever. Fortunately, thanks 

to the programs funded through this committee, whether through the National Defense 

Authorization or the V AlMilitary Construction Budget, transitioning service members in 

situations like mine have the tools to succeed, and I have the opportunity to sit before you today 

and share my story. Offering Veterans the tools to properly transition back to civilian life, further 

their education, and ultimately their careers is a benefit to not only the individual veteran, but to 

our country as a whole. 

Continuing to make these programs a priority fulfills our commitment to the men and 

women who volunteer to serve in harm's way. Don't get me wrong, we understand the risks 

associated with serving in the military during a time of war, but knowing that the country is 

prepared to care for us when we come home is critical to morale and the overall welfare of our 

volunteer military. 

I recognize that this committee has difficult decisions to make on the fiscal future of our 

country. I also recognize that some veterans programs need significant improvements. IfI had 

my way, I would keep investing in programs like peer mentorship, health care both physical 

and mental, and education programs like the Post-9I11 GI Bill. I would continue to work on 

improving military record-keeping so that veterans do not have to hand-carry their paperwork 

from one hospital to another. I would keep investing in quality V A employees so that veterans 

can speak to another veteran when they call for help. 

I want to go beyond the cliche that these programs are a cost of war. Nobody denies that. 

But these programs are also an investment in proven leaders. Just look at my Grandfather's 

generation: The late Sen. Inouye wanted to become a surgeon, but lost his arm saving his buddies 
19 

in World War II. The country invested in veterans like him, who overcame life-changing injuries 

and found other ways to serve the country they loved. I'm confident that my generation can do it 

again, but as our troops come home from Afghanistan, we have to continue to invest in them. 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, members of the committee. Thank you for this 

opportunity. I look forward to answering any questions you may have. 

Patrick Murray is a retired Marine Corps corporal who, while on patrol in Iraq in 2006, lost his 

leg in an improvised explosive device attack. Murray spent the next year recoveringfrom his 

injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Prior to his deployment, Murray was an 

undergraduate student at the University of Rhode Island, where he planned to complete his 

education and pursue a career as a firefighter. As a result of his injury, Murray needed to 

choose a new career field. Murray is currently enrolled at Georgetown University where he 

seeks to complete his education and pursue a career in veterans' advocacy. Murray is also a 

member of John Lyon VFW Post 3150 in Arlington, Va. 
20 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. We really appreciate 

it. 

Bob Greenstein. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT GREENSTEIN, PRESIDENT, CENTER 

ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Thank you. Good morning. 

The Bowles-Simpson Report made it a core principle that deficit 

reduction should not increase poverty or harm the disadvantaged 

and largely shielded core programs for the disadvantaged from the 

cuts it recommended. The Gang of Six plan did so, as well. 

Our current system of supports for low-income families surely is 

not perfect and can be strengthened, but it does a great deal of 

good. The best data from the Census Bureau show that the safety 

net cuts poverty nearly in half compared to what it otherwise 

would be. 

Recently, a comprehensive review was conducted by a number of 

the leading scholars in the field of all of the research on the impacts of safety net programs. It took into account behavioral effects, 

such as impacts on work. And it found that one of every seven 

Americans, more than 40 million people, would be poor without the 

safety net, but are lifted above the poverty line because of it. For 

example, Census data showed that the Earned Income Credit and 

the Child Credit lift nine million people in low-income working 

families above the poverty line, including five million children. 

Two questions often asked are the impact of the safety net on 

work and on our long-term fiscal problems. The major piece of research, the leading review of the research in the field that I just 

mentioned, reviewed the impact of the safety net programs on work 

and found that while it is not zero, it is small and was far outweighed by the big reduction in poverty that resulted. 

This is not unrelated to the fact that over the last several decades, we have had a big change. The U.S. has moved heavily towards what analysts call a work-based safety net. Cash welfare assistance for families without earnings has diminished dramatically. 

Support for the working poor has increased. Over 90 percent of all 

Federal spending on entitlements today goes for people who either 

are not expected to work because they are elderly or disabled or 

people who are members of working households. And most of the 

other nine or ten percent is for things like unemployment insurance and Social Security benefits for widows and children who have 

lost a parent. 

There is also the question of cost. Senator Sessions cited high figures for low-income programs. Those figures are dominated by 

health care. We all know that we have rising costs for all health 

care programs, including Medicaid, as a result of the aging of the 

population and rising health care costs. 

But let us examine costs for all other means tested programs outside of health care. When we look at that, we find the following. 

In 2011, total health care costs for means tested entitlements outside health care equaled two percent of GDP. Now, that was 50 

percent higher than the average over the previous 40 years. But 

that increase was a result of the recession and temporary increases, which are expiring, enacted in the Recovery Act. 
21 

So let’s look at the new CBO report that just came out. It shows 

that costs for means tested programs other than health care will 

decline all the way back to the prior 40- year average of 1.3 percent 

of GDP by 2020, and that is just entitlements. Low-income discretionary programs are slated to decline as a share of GDP. Total 

means tested spending outside health care, mandatory and discretionary combined, will decline over the course of the coming decade 

to a share of GDP below its prior 40 percent—40-year average. 

I would also briefly note that I think the $60,000 figure Senator 

Sessions mentioned is really not meaningful. Half of the money 

that goes into producing the $60,000 estimate is payments to doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes for health care. A lot of this is 

payments for people in nursing homes who are not counted as poor 

because the poverty count does not include people in institutions. 

All of that money is taken and divided by households who are poor 

to push up the number. Similarly, a lot of that spending is for people who are hard pressed but are above the poverty line, including 

people lifted out of poverty. All that money is then divided by people left below the poverty line. We have actual Census data on the 

average assistance per family of people who are poor, what they 

really get, and it is far, far below $60,000. 

Finally, it is important to look at some of the research on the impacts of these programs beyond income and poverty. A strong body 

of research finds, for example, that the Earned Income Credit substantially increases work, and the research finds that the expansions of the EITC in the 1990s had as large an effect in inducing 

single mothers to go to work and leave welfare as the changes in 

the 1996 welfare law. 

Important recent research finds that programs that supplement 

the income of low-income families, like the Earned Income Credit 

and the Child Credit, boost children’s school achievement and are 

associated with increased work and earnings in adulthood. New research on Food Stamps finds that children who had access to Food 

Stamps in early childhood and whose mothers had access during 

pregnancy had improved health outcomes as adults years later, and 

that the women who had access to Food Stamps as young children 

did better in employment, poverty status, and high school graduation later in life. And the landmark study on Medicaid, co-led by 

a former member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, found very substantial health impacts from Medicaid. And another study examining Medicaid expansions in three 

States found reductions in mortality. 

So there are major effects here. They affect school achievement, 

earnings, health care. And I would urge the committee to follow the 

Bowles-Simpson and Gang of Six principles and the Hippocratic 

Oath of doing no harm as you face the difficult task of deficit reduction. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Greenstein follows:] 
22 

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT GREENSTEIN 

President, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 

Before the Senate Budget Committee 

February 13, 2013 

I appreciate the invitation to testify today on the impact of federal budget decisions on families 

and communities. This is an important matter. As you know, the nation will have to make tough 

decisions to put the budget on a more sustainable fiscal coutse. The issue is not only whether 

policymakers act to secute adequate deficit reduction, but also how that is done. 

On Monday, we issued an analysis which finds (based on the new Congressional Budget Office 

projections, with several adjustments that analysts commonly make to reflect the cost of continuing 

cutrent policies!) that 

policymakers could 

stabilize the public debt 

over the coming decade 

with $1.5 trillion in 

additional deficit 

reduction. Policymakers 

could achieve these 

savings with $1.3 trillion 

in policy savings (that is, 

spending cuts and tax 

increases), which would 

generate about $200 

billion in savings in 

interest payments. The 

$1.5 trillion in total 

savings would stabilize 

the debt at 73 percent of 

gross domestic product 

(GDP) over the latter 

Debt as a percent of GDP 

90% 

88 

86 

84 

82 

80 

78 

76 

74 

72 -::20!:12~2-':Ol:-3 2O::'1:-:-4-::20:':-lSccc20c:':1"-6 2;O'1::7::20~18=20=19=20=20==20~21=2=Oll=20=2-3 

- Ratio without 

BCA or ATRA 

Ratio with BCA 

but not ATRA 

Ratio with BCA 

and ATM 

Ratio with BCA, 

ATRA, and 

$1.5 trillion more savings 

Notes: SeA stands for the BUdget Control Act, enacted in August 2011; ATRA stands for the 

American Taxpayer Relief Act, enacted In January 2013. 

Source: Center on Budget .and Policy Priorities based on Congressional Budget Office and JOint 

Commlttee on Taxation data. 

part of the decade. (Stabilizing the debt at a somewhat lower level of GDP would require a larger 

I In calculating that another $1.5 trillion in deficit savings would stabilize the debt over the latter years of the decade 

at 73 percent of GDP, we start with the budget baseline that CRO has just rdeased. \X'c use CBO's economic 

assumptions and make certain adjustments to its policy projections, which are identical to the adjustments that 

organizations such as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget also make. We freeze Medicare reimbursement 

rates for physicians at current levels, rather man assuming mey will be slashed deeply. We phase down war funding over 

the next few years to a lower level, as policymakers are on course to do, rather than asswning that current levels of war 

costs continue (and rise with inflation) through 2023. We assume disaster funding will revert to the ten·year historical 

average level, as allowed by the Budget Control Act. rather than grow with inflation from the unusually high levels 

resulting from Hurricane Sandy. \Ve assume that the scheduled across·the-board spending cuts (known as 

«sequestration") do not occur. We also asswue that policymakers will continue certain improvements in refundable taX 

credits that they have just extended for five years. At the same time, we follow the ellO baseline ill assuming that 

policymakers either will not continue a series of tax provisions often referred to as the "tax extenders," which expire at 

the end of 2013, or will offset the costs of continuing those "extenders" they do maintain. 

C:\Users\je40191\Desktop\TESTIMONY OF ROBERT GREENSTEIN 2-13-13 Final.docx 
23 

amount of deficit reduction; stabilizing at a somewhat higher level of GDP would require a lesser 

amount of deficit reduction.) 

The fact that $1.5 trillion in deficit savings (rather than a much larger amount) would stabilize the 

debt over the coming decade at about the 2012 debt-to-GDP ratio is primarily due to two factors. 

First, Congress and the President have enacted significant deficit reduction over the two-plus years 

since the Bowles-Simpson report and Rivlin-Domenici task force made major deficit-reduction 

proposals; over this period, policymakers have enacted nearly $1.5 trillion in spending cuts for 

appropriated programs (relative to the CBO baseline in use at the time of the Bowles-Simpson and 

Rivlin-Dorninici reports), mainly through the annual caps enacted in the 2011 Budget Control Act, 

as well as nearly $600 billion in revenue increases in ATRA. Including the related savings in interest 

payments, policymakers have achieved about $2.35 trillion in deficit reduction so far. (Other 

analysts like those at the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget use the same $2.35 trilliion 

savings estimate.) These savings are for the ten-year budget window of 2013-2022. Over the new 

budget window of 2014-2023, the same policies are estimated to produce savings of $2.75 trillion, as 

Table 1 indicates. 

reduction 

Discretionary savings from cuts in 2011 

funding and caps imposed by the SGA 

Savings from the ATRA 

Further savings to st911LlL~.Q.ebt_".t1.~2tQ)'_@1' 

TOTAL 

1.576 

732 

U21 

3,636 

seA stands for the Budget Control Act, August 2011: ATRA stands for the 

336 

117 

ZJL:? 

655 

savlngs measured relative to current policy {see Appendix n Center on Budget and Polley Priorities based on Congressionai Budget Office and Joint 

on Taxation data. 

1,912 

850 

b5l~ 

The other factor is that CBO's economic and technical projections have improved over the past 

few years. Not counting the reductions in discretionary funding and the savings from ATRA, the 

new projections reduce estimated deficits under current policies by about $750 billion over the 

coming decade, relative to CBO's,forecast oflast March. Relative to CBO's August 2010 forecast, 

which the Bowles-Simpson and Rivlin-Domenici panels relied upon for their reports, the new ,CBO 

economic and technical projections reduce estimated deficits by about $1.3 trillion. 

Is Stabilizing the Debt the Right Target? 

Stabilizing the debt-to-GDP ratio over the coming decade - so the debt grows no faster than the 

economy is the minimum appropriate budget policy. Stabilizing the debt at 73 percent of GDP 

would require shrinking annual deficits to below 3 percent of GDP. 
24 

Stabilizing the debt ratio for the decade ahead would still require policymakers to enact additional 

deficit reduction for the long term. In ensuing decades, the aging of the population and increases in 

per-capita health care costs (which are likely to rise faster than per-capita GDP) will raise costs for 

health and retirement programs, returning the budget to a path where debt is increasing as a share of 

the economy. 

Some call for greater deficit reduction now in order to achieve a declining debt ratio, citing these 

long-term trends. Enacting larger deficit reduction now would require deeper program cuts, larger 

revenue increases, or both. At issue here is the quality of these policy choices. One concern is that 

enacting steeper deficit reduction now could lead policymakers to make decisions, particularly in the 

health care arena, where desired solutions currently are elusive and knowledge about effective ways 

to slow health care cost growth is likely to be greater in coming years, due to changes now underway 

in the health care sector and various research and demonstration projects. 

To be sure, policymakers can enact measures now, as part of a balanced deficit-reduction package, 

that would achieve significant Medicare savings for the decade ahead without jeopardizing the 

quality of care or access to care. But rushing now to enact cuts much deeper than that in federal 

health spending could result in measures that largely shift costs to states, individuals, and private 

employers and harm some of the most vulnerable members of society, while failing to address the 

underlying causes of the unsustainable growth in costs across the U.S. health care system. (Analysts 

have found that some proposals to enact large cuts in Medieare or other health programs would 

actually increase total U.S. health care costs, not a desirable outcome.) 

Stabilizing the debt for the coming decade would give policymakers time to figure out how to 

slow the growth of health care costs throughout the U.S. health care system without impairing the 

quality of care. While stabilizing the debt during the decade ahead won't permanently solve our 

fiscal problems, it would represent a significant accomplishment. 

Designing Deficit Reduction 

Given the continued weakness in the economy - with the unemployment rate still close to 8 

percent and CBO projecting that it will take four more years for the economy to recover fully 

deficit reduction needs to be designed carefully to avoid making the recovery even slower. Deficit 

reduction should be phased in over coming years. Preferably, policymakers would couple some 

temporary fiscal measures to accelerate growth and job creation now with permanent deficit reduction 

measures. 

And the design of permanent deficit reduction measures matters. Deficit reduction should be 

secured through well-designed, balanced policies that do not impede the economic recovery and 

don't jeopardize future productivity growth (by providing inadequate resources for areas like 

education, infrastructure, and basic research), don't increase poverty and inequality (which already 

are larger in the United States than in most of the Western world), and don't sacrifice health care 

quality or access or raise overall U.S. health care costs. The quantity of deficit reduction over the 

next ten years is not the only important issue; the quality of the deficit-reduction measures adopted 

matters as well. 
25 

Deficit Reduction and the Well-Being of Americans of Modest Means 

The Bowles-Simpson report made it a core principle that deficit reduction should not increase 

poverty or harm the disadvantaged. It largely shielded core programs for the disadvantaged from 

the cuts that it recommended. It also sought to design its revenue increases so they would maintain 

or improve the progressivity of the tax code. 

These principles and design features are also reflected in the plan presented in July 2011 by the 

Senate's bipartisan "Gang of Six." (!bey have also been highlighted by a group of Christian leaders 

that ranges from the Catholic Bishops' Conference and the Episcopal Church to the Salvation Army 

and the National Association of Evangelicals, which has issued a call for policymakers to safeguard 

the poor in deficit reduction and draw a "circle of protection" around programs targeted on them.) 

Our current system of supports for low-income families and individuals surely isn't perfect. But it 

does a great deal of good for tens of millions of our less fortunate fellow citizens. Using a measure 

of poverty that many analysts favor because it counts rather than ignon:f major benefits like food 

stamps and refundable tax credits the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure - we see 

that the poverty rate would have been 29 percent in 2010 without government assistance. But it 

stood at 15 percent when those benefits were counted. In other words, the safety net cuts U.S. 

poverty nearly in half, compared to what it would otherwise be. 

Of course, it may be that in the absence of safety-net programs, some people might have worked 

more (although it is hard to see where the additional jobs would have come from in 2010, given the 

depressed labor market). But the impact of the safety net on poverty, including its effect on work, 

has been studied extensively. Tn a recent comprehensive review and synthesis of the research 

literature, some of the field's leading scholars examined the impact of the safety net on the amount 

that people work and found the safety net's overall impact on work to be small. They found that, 

after taking behavioral effects into account, the safety net lowers the U.S. poverty rate by 

approximately 14 percentage points. In other words, one of every seven Americans more than 

40 million people - would be poor without the safety net but are above the poverty line because of . 2 It. 

One can also look at the Census data on how many people individual programs lift out of poverty. 

In 2010, for example, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit lifted about 9 million 

people in low-income working families above the poverty line, including 5 million children. SNAP 

(formerly called the Food Stamp Program) lifted about 4 million out of poverty. 

Among the most striking figures are those that track poverty rates over the lasr few years. Given 

the depth and severity of the Great Depression, one would have expected poverty to have soared. It 

didn't. The Census Bureau's broad poverty measures show relatively modest increases in poverty, 

which stands in sharp contrast to the deep plunge in the economy and the doubling of the 

unemployment rate. Why didn't poverty rise much more as unemployment rocketed upward? The 

"automatic stabilizer" response of programs like SNA P and unemployment insurance, supplemented 

by the temporary increases in assistance in various safety net programs provided under the Recovery 

Act, counteracted most of the increase in poverty that would otherwise have occurred. 

Z Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Robert A. Moffitt, and John Karl Scholz "An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Anti-Poverty 

Programs in the United States." NBER Working Paper 17042, May 2011. 
26 

Issues Related to the Safety Net and Criticisms of It 

Various questions are raised about safety-net programs, These include its impact on dependency 

and on our long-term fiscal problems, 

Over the past several decades, the United States has moved heavily toward what analysts call a 

"work-based safety net," Cash welfare assistance for families wjthout earnings has diminished 

gready, while support for the working poor and near poor through the EITC, the Child Tax Credit, 

Medicaid, and SNAP has increased, The results are notable, Even though 2010 was a year of 

economic distress, wjth an average unemployment rate of 9,6 percent, it was marked by the 

following results: 

• Some 91 percent of all spending on 

federal entitlement benefits in 2010 

went to people who either aren't 

expected to work because they are 65 or 

older or disabled, or were members of 

working households (with work defmed 

as a household with a member who 

worked more than 1,000 hours during 

the year), 

Seven of the other nine percentage 

points of entidement benefits went for 

unemployment insurance that people 

must have a significant reCent work 

history to qualify for, Social Security 

survivor benefits for wjdows and 

orphans of deceased workers, Social 

Security benefits for retired workers 

aged 62-64, or medical care, 

Share of entitlement benefits, 2010 

.------Age 65 and up 

53% 

Disabled (non-elderly) 

20% 

- In a working household 

(non-elderly, non-disabled) 

18% 

Concerns that the safety net is leading millions to become dependent and cease working are not 

bome out by the research. (I believe, however, that we should explore ways to encourage more 

people neating retirement age to work longer. The challenge there is to fmd ways to do so without 

impoverishing people in that age bracket who can't work or can't fmd a job because of their 

occupational background or skills or because of health issues.) 

A second issue - and an important one in the current budgetary context involves the safety 

net's cost trajectory, The nation faces a significant long-term fiscal problem as a result of a large 

projected imbalance between revenues and expenditures. Under current policies, expenditures will 

climb as a percentage of GDP, while revenues remain at levels that are low relative to need, given 

the aging of the population and continuing increases in health care costs throughout the health care 

system, 
27 

Ibis raises an important question: will meanstested programs rise in cost as a share of GOP and 

thereby contribute to our long-term fiscal 

problems? 

As is well known, Medicaid is projected to rise 

in cost for various reasons. Health care costs 

throughout the entire U.S. health care systemin both the public and private sectors - have 

been growing faster than GD P for several 

decades. Medicaid isn't the cause of this 

systemwide cost growth, and over the past decade, 

Medicaid costs per beneficiary have been rising 

more slowly than pet-beneficiary cost under 

private insurance. Moreover, Medicaid costs per 

beneficiary (adjusted for differences in health 

status) are substantially lower than those under 

private insurance (because Medicaid pays 

providers lower rates and has lower administrative 

costs. 

But systemwide health care cost increases, 

driven in pan by medical advances that improve 

health and lengthen life but add to costs, will push up health care costs across the board. 

A second reason that Medicaid costs will rise is the aging of the population. Older people have 

much higher average health care costs than younger people do. Elderly and disabled beneficiaries 

account for 25 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries today but 68 percent of program costs. As the 

population ages, the number and share of beneficiaries who are elderly will rise, increasing program 

costs. 

Another reason that Medicaid costs ",-ill rise is the continued erosion of employer-based health 

coverage. Over time, fewer low-income people are able to get coverage through their (or a family 

member's) employer, causing more of them to turn fot coverage to Medicaid. 

Finally, the coverage expansions in the Affordable Care Aet - both in Medicaid and for subsidies 

to help near-poor and many middle-income families afford coverage in the new health insurance 

exchanges - will raise expenditures for means-tested health care expenditures as coverage is 

extended to millions of uninsured Americans (although CBO projects that these expenditure 

increases will not add to deficits because the costs are offset under the Affordable Care Act, 

primarily through savings in Medicare and new revenues). 

For these reasons, if one looks at total means-tested program costs, they appear to remain high in 

the years to come. But if one examines costs for means-tested program other than health care 

programs, the picture changes dramatically. Means-tested programs outside of health insurance will decline in 

cost as the economy recovers and are not projected to rise in future decades as a percentage ofGDP. Here are the 

data, which come from the official historical tables on federal budget expenditures and the new 

CBO projections of future expenditures. 
28 

• In fiscal year 2011, 

total federal 

expenditures for 

means-tested 

entitlement (or 

mandatory) 

programs outside 

health care 

programs equaled 1.5 

2.0 percent of 

GOP. This was 1.0 

about 50 percent 

higher than the 

average for the 

prior 40 years -

which was 1.3 

percent of GOP. 

The costs of these 

0.5 

0.0 ! f ! ' , , , J t I I" ttl J 

1972 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2012 2017 2021 

programs have risen significantly in the last few years.' 

But, the recent increases are largely driven by the economic downturn and temporary program 

expansions under the Recovery Act. The CBO projections show that total expenditures for 

means-tested entitlements outside health care will decline steadily as a share of the economy as 

the economy recovers, falling to 1.3 percent of GOP by 2020 and thereafter. (These figures do 

not assume savings under sequestration.) 

• In other words, by 2020, total means-tested entitlement expenditures outside health care, 

measured as a share of GOP - including expenditures for SNAP, the EITC, and other 

programs - will return all of the way to their prior 40-year average. 

• The foregoing figures do not include low-income dismtionary programs. Under the Budget 

Control Act's caps, non-defense discretionary spending will fall over the decade to its lowest 

level as a share of GOP since 1962. As a result, some decline in low-income discretionary 

programs appears inevitable. Thus, total expenditures on low··income (or means-tested) 

programs outside health care, including low-income discretionary programs, are expected to 

decline over the eoming decade to a level below their average over the prior 40-year period. This 

indicates that this part of the budget isn't contributing to the long-term fiscal problem 

I would also briefly note that there has been particular misunderstanding of what is happening 

with expenditures for the SNAP program. SNAP participation and costs have risen substantially in 

recent years. But CBO projects that SNAP cascloads and expenditures will decline markedly as 

unemployment and poverty fall. The grapb below shows actual SNAP costs, as a share of GOP, 

from 1995 to the present, and CBO's projection of costs as a percentage of GOP through 2023. As 

3 ,Means-tested mandatory health care programs include ?v1edicaid, CHIP, and subsidies for the purchase of health 

insurance under the Affordable Care Act (along with a few very small programs such as mandatory supplements to a few 

areas of discretionary health funding). 
29 

the graph indicates, by 

2018, costs are expected 

to decline back to their 

mid-1990s level as a 

percentage of GDP, and 

then to edge below that. 

Finally, I would note 

that over recent 

decades, the minimum 

wage has been allowed 

to erode and is now 20 

percent lower, after 

adjusting for inflation, 

than in the late 1960s. 

For this and a number 

of other reasons (relating in part to globalization of the economy), wages for low-paid jobs have 

fallen. Partly in response, policymakers also have expanded refundable tax credits for low-income 

working families with children, ptincipally the EITC - which has offset part of the wage decline for 

working parents with children. Any examination of increases in federal costs for refundable tax 

credits and other supports for low-income working families needs to be put in the context of what 

has happened to these families' wage~. 

Beneficial Effects of Programs to Assist People of Modest Means 

A focus simply on the extent to which various assistance programs lift low-income Americans 

above the poverty line or lessen the severity of their poverty (or, for that matter, a focus simply on 

their budgetary costs) is too narrow. An extensive body of research finds that various of these 

programs also have other important effects. 

A strong body of research finds, for example, that the Earned Income Tax Credit increases work 

substantially, especially among single mothers.4 The research indicates, in fact, that the expansion of 

the EITC in the 1990s had as large or larger an effect in inducing more single mothers to go to work 

than the changes in the 1996 welfare law. (The EITC and the welfare changes reinforced each other 

in this respect.) The research similarly finds that the EITC likely contributed as much to the decline 

in cash welfare receipt among female-headed families as did time limits and other welfare reformss 

Of particular note is the growing body of research which finds that certain types of assistance for 

low-income families can have significant positive long-term effects, especially on children, such as 

4 Stacy Dickert, Scott Houser, and John Karl Scholz, HThe Earned Income Tax Credit and Transfer Programs: l\ Study 

of Labor Market and Program Patticipation," Tax Policy and the Economy, Vol. 9, MIT Press, 1995. V. Joseph Holt, 

Charb H. Mullin, and John Karl Scholz, "Examining the Effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit on the Labor Market 

Participation of Families on Welfare," NBER Working Paper :-lo. 11968,January 2006. 

5 Jeffrey Grogger, "The Effects of Time Limits, the EITC, and Other Policy Chnages on Welfare Use, Work, and 

Income among Female-Head Families," fuviow rifEconomicI and Statistics, ~fay 2003. In separate study using different data, 

Grogger reaches similar conclusions. Jeffrey Grogger, 'Welfare Transitions in the 1990s: the Economy, Welfare Policy, 

and the EITC," NBER Working Paper No. 9472, January 2003, hop:! /www.nber.org/papers/w9472.pdf 

8 
30 

improvements in educational success, children's health status, and their future lahor-market 

outcomes. 

• A growing hody of research finds that programs that supplement the earnings oflow-income 

working families -like the EITC and the low-income component of the Child Tax Creditboost children's school achievement and are associated with increased work and earnings in 

adulthood. (Economists Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard University and Jonah 

Rockoff of Columbia University analyzed school data for grades 3-8 from a large urban school 

district and found that additional income from the EITC and CTC leads to significant increases 

in students' test scores. " Economists Gordon B. Dahl of the University of California, San 

Diego and Lance Lochner of the University of West em Ontario concluded, after studying 

nearly two decades' of data on mothers and their children, that additional income from the 

EITC significantly raises students' math and reading test scores.') 

• The beneficial effects of the EITC and CTC appear to follow children into adulthood. 

Harvard's Chetty and his coauthors note evidence that test-score gains can lead to significant 

improvements in students' later earnings and employment rates when they become adults.' 

• These findings are consistent with other research that followed poor children from early 

childhood into their adult years and found that significant increases in the incomes of these 

children's families led to enduring beneficial effects. The researchers found that each additional 

$3,000 in annual income in early childhood (whether from earnings or government assistance) 

was associated with more hours of work and an additional 17 percent in annual earnings in 

young adulthood.' 

• Recent research on Head Start also is noteworthy. David Deming of Harvard found that 

children who participated in Head Start subsequently measured better on young-adult outcomes 

that included high school completion, being out of work and out of school, and poor 

health. Deming's concluded that Head Start, " ... closes one-third of the gap [on the measure of 

adult outcomes] between children with median and bottom quartile family 

6 Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff 2011. 

7 Gordon Dahl and Lance Lochner, '<'"The Impact Of Fam.ily Income On Child Achievement: Evidence From The 

Earned Income Tax Credit," Amen'can Economic Review (2012).1927-1956, 

http://www.aeaweb.org/arcicles.php?doi-10.1257 laer.l02.5.1927. 

Builcling on Dahl and Lochner's research methods, economists Alexander:t..f. Gelber of the \X!harton School of Business 

and Matthew C. Weinzierl of the Harvard Business School conclude that the income boost that low-income families 

with children receive from the EITC helps the tax system rruse revenue more effectively. In essence, they conclude, 

when low-income families with young children receive additional income, their children perfonn better .in school. which 

increases the opportunities that their children will have to sllcceed. Alexander M. Gelber and Matthew C Weinzierl. 

"Equalizing Outcomes vs. Equalizing Opportunities: Optimal Taxation \Xlhen Children's Abilities Depend On Parents' 

Resources," NBER Working Paper No. 18332, August 2012, http://www.nber.org/papers/w18332 

8 Raj Chetty,John N. Fnedman. Nathaniel Hilger, Emmanuel Saez, Diane \Xlhitmore Schanzenbach, and Danny Yagan, 

"How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star," The QuarterlY Journal of Economics (2011), http://ClJe.oxfordjournals.org/contentI126/4/1593.abstract 

<) Greg]. Duncan, Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, and Ariel Kalil, "Early-Childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment, Behavior, 

and Health," Child Development Ganuary/February 2010), pp, 306-325.) The $3,000 figure is in 2005 dollars, equivalent 

to approximately $3,530 in 2012. 
31 

income." Researchers Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago and Douglas Miller of the 

University of California, Davis also found a reduction in mortality rates among children aged 5 

to 9 as a result of screenings conducted as part of Head Start's health services. to 

Other studies have found that the Pell Grant program reduces the likelihood of students 

dropping out." A Department of Education study found that college graduates who received 

Pell Grants earned degrees faster than non-recipients." A separate 2008 study found that lowincome students receiving a Pell Grant were 63 percent less likely to drop out than low-income 

students without Pell Grants.!3 

• In the housing area, research indicates that four housing-related problems - homelessness, 

frequent moves that result in school changes, overcrowding, and poor housing quality - can 

impair children's acadernic achievement. Children in homeless families are more likely than 

other low-income children to drop out of school, repeat a grade, or perform poorly on tests. 14 

Housing assistance has been shown to reduce these housing-related problems. In a multi-site, 

rigorous evaluation, low-income families that received Section 8 housing vouchers were 74 

percent less likely to become.homeless, 48 percent less likely to live in overcrowded housing, 

and moved fewer times over a five-year period than similar low-income families that did not 

receive housing assistance. IS 

Recent studies regarding food stamps and Medicaid are of particular note. An important new 

study makes use of the fact that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, some counties operated the food 

stamp program while others did not; this enabled the researchers to compare low-income people 

from different counties. The researchers found that children who had access to food sramps in early 

childhood and whose mothers had access during pregnancy had improved health outcomes as adults 

years later, compared to children born at the same time in counties that hadn't yet implemented the 

program. In addition to lower rates of "metabolic syndrome" obesity, high blood pressure, heart 

disease, and diabetes - adults who had access to food stamps as young children reported better 

health, and women who had access to food stamps as young children reported improved economic 

10 Jens Ludwig and Douglas L. ~1iller" HDoes Head Start Improve Children's Llfc Chances? Evidence From a Regression 

Disconrinuity Design." NBER \Xlorking Paper No. 11702, Octobet: 2005. http:lh.",v",r,nbcc,org /papecs!w11702 

11 Eric Bettinger, "How Financial j\id Affects Persistence," in Caroline M. Hoxby, editor, Co/l(~e Choices: The Economic; of 

When to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay For It, University of Chicago Press, 2004. 

12 Christina Chang Wei, Laura Hom, and Thomas Weko, A Profile 0/ SuccesJjul Pel! Grant Recipients: Tlme to Bachelor's Deg,.ee 

and Ea,.IY Graduate Schoof Enrollment, U,S, Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, July 2009. 

The study controlled for factors such as parental education. 

13 Rong Chen and Stephen 1.. Desjardins, "Exploring the Effects of Financial Aid on the Gap in Student Dropout Risks 

by Income Level," Rmarch in Higher Educatio", v. 49 pp. )-18, February 2008. 

14 E.g., Rubin and colleagues also found, after controlling for differences in socioeconomic status, demographic 

characteristics, and schools, that homeless children scored lower on tests of reading, spelling, and math proficiency. 

David H. Rubin ct ai" !'Cognitive and _Academic Functioning of Homeless Children Compared with Housed Children," 

Pedialn'cs 97:3: 289 94,1996. Similar results have been found in more recent studies. 

15 Michele Wood, Jennifer Turnham, and Gregory l\iilIs. 2008. "Housing Affordability and Family Well-Being: Results 

from the Housing Voucher Evaluation." Housing Pofiq Debate, 19:2, pp. 367 - 412. The srudy did not collect data on 

school outcomes. 
32 

self-sufficiency, as measured by such factors as employment, income, poverty starus, and high 

school graduation." 

Another important recent srudy, conducted by a team of leading researchers including a fanner 

member of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, examined the effects of 

Medicaid. Their study is considered the most important and reliable research on Medicaid's effects, 

because the researchers were able to compare adults who were and were not offered Medicaid in 

Oregon through a random "lottery" system allowing a type of scientific comparison not usually 

available to researchers in the health field. The study found that adults with Medicaid coverage were 

40 percent less likely than uninsured adults to experience a decline in their health over a six-month 

period. P (Those with Medicaid also were 40 percent less likely to have to borrow money or leave 

other bills unpaid in order to meet medical expenses, and were more likely to receive physicianrecommended preventive care. Women, for example, were 60 percent more likely to have a 

mammogram.) Other research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that 

expansions of Medicaid coverage for low-income adults in Arizona, Maine, and New York resulted 

in a sizeable reduction in mortality." Research has also found that children covered by Medicaid or 

CHIP are more likely than uninsured children to receive preventive health services like regular 

check-ups that are important for spotting health problems early. 

Social Insurance Programs 

Finally, a brief word on Social Security and Medicare. The beneficial effects of these programs are 

well known. And we know some changes will be needed here to restore long-tenn solvency to these 

programs and to help attain long-tenn fiscal sustainability. 

In considering such changes, I would urge policymakers to consider the circumstances of Social 

Security and Medicare beneficiaries with very modest incomes. People sometimes think of affluent 

seniors playing golf and receiving benefits from these programs, and to be sure, some beneficiaries 

are affluent and can afford to pay somewhat higher Medicare premiums or receive somewhat less 

from Social Security. But we should keep in mind that half of all Social Security and Medicare 

beneficiaries have (including their spouse's income) of less than about $25,000 a year. 

It's often also assumed that people who arc elderly or disahled face little in the way of out-ofpocket health-care costs because they are covered by Medicare (or by Medicare and Medicaid, 

Medigap, or other supplemental insurance). Yet data from the Kaiser Family Foundation show that 

while U.S. households who are not receiving Medicare spend an average of 5 percent of their 

budgets on out-of-pocket health costs, Medicare households spend 15 percent of their budgets. 

And, near-poor Medicare beneficiaries those with incomes between 100 percent and 200 percent 

Hi Hilary W. Hoynes, Diane W'hitmore Schanz-en bach, Douglas Almond. "Long Run Impacts of Childhood Access to the 

Safety Net,'l National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 1'\0. 18535, November 2012. 

http://www.nber.org/papcrs/wI8S3S 

17 Amy Finkelstein, Sarah Taubman et aI., "The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence from the First Year," 

National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 17190,july 201 L http:! ;'",.w.nber.org/papers!w17190 

18 Benjamin Sommers, Katherine Bakker, and Arnold Epstein, "~1ortaliry and Access to Care among Adults after State 

Medicaid Expansions," New England j oumal of Medicine; 367: 1 025·1034, September 13, 2012. 
33 

Emerging Research Offers Clues on Connections Between Poverty and Child Outcomes 

and Why increases in Income and Other Assistance Can Have Substantial Positive Impacts 

Research conducted by Dr. Jack Shonkoff, Director of Harvard University's Center on the Developing 

Child, has shown that when children live in highly stressful situations - in dangerous neighborhoods, in 

families that have difficulty putting food on the table, or ,,~th parents who are unable to cope with their 

daily lives - they experience "toxic stress" that has damaging neurological impacts. His research fmds 

that these neurological changes can negatively affect the way a child's brain works and impede children's 

ability to succeed in school and develop the social and emotional skills they need to function well as 

adults. 

One study documented that a young adult's working memory (measured at age 17) "deteriorated in 

direct relation to the number of years the children lived in poverty (from birth through age 13)." The 

study found "such deterioration occurred only among poverty-stricken children with chronically elevated 

physiological stress." The mechanism by which early childhood poverty affects memory appears to be 

related to the stress that "usually accompanies poverty,,,a 

Other recent research has found connections between sv.mgs in income around the time of a 

pregaancy and dangerous levels of stress that have effects on both the mother and the infant. Temporary 

spells of low income during pregnancy appear to come with an increase in the maternal stress hormone 

cortisol; a high corttsollcvel during pregnancy was associated with negative child outcomes, specifically, 

"a year less schooling, a verbal IQ score that is five points lower and a 48 percent jncrease in the number 

of chronic [health] conditions" for the exposed children, relative to their own siblings who were bom at 

times when the family had lower stress (and, usually, higher income).b 

Programs that help poor families with children afford the basics may help improve longer-term 

outcomes for children by reducing the added stress that parents or children may experience if they cannot 

pay their bills or do not know there will be food on the table. \Vhile researchers are only starting to 

explore the relationship between safety net programs and toxic stress and its long-tenn conse<:],uences, the 

early findings are striking. 

As one other example, economist Hilary Hoynes of the University of California, Davis and her 

colleagues find that "access to food stamps in utero and in early childhood leads to significant reductions 

in metabolic syndrome conditions (obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes) in adulthood 

and, for women, increases in economic self-sufficiency (increases in educational attainment, earnings, and 

income~ and decreases in welfare participation)."c Other researchers also found signs of reduced stress 

(such as less inflammation and lower diastolic blood pressure) among mothers targeted by a 1993 

expansion in the Earned lncome Tax Credit; this expansion was also followed by a significant 

improvement in self-reported health status for the affected mothers d 

a Gary Evans,Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Pam Klevanov, "Stressing Out the Poor: Chronic Physiological Stress and 

the Income-Achievement Gap," Pathways, winter 2011, 

http://wvi\1.l.stanford.edu/group/scspi/media/pdf/pathwa).s/.\\.IDter 2011/Pathways\\'intcr11.pdf 

b Anna Aizcr. Laura Stroud, Stephen Buka (2012), "~fatcmal Stress and Child Outcomes: EVldence from Siblings," 

~ationaI Bureau of Economic Research \Xlorking Paper 18422, \v\v\v.nber.orgipapers Iw18422.pd f. 

, Hilary W. Haynes, Diane \'iih.itmorc Schanzenbach, and Douglas Almond (2012), "Long Run Impacts of 

Childhood Access to the Safety Net," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 18535, 

W\VW.nber. org/papers I w18S35. 

d William N. Evans and Craig L. Garthwaite (2010), "Giving Mom a Break: The Impact of Higher EITC Payments 

on Maternal Health," National Buteau of Economic Research Working Paper 16296, 
34 

of the poverty line, or between $11,500 and $23,000 for an elderly or disabled individual- spend an 

average of 23 percent of their modest incomes on out-of-pocket health costs. 

I bring up these figures not to argue for placing Medicare and Social Security off limits or to argue 

for placing all changes affecting beneficiaries off limits, but to make the point that any changes 

impacting beneficiaries should be designed carefully to avoid causing hardship and impeding access 

to needed health care among near-poor as well as poor beneficiaries. 

(I would note that the Socia] Security checks which beneficiaries receive equal their Social 

Security benefits minus their Medicare premiums, which are deducted from the checks; the premiums 

increase with health care costs, which tend to rise faster than general inflation, and that erodes the 

purchasing power of Social Security checks over time.) 

The nation will not be well served if elderly widows trying to live on $15,000 a year can't afford to 

see a doctor because we have set their Medicare deductible too high. 

The Need for Balanced Deficit Reduction 

We need to make more progress in getting our fiscal house in order. How we do so will have large 

consequences for tens of millions of Americans. One way to look at this is to say that changes will 

be needed on both the spending and revenue sides of the budget. Perhaps a better way to look at 

this is to say that changes will be needed both in spending in the tax code and in spending on the outlay side of 

the budget. 

As individuals such as 

Martin Feldstein, who 

served as Chairman of 

President Reagan's 

Council of Economic 

Advisers, and former 

Federal Reserve chairman 

Alan Greenspan have 

pointed out, a great deal 

of spending occurs 

through the tax code, in 

the form of tax 

expenditures. The 

Budget Act of 1974 

defines tax expenditures 

as revenue losses 

attributable to provisions 

in federal tax law that 

provide special benefits 

to particular taxpayers or 

groups of taxpayers. 

Deductions, exemptions, 

exclusions, credits and 

Tax expenditures and outlays for other major spending (ategories in 2011, in billions 

$1,200 

1,000 

800 

600 

200 

o 

NDtes: Tax expenditure estimates do not account for interaction effects: estimate does not 

include outlays. 

Source: Office of Management and Budget. Historical Tables 8.5 and 8,7 and Analytical 

Perspectives Table 17-2. 
35 

preferential tax rates on certain forms of income 

all are tax expenditures. 

The tax code now includes about $1.1 trillion a 

year in tax expenditures. Their cost exceeds that 

of Medicare and Medicaid combined ($755 

billion), of Social Security ($725 billion), and of 

non-defense discretionary programs, which 

stood at $648 billion in 2011. 

Martin Feldstein has written that tax 

expenditures are the single largest source of 

wasteful and low-priority spending in the budget 

and should be the first place that policymakers 

go to restrain spending. Alan Greenspan has 

referred to tax expenditures as H tax entidements" 

and said they should be looked at along with 

other entitlements. 

Tax expenditures differ from spending 

entitlements in terms of the distribution of their 

benefits. With spending entitlements, the middle 

class receives roughly a proportionate share: in 

2010, the middle 60 percent of the population 

received 58 percent of the entitlement benefits. 

The bottom 20 percent received 32 percent of the 

benefits, while the top 20 percent received 10 

percent of the benefits." 

But with the tax entitlements, the situation is 

different. The Urban Institute-Brookings 

Institution Tax Policy Center has estimated that 

for tax year 2011, the top fifth of the population 

received 66 percent of all individual taxexpenditure benefits - with the top 1 percent of 

households receiving 24 percent of the benefits. 

Meanwhile, the middle 60 percent of the 

population received a little over 31 percent of the 

benefits, and the bottom 20 percent of the 

population received 2.8 percent of the benefits. 

That policymakers should look together at tax 

and spending entitlements can be illustrated by 

Note: The bottom 20% means the 20% of tax units with the 

lowest incomes; the same IS true for the other inCDrne 

categories. 

Source; Tax Polley Center. 

19 Spending entidement figures include the outlay components of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax 

Credit. See Arloe Sherman, Robert Greenstein, and Kathy Ruffing, "Contrary to 'Entitlement Society' Rhetoric, Over 

Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Dtsabled, or Working Households," Center on Budget and Policy 

Priorities, February 10, 2012, http://W\1l'o.\,.cbpp.org/cms!?fa=,,.,ew&id=3677. 
36 

examining the subsidies the federal government provides for child care costs. A parent with low or 

moderate income may be able to obtain a subsidy to help defray child care costs, \vith the subsidy 

being provided through a government spending program. A parent higher on the income scale also 

can receive a government subsidy that reduces her child care costs, but this parent's subsidy is 

delivered through the tax code, via a tax credit. 

The two types of subsidies differ in their availability to eligible families. The low- or moderateincome parent may Jail to get any subsidy to help with her child care costs, because the spending 

programs that provide these subsides are not open ended; they can serve only as many people as their 

capped funding allows, and only about one in six eligible low-income working families with children 

receives such a subsidy. By contrast, the child care subsidies for higher-income households are 

guaranteed, because the child care tax subsidy operates as an open-ended entitlement (and there is no 

limit on how large a family's income can be to claim this tax credit). All higher-income households 

that qualify receive the subsidy, even though unlike many of the working-poor families - they 

generally would be able to afford child care without the subsidies. It would not be sound policy to 

make the tax-code subsidies sacrosanct and the program subsidies a target for deficit reduction 

because one type of subsidy is delivered through a "spending" program and the other is delivered 

through the tax code. 
37 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Secretary Alexander. 

STATEMENT OF HONORABLE GARY D. ALEXANDER, SECRETARY, PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam Chair, Ranking Member 

Sessions. 

I would like to start with a quote from the Concise Encyclopedia 

on Economics. ‘‘The United States welfare system would be an unlikely model for anyone designing a welfare system from scratch. 

The dozens of programs that make up the system have different, 

sometimes competing goals, inconsistent rules, and overlapping 

groups of beneficiaries. Both the hidden and known cost of the system, which lacks the reciprocity of earned benefit social insurance 

programs like Social Security and Medicare, places unsustainable 

burdens on the Federal budget and is creating a fiscal migraine for 

the States. Welfare programs represent a complex web of multiple 

Federal agencies acting in a manner that are rarely coordinated. 

Moreover, welfare recipients are not generally well served. Yes, advocates for specific programs will always find isolated examples of 

a person or household in need and make a case for a particular assistance program. However, if we take a more informed view beyond the immediate emotions of selected anecdotes, for the majority of families and individuals, we will find a system that entraps 

parents and children in dependency while not improving their overall well-being. The system needs reform.’’ 

Like many other States, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is 

struggling with the unprecedented growth of Medicaid and other 

public welfare expenditures which constitute increasingly larger 

portions of the Commonwealth’s budget. Today, that cut is at 43 

percent of the State’s budget, and at its current growth rate, it will 

be over 50 percent of the State’s budget in the next ten years, 

crowding out other important programs like education and other 

needs like transportation. 

Look at one specific program, for example. A common 

misperception is that economic conditions were solely responsible 

for the dramatic increase in the Food Stamp caseload. Empirical 

data shows otherwise. The percent of the United States population 

on Food Stamps has grown despite a reduction in employment 

prior to the last recession. The forces at work are policy and statutory changes that were made, one being the farm bill in 2002, 

which expanded categorical eligibility well before the recession. 

The expansion of any program, whether Food Stamps or Medicaid, also increases the opportunity for fraud and abuse. Please 

hear what I am saying. Not every recipient on welfare cheats. However, benefit systems run by bureaucracies attract certain people, 

both on the provider side and the recipient side, who will find ways 

to fraud and abuse the system. 

For example, in 2009, 178 convenience stores in Pennsylvania 

were banned from the Food Stamp program, and we have estimated that more than a quarter-billion dollars in Food Stamp payments that should not have been made over the last few years. 
38 

What does this translate to? In Pennsylvania today, every 1.8 

privately employed persons supports one person on the welfare system. 

Let us move to outcomes. It has long been understood that the 

welfare system can trap recipients in poverty. The model presented 

today here is based on the actual rules of receiving benefits in 

Pennsylvania. Other States will have similar results because these 

are driven by Federal rules. Sample runs of the model demonstrate 

that when welfare assistance benefits are added onto net income, 

not one but several welfare cliffs emerge. A welfare cliff is defined 

as a point along the range of increasing gross income where the 

sum of net income and welfare assistance benefits decrease. These 

are points where a household would be worse off financially if that 

household were to increase its gross income. Worse off financially 

is measured by the sum of net income and welfare assistance benefits. 

For example, as Senator Sessions said earlier, a welfare recipient 

with two children earning gross income of $29,000 would receive 

the sum of $57,327 in net income and welfare assistance benefits 

if you count the value of the Housing Choice Voucher, Food Stamp, 

day care subsidies, and medical assistance. The same household 

would have to earn a gross income of $69,000 with a net income 

of $57,000 to enjoy a comparable standard of living. In other words, 

if the welfare recipient were earning a gross income of $29,000, the 

household would turn down an opportunity to earn a gross income 

of $30,000 because the benefits begin to fall off, making that household financially worse. Therefore, the recipient gets trapped at the 

gross income of $29,000. A scenario like this might make a hardworking American making a median gross income of $50,000 per 

year think about applying for welfare benefits. 

Where do we go from here? The only way to solve the problem 

is to reconstruct and redefine the entire Federal means tested welfare benefit program system. There is no other way. States need 

flexibility, either through more block grants or through waivers 

where they can combine programs, braid funding, so that the welfare cliff is moved in an upward slope and that individuals will be 

incentivized to work instead of staying on the system. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Alexander follows:] 
39 

Statement of Gary D. Alexander 

Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 

Before the Senate Budget Committee, United States Senate 

February 13, 2013 

I would like to start with a quote from the Concise Encyclopedia on Economics. l 

"The U.S. welfare system would be an unlikely model for anyone designing a 

welfare system from scratch. The dozens of programs that make up the 'system' 

have different (sometimes competing) goals, inconsistent rules, and over-lapping 

groups of beneficiaries:' 

This assessment is an understatement. Over the years we have created program after 

program in a haphazard manner without regard to the actual ineffectiveness or 

effectiveness of the entire whole. The net result is a "means-tested" welfare system that is 

not only disjointed and dysfunctional but also a bureaucratic mess. Both the hidden and 

known cost of the system, which lacks the "reciprocity" of earned-benefit socialinsurance programs like Social Security and Medicare, places unsustainable burdens on 

the Federal budget and is creating a fiscal migraine for the states. 

Welfare programs represent a complex web of multiple federal agencies acting in a 

manner diat are rarely coordinated; more often than not the programs, regulations, and 

actions are independent and conflicting. It's an alphabet-soup array of federal bureaus, 

offices, and departments that are overwhelming and confusing: FNS, ACF, CMS, HUD, 

DOJ, FBI, IRS, VA, SSA, DOT, and SAMHSA. These federal agencies interact with 

multiple state agencies and a large array of local entities. 

This description understates the complexity. The federal government also bypasses the 

state on numerous welfare-related programs that are disconnected from state efforts to 

serve the welfare population. Public housing, Section-8 housing vouchers, Supplemental 

Security Income, and earned-income tax credits are examples of federal programs that 

completely bypass the states. 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
40 

This a snapshot afwhat a state has to deal with from the federal government: a myriad of conflicting rules and 

regu.lations/rom a massively disorganized bureaucrac}', 

Moreover, welfare recipient$ are not generally well served. Yes, advocates for specific 

programs will always find isolated examples of a person or household in need and make a 

case for a particular assistance program. However, if we take a more informed view 

beyond the immediate emotions of selected anecdotes, for the majority of families and 

individuals, we will find a system that entraps parents and children in dependency while 

not improving their overall well-being or their chances of joining the middle class. The 

system needs reform. 

Growth in the System Beyond a Safety Net 

Like many other states, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is struggling with the 

unprecedented growth of Medicaid and other public welfare expenditures, which 

constitute increasingly larger portions of the Commonwealth's budget. Fifty years ago, 

the Department of Public Welfare constituted 17 percent of the total Commonwealth 

Budget. Today that cut is 43 percent. lfthe ACA Medicaid expansion is implemented, it 

will grow to more than 50 percent. 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
41 

Real PA Budget Growth in Magnitude and Percent 

Data by the National Governor's Association and the National Association of State 

Budget Officers shows that this is now true for all states as a whole. States are now 

spending more on Medicaid and welfare than any other priority, including education. So 

here's the bottom line: Welfare spending exceeds revenue growth and is forcing the states 

to abandon other funding priorities, including education and infrastructure. This type of 

welfare expansion will not help spur economic expansion and grow jobs. 

Look at one specific program: food stamps. A common misperception is that economic 

conditions were solely responsible for the dramatic increase in the food-stamp caseload. 

Empirical data shows otherwise. The percent of the U.S. popUlation on food stamps has 

grown despite a reduction in unemployment prior to the last recession. 

The forces driving this growth are policy and statutory changes. The Farm Bill of 2002, 

for example, contained provisions that gave states the option to expand "categorical 

eligibility," making it easier for households to qualify for food stamps. The American 

Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, another example, suspended food-stamp work 

requirements among able-bodied adults without dependent children. That 2009 

legislation also increased the dollar value offood-stamp benefits. 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
42 

This slide demonstrates that the growth in theJood stamp program since 200l is not tota/ly linked to the 2007-09 

recession. We expect, of course, enrollment to increase during recessionary times, but this growth predated the 

2007-09 recession and had abnormal growth beyond the simple impact oJ the recession. We knowJor aJact that 

policy and program changes changed the rules oj the game that made Jood stamp enrollment grow Jaster than it 

would have otherwise. Policies were eased or not enforced in the earlier part of the decade and then the asset test 

was removed in 2008. 

Fraud, Abuse and Inefficiency 

The expansion of any program, whether food stamps or Medicaid, also increases the 

opportunity for fraud and abuse. Please hear what I am saying. Not every recipient on 

welfare cheats. However, all benefit systems run by bureaucracies attract certain people, 

both on the provider side and the recipient side, who will find ways to fraud and abuse 

the system. 

I am stating this from years of experience running welfare systems. On a daily basis, our 

auditors and inspectors uncover incidences of fraud and abuse, despite the fact that we 

have put systems into place to prevent such cheating. In 2011, 178 convenience stores in 

Pennsylvania were banned from the food-stamp program. We have estimated that more 

than a quarter-billion dollars in food-stamp payments that should not have been made. 

Applicants and recipients do not properly report income, and we do not catch it. 

Recipients sell EBT cards for cash so they can buy tobacco, alcohol, or illegal substances. 

To make matters worse, most states have abandoned asset-limit tests in regards to food 

stamps. This is why a news story every now and then arises about a person winning a 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
43 

large payout from a state lottery but nonetheless still qualifies for food stamps. This is 

one reason Pennsylvania reinstituted its food-stamp asset test last year. 

Medicaid is by far the largest welfare program. For years, states have been struggling 

with the costs of Medicaid, a program that has supplanted other funding priorities to 

become one of the largest single expenditures for states. Essentially, we have concluded 

that Pennsylvania cannot expand Medicaid under the current rules. If we expand under 

the current system, we would be expanding an inefficient system. 

Burden on the Taxpayers 

In Pennsylvania today, every 1.8 privately employed persons support 1 person on 

welfare. Ten years ago, 2.8 persons privately employed supported I person on welfare. 

This already represents a significance increase in the tax burden on every working man or 

woman. If we were to expand Medicaid, that already heavy burden would increase 

further. 

Taxpayers to Welfare Recipients in Pennsylvania 

For eve')l 1.8 persons emplo~ved in the private sector in Penm~vlvaniQ. there is one person on we!lare. The ratio was 

2.8 to 1 in SFY 2002. and the projection/i)r SFY 2022 is 1.4 to 1. 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
44 

This slide compares Medicaid enroilment to employment overtime. The purpose of this slide is to demonstrate the 

societal burden to carrying Medicaid. The comparison being is used the number of person employed relative to the 

number of persons on Medicaid: the higher the ratio, the lighter the burden; the lower the ratio, the heavier the 

burden. Two numbers were used for employment: total nonfarm employment and private employment, as puhlished 

by the u.s. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Private employment was also chosen to be displayed because that is where 

wealth is being created. With minor and insignificant exceptions, the public sector relies on taxation to exist. 1/ other 

words. without a private sector to tax, the public sector could not aist. As is demonstrated in the graph. the ratios 

over time keep getting worse 

The Welfare Cliff 

Let's move to outcomes. It has long been documented that the welfare system can trap 

recipients in poverty. 

Many Americans either know this intuitively or possess personal experience with the 

system. The phenomenon is often called the welfare-cliff effect. If a typical single mother 

on welfare earns just a little bit more income, or if she marries a man with a job, the 

household stands to lose far more in benefits than what the marginal income is worth. 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
45 

The model presented today here is based on actual rules of recelvmg benefits in 

Pennsylvania. Other states will have similar results, because most assistance programs 

are based on eligibility criteria established by the Federal government. 

Sample runs of the model demonstrate that when welfare-assistance benefits are added 

onto net income, not one but several welfare cliffs emerge. A welfare cliff is defined as a 

point along the range of increasing gross income where the sum of net income and 

welfare-assistance benefits decrease. These are points where a household would be worse 

off fmancially if that household were to increase its gross income. "Worse off 

financially" is measured by the sum of net income and welfare-assistance benefits. 

For example, a welfare recipient with two children earning gross income of $29,000 

would receive the sum of $57,327 in net income and welfare-assistance benefits, if you 

count the value of the housing-choice voucher, food stamps, daycare subsidies, and 

medical assistance. The same household would have to earn a gross income of $69,000, 

with a net income of $57,045 to enjoy a comparable standard of living. In other words, if 

the welfare recipient were earning a gross income of $29,000, the household would turn 

down an opportunity to earn a gross income of $30,000 because the benefits begin to fall 

off, making that household fmancially worse off. Therefore, the recipient gets trapped at 

the gross income of $29,000. A scenario like this might make a hardworking American 

earning a median family income of $50,000 per year think about applying for welfare 

rather than working. 

In the U.S. today. despite the progressivity oj the income lax. a Jamily is always better off taking a better job and 

making more money. 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
46 

80,000 

75,000 

70,000 

65,000 

60,000 

55,000 

50,000 

45,000 

40,000 

35,000 

30,000 

25,000 

20,000 

15,000 

10,000 

5,000 

Jfwe stack on welfare benefits, you can quickly see what happens. Welfare cliffs crop up in several spots, trapping 

people in a life of poverty and low-income. With a job that offers no health benefits, the single mom is better off 

earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & welfare benefits than to earn gross income of 

$69,000 with net income & benefits of $57, 045. That family is dependent. As the mom looks over the horizon, she 

realizes she must find ajob worth $69,000 in order to maintain her current quality of life. Taking ajob that makes 

less than $69,000 will actually hurt her family. 

This sample demonstration represents just one outcome of the model. The model is 

capable of altering assumptions, such as the household type, quality and cost of the 

daycare, and county of residence. Alternative scenarios produce different numbers, but 

they show the same pattern of perverse incentives against work and upward mobility. 

By looking across the broad spectrum of welfare programs, the model validated what 

many Americans suspect: a parent on welfare faces built-in disincentives to earn more 

income because the household would face the potential loss of benefits even greater than 

the potential increase in income, In economic terms, the opportunity costs of earning 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
47 

more marginal income or marrying were greater than the benefits of that marginal earned 

income. 

A real example might put this into perspective. Linda, a single mother with two 

dependent children losses her job. She possesses an associate degree and worked in 

banking. After she lost her job, she applied for welfare benefits. After 24 months of 

being without work she obtained a lower paying job without medical benefits at a retail 

store. This retail store offered management training that would certainly increase her pay. 

Although working, she still obtained a myriad of federal means-tested benefits. She 

claimed that while on welfare, she felt no incentive to attempt the management-training 

class offered through the retail business because increasing her income would decrease 

her benefits and she would lose thousands of dollars. She decided the management 

training was not in her best interest fmancially. 

This was a real example. Is this the best that we can do? 

But this is not the only problem with the welfare system. The system is also inequitable 

to those households who want to join the vast middle class. Parents that want to follow 

the family-formation and employment route end up with less income in real terms than 

the welfare households that they end up subsidizing through their taxes. Consequently, 

our system discourages not only work and family formation for those stuck in the system 

but also for those who barely live above the poverty line. 

Redesign the Federal Welfare System 

So where do we go from here? The only way to solve the problem is to reconstruct and 

redesign the entire system. There is no other way. The system must be reth01lght so that 

programs not only dovetail together but that the total benefits package, when added onto 

net income, has an upward slope as income increases for recipient households. In short, 

programs should reward work because employment is the best anti-poverty remedy. 

For every extra effort, for every opportunity to earn more income through employment or 

marriage, the person deserves to be better off. It is only fair. 

Redesigning the system is a major undertaking. It will require congressional action. After 

having managed the welfare system in two states and having worked on these issues at 

the state level on both sides of the aisle for close to twenty years, I have designed a 

comprehensive redesign of the system that would solve much of the problem, but we do 

not have the time to dive into the specifics. Without diving into what I have created, here 

are some positive first steps that should be taken to enable state innovation: 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
48 

Provide states generous latitude and flexibility to redesign and run welfare programs in a 

manner that makes sense so that we can "smooth out" the welfare cliffs and ensure that 

households obtain "upward" mobility and become motivated to benefit from 

employment. 

Such latitude can be offered to states in one of two ways. 

First, Congress can streamline all welfare programs into block grants and allow states to 

braid or combine funding streams. The programs that will need to be "block granted" are 

SNAP, Medicaid, housing-choice vouchers, and public housing. Currently, TANF and 

federal daycare programs are block grants, but any redesign should also allow states to 

include these two programs in any block-grant reform. Of course, the Federal government 

should provide broad performance measures to the states surrounding health, safety, 

employment and education -- and then allow each state to design appropriate programs 

and services as each state deems best and then compete among each other. This will spur 

creativity and ingenuity - both hallmarks of our republic. Let the states function as 

laboratories of democracy. 

A second, although less desirable option is to allow states to obtain federal waivers, 

giving them maximum flexibility for all of the programs utilized in the redesign. Waivers 

would be needed for Medicaid, SNAP, housing-choice vouchers, public housing, and 

daycare. Federal law should be written that such waivers are easily obtained and not 

micromanaged by the Federal bureaucracy. Both of these options might just leave the 

Federal government out of the business of micromanagement and in the business of 

oversight only. 

Both of these options might just allow states to redirect some of these funds to focus on a 

pro growth agenda that would decrease welfare spending and dependency and help 

generate economic expansion. 

My fundamental point is this: rely on the strength of our federal system. We are blessed 

in this nation to have fifty states that have been called the laboratories of democracy. We 

need to unleash the power of competition and innovation of the states, instead of relying 

on a top-down approach where everything is determined in Washington, D.C. 

Conclusion 

The vast majority of welfare recipients would prefer a system with the right incentives 

rather than face the cliff. The current American welfare system is failing them and their 

chances of realizing a true opportunity to obtain self-sufficiency and independence. 

Redesigning the system to focus on incentivizing upward mobility for the people we 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
49 

serve rather than the feeding a massive bureaucracy of overlapping programs that 

discourage work and independence might just help us to eradicate the welfare cliff. 

I will be happy to answer any questions you might have. 

1 http://www.econlib.org/librarviCEE.html. Written by Thomas MaCurdy and Jeffrey M. Jones. MaCurdy is the 

Dean Witter Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of economics at Stanford University. He is a 

member of standing committees that advise the CBO, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the U.S. Census. 

Jones is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Testimony of Gary D. Alexander, Secretary Pennsylvania 
50 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Mr. WOODSON. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT L. WOODSON, SR., PRESIDENT, 

CENTER FOR NEIGHBORHOOD ENTERPRISE 

Mr. WOODSON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Senator Sessions, 

it is good seeing you. 

Like you, Madam Chairman, I am from Philadelphia and my dad 

died when I was nine, leaving my mother to raise five children in 

a very troubled neighborhood. Because my father died from war-inflicted wounds as a veteran, we were entitled to government assistance. But I dropped out of high school at age 17 and went into the 

military and completed my GED and then went to college on the 

G.I. Bill of Rights. Then I got involved in the Civil Rights movement, leading demonstrations in my native Philadelphia and the 

surrounding area. 

I realized that many of the people who suffered and sacrificed 

most for civil rights progress did not benefit from the change because their problems were not just race, but also poverty. I began 

to work at a juvenile jail as a correction officer and also as a 

trained social worker in the child welfare system. It was there that 

I realized how we were beginning to injure people with the helping 

hand. 

Yes, there are people who are poor and who just need a hand up, 

like your parents and the other witness. But otherwise, their attitudes and values are intact, and they use the welfare system as it 

was intended, as an ambulance service and not a transportation 

system. But for those who are poor because of the chances that 

they take and the values that they exercise, spending on them can 

injure with the helping hand. 

In a recent article in the New York Times, many politicians on 

both sides were shocked to learn that parents of Appalachian children were refusing to send their children to literacy classes because 

they would lose $600 in SSI payments. So the future of the children was sacrificed for the short-term interests of the family. 

Colbert King, certainly no conservative, writing in the Washington Post recently said the solution to the poor is not to integrating and funding more programs, but creating a civic infrastructure focused on building stronger families, fathers living at home 

married to mothers of their children. 

In other words, Washington, D.C. leads the nation in 21 separate 

categories of poverty expenditures, and yet we are dead last when 

it comes for outcomes for children. So we cannot equate how much 

we spend on the poor in terms of how much we help the poor. We 

must reform some of these programs that are really discouraging 

people from moving forward. A member of my own family is an example. 

Before welfare reform, my niece, who was in her 30s, had been 

on welfare for many years. I spent thousands of dollars trying to 

discourage her dependency and give her an opportunity to move toward self-sufficiency. I obtained an apartment and a job for her in 

Arlington, Virginia, and I went to pick her up in this very dangerous public housing project in Philadelphia. My nephew, told me, 

who was a police officer, told me not to go up in there because it 
51 

is so dangerous. But I went to pick her up and at two in the afternoon she was in a nightgown with a beer can in her hand. She 

would not leave because she knew that she could depend on welfare. She could depend on daycare for her child. Unfortunately, 

many years later, I was on a juvenile justice panel with a judge 

who informed me that he had sentenced her son, and my greatnephew, to prison. So she and others like her are trapped in this 

system. We have other programs, again, well intended, but noble 

intentions cannot always lead to noble outcomes. 

My organization supports 2,500 grassroots groups living in 39 

States. These are the people who are providing moral guidance and 

character coaching to people who are poor, because for many of 

them, redemption and moral revitalization is a prerequisite to 

being helped. It is important to support structures like this. 

But instead, we support programs like the one in Colorado and 

other places that we call ′′Bunks fo Drunks.′′ Homeless alcoholics 

are put in these fine hotels at a cost of $4,000 per person per 

month and they can drink in their rooms. But this is because we 

are looking at it as a medical problem. 

We are also injuring people in foster care and adoption. For instance, we spend $75 billion on children who are in foster care 

where there are disincentives for them to reunite. Many of these 

providers will not reunite children with their parents because it 

would injure their cash flow. There are endless other examples of 

how we are injuring people with the helping hand and rewarding 

behavior that is self-destructive. 

My recommendation is that we support institutions like we did 

in Alabama, Lowndes County, where we were instrumental in the 

development of two industrial parks. They now have the county’s 

first daycare and recreation center. So it is really not just aiding 

individuals but also supporting structures that produce jobs and 

providing incentives so people are not discouraged from work because they are getting rewarded. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Woodson follows:] 
52 

Testimony before the United States Senate 

Committee On The Budget 

by Robert L. Woodson, Sr. 

Founder and President of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise 

February 13, 2013 
53 

Testimony before the United States Senate 

Committee On The Budget 

By Robert L. Woodson, Sr. 

Founder and President ofthe Center for Neighborhood Enterprise 

February 13,2013 

I'm speaking as someone whose life's work has been committed to helping low-income people to 

help themselves to rise up. Along the way, it became obvious that what I was fighting against 

wasn't just the dysfunction of the people I was helping but it was also the dysfunction of the 

system that was put in place to help them. 

Since its inception in 1964, the War on Poverty has spent nearly $20 trillion. Today, the federal 

government runs 80 means-tested programs providing aid to the poor at the cost of $1 trillion a 

year. Ifwe were going to have won the war on poverty with spending, it would have been done a 

long time ago. 

The issue isn't amount of funding but the outcomes ofthe programs. Those outcomes are a 

direct result of the incentives built into those programs. Sometimes those incentives 

encourage dependence, even for generations. Sometimes incentives help people gain personal 

responsibility and pursue their dreams. 

So if we want to help those in need, we need to ask: Is the approach we are taking to relieve 

poverty by what we call the safety net actually helping or is it injuring with the helping hand? 

It's not surprising that, regardless of intention, a system that rewards failure and punishes success 

has generated ever-increasing dependency. You get more of what you reward and less of what 

you punish. 

Not long ago, a story in the New York Times shocked politicians on both sides of the aisle when 

it revealed that an impoverished Appalachian couple had pulled their kids out of a literacy 

program because they feared they would not qualify for their SSI check if their children could 

read. 

It was not a shock to me. I have seen similar cases again and again. 

When my daughter was earning her degree in pastoral counseling, she was an intern in a highschool class for low-income kids with behavioral problems. One girl she met with was under a 

lot of stress. She was 15 and had a two-year-old baby. She and her boyfriend were living with 

her grandmother because her father was out of the picture and her mom was on drugs. But one 

day she came into my daughter's office and was very excited. She had figured out a plan. She 

would try to get pregnant again, and then would qualify for more money and more food stamps 

and she and her boyfriend would move into Section 8 housing. The girl even knew how much of 

the rent she would have to pay. That was her dream. She had her whole life figured out within 

the government programs. 

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54 

The entrapment of the system even hit closer to horne. I had a niece who was in her 30s and had 

been on welfare for years. She was living with her child in one of the most dangerous public 

housing projects in Philadelphia. The apartment complex was so dangerous that my nephew who 

was a police officer warned me about going there and said he wouldn't even go in there with his 

gun. 

I spent thousands of dollars trying to help her relocate. I found an apartment for her in Arlington 

and found ajob for her. But when I went to pick her up, she was in a bathrobe with a beer in her 

hand in the middle of the afternoon. She couldn't bring herself to make the move and leave the 

situation she had. 

My efforts to help her help herself couldn't compete with the welfare system. 

In the system, she knew she had a place to live, no matter how dangerous, and she had food and 

day-care benefits. 

It wasn't until welfare reform became a reality that she changed. Welfare reform did what all of 

my efforts to persuade her could not do. It compelled her to go out and get a job. She had been 

on welfare for years and the only thing that interrupted that cycle was welfare reform. 

Once again, the issue is not whether we cut or expand our welfare funding. More or less of a bad 

thing is still a bad thing. The issue is how we can reform our approach so that we can effectively 

help people to rise from poverty and stop wasting billions of dollars every year on 

counterproductive programs intended to help the poor. 

We should look for models of approaches that work-both in the public and private sectorbased on two core principles: 

1. Stop driving out personal responsibility and good works with government largesse. It's 

hurting the people it's supposed to help, and hindering the efforts of those that love them. I 

couldn't help my niece because welfare programs created a path of least resistance. 

We need to continue the work of welfare reform and not live any longer under the illusion 

that an ever-increasing budget is the answer to poverty. 

2. Strengthen and support the foundation of civil society. Not all poverty is caused only by a 

lack of money. Community groups address these problems at their root. As Colbert King 

(not typically a conservative spokesperson) recently wrote: The solution for the poor is not 

funding and integrating more government programs but creating "a civic infrastructure 

focused on building stronger families: fathers living at home, married to the mothers of their 

children; parents who see that their kids get to school on time, ready to learn, and who raise 

their children to respect others and themselves." 

The Center for Neighborhood has a 30-year history of supporting grassroots organizations in 

low-income communities that have demonstrated their ability to reassert moral authority, 

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55 

enabling people to get off of drugs and stop their self-destructive behavior. They have 

established a track record in which hundreds of people's lives and communities have been 

reclaimed. 

Policymakers and philanthropists who truly want to make a difference need to look to these 

grassroots groups who are making an impact because they understand how incentives work 

and have the relationships that transform lives and communities. 

That's what happened in the Alabama Rural Initiative: In 2002, my organization, The Center for 

Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), joined with Senator Jeff Sessions and Household Internationalnow HSBC-North America--in Lowndes County, Alabama. Though that county had been the site of 

annual civil rights memorial marches, the conditions of the poor there hadn't improved for forty 

years. In a five-year initiative, we helped Lowndes County improve sanitary conditions, create 

economic development, provide training in financial literacy and created new housing opportunities. 

With unemployment at more than 11%, and most jobs paying little more than minimum wage, 

there was a great need for economic development in Lowndes. The advent ofa $1 billion 

Hyundai manufacturing plant just six miles away from the Lowndes border opened the 

possibility that Lowndes could attract supplier companies to within its borders. CNE facilitated 

the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) that was the prerequisite for two 

tier-one auto suppliers. 

And there were ripple effects for families and neighborhoods where fathers had a job. This effort 

did not involve spending more money for welfare: it made a lasting difference in the lives of the 

residents of that impoverished county. 

From personal experience, I believe that nation's strategy to address poverty must be reformed. I 

have spent my life working on behalf of low-income people and that meant fighting against wellintended policies that have injured with the helping hand. 

I think of the words of Dietrich Bonheoffer who declared that the greatest enemy to the good is 

not malice but folly. It is folly when people do things to help people that end up destroying them. 

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56 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of 

our witnesses today, and I will begin with my questions. We will 

each have five minutes and we will go in order of appearance and 

I appreciate everybody keeping to their five-minute time limit. 

Ms. Marks, I want to start with you. Thank you so much for 

being here today. I know it is not easy talking about facing some 

of the challenges like the ones you have seen, and when I hear stories like yours, it makes me very concerned about the direction 

some of our members of Congress want to take us in. House Budget 

Committee Chairman Ryan last year released his budget that 

would have reduced Federal support for SNAP by 17 percent, 

which could lead to more than eight million people being removed 

from the program. I wanted to ask you where you thought you 

would end up if that Federal safety net had not been there for you 

when you needed it so badly. 

Ms. MARKS. I would still be in poverty, ma’am. 

Chairman MURRAY. You would still be in poverty? 

Ms. MARKS. Yes. 

Chairman MURRAY. Do you think you would have finished 

school? 

Ms. MARKS. No. No, because I knew that I needed to be there, 

but I was not able to be able to afford it outright myself. So I was 

very much dependent on student loans and Pell Grants to get me 

through. 

Chairman MURRAY. Mr. Greenstein, what sort of effect would a 

cut like the one Chairman Ryan proposed have on American families and communities and the economy, and what do you think 

about the idea of block granting programs like Medicaid and SNAP 

and housing? 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Well, with regard to Medicaid and SNAP in 

particular, there is both the effect on the individual families, but 

there is actually also a significant adverse effect on the overall U.S. 

economy. The reason is that those programs are automatic stabilizers. They automatically grow when the economy turns down and 

put more purchasing power into the economy and they come back 

down when the economy recovers. 

The Congressional Budget Office actually noted in a report a couple years ago that increases in Food Stamp benefits during economic downturns were, along with unemployment insurance, the 

two most effective forms of stimulus in terms of bang for the Federal buck because virtually all of the money is then spent. 

In terms of the impact on the families, I would be extremely concerned. I remember the period in the late 1960s when each State 

set its own rules in Food Stamps. Some States—South Carolina— 

cut off people at 50 percent of the poverty line. It was in that period that, on a bipartisan basis, we had a team of medical researchers that went into Appalachia, the Deep South, and elsewhere, and 

they found in a report that shocked the nation rates of childhood 

hunger and malnutrition—incidents of child hunger and nutritionrelated conditions akin to those of some third-world countries. They 

then went back ten years later, after we went to national standards 

in Food Stamps. It was President Nixon who led that effort. And 

they found dramatic improvement. 
57 

So I think it would be a major step backward to move from the 

kinds of national standards that have served us well since President Nixon’s day. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Ms. Marks and Mr. Murray, I have to say I was really impressed 

by both of your stories and your testament. You mentioned something that I often hear from people who have a government investment in them that helps them get out of poverty and into middle 

class and that is giving back again to the community that helped 

you when you needed it the most. And I imagine that most taxpayers would look at both of you and think that they received a 

pretty solid return on their investment. 

Can either of you talk a little bit about how you have been able 

now to contribute back because of the investment the Federal Government has given to you? Mr. Murray. 

Mr. MURRAY. Ma’am, thanks to the military health care system 

and significant upgrades in prosthetic technology through added 

funding, I was able to quickly transition back to somewhat of a 

normal lifestyle. When I got out of Walter Reed, like I said, I went 

to work for Turner Construction and got to be part of a great team 

that then built another hospital for our soldiers and sailors, airmen 

and Marines coming home, down in Fort Belvoir. Without the ability, without the technology to get around as well as I can, that 

would not have happened for me and I do not think it would have 

been possible. 

Chairman MURRAY. Ms. Marks. 

Ms. MARKS. You are asking me about the investment— 

Chairman MURRAY. And how you contribute back now because of 

that investment. 

Ms. MARKS. First of all, I just want to say thank you to anybody 

and everybody who ever had anything to do with any Federal program that helped me in the time when I needed it. The investment, 

I hope, was well worth it, and I would have to say, yes, that it has 

worked for me. 

I was able to go back into the workforce and to be able to be a 

productive member of society, of taxpaying and all that good stuff 

that I was very happy to be able to do so. And also that I have this 

firm belief that people need help, and I know that from firsthand, 

and so I tried to give back as much as I can when it is my turn 

to be able to help people. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. Well, thank you to both of you. My 

time is up and I will turn it over to Senator Sessions for his questions. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Ms. Marks, you benefit from the program like it is supposed to 

be, our design and vision for it. I think what Mr. Woodson is saying, that for a lot of other people, somehow, it can become a trap 

and a dependency. It actually hurts their morale, their independence, and their ability to be successful, and we do not want that 

to happen. 

I know, Mr. Greenstein, you tend to suggest that all spending is 

good, that no—well, you praised the committee for, what did you 

say, shielding poverty programs from any cut. Medicare, Medicaid, 

Food Stamps got zero reductions, zero. It has increased 300 percent 
58 

in the last 11 years. So I just would say that we have a program 

that has been surging and I think it is not wrong to examine them 

and see if we cannot make them work better. 

Secretary Alexander, you have administered these programs. I 

see that last year, Secretary Vilsack claimed the Food Stamp error 

rate is less than 3.5 percent and the fraud rate is less than one 

percent, a historic low. As a young Federal prosecutor, I prosecuted 

stores that sold liquor and other things, non-food items, misdemeanor cases. Now, I guess I have observed this situation for a 

long time. What would your feeling be, as someone who has administered this program, about fraud and abuse, people who just do 

not qualify for the benefits they are receiving? 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Well, first of all, I believe that if we create a 

vast system like we have with many, many bureaucracies and Federal agencies that trickle down to the State and local level, you are 

inviting more fraud and abuse, whether it is from recipients or 

from, potentially, providers. People do not necessarily want to 

cheat the system, but if it is available to them, they will take advantage of it. 

In regard to the Secretary’s claims of the error rate, it sometimes 

can be a bit misleading, because if the individual is not providing 

the right information a lot of times, sometimes it is very difficult 

for State administrators or workers who are seeing sometimes upwards of over a thousand clients in their caseload to be able to 

keep track of all of these things. So I think that— 

Senator SESSIONS. But just fundamentally, right there, if a person comes in and says they have five children, they say they have 

a certain amount of income, there is no way most State agencies 

who administer that program are going to go out and investigate, 

send the FBI out to verify that, right? They take basically what 

they are told. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. We have very few investigators. The workers do 

the best job they possibly can on the front line. And they try to 

check. But, for example—I will just give you an example. In the 

TANF program, when the law was being passed in the 1990s, there 

was talk of a national database so that we could check across State 

lines. We do not have that ability today in real time to be able to 

do that. I think the government, whether it is State or Federal 

Government, is looking at increasing its technology capabilities. 

However, we certainly have a long way to go. And the fact that the 

Federal Government is so vast and complex and that the rules that 

are set forth here in Washington overlap, are inconsistent, they are 

inconsistent sometimes just between programs. 

So, for example, in Medicaid, States operate multiple Medicaid 

waivers with competing service definitions, rules, regulations, reporting requirements. These are very, very difficult for States to 

administer. And because of that, it trickles down to the recipients 

we serve. We are not creating a round wheel for administrators at 

the State or local level to operate so that we can, as individuals 

come into the system that are able-bodied, we are able to get them 

off of the system very quickly. 

Yes, there are examples of individuals who are self- motivated, 

but the majority of our recipients need to be helped and we need 

to incentivize them. The current system incentivizes nobody, as we 
59 

saw with the welfare cliff. But in addition to that, there is no motivation for individuals to really better themselves. We would be 

much better off taking the vast amounts of money that we put into 

some of these programs and redirecting that towards a jobs program or toward technical training, vocational training for a lot of 

these individuals. They could achieve more, become more mainstream, get into the middle class, and become real taxpayers and 

lifted out of poverty. 

What we are doing, Senator, is we are essentially providing them 

with a plethora of benefits, and yes, they are important, but if we 

were to teach them how to fish rather than providing them with 

the fish, these individuals would make it off of the system more. 

We cannot continue to keep the status quo. We have to look at 

these programs critically. We have to start to braid funding and we 

have to start to create a continuum of care to get people off of the 

system. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator SESSIONS. I would just say, I did talk to a lady who manages a sewing plant and I asked her how she was doing with employees. She said, ‘‘We are doing pretty well, but we compete 

against the government every day,’’ and I think that is what you 

are saying. That is a sad thing. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. If I could offer just— 

Chairman MURRAY. And I would just say, we have a number of 

Senators who want to— 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Okay. 

Chairman MURRAY. —and you will have time to respond. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Okay. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Warner. 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you for 

this hearing and the powerful testimony. 

I know you both made mention, both you and Senator Sessions, 

of personal stories. I am sure we all will make some mention. I put 

myself in a category of the first and only member of my family to 

graduate from college. I would not have been here if there had not 

been a student loan program. 

I also want to say a personal thanks to Bob Greenstein, who 

through my journey around these issues is somebody who falls very 

much on the deficit side, has—and concerns about that, pushed me 

hard on issues. And, Senator Sessions, I will tell you, Bob Greenstein has been out there on a number of reforms and, I can assure 

you, taken a good set of grief from many colleagues on this side of 

the aisle for being willing to point out areas where we have to get 

our debt and deficit under control. So I really want to thank him— 

Senator SESSIONS. He has been a valuable witnesses before here, 

too. 

Senator WARNER. He has the scars to prove it, I can assure you. 

I also want to just reiterate, as Bob has mentioned and others, 

that many of us have cited the Simpson-Bowles report as a guideline that, while not perfect, set out meaningful deficit reduction. 

The Gang of Six had built upon that. And I again just want to reiterate that even in those reports, there was that philosophical goal 
60 

to maintain parts of the safety net that are important and valuable. 

So, for example, even though we put forward Social Security reforms, there was a bumping up of the bottom quintile of those recipients on Social Security to make sure they at least got to a poverty level, to make suer that those folks above 85 who may have 

run out of their private pensions got a bump-up, as well. And while 

there are areas, particularly on the SNAP program, where we can 

do better enforcement, it was the consensus not only of SimpsonBowles but of the Gang of Six that the SNAP program, net-net, 

was a good value for the investments we have made, and Ms. 

Marks’ comments, I think, reflect that. 

But I have also got to say that, you know, at $16.5 trillion in 

debt that goes up $3 billion a day, if we were to have interest rates 

at anything close to historic levels already, we would see interest 

costs alone on that debt outcourse Medicare at this point. So the 

idea that we do not need to rethink and find better efficiencies is 

something, even though we may have different philosophical views 

of the role of government, there ought to be at least some space 

here for common ground. 

I would simply add—and there will be a question at some point 

on this, but— 

[Laughter.] 

Senator WARNER. —say as a former Governor—I think about my 

good friend, Governor Kaine—former Governor—as well—there are 

times when this myriad of Federal programs restrict the ability for 

States to do the kind of value and protections, but the kind of approach that we have had as, at least I can say, as a Governor, having those maintenance of efforts requirements so that you can try 

to deliver a better product without simply then being able to dramatically cut back on the benefits that people receive, finding better ways to deliver those at a better value is something that we 

don’t get enough attention. And, quite honestly, we kind of hear on 

a one-off basis. 

The National Governors Association does a fairly good job, but I 

have been amazed in my relatively short time here, in four years, 

how rarely we see how best practices are taken from State levels 

and then built into Federal programs. And I think that ought to 

be a part of our discussion on a going forward basis—not decreasing efforts, making sure that folks still get the need in an appropriate way that they should receive, but making sure that where 

there are examples, and I would take one exception with Secretary 

Alexander. On one hand, you say you complain about the myriad 

of Federal regulations, but one of the ways that is, you have to give 

flexibility with waivers. A waiver system is still, as long as there 

is that maintenance of effort, something that I think that we need 

to look at and how we get that best practice system better in place. 

I am down to 20 seconds. Bob, if you want to make a comment. 

I think one of the things you may want to simply reiterate, EITC 

and Child Tax Credit, while we can talk about some of the programs, these have been initiatives that, again, with some broadbased, I think, bipartisan support really have been very successful. 

You may want to comment. 
61 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Well, they are only for people who work. You 

have to have earnings to qualify for them. And in the EITC and 

the Child Credit, actually, in both of them, they have a structure 

where the credit goes up as you earn more, from very low levels, 

which is really the reverse of a number of other programs. And the 

research is very clear that they have quite powerful effects in 

bringing more people into the labor market and increasing earnings. 

What is new and we did not know before is the new research 

finding that the increased income they provide—apparently by stabilizing family circumstances so they are not so poor—is actually 

linked to increased performance by the children in the families in 

school, which then pays off later in life in terms of earnings and 

employment. 

So this is, I think, an area where, while not perfect, we have actually come up with very good programmatic designs that are really yielding positive results. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Senator JOHNSON. 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Murray, thank you for your service. 

Ms. Marks, I am sure I share everybody’s feelings here that we 

are so glad that your story has a happy ending here. 

As we move forward in this hearing and as we try fixing these 

very serious problems facing our nation, I hope we do not question 

each others’ motives. I mean, I truly believe we share the same 

goal. I think we are a compassionate society. We want a strong social safety net. We want to help individuals that cannot help themselves. We want to help people help themselves. I think that is the 

bottom line. 

The trick is, how do you design that social safety net so that it 

does not incentivize people into bad behavior. So I just want to— 

I am an accountant, so I like figures. I would like to ask Mr. 

Greenstein, when you take a look at Census Bureau information on 

some pretty serious societal metrics—number of people in poverty, 

poverty rates, out-of-wedlock birth rates—in 1959, which is when 

the first good information became available on poverty rates, there 

were 34 million people in poverty. By the time we embarked on the 

War on Poverty, the $16 trillion War on Poverty, that had actually 

declined to 23 million. Today, it stands at 43 million. It has actually increased. 

Now, you can say, okay, the population increased. So let us look 

at poverty rates. In 1959, the percentage of Americans in poverty 

was 19.3 percent in 1959. It had dropped to 12 percent by 1966, 

and today it stands at 14 percent, so it has actually increased. 

Again, all of our wonderful intentions on the War on Poverty, poverty rates have increased according to the Census Bureau. 

And then out-of-wedlock birth rates. In 1940, they stood at four 

percent. By 1966, they are up to eight percent. They doubled, and 

people like Democratic Senator Patrick Moynihan was writing eloquently on his concern about that as a societal metric. Today, overall, that stands at 41 percent. 

So, again, the question—again, I am very fact-based. I mean, we 

embarked on this $16 trillion War on Poverty, which just happens 
62 

to, coincidentally, equal our national debt. We have not had those 

metrics turned down. It has not improved. I mean, do you have any 

explanation on maybe all those good intentions, how they could 

have actually contributed to the upward turn in those metrics? 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. With all due respect, Senator, and a number of 

people use the metric, but the poverty metric example you just did, 

it really is not valid. Let me explain why. 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, then— 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Let me— 

Senator JOHNSON. No. Then deal with out-of-wedlock birth rates. 

I do not want to— 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. No, no, no, no— 

Senator JOHNSON. Let us do one that is really solid, out-of-wedlock birth rates, because it is— 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Let me try to do both. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. It is very important. The official poverty rate 

only counts cash benefits. It does not count Food Stamps. It does 

not count the Earned Income Credit. It does not count the Child 

Credit. It does not count any of the things that expanded. It does 

count the cash welfare benefits, which went down. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay, good. Now comment on— 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Apples and oranges— 

Senator JOHNSON. Now comment on out-of-wedlock birth rates 

that have gone from eight percent to 41 percent. 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Out-of-wedlock birth rates have gone up. They 

have gone up not only among the low-income population or the minority population. They have gone up broadly throughout U.S. society. 

Senator JOHNSON. I know. Forty-one percent is average, and the 

minority population is far worse. 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. I do not have the specific figures in my head. 

The point that I am making is— 

Senator JOHNSON. Mr. Woodson, do you want to— 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. —the research suggests that this is not primarily a result of the way particular social programs are structured, and the single program that was viewed as having the biggest adverse effect, the old welfare program, was dramatically 

changed in 1996. This is a larger question of societal-wide changes 

in mores and values. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. Mr. Woodson, would you comment on 

that. 

Mr. WOODSON. Yes. In the black community, as you know, it is 

about 70 percent. But it is interesting, in the years 1930 to 1940 

in the black community, when we had no representation, when our 

poverty rates were much worse, we had a higher marriage rate 

than the white community. Even up until 1960, before the War on 

Poverty, 82 percent of all black families had a man and a woman 

raising children. And now, since the War on Poverty, that has gone 

up to about 70 percent. 

So I think we have a series of policies that, first of all, discredits 

any moral influence institutions. But, also, we have provided disincentives for people to marry. As it has often been said, if you became pregnant out of wedlock, drop out of school and you can get 
63 

more benefits. There are just endless examples in the black community of how we are being destroyed by these perverse incentives. 

And that is why I think benefits ought to be associated with personal responsibility. 

All the witnesses that testified here, my colleagues on this panel, 

they all worked hard. They had a positive, life-affirming attitude. 

They were not where they were 20 years ago because of their own 

personal initiative, their own values. 

But we discount this when it comes to addressing poverty. We 

never discuss the moral choices that people make and what are the 

institutions indigenous to those communities that help people to 

make better choices, to bring about redemption and transformation. 

We do not look at these as factors in our fight on poverty. We act 

as if poor people are the agents of incentives and disincentives 

rather than moral people whose attitudes and behavior are influenced by the chances that they take and the choices that they 

make. 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Kaine. 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Madam Chair, Mr. Ranking Member, 

colleagues, and to our witnesses today. 

This committee will write a budget and we need to get it through 

the Senate by mid-April. A lot of the discussion has been a helpful 

discussion about kind of program design, and I think everyone 

around the table could agree, we want programs to be designed 

well. We want to minimize fraud. We want to minimize abuse. We 

want to minimize overlap. And your insights can help us do that. 

But the primary task of this committee is to write a budget. 

Just real quick, I mean, I am new to the body, but I have done 

a lot of work on budgeting in the private sector and also as a 

mayor and Governor. We had a presentation yesterday—you are 

following a presentation from the CBO Director Dr. Doug Elmendorf, and his basic position in laying out historical data was that, 

right now, we do have a budgetary problem. We are spending more 

as a percentage of GDP than historical averages. And we are taxing, taking in revenue, less than historical averages. We all understand basic math. If you spend more than historical averages and 

you have taxes and revenue that are less than historic averages, 

you are going to have a challenge. 

And I just wanted to kind of throw it to all of you and just announce to my colleagues, my basic belief about budgets is you cannot fix a balance sheet without fixing both sides of the balance 

sheet. If we are spending more than historic averages and our revenues are less than historic averages, then we need to fix both sides 

of the balance sheet. We can say, well, we just let taxes go up. We 

cannot do it again. We can say, we just cut spending, so, of course, 

we cannot do it again. But the way I look, and I just would love 

your thoughts, the only way we are going to be able to find a better 

budget path forward is to find smart ways to reduce spending, but 

also to have more revenue and trying to get this more toward historic averages and more in concert, and I would love any of your 

thoughts on that. Mr. Greenstein. 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. I agree with that. I think there is even another 

formulation you could look at. You could say that the main focus 
64 

could be on spending, but that that ought to include spending in 

the tax code as well as spending on the outlay side of the budget. 

We have $1.1 trillion a year in tax expenditures. President Reagan’s Chief Economic Adviser for a number of years, Martin Feldstein, has called tax expenditures the least efficient, most wasteful 

part of spending in the Federal budget and the first place to look 

at to restrain spending. 

I had the honor of being on the Deficit Commission, the KerreyDanforth Commission in 1994. Alan Greenspan testified before us 

and he said, tax expenditures are really tax entitlements and you 

ought to look at entitlements on both the spending and the tax side 

of the ledger. 

It is also interesting when you look at the distribution. So the 

bulk of spending entitlements go to middle- and lower-income families and the bulk of tax expenditures go to the upper end of the 

range. So I think you could put together a package that was a balanced mix of changes on the spending side and changes on the tax 

expenditure, tax entitlement side, and come up with a package that 

does not hit hard while the economy is still weak, but you enact 

it now and it phases in over a number of years and it stabilizes 

the debt over the course of the decade. 

Senator KAINE. Other thoughts on the fix both sides of the balance sheet? Sir, please. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. States have to balance their budgets, as you 

know as a former Governor. 

Senator KAINE. Yes. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. And with revenues growing— 

Senator KAINE. I have a lot of scar tissue on that one. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Well, me, too. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. ALEXANDER. With revenues growing at a little over two percent and the programs that we operate growing at eight-plus percent, nine percent, some double-digit percent, year over year, other 

priorities in the State budget are crowded out—education, which is 

extremely important to make investments in, transportation so 

that we can create more and more jobs. And States do not have the 

luxury of waiting for the Federal Government to fix its own budget 

crisis. States have to fix them year after year after year, and at the 

point of spend we are at right now, as I said earlier, we are, in 

Pennsylvania, projected to spend over 50 percent of the State’s 

budget in the next decade on these programs. 

So they are important, but we need relief from Washington, flexibility from Washington, whether it is block grant and waivers, so 

that we can operate these in a much more simple fashion to be able 

to serve the people we need. 

Senator KAINE. Mr. Woodson. 

Mr. WOODSON. Yes. One example is that we can invest in social 

interventions that have the consequence of changing the risky behavior of people. In the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for instance, 

during the last five years we have been engaged in a program with 

the school system. We have young adults advisors in the schools 

and we were able to reduce violence by 25 percent in the first three 

months, which means fewer police calls— 

Senator KAINE. Do what works. 
65 

Mr. WOODSON. Do what works. 

Senator KAINE. Secretary Alexander mentioned job training is an 

excellent example of something we should be investing in. 

Mr. WOODSON. We have the data that shows that when you invest in interventions that alter people’s behavior. The police are not 

called and fewer kids are being killed. That is the kind of intervention that we ought to be investing in. 

Senator KAINE. Right. The last thing I will just say to Mr. Murray, I was at the hospital that you built Monday, and you have 

every reason—you and your colleagues—to be extremely proud. 

That is a wonderful facility. 

Mr. MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator AYOTTE. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I want to thank the witnesses who are here. I also want to thank 

my constituent, Katyanne Zink, for her terrific story of success, and 

thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate it 

and I am inspired by reading what you have done. Thank you. 

I wanted to follow up, because I certainly would like to get the 

advice of our panel on how we could better improve what we are 

doing, because I think that, as Senator Warner pointed out, one of 

the issues we have is if you look at the CBO projections on if we 

continue on the trajectory that we are on in terms of interest payments, basically, it would take—crowd out and cover all of the 

spending we are doing as a safety net. I mean, there are certain 

pieces you could include, but the bulk of the spending that we 

would do. So if we do not come up with a deficit reduction plan, 

obviously, we are not going to be able to make the choices we 

would like to make for a safety net, our military, whatever the 

choices we want to make for our nation. So I think that we all recognize the urgency of doing this. 

But some of you had mentioned—first of all, I want to thank Mr. 

Murray for his service. Thank you very much. You mentioned that 

you had some recommendations of how we could improve the experience you had at the VA, including upgrades to VA employees and 

also how we can improve recordkeeping, and I just wanted to get 

your advice on that. 

Mr. MURRAY. Ma’am, the VA medical records are somewhat still 

paper. There was $126 million put into trying to upgrade the system. It came back last week that because the DOD medical record 

system is not necessarily compatible, it is very difficult for the VA 

to even transition to get those same records. Medical files being 

lost is delaying claims being processed. It is adding more work for 

the VA employees and a lot more headache for some of the veterans. That just adds to a lot more of the stress and turning people 

away from looking to get help. 

Senator AYOTTE. Okay. I appreciate your advice on that, and I 

may follow up with some additional questions for you just so that 

I can understand fully how we could be better effective for the VA 

in both delivery and also electronic records, so I appreciate your 

testimony on that. 
66 

Secretary Alexander, as I understood what you had to say, that 

right now, for example, if you’re receiving benefits in Pennsylvania, 

Federal benefits, there’s no way to connect up to a national system 

so we could determine whether, for example, someone is defrauding 

the system and also seeking to obtain them in Arizona or some 

other State. Is this something you think is an important measure 

for us to take? 

Mr. ALEXANDER. As long as the Federal Government is involved 

the way it is, I think that Washington should be monitoring, doing 

oversight on programs, providing broad performance measures for 

States to hit so that States can compete and innovate, and one of 

the things that they can do is establish that national database in 

real time so that States know if somebody is receiving benefits in 

another State. It takes us an enormous amount of time to be able 

to contact States to find if the person actually accesses benefits, 

and the Federal Government—I would see it as one of the duties 

of the Federal Government to be able to do something like that to 

help States out. 

Senator AYOTTE. Also, I would like to ask Mr. Greenstein, I appreciate your being here. You said in your testimony that there are 

a number of reforms we should make, and I believe that Senator 

Warner said that you have been a champion of some reforms that 

we could make to better improve our safety net, our delivery systems. What are those? What recommendations would you make for 

us, because knowing the fiscal challenges that we face, we want to, 

of course, make sure that—I really agree with, certainly, what Mr. 

Woodson is saying, of create opportunities for people so that certainly our panelists and my constituent can have the type of success they have had. But also, if there are ways that we can improve 

our system to more efficiently deliver to make sure that those that 

need it the most get it and that we eliminate fraud, I would certainly appreciate your advice on that. 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Well, I think what Senator Warner was referring to were particularly things he and I and others have talked 

about in the context of deficit reduction. And I think on the spending side, it’s pretty clear that the program that one would look at 

to make the single largest contribution to deficit reduction at this 

time is actually Medicare. And I think there are a variety of things 

to look at in Medicare. 

On the provider side, I think there are some further savings to 

be had in Medicare Advantage and on drug pricing. On the beneficiary side, I think we can ask affluent beneficiaries to pay somewhat higher premiums. I think there are some things that can be 

done to restructure deductibles, cost sharing, and Medigap, so long 

as we do it in a way that does not impede access to care for, low 

income individuals, such as elderly widows at $15,000, $20,000 a 

year. There are other things in other programs, but in terms of the 

dollars, probably the single area at this point, if one is doing a 

budget plan, where one could in a careful way get the dollars is 

Medicare. 

In the long term, we are going to need to find more ways to slow 

the growth of health care costs systemwide and that would yield 

benefits for Medicare, Medicaid, and other areas. There are hopeful 

signs in the degree of slowdown of health care costs in the last few 
67 

years. Medicare costs last year rose only four-tenths of one percent 

per beneficiary. That is remarkable. But we do not know if it will 

last and we have to find ways systemwide to be reforming the delivery of health care that yield significant savings across Medicare 

and Medicaid and other programs. 

Senator AYOTTE. So we need to reform it to preserve it, obviously. I think there is—just based on the sheer numbers. 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Excuse me? 

Senator AYOTTE. We would need to reform Medicare just to preserve it, based on the sheer numbers and the actuarial analysis— 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Yes, but we do need to be careful. There is a 

lot we do not know yet. So we want to do the things we know we 

can do now without reducing the quality of care now, and they will 

fall well short of the savings we need for future decades. And as 

we learn more over the next several years with the big changes 

that are going on in health care delivery now in the private sector 

as well as demonstration projects and research, some private, some 

publicly funded. I think by later in the decade, we will be in a position to come back and do a second round of things that are perhaps 

a little more related to the structure of how the whole U.S. health 

care system delivers care. 

Senator AYOTTE. And Mr. Greenstein— 

Chairman MURRAY. I hate to interrupt, but— 

Senator AYOTTE. I know my time is up— 

Chairman MURRAY. —but we do have Senators who have been 

waiting, so thank you. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you. 

Senator SESSIONS. Could I just say, Madam Chair, that in our 

analysis of the numbers I have used, Medicare was not included. 

We are talking about the means tested poverty programs. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Whitehouse. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Thank you to all of the witnesses, particularly Patrick Murray of 

Rhode Island. I am delighted that you are here and I thank you 

for your wonderful service to our country and I hope that, if you 

are lucky, maybe some of those Georgetown credits can be honored 

at the University of Rhode Island so you get a good URI degree. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MURRAY. It was actually the other way around. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Well, I am delighted to have you here and 

I appreciate it. 

Just to follow the conversation, there are, I think, inevitably, 

hard and necessary choices that have to be made when there is not 

enough money to go around. There are also tragic choices that have 

to be made when you make a bad decision and you miss an opportunity because of it. The hard things, you can understand. The 

tragic stuff would be really a shame. And I am worried that we are 

headed for tragic choices on Medicare and Medicaid if we do not 

appreciate, Mr. Greenstein, what you were saying, which is that 

you cannot cut Medicare and Medicaid enough to solve the problem 

of the underlying explosive cost growth of our health care system. 

We cannot long manage a successful competitive enterprise in 

the United States of America in which 18 percent of our nation’s 
68 

Gross Domestic Product gets burned up by our health care system 

when the most inefficient other country in the world that competes 

with us is at 12 percent. We cannot continue to pay a 50 percent 

inefficiency penalty and ignore that problem and instead look at 

Medicare and Medicaid simply because that is where the real problem happens to touch the Federal budget and then whack the elderly on Medicare, the families with disabled kids on Medicaid, 

while we are ignoring the real underlying problem, and I think 

that is a fight that we really need to clarify, because, among other 

things, we should have Common Cause in the fight for a more efficient health care system. 

Senator Ayotte is from New Hampshire. Some of the best evidence about the opportunities in improving our health care system 

comes out of the Dartmouth studies, which are famous in this area. 

They show this huge variation in our country between States that 

deliver relatively low-cost, high-quality health care and other 

States that deliver very high-cost, low-quality health care. And 

when you drill down even further to cities, there are amazing differences in cost per capita, even adjusted for demographics. Al 

Franken represents Minnesota, which is a particularly high-quality, low-cost State, so he is always complaining about why they 

have to carry other States along that do a lousy job of providing 

decent health care. 

The other great thing about addressing that problem, the real 

problem, is that what we have discovered is that the solutions are 

win-win solutions. And over and over again, private organizations 

that deal in this area—Kaiser, Intermountain in Utah, Gunderson 

Lutheran in Senator Johnson’s home State of Wisconsin, Geisinger 

in Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island is a leader, as well, on this— 

when you improve the quality of care, you lower the cost. When 

people have a real working electronic health record that is integrated, it improves the quality of care. When you are not giving 

people hospital-acquired infections, which are now, I think, killing 

more Americans than, I forget, is it breast cancer and car accidents 

combined? I mean, it is a massive cost on our system, and you can 

be rid of them. We are virtually rid of them in Rhode Island because of work that we have done in our intensive care units. 

We have to focus, I think, relentlessly on that, and I am going 

to use every opportunity I have to speak in this committee and 

anywhere else that I can, when we are talking about Medicare and 

Medicaid benefits being cut to solve this problem, we are looking 

at the wrong problem. We are misdiagnosing the problem. If we get 

it right on delivery system reform and can save $700 billion a year 

in this country, as the President’s Council of Economic Advisers 

says, $750 billion a year, as the Institutes of Medicine say, a trillion dollars a year if you believe the Lewin Group and George 

Bush’s Treasury Secretary, that is where we have to put our energy. 

I am sorry, I am not going to ask a question because I spent all 

my time saying that, but it is immensely frustrating to have this 

conversation over and over again and have it be Groundhog Day 

on cutting Medicare benefits when we are not addressing in a 

meaningful way the most wasteful health care system in the world. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Sanders. 
69 

Senator SANDERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. Murray, thank you very much for your service to our country, and I thank all the panelists for being here. 

I want to put this discussion in a broader context than just Federal Government policies. The United States is the only country in 

the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all 

people as a right. Some 45,000 Americans die each year because 

they do not get to a doctor when they should. 

Secretary Alexander, my understanding—correct me if I am 

wrong—but according to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and 

the Uninsured, in the State of Pennsylvania, and I only pick out 

Pennsylvania because you are sitting here, there are 232,000 children who have no health insurance at all and there are 1.1 million 

adults who have no health insurance at all. Do you believe that all 

people should be entitled to health care? There are 50 million in 

America who have no health insurance. And what happens to a 

family making $25,000 a year who has no health insurance and 

has some kids? 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator, you bring up a good point. I would say 

that all individuals should have access to quality health care. If a 

family, as you say, making $25,000 a year does not have access to 

health insurance, they will, if they need health care, go to an emergency room, which is very costly. 

Senator SANDERS. Good. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Okay. I want to just— 

Senator SANDERS. But let me just interrupt you, if I might— 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes. 

Senator SANDERS. —because your point is exactly correct. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes. 

Senator SANDERS. My understanding is that going to, depending 

on location, going to an emergency room, you agree with me, is not 

the way to do primary health care. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Absolutely not. 

Senator SANDERS. Okay. And it will cost ten times more than 

going to a community health center. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Correct. 

Senator SANDERS. That is my understanding. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes. 

Senator SANDERS. Continue. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Oh, okay. 

Senator SANDERS. But your answer—we talk about government 

policy. You are not suggesting that the solution is we should have 

the hundreds of thousands of kids in Pennsylvania flock to the 

emergency room when they have the flu. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. No, absolutely not, and that is why in my Governor’s budget this year, he has invested more money in the CHIP 

program, which, as you know, was, I think, founded in Pennsylvania, and it is a very efficient program- - 

Senator SANDERS. All right, but my— 

Mr. ALEXANDER. —to be able to— 

Senator SANDERS. I am sorry. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. —to be able to ensure that children have access 

to care. 

Senator SANDERS. I certainly agree with that. 
70 

Mr. ALEXANDER. What I would say is that we are operating an 

inefficient system— 

Senator SANDERS. Yes. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. —that is causing us to have to spend all of this 

money, and because of that, we cannot afford to provide more access to care. So to go back to— 

Senator SANDERS. But in terms of inefficient, my understanding—and certainly Senator Whitehouse and I have been 

working on this issue—he and I understand that, as a nation, we 

spend almost twice as much per person on health care as any 

other, and you know why? Because all the other countries have 

universal national health care systems. Are you an advocate of a 

universal national health care system? 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Not a Federal-run system. 

Senator SANDERS. A Federal-State system, where everybody in 

America— 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Not—the private sector would have to be involved, and so— 

Senator SANDERS. If the private sector is involved, my guess is 

you are not going to cut the cost. 

But let me ask you this. Anybody else can pipe in. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. If— 

Senator SANDERS. I am sorry. I do not have a whole lot of time. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Oh, okay. Sorry. 

Senator SANDERS. I would love to dialogue. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes. 

Senator SANDERS. Five minutes is not a long time. 

Mr. Greenstein, we talk about—and Secretary Alexander raised 

this, Senator Sessions had raised this issue in a broad sense—one 

of the great welfare beneficiaries in this country, of course, as we 

know, is the Walton family, the wealthiest family in America. That 

one family owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the 

American people, and yet one of the reasons they are so rich is the 

wages and benefits they provide to their workers force many of 

those people to be on Medicaid, housing programs, and Food 

Stamps. Do you think we should end the welfare program to the 

wealthiest family in America by raising the minimum wage and by 

asking them, in one form or another, to provide decent wages and 

benefits to their employees? 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. I am very much in favor of raising the minimum wage. I was glad to hear the President propose it last night. 

Raising the minimum wage is not going to be sufficient. Its impact 

on reducing poverty is significant, but well short of what we need. 

But if I could take this into a related area, we have had a lot 

of discussion today about discouraging people from working, marriage penalties and the like. One of the most important steps to 

make progress, not a full answer, just one important step, is actually the Affordable Care Act, because today, if a family is on Medicaid and maybe the mother gets married and the income goes up 

or the family’s income rises, the parents lose eligibility, and if their 

employer does not offer coverage, they are uninsured. That is part 

of the poverty track. 

Changing the law so that people who are lower-middle income, 

moderate families, above the poverty line, go to work and get cov-
71 

erage, whether the employer offers it or not, removes, eases that 

part of the poverty trap and it also reduces inefficiency, because 

one of the inefficiencies you and Senator Whitehouse are talking 

about is all the cost shifting that goes on to deal with uncompensated care for the uninsured. 

Senator SANDERS. Right. Let me just say to Mr. Murray, one of 

the proposals that is being contemplated, which I vigorously oppose, along with the AFL–CIO, every veterans’ organization, every 

senior organization, every disability organization, is the so-called 

chained CPI. That is a recalculation of how you determine what a 

COLA is. It would impact people on Social Security and it would 

impact disabled veterans. 

Madam Chair, what I would like to do is introduce into the 

record a letter from the American Legion in opposition, and virtually every—all of the veterans’ organizations, opposition to the 

chained CPI. Under the chained CPI, a disabled veteran who started receiving benefits at age 30 would have their benefits reduced 

by $1,425 at age 45, $2,300 at age 55, and over $3,000 at age 65. 

I do not believe that is the way you treat disabled veterans in this 

country and I would like to introduce the American Legion letter 

to the record. 

[The letter from the American Legion follows:] 
72 

Th, Amencan 

Legion • WASHINGTON OFFICE * 1608 "K" STREET, N.W. * WASHINGTON, D.C. 20006 .. 

(202) 263·2986 .. 

O,.flCr. Of' THE 

NATIONAL CQMMAHOEJiI 

Honorable Harry Reid, Majority Leader 

United Slates SeMte 

Washington, DC 20510 

Honorable John Boehner, Speaker 

United States House of Representatives 

Washington, DC .20515 

December 14,2012 

Honorable Mitch McConnell, Republican Leader 

United States Senate 

Washington, DC 20510 

Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader 

United States House of Representatives 

Washington, DC 20515 

Dear Leader Reid, Leader McConnell, Speaker Boehner, and Leader Pelosi: 

As efforts to address our nation's debt continue, we understand many proposals and policies are 

being reviewed. One proposal appears to be the changing of the fonnula used to calculate the 

annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) that affects Social Security and .other beneficiaries, 

including many veterans. On behalf of the 2.4 million members of The American Legion I voice 

our opposition to this proposal because of the harmful effects it will have on veterans' and Social 

Security benefits. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimates adopting the chained consumer price index (CPI) to 

calculate annual COLAs could save the government $208 billion over ten years by reducing 

payments ofSociaJ Security, disability, and other benefits. More than half of this amount - $112 

billion - would come from Social Security cuts, which many veterans rely on for both retirement 

and disability benefits. Another 11 percent of the savings - $24 billion - would come from 

Department of Veterans Affairs (V A) benefits, civilian pensions, and military retired pay. The 

American Legion opposes the use of the chained CPI because using it would have significant 

deleterious effects on the benefits millions of veterans depend on in the following ways: 

Social Security Retirement Benefits: Adopting the chained CPI significantly reduces these 

benefits by changing the manner in which COLAs are detennined. Not only would a Social 

Security COLA cut hurt veterans, their families, and their survivors; it is tnisguided public 

policy. Social Security is fiMnced by the contributions of our members and their employers. In 

effect, it belongs to its contributors. It is separate from the rest of the budget. To use it to reduce 

the federal deficit, which it did not cause, breaks the promise of Social Security and it could have 

hannfuI effects on the recruitment and retention of the Anned Forces. 
73 

December 14,2012 Letter to: 

Sen. Maj. Leader Reid 

Sen. Rep. Leader McConnell 

House Speaker Boehner 

House Dem. Leader Pelosi 

Page #2 

V A Service-eonnected Disability Compeasation: Veterans are eligible for V A serviceconnected disability compensation if they become disabled due to injuries or illnesses incurred 

during, or as a result of, military service. Under the chained CPI, which cuts the formula used to 

determine the COLA for V A benefits, disabled veterans who receive this benefit would have 

their benefits reduced by thousands of dollars over their remaining life times. 

VA Peasion Beaefits: Vetemns with low incomes who are permanently and totally disabled, or 

are age 6S and older, may be eligible for pension benefits if they served during a period of war. 

Under the chained CPI, V A pension benefits for veterans aged 6S and older living in poverty 

would be reduced over their remaining life times. 

Social Security and veterans' benefits do need to be based on an accurate measure of inflation. 

The current COLA formula already understates the true cost-of-living increases faced by seniors 

and people with disabilities because it does not take into account their higher share of spending 

devoted to health care, and health care prices rise more rapidly than overall prices. Even though 

veterans who have service-connected disabilities and those receiving pension benefits are 

eligible for VA health care, they will still be impacted by rising out-of-pocket health care costs 

not covered by the VA. Adopting the chained CPI would make their situations much worse over 

time. 

The American Legion understands the need to restore fiscal discipline, but it should not be done 

by reneging on this country's promises to its veterans who already have earned these benefits 

through their service to country. For these veterans and their families, reducing the current 

COLA represents real sacrifice. We ask you not to do harm to those who have already sacrificed 

so much for this great nation. 

Thank you for your consideration. And thank you for what you have done on behalf of the 

nation's servicemembers, veterans, and their families and survivors. 

Sincerely, 

Oa.un.-- E.. • JT_. J:Jtd--:z.-

iJlMESE. 'JIM' KOUTZ 

National Commander 
74 

Chairman MURRAY. Without objection, and thank you, Senator. 

Senator STABENOW. 

Senator STABENOW. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair, 

for this very important hearing and bringing the voices of real people who have experienced the issues and the programs that we are 

working on. Thank you very much. 

I first want to say I agree with Senator Whitehouse, and Senator 

Sanders mentioned, as well, about inefficiencies in the health care 

system. Michigan started something called the Keystone Quality 

Initiative, which is in health reform, which has shown very specifically how we can address cost. 

And, also, I think it is important, Mr. Greenstein, as you talked 

about in health reform, we begin—we are beginning the process of 

bringing down the rate of growth, and so on Medicare Advantage, 

I believe, last year, the premiums went up—were actually reduced 

seven percent because of changes that we have been putting in 

place, and we definitely want to get folks out of emergency rooms 

and into what will be a public-private sector system starting in 

January, where the private sector is involved in a competitive way. 

I would like to go back with my hat on chairing the Agriculture 

Committee, since we have been deeply involved in looking for ways 

to address waste, fraud, and abuse throughout that system, including the nutrition programs, and Mr. Greenstein, thank you for your 

input as we look for ways to be able to do that. Certainly, whether 

it is the Crop Insurance Program, which is a safety net for farmers 

during times of disaster, or nutrition programs, which are a safety 

net for families during times of disaster, we have been looking at 

all of that. 

Could you speak to what I know is actually the error rate in the 

SNAP program? It is my understanding, correct me if I am wrong, 

that the error rate on overpayments is actually 2.9 percent, which 

we found to be less than anything else under the jurisdiction of the 

Agriculture Committee. But could you speak to what is actually the 

error rate as we look at this program and we want to make sure 

it is going to the families that need it? 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Yes. There has really been very strong progress 

here. The error rate, as you said—the combined rate of payments 

to people who are ineligible and overpayments to people who are 

eligible, the two combined are now only about three percent of total 

program payments. That is maybe a fifth below the error rate in 

the tax code, for example. 

I would have to disagree with something Mr. Alexander said earlier in response to a question from Senator Sessions. He questioned 

whether the error rate was really that low because he talked about 

how difficult it was for caseworkers to check all of this information. 

The error rate does not come from what caseworkers do. The error 

rate is computed under very strict rules under which a national 

sample of something like 50,000 households is chosen, and not 

caseworkers but trained investigators spend an average of something like 12 hours per family. They sometimes go to their homes. 

They check the automatic wage records. And then after those reviewers come up with the error rate, Federal investigators take a 

sample of what the State looked at and further review it, and if 
75 

they find that the State investigators underestimated the error 

rate, they adjust it up. 

So, yes, the figure is not perfect, but it is one of the most rigorous set of analyses of error rates we have in any program. If we 

did something as rigorous in the tax code, you would not want to 

know what the result would be. 

So this is not perfect. More progress can be made. But it is significant progress and it is a quite low error rate for a program of 

that size. 

Senator STABENOW. And in the five-year farm bill we pass in the 

Senate, we did even more by looking at areas where there have 

been abuses. In my State of Michigan, we had two people who won 

the lottery that were able to continue on food assistance. We eliminated that and looked at a variety of other things to tighten up the 

system and to actually create more savings. And so I am actually 

very proud of the collective work that we have done to focus on 

waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Could you also speak, though, Mr. Greenstein, and maybe you 

did earlier, but just because the food programs follow the economy, 

and certainly as all of these programs do, when we have more crop 

disasters, Crop Insurance goes up. It goes down when we have 

fewer disasters. In the area of SNAP, it is my understanding the 

CBO number that we have received, the new number we are working with as we write a new farm bill is that the food programs are 

actually going to be down over the next ten years by $11.5 billion 

because the economy is getting better, people are going back to 

work, and they, frankly, do not need to have the help. Could you 

speak to that more? 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. Yes. SNAP is one of the most responsive of all 

programs to the economy. The CBO projections are that by about 

2019, SNAP spending as a share of the economy will be all the way 

back to its 1995 level. It has gone way up— 

Senator STABENOW. Nineteen-ninety-five? 

Mr. GREENSTEIN. As a share of GDP. It is also—there has been 

a little bit of misunderstanding. Some people look back just ten 

years and say, look at how big the increase in SNAP was. But ten 

years ago was an unusual low point. What happened is that following passage of welfare reform in 1996, something unintended 

occurred in the initial implementation which was lots of people 

leaving welfare for work lost their Food Stamps, as well, which 

then lessened the incentive to go to work. There was a bipartisan 

agreement that this should be addressed and it was. And we had 

ten years ago a remarkably low percentage of eligible working poor 

families getting Food Stamps. You do not want a situation where 

everybody on welfare gets something and the working poor do not. 

So that has been corrected and that contributed to the expansion 

of the program. 

But even with that, the CBO estimates show that by 2018, we 

will be back to levels of many years ago in terms of SNAP expenditures as a share of GDP. And if a program’s costs are not rising 

over future decades as a share of GDP, then it cannot really be 

said to be contributing to the long-term fiscal problem. 

Senator STABENOW. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 
76 

We have run out of our time here, and I want to really thank 

the participation of all our colleagues on the committee. I especially 

want to thank all of our panel members today, particularly Tara 

Marks and Patrick Murray. As I said at the beginning of this hearing, I am really committed to making sure that your stories are 

heard and your families and communities have a seat at the table 

as we discuss these really important issues, and today’s hearing 

was a small but important step in making progress on that. 

As a reminder to all of my colleagues, additional statements and/ 

or questions for any of the witnesses from today’s hearing are due 

in by 6:00 p.m. today, to be submitted to the Chief Clerk in Room 

624. 

I do plan on the committee holding one or more hearings the 

week we return, the week of the 25th, and we will have more information to your offices on that in the next several days. 

With that, again, thank you very much to all of our witnesses 

and I call this hearing to a close. 

[Whereupon, at 12:17 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
77 

Statement for the Record 

from Senator Angus S. King, Jr. 

Impact of Budget Decisions on Families and Communities 

February 13, 2013 

Senate Budget Committee 

Chairman Murray, Senator Sessions, fellow Members of the Budget Committee: Thank you for the 

opportunity to discuss the federal budget and its long-term impact on American families and 

communities. Too often, discussions about budgets, debt, and deficits fail to include the perspectives of 

ordinary Americans and those most affected by decisions made at the federal level. As this Committee 

moves forward with our work to address our nation's challenges, I believe that we must balance our 

commitment to safety net programs with the need to put America back on a path to fiscal responsibility 

and economic prosperity. 

I would also like to thank all of our hearing's witnesses for sharing their time and expertise, which 

provide valuable insights to this Committee. 
78 

Patrick Murray 

Question for the Record 

From Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) 

February 20, 2013 

Question: While you were able to briefly discuss your recommendations on how fo improve the 

experience at the Veteran's Administration (VA), please provide a more detailed description of 

each of those recommendations so that Congress can create a better, more efficient VA. 

Answer: The fundamental problem facing the departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and 

Defense (000) in developing the Integrated Electronic Health Record (iHER) is the inability of 

the three military medical commands (Navy, Army and Air Force) to communicate with one 

another. From this point, V A has a near-impossible task of deciphering military health records 

into something that is compatible with VA's own proprietary health care record system. 

When Secretaries Panetta and Shinseki broke the news last month that they would scrap plans to 

develop iHER from the ground up, Senators like Committee Chairman Patty Murray chastised 

V A and 000 for wasting more than $1 billion over the last four years on the project. 

As a wounded Marine who relied on the Navy's health care system, but needed to recover at 

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I learned back in 2006 that the different military networks 

can't easily speak to one other. How did VA and 000 not see this coming? Now, the secretaries 

are saying they can set benchmarks to integrate the military record-keeping systems without 

much more investment. How did it take four years and a billion dollars to figure that out? 

Seamless record-keeping is long overdue and, if implemented, could save time and money for 

every department involved. The first step is reconciling the record systems for each military 

branch, then allowing seamless communication between the military and V A. Again, as a 

veteran, it makes no sense to me that V A - a federal agency that only serves former military 

personnel - still cannot communicate readily with 000. 

V A has taken steps to improve how it interacts with veterans online, but they seem to have gone 

about it the wrong way. Veterans Benefits Administration developed the eBenefits online portal, 

which is based on the military's DEERS system, and the Veterans Health Administration 

developed its proprietary MyHealtheVet portal. On eBenefits, veterans can check the status of 

their disability claims, GI Bill processing and apply for home loan eligibility. On MyHealtheVet, 

veterans can review V A medical records and send secure messages to care providers. 

Unfortunately, veterans need to enroll in the systems at different times, veterans have a different 

username and password for each system, and the systems are not interoperable. To the average 

veteran, this makes no sense. While both portals offer good tools and seem to be improving 

every day, veterans would be better served to have access to one online portal through which 

they could navigate all V A services. 

VA is not alone in managing redundant and confusing programs designed to better serve 

veterans. When veterans don't know where to go for the right answer, odds are that a program 
79 

isn't working correctly. This is why I believe savings could be easily found across the federal 

government by better managing resources and initiatives for veterans across federal agencies. 

Veterans should have a single point of access and efforts should be managed by a single point of 

contact to avoid redundancy across agencies like VA, 000, Housing and Urban Development, 

Small Business Administration, Department of Homeland Security, or any of the others with 

responsibility over a veterans' program. 

When I was filing my V A disability claim in 2006, my paper military health care record was 

temporarily lost in transit around VA. Eventually [ learned that it arrived at a V A regional office 

in Colorado. I share this story because it emphasizes both shortcomings I see in the current V A 

system: Poor record-keeping and the quality of employees. 

In 2006, there was no reason why VA and 000 health care systems couldn't communicate 

effectively, and it's even more inexcusable today. Plus, when I asked some pointed questions to a 

V A employee about why my records were lost, the person on the other end of the phone insisted 

that I either lived in Colorado or somehow sent it to their office in error. I was furiousespecially now that I know another regional office likely farmed out my claim to the regional 

office in Colorado, unbeknown to me and the VA employee on the other end of the phone. 

Still, why must VA employees consistently treat me and my fellow veterans as if we're a 

burden? I believe that we are VA's customers and I know that Secretary Shinseki agrees with 

me. VA has invested a tremendous amount of taxpayer money trying to convince veterans from 

my generation to come into the V A system and use our earned benefits. These remarkable 

benefits like health care and the GI Bill can help veterans like me get our lives in order after 

military service. Unfortunately, many veterans are driven away because of bad experiences 

interacting with ambivalent V A personnel both in person and over the phone. 

[ do not want to lump all VA employees together. Some of the men and women who work for the 

department are hard-working and dedicated. But they are consistently overshadowed by the "bad 

apples." In an effort to improve this situation, V A first needs to invest in quality veteran 

employees. Veterans like dealing with veterans, so I echo Secretary Shinseki's call to make VA 

the most "veteran-friendly" employer in the federal government. Beyond this, employees need 

better training. They need to understand customer service, strive to meet the needs of their 

customers, and face reprimand if they fail to meet expectations. When I worked for Turner 

Construction, I knew that if! consistently failed at my job, Turner would have no qualms about 

firing me. U nderperforming V A employees need to face the same kind of scrutiny. 

Thank you for the opportunity and I welcome any additional questions you may have on this 

issue. 
80 

Question #1: 

During the hearing, I questioned you about your reconunendations on how to reform our safety 

net programs, and you responded with some recommendations on Medicare and Medicaid. 

Please describe any recommendations you have for any other welfare or poverty programs. 

While the safety net has gotten stronger in recent years for low-income working families who 

struggle to make ends meet because of their low wages, the safety net has gotten weaker for poor 

families in which a parent struggles to fmd and keep a job. More could be done to improve 

outcomes for these families and doing so could significantly improve prospects for the children in 

the families. 

Using Census data and counting non-cash benefits as income, as most analysts favor, the number 

(and percentage) of children living in deep poverty below half of the poverty line - increased by 

650,000 between 1995 and 2005, even before the economy turned down.' The welfare law played a 

role here. On the one hand, changes wrought by the 1996 welfare law, in combination with 

expansions in the EITC and, in the :ate 1990s, a very strong labor market, pulled more singlemother families into the labor me -t and raised many of their incomes. This was a very positive 

development. But at the same t .• c. the welfare changes also deepened poverty among another 

group of single-mother families - including some mothers with less education and skills and more 

physical, mental health, or other problems. Increased earnings, supplemented by the EITC, lifted 

some families out of poverty. But other families fell deeper into poverty as a result of having neither 

earnings nor cash assistance (or earnings that the 105' of cash assistance more than offset). 

The data indicate that this was the primary cause of the increase in deep poverty. In 1995, cash 

assistance provided by tile former AI'DC program lifted 2.2 million children out of deep poverty. It 

raised 62 percent of the children who otherwise would have been below half of the poverty line above 

that level. By 2005, cash assistance provided under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families 

(IAN F) block grant lifted 650,000 children above half of the poverty level, or just 21 percent of 

those who otherwise would be in deep poverty. 

The same phenomenon is reflected in a recent study by poverty researcbers that finds that both 

the number of families and the number of children who live below a standard that the World Bank 

uses to measure serious poverty in third-world countries -living on less than $2 per person per day 

- has doubled in the United States since 1995: 

These fmdings are of particular concern in light of emerging research tbat shows that among lowincome families, the level of family income when a child is young affects his or her school 

achievement and may well influence later employment and earnings as an adult.' 

It bears noting that were it not for SNAP, the rise in severe poverty would be substantially worse. 

The data show that SNAP cuts nearly in half the percentage of children living below the 

1 In this measure, non-cash benefits are counted (and taxes subtracted), consistent with the broad measures of poverty, 

2 H. Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, "Extreme Poverty in the United States, 1996 to 2011," National Poverty Center, 

2012, http://npc.umich.edu/publications/polic),briefs/bricf28! 

C: \ Users \je40191 \AppData \Local\Microsoft\ Windows \ Temporary Internet 

Files \ Content. Outlook \SY64WWP2\Ayotte qfr 2-25-13.docx 
81 

aforementioned World Bank poverty standard. (In 1996, a number of the Republican members of 

the House Ways and Means Committee responded to criticisms that the welfare reform legislation 

would harm poor children in part by noting that food stamps would remain as a floor under poor 

children.) 

This evidence suggests that the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program could 

be doing a better job in helping the most disadvantaged parents prepare for, find and keep a job. 

States from across the political spectrum have reported that overly prescriptive federal TANF 

requirements have hindered some of their efforts to innovate within their TANF programs and 

develop more effective employment programs. And, many states have indicated that they would 

prefer to be held accountable for outcome measures - such as their success in helping people get 

jobs - than be required to comply with detailed federal "bookkeeping" rules that limit their ability 

to tailor employment services to the needs of their families. 

The Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance last year to allow states to apply 

for waivers of those prescriptive rules if they were willing to be held accountable for improving real, 

measurable employment outcomes for TANF recipients. Given the importance of finding more 

effective ways to help parents succeed in today's labor market, allowing states more flexibility to test 

new approaches - and carefully evaluating the effectiveness of those approaches - holds promise 

for improving outcomes for both parents and their children. 

2 
82 

Response to Questions from Senator King 

Question. Bob, thank you for your testimony on the impact of federal budget decisions on 

families and communities. In your statement, you advocate that deficit reduction should be 

designed carefully to not impede our economic recovery and that it should not increase poverty or 

adversely affect the disadvantaged. Both the Simpson-Bowles report and the 2011 bipartisan Gang 

of Six plan share this principle. 

Given that the unsustainable rise in health care costs is the largest single threat to long-term fiscal 

sustainability, how would you advise addressing increases in health care expenditures while 

maintaining access to quality care? What steps can this committee take to ensure that we protect the 

most vulnerable members of society without simply shifting the costs to states, individuals, and 

private employers? 

Answer. Some changes to Medicare can achieve budgetary savings over the next ten years while 

preserving Medicare's defined benefit, and without raising the eligibility age or otherwise shifting 

costs onto vulnerable beneficiaries. These include: 

• Ending the excess prices that Medicare pays for drugs for low-income beneficiaries, 

• Eliminating remaining overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans, 

• Reducing payments to post-acute-care providers, as proposed by the Administration, 

• Expanding the scope and size of Medicare's income-tested premiums, and 

• Restructuring Medicare cost-sharing and limiring Medigap and other supplemental insurance 

in a way that protects low- and moderate-income beneficiaries. 

Additional steps will need to be taken to slow the growth of health care costs in the longer run, 

but we currendy lack much of the information needed to do so without impairing access or reducing 

quality. The Affordable Care Act begins to restructure the health care payment and delivery system 

to stop paying providers for more visits or procedures and begin rewarding effective, high-value 

health care. If successful, the ACA reforms hold the potential to both bend the cost curve and 

improve the quality of care. Making major changes in Medicare before we know the results of these 

efforts, however, would be ill-advised and could produce unintended consequence. Fortunately, the 

recent slowdown in the growth of health care costs reduces pressure for overly hasty action and 

provides time to collect the necessary data. 

Question. In your testimony, you also raise concerns about the growth of federal tax expenditures 

as a share of the federal budget. It is my view that reforming tax expenditures in order to achieve 

credible deficit reduction should be prioritized before cutting federal discretionary spending. 

What recommendations do you have for this committee on reforms to our tax code? 

Of these recommendations, which do you see as having the most potential for achieving 

bipartisan consensus? 

Answer. Senator King, I agree with you that future deficit-reduction efforts should prioritize 

reductions in tax expenditures over further reductions in discretionary spending. Both defense and 
83 

nondefense discretionary funding are subject to tight caps imposed as part of the Budget Control 

Act in 2011. Indeed, under these caps, nondefense spending by 2017 will fall to its lowestlevel since 

1962 (the earliest year on record). This part of the budget funds a diverse set of programs, including 

those such as education and scientific research that will affect the future productivity of the 

economy. So further reductions would be unwise. In contrast, the focus of the tax policy changes 

to date has not been on tax expenditures, and this area of the budget is ripe for reform. 

The soundest approach to tax expenditure reform would be to examine each tax expenditure on 

its merits and to eliminate or restructure expenditures individually, as warranted. However during 

last year's budget negotiations and even during the Presidential campaign, there was some bipartisan 

interest in addressing tax expenditures through a type of across-the-board limitation. This approach 

has the attraction of trearing a number of tax expenditures in a similar fashion and obviates the need 

for Congress to develop extensive reforms specific to a large number of individual provisions. A 

well-designed limitation could retain tax subsidies to encourage activities regarded as producing 

social or economic benefits, but limit those subsidies to make them more cost-effective and less 

regressive, and deliver substantial deficit reduction savings. 

Of the various limitation proposals that have emerged to date, the President's proposal to limit 

the value of itemized deductions and certain other tax expenditures to 28 cents on the dollar has the 

soundest design. It would retain tax incentives for desired activities (such as charitable giving) rather 

than eliminating such incentives altogether for some taxpayers, reduce tax-code inefficiencies (under 

which high-income taxpayers get larger tax-incentive subsidies to undertake certain activities than 

lower- and middle-income households do, even when the high-income taxpayers generally would 

engage in the activities anyway and lower- and middle-income households are the ones more 

responsive to the tax incentives), and be progressive. 

Policymakers also should scrutinize, and narrow or close, various tax breaks that allow very 

affluent individuals to pay much lower or no taxes on certain forms of income. In many cases, these 

tax breaks cannot be addressed through an across-the-board tax expenditure limit, or it may make 

more sense to restmcture (or repeal) these tax breaks directly. Examples of such tax breaks include 

the "carried interest" tax break on the compensation of hedge fund managers and the loophole that 

allows S corporation owners to avoid their full payroll tax liability. 

(85) 

THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL INVESTMENTS ON 

PEOPLE, COMMUNITIES, AND LONG–TERM 

ECONOMIC GROWTH 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:31 a.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Wyden, Whitehouse, Warner, Baldwin, Kaine, King, Sessions, Toomey, Johnson, Ayotte, and Wicker. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and 

Marcus Peacock, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. Good morning. This hearing will come to 

order, and I want to thank all of our witnesses who are here with 

us today, who I will introduce in just a few minutes, as well as our 

Ranking Member, Senator Sessions, and all of our colleagues who 

are joining us here today. 

The Budget Committee is a place where some of the most important questions facing our Nation are asked and hopefully where we 

can come together in a responsible way to answer them. Many of 

those questions will be about how we can tackle our debt and deficit challenges responsibly, and while this is important, it is not all 

this Committee is about. 

A budget is a reflection of our values and priorities. It is a vision 

for what we believe creates economic success and broad-based national prosperity. It outlines our short- and our long-term economic 

policies. It is where we make decisions about what kind of Nation 

we want to be now and where we lay down the foundation for accomplishing even more in the years ahead. 

This last point is what we will be discussing in today’s hearing— 

the role and impact of Federal investment on people, communities, 

and long-term economic growth. And it is going to be a critical part 

of the pro-growth, pro-middle-class budget resolution we are working to write, because there is no question getting our debt and deficit under control is a challenge we have to confront. 

But we have many other challenges we cannot ignore. We need 

to repair our crumbling roads, bridges, and highways. We need to 

ensure our students receive an education that offers them the opportunities they deserve and ensures our Nation has a skilled 
86 

workforce for the 21st century. And we need to fight to maintain 

our edge in research and innovation because the next Apples or 

Microsoft or Google should be started right here in the United 

States. 

These are the kinds of investments that make us stronger, and 

as any businessperson will tell you, when you have a budget problem, the last areas you want to cut are those that will help you 

grow. Slashing R&D or capital investments may allow a business 

to look like they are lean and efficient in the short term, but only 

by undermining their competitive advantages over the long run. 

The same is true for the Federal Government. Both parties used 

to understand this. 

Strong Federal investments played a key role in the broad-based 

economic growth that carried millions of families into the middle 

class in the 20th century. 

The Simpson-Bowles Commission report stated that one of its 

guiding principles and values was to invest in education, infrastructure, and high-value research and development to help our 

economy grow, to keep us globally competitive, and to make it easier for businesses to create jobs. But that bipartisan consensus 

seems to have eroded. 

Recently, more and more lawmakers here in Washington, D.C., 

have focused on shrinking short-term numbers, regardless of the 

impact on jobs and economic growth. This has led to attempts, too 

often successful, to choke off the investments today that could 

make all the difference down the line. 

The fact is that if we slash our investments in infrastructure like 

roads and bridges, we are not really saving money at all. We are 

making things worse. We are weakening our basis for private investment and economic growth; we are putting public safety at 

risk; and congestion is taxing families times with painfully long 

commutes and health-threatening pollution. 

Roads are going to need to be fixed eventually. Bridges will need 

to be strengthened at some point before they collapse, and waiting 

will only make the work more expensive when we eventually do it. 

And what will happen in the meantime? 

When a bridge deteriorates, at some point it is no longer safe for 

heavier traffic such as emergency vehicles or large trucks. When 

roads fill with potholes, it makes traffic worse and driving more 

dangerous. So our families are less safe, our businesses cannot 

move their goods quickly, and all just to save money in the short 

term. It is short-sighted and does not make sense. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers released a report card 

for America’s infrastructure back in 2009. Our country got a D. 

More than 70,000 of our bridges across the country have been 

deemed ‘‘structurally deficient.’’ We are not keeping up with the repairs and have not for years, much less accounting for the growth 

of our country’s population. 

This is an area where you see agreement from the U.S. Chamber 

of Commerce, major labor groups like AFL–CIO, and economists 

and policy experts across the political spectrum. Investing in infrastructure creates jobs today, makes our families safer, and lays 

down a strong foundation for long- term growth. 
87 

We are going to be hearing more about transportation infrastructure investments from one of our witnesses, the Under Secretary 

for Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, Polly 

Trottenberg. But this is a clear case where investment cuts make 

our short-term budget deficit look better on paper, but cost us more 

in the long run and make other deficits worse—in this case, our infrastructure deficit. 

But it is not the only one. When we slash investments in our 

schools, Pell grants, or worker training programs, we increase our 

skills and education deficit. This is not good for our students and 

workers, and it is devastating for our economy over the long run. 

Investments in education from early childhood programs through 

college are some of the smartest the Federal Government can 

make. 

According to a study done at the University of Chicago by Nobel 

Prize winner Dr. James Heckman, high-quality early childhood 

education programs have a 7- to 10-percent rate of return through 

better educational outcomes. We also know those with a high 

school diploma or less are more likely to be unemployed, to be 

among the long-term unemployed, and earn substantially less than 

their counterparts. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 

workers with a college degree can expect to make about $1 million 

more over the course of their career than those with a high school 

diploma. 

But this is not just a problem for the people and families directly 

affected. It is a challenge for our Nation. If our workers do not 

have the skills they need to fill the jobs of today and tomorrow, our 

economy and our businesses pay the price, too. Among our Nation’s 

manufacturers, 82 percent report a moderate to serious skills gap 

in their skilled positions. Seventy-four percent say that this skills 

gap has negatively impacted their business and 70 percent expect 

it to get worse. 

McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the U.S. will need to 

produce roughly a million more postsecondary degrees by 2020, 40 

percent more than today, to ensure we have the skilled workers our 

economy needs. 

One of the witnesses we will hear from today, Tony Carnevale, 

the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and 

the Workforce, has estimated that by 2018 nearly two-thirds of 

U.S. jobs will require some education or training beyond a high 

school diploma. 

We know these investments pay off. In my home State of Washington, for example, a study found that the return on investment 

is 7:1 for the resources put into serving dislocated workers, 13:1 for 

the postsecondary professional and technical education offered 

through the Perkins Act, 87:1 on Perkins funding at the secondary 

school level, and an astounding 91:1 on apprenticeship programs. 

We simply cannot expect our economy to grow in a way that creates broad-based prosperity if we continue allowing our skills and 

education deficit to increase. If our businesses are going to be creating 21st century jobs, we need our students and workers to have 

21st century skills. 

Today we will also be hearing more about the role of Federal investments in research and innovation from Hunter Rawlings, the 
88 

president of the Association of American Universities. These investments have led to private sector growth in areas from pharmaceuticals to the Internet to GPS and much more. They have led to 

new industries, new drugs, new interventions, and new jobs. They 

have led to private sector growth in areas such as pharmaceuticals, 

the Internet, communication technology, products that keep our 

troops safe, the development of alternative energy sources and improved energy efficiencies, and much more. They have led to new 

industries, new drugs, new interventions. They have provided jobs. 

They have expanded our economy. Today 40 percent of U.S. GDP, 

$6 trillion, comes from companies that did not exist 30 years ago. 

Innovation is beneficial for the economy overall but also for families. A recent review by the Hamilton Project described how innovation improves life expectancy, makes technology affordable, and 

improves standards of living. 

The United States has been a leader in this area for decades, and 

we cannot afford for countries that understand the value of these 

long-term investments to overtake us. Cutting these investments 

off would help our budget deficit in the short term, but only at the 

expense of long-term increases in our research and innovation deficits, and that does not make sense. 

Although the role of Federal investments is an important issue 

for us to address in the context of the pro- growth budget resolution we are currently working to write, this conversation is especially appropriate as we head toward the March 1st sequestration 

deadline. 

I remain hopeful that we can find a balanced and bipartisan replacement to sequestration in the next few days, but if we cannot, 

investments in people, communities, and innovation would be hit 

hard. According to the White House, Title I education funding 

would be eliminated for more than 2,700 schools, cutting support 

for nearly 1.2 million students and putting thousands of teacher 

jobs at risk. Head Start would be eliminated for approximately 

70,000 students, and over 7,000 special education staff would lose 

their jobs. The National Institutes of Health and the National 

Science Foundation would have to delay or end scientific projects 

and make hundreds fewer research awards, which would mean an 

estimated 200,000 fewer jobs across America. And the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research would face cutbacks which 

would cause delays on new drug approval. 

This, of course, would come alongside the hundreds of thousands 

of jobs lost, major cuts to defense and nondefense programs, and 

the economic impact that could be devastating to our fragile economy. 

Even for people who think that investments need to be cut, sequestration is an awful and short-sighted way to do it. And I hope 

Republicans join us soon and work with us to replace it with a balanced mix of responsible spending cuts and new revenue from 

those who can afford it most. 

Now, I already mentioned the three witnesses that were invited 

by the majority, and Senator Sessions will introduce the witnesses 

he has invited, but I want to thank David Malpass and Stephen 

Ferguson as well for taking the time to be here today. 
89 

And I am looking forward to hearing more from all of our witnesses about the role of Federal investments and the impact of 

automatic cuts. This is going to be an important issue for us as we 

work on our budget resolution here in the Senate. 

We absolutely need to tackle our debt and deficit. We need to cut 

spending responsibly. And of course, for Government investments 

to truly pay off, we need private industry to succeed and innovate 

and create jobs. 

I believe smart Federal investments will create jobs and help the 

middle class right now, they will help lay down a strong foundation 

for long-term and broad-based economic growth, and they will help 

position our country and our economy to compete and win in the 

21st century global economy. 

Recent Republican budgets have moved away from these critical 

national investments, but I am really hopeful that the bipartisan 

work can continue to make sure we leave our children a stronger 

country than the one we received. And I am looking forward to engaging the American public in this debate that is so central to their 

economic future. 

And with that, I will turn it over to Senator Sessions for his 

opening statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I appreciate this hearing, which deals with an important subject—Government spending, and long-term economic growth. It provides an important opportunity to address the economic harm that is caused 

by excessive Federal spending and debt. 

We will examine studies showing that the expansion of the Federal Government can actually depress economic growth, hurting all 

Americans, especially those who work their way out of poverty. 

The truth is that growth and prosperity is furthered by a lean, 

responsive, limited Government that can sustain itself, not an evergrowing, debt-incurring, amorphous entity like the Great Blob. 

Madam Chairman, you mentioned that 40 percent of businesses 

did not exist 10 years ago. I would doubt that any of those—what 

is that? 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. I am sorry. I did not hear the Ranking 

Member. Did he say ‘‘the great block’’ or ‘‘the great blob’’? 

Senator SESSIONS. I said ‘‘the Great Blob.’’ 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. ‘‘Blob,’’ okay. 

Senator SESSIONS. Metaphorically suggesting that ever-growing 

Federal investments can turn into a Federally financed Great Blob. 

So those businesses for the most part, I am sure, had 

no knowledge whatsoever of Washington, D.C., participating in 

their creation. And we do need to deal with cutting spending responsibly, but what we are seeing today is nothing is responsible. 

Every cut in spending is resisted as being fatally damaging to the 

Republic. 

And I do not think slowing the growth in spending—which is 

what we are talking about. Indeed, we are projected to increase 

spending in the next decade by $10 trillion. The cuts in the Budget 

Control Act would have allowed that increase to go up 8 instead 

of 10. 
90 

Tomorrow will mark 1,400 days since the Senate held a budget, 

but hopefully we can work our way through this year and get us 

a budget. I think it will help us. 

But today we will hear from two witnesses who will explain the 

human consequences of large Government and surging deficits. 

David Malpass, a writer who writes for Forbes and the Wall Street 

Journal, a former staffer on this Committee for tax policy and 

many other such positions in his background, will review the growing body of evidence about excessive spending and how large debt 

suppresses growth, job creation, and lowers—keeps higher wages 

from occurring. 

Steve Ferguson, chairman of the Cook Group, a private entity, a 

business, will talk about how the President’s health care law and 

its new taxes are hampering medical innovation and research that 

could save thousands of lives. 

We remain on an unsustainable debt course, and one major reason for that is the lack of honesty in evaluating the cost of new 

spending programs and the benefits, which are exaggerated. Invariably, the projected costs are underestimated—good politics maybe, 

but not good policy. 

A new Government report dramatically proves that the promises 

made assuring the Nation that the largest new entitlement program in history since Medicare, the President’s health care program, would not add a dime to the long- or short-term debt of 

America was false. Just this morning, the nonpartisan Government 

Accountability Office released a report I requested regarding the 

deficit impact of the President’s health care law. The results of this 

brand-new report confirm everything critics and Republicans were 

saying about the cost of this bill and reveal the dramatic falsehoods 

that were used to push it to passage. 

At the signing ceremony for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the President claimed that his law would ‘‘lower 

costs for families and for businesses and for the Federal Government.’’ The President went on to say, ‘‘It is paid for. It is fiscally 

responsible.’’ 

On her website, then-Speaker Pelosi said the bill is ‘‘the great 

deficit reduction effort in two decades.’’ 

Speaking before a joint session of Congress in 2009, the President had this to say: ‘‘And here’s what you need to know. First, I 

will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now 

or in the future. I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, 

period, now or in the future, period.’’ Pretty much like ‘‘Read my 

lips.’’ 

But the GAO’s investigation reveals these claims to be false. According to GAO, under a realistic set of assumptions, the health 

care law will increase the deficit by seven-tenths of 1 percent of 

GDP or roughly $6.2 trillion over the next 75 years—$6.2 trillion 

unfunded liability of the United States. In other words, the GAO 

reveals that the big tax increases in the bill come nowhere close 

to covering the even more massive spending. Again, $6.2 trillion is 

only a fraction of what the bill will spend, but that number is how 

much new deficit spending, excluding interest costs, will result despite trillions in new taxes. 
91 

The Big Government crowd in Washington manipulated the 

numbers in order to get the financial score they wanted, in order 

to get their bill passed and to increase power and influence. The 

goal was not truth or financial responsibility, but to pass the bill. 

This is how a country goes broke. It is also how the economy and 

jobs are destroyed. 

Economic research by a wide spectrum of organizations has discovered harmful economic impacts from excessive levels of Government debt. When total Government debt rises near or above 90 percent of GDP—and our gross debt now is over 100 percent—the 

economy slows, resulting in fewer jobs, smaller paychecks for working Americans. 

Using this research, Dr. Salim Furth from Heritage estimated 

that even ‘‘a two-tenths of 1 percentage point drop in the annual 

GDP growth over the next 10 years would cost Americans $1.9 trillion in income.’’ He further estimates that from 2009 to 2011, 3 

years has already cost Americans $200 billion in foregone growth, 

which is nearly a full year of normal GDP growth. 

At this point in history, the key to producing greater economic 

growth is returning Government spending to responsible levels. Attempting to combat the debt drag through higher taxes just will 

not work. 

First, the Federal debt is projected to grow by $9 trillion over the 

next decade, and there is no tax hike large enough to stem that 

tide. 

Second, raising taxes would produce the same economic harms as 

high debt. It drains wealth and weakens the private job-creating 

sector. 

The problem is spending is growing faster than the economy, 

which is what Mr. Elmendorf told us at the last hearing. There is 

no free lunch. Nothing comes from nothing. Everything consumed 

will be paid for sooner or later. Reforming and making more productive failing Government programs is not only an economic necessity but a moral necessity. Raising taxes instead of reforming 

Government means turning a blind eye to the colossal waste of taxpayers’ money that too often occurs. 

I am not aware of any serious leadership effort from the President or his top officials to systematically reduce waste and abuse 

and to save money, as we have seen from Governors and mayors 

and families all over America that continues daily. I know Senator 

Warner is working on a bipartisan effort, and I understanding that. 

So how can anyone contend that eliminating waste, fraud, duplication, and abuse is bad for America? A leaner, more productive, 

more competitive American Government is certainly good for America and American workers. It almost seems the President believes 

all spending is stimulative to the economy and no spending, even 

wasteful spending, should be cut. Raising taxes instead of reforming Government means hurting the very people who need it the 

most, need help the most. 

For too long, Washington has defended the bureaucracy at the 

expense of the American people. Until this National Government 

gets serious about containing runaway costs and establishing efficient management programs, the American people should not even 

consider sending one more dime to this Government. The budget 
92 

process provides us with an opportunity to right that wrong and to 

restore growth and opportunity to the Nation. 

And we do believe in infrastructure, but I would just note that 

in the stimulus bill that spent over $800 billion, only 4 percent 

went to roads and bridges and less than 1 percent of our total 

spending each year goes to roads and bridges. So when we talk 

about spending, we are not talking about cutting only highway 

funds, many of which are productive and help us make our Nation 

healthier. 

So, thank you, Madam Chairman, for your leadership. I look forward to working with you throughout this budget process. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

With that, I am going to turn to our witnesses. We do have a 

vote at noon, and I want to make sure everybody has a chance to 

ask questions, so I am going to ask you, if possible, to limit your 

statement to 5 minutes for us today, and we will begin with Ms. 

Trottenberg. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE POLLY TROTTENBERG, 

UNDER SECRETARY FOR POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 

TRANSPORTATION 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here 

today to testify on behalf of the Obama administration about the 

importance of transportation investments to our Nation’s economy, 

our States and local communities, and the traveling public. 

From waterways to railroads, highways, airways, and transit, 

our transportation system has been critical to our Nation’s economic success, providing remarkable mobility and opportunity to 

our citizens and their families, and fueling the prosperity of our 

businesses, factories, and farms. 

Transportation is one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, 

with transportation-related goods and services representing nearly 

10 percent of the Nation’s $15.6 trillion GDP. 

The transportation sector is one of the largest generators of highpaying jobs, accounting for 11.4 million jobs in 2011. The transportation sector has helped generations of Americans secure a middleclass life for themselves and their families. 

But our transportation system is aging. Much of it was built 

more than 50 years ago, and in some cases more than 100 years 

ago, and it is in need of investment, innovation, increased efficiency, and new technologies. 

Our economic competitors in Europe and Asia continue to invest 

significantly more in maintaining, modernizing, and expanding 

their transportation networks. In 2012, the World Economic Forum 

rated the competitiveness of U.S. infrastructure as 14th in the 

world, below Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and Korea. 

Beginning with the State of the Union address 2 weeks ago and 

continuing with his proposal released last week, President Obama 

called for $50 billion in increased infrastructure investment to create jobs and spur economic growth. The President proposed a ‘‘FixIt First’’ Program that would direct $40 billion towards reducing 

the backlog of deferred maintenance on highways, bridges, transit 
93 

systems, and airports nationwide, along with $10 billion for innovative transportation investments. 

The President also proposed a Partnership to Rebuild America to 

attract private capital to upgrade what our businesses need most: 

efficient roads, rails, mass transit systems, waterways, and ports to 

move people and goods, and safe, modern energy, water, and telecommunications systems. 

The proposals that the President recently made build on the Administration’s work over the past 4 years to strengthen the Nation’s transportation infrastructure. The administration worked 

with Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act in 2009. And it is true, Senator, it was a small portion on 

transportation, but it was the most significant transportation public works program since the New Deal. The Recovery Act funded 

in the transportation sector 15,000 transportation jobs across the 

country and created tens of thousands of jobs. 

We are also grateful that Congress recently passed the Moving 

Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP–21). It has provided predictable surface transportation funding for States and localities, and it has been a major priority for the Department. The 

bill makes great progress in improving safety, especially in transit, 

expanding the TIFIA credit program to get more private sector involvement in our transportation system, focusing on freight policy, 

better planning, and moving us towards a more performance-driven 

system. 

While we are implementing the bill, we also know that part of 

how we ensure we have the best infrastructure is improving how 

we do project delivery. The Department is working with States and 

localities to produce better economic analysis to ensure that every 

public dollar is well spent. 

We are working with our sister agencies to reduce the Federal 

permitting review process timeline by 50 percent for project sponsors, giving them tremendous savings of time and money. We are 

also encouraging cost-effective innovation and creative new approaches to construction, operations, and project delivery. 

On the aviation side, the Federal Aviation Administration is 

moving forward aggressively with the NextGen satellite navigation 

program, which will provide tremendous economic returns by improving the safety, efficiency, capacity, and reducing the environmental impacts of travel. 

MAP–21 and NextGen are important first steps in rebuilding and 

modernizing our transportation system, but the demands on our 

Nation’s infrastructure will only increase in coming years. By 2050, 

the U.S. population is expected to grow by approximately 100 million people. Many of them will live in already congested metropolitan areas. 

Last year, the Highway Trust Fund collected only $40 billion in 

revenue but spent close to $50 billion. This is not a new problem. 

The Highway Trust Fund has had a funding shortfall every year 

for the last 5 years. 

By the end of MAP–21 in 2014, Congress will have transferred 

almost $54 billion in general funds into the Highway Trust Fund 

to keep the surface transportation program afloat. This is of growing concern as we seek to address our Nation’s fiscal challenges. 
94 

As Federal dollars have grown scarcer, many States and localities have attempted to make up the shortfall, often by taking on 

significant debt. 

We clearly need political consensus on how to sustainably fund 

surface transportation in this time of severe budgetary challenges. 

The President has proposed to pay for our investments in surface 

transportation through savings from winding down our contingency 

operations overseas. We believe this is the right course because it 

will allow us to move forward with critical investments in transportation infrastructure now while working together on a bipartisan 

basis to address the longer-term fiscal challenges the Highway 

Trust Fund faces. 

Thank you and I am happy to answer any questions you have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Trottenberg follows:] 
95 

STATEMENT OF 

POLLY TROTTENBERG 

, UNDER SECRETARY FOR POLICY 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT A TION BEFORE THE 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

U.S. SENATE 

February 26, 2013 

The Impact of Federal Investments on People. 

Communities, and Long-term Economic Growth 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, Members of the Committee: 

Thank you for inviting me here today to speak on behalf of the Obama Administration about the 

importance of transportation investments and their impacts on our Nation's economy, our States 

and local communities, and the traveling public. 

The U.S. boasts a transportation system that is among the strongest and safest in the world and 

has benefitted from the investments of previous generations of Americans. 

From waterways to railroads, highways, airways and transit, our transportation system has been 

critical to our Nation's economic success, providing remarkable mobility and opportunity to our 

citizens and their families, and fueling the prosperity of our businesses, factories and farms. 

But our transportation system is aging. Much of it was built more than 50 years ago and in some 

cases more than 100 years ago, and is in need of investment, innovation, and new technologies. 

Transportation is one ofthe largest sectors of the U.S. economy, with transportation-related 

goods and services including vehicles, fuel, auto insurance, structures, and equipment 

representing nearly 10 percent of the Nation's gross domestic product (GDP) -- $1.5 trillion out 

of$15.6 trillion in 2011. 

The transportation sector is one of the largest generators of high-paying jobs, accounting for 11.4 

million jobs in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including 2.3 million truck 

drivers, 144,000 highway maintenance workers, and 87,000 flight attendants. 

Beginning with the State of the Union address two weeks ago, and continuing with his proposal 

released last week, President Obama called for $50 billion in increased infrastructure investment 

to spur economic growth. The President proposed a "Fix-It-First" Program that would direct $40 

billion towards reducing the backlog of deferred maintenance on highways, bridges, transit 

systems, and airports nationwide and put U.S. workers on the job, along with $10 billion for 

innovative transportation investments. 
96 

President Obama also proposed a Partnership to Rebuild America to attract private capital to 

upgrade what our businesses need most: efficient roads, rails, mass transit systems, waterways, 

and ports to move people and goods, and safe, modem energy, and telecommunications systems. 

The President's proposals build on the Administration's work over the past four years to 

strengthen the Nation's transportation infrastructure. The Administration worked with Congress 

to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, the most significant 

transportation public works program since the New Deal. 

The Recovery Act funded major projects all across the country, including the CREATE freight 

rail project in Chicago, the 1-244 Bridge in Tulsa, and rebuilding the Presidio Parkway 

connecting San Francisco to the Golden Gate bridge. Through the Recovery Act and core 

infrastructure funds, U.S. workers have improved over 350,000 miles of U.S. roads, and repaired 

or replaced over 20,000 bridges, including the Milton-Madison Bridge connecting Kentucky and 

Indiana, and the South Park Bridge in Seattle. 

Since the President took office, the Department's investments are helping communities build or 

improve more than 6,000 miles ofintercity rail corridors and 40 train stations, such as Union 

Station in St. Paul and Moynihan Station in New York, and purchase approximately 260 

passenger rail cars and 105 locomotives, and make significant investments in 25 ports across the 

U.S. 

In addition, the Obama Administration has made an unprecedented commitment to strengthen 

public transportation across the United States, investing in more than 350 miles of new light and 

heavy rail, streetcars, and bus rapid transit, in cities from Los Angeles to Cleveland to Atlanta, 

and helping to revitalize the American manufacturing industry by investing in 45,621 buses and 

5,545 rail cars. 

We are grateful that Congress passed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 2 IS< Century Act 

(MAP-21) in June 2012, and provided two years of predictable surface transportation funding for 

States and localities. Since enactment, MAP-21 has been a major priority for the Department, 

and I am proud of how quickly we have been able to implement its key provisions and get 

guidance out to the States, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, local communities and transit 

agencies. 

MAP-21 makes great progress in improving safety, especially in transit, expanding the T1F1A 

credit program, focusing on freight policy, better planning, and moving us towards a more 

performance-driven system. 

In fact, we consider MAP-21's focus on performance one of the most exciting parts of the 

legislation. We are working with our stakeholders to develop performance measures in key areas 

such as safety, pavement and bridge condition, system performance, congestion and freight. 

Setting these performance measures is an important step in creating a more efficient outcomebased transportation system. 
97 

Part of ensuring our nation has the world's best infrastructure, which is essential to our continued 

economic success, is improving how we deliver transportation projects. The Department is 

working with states and localities to produce better economic analysis to ensure that every public 

dollar is well spent. 

We are working with our sister agencies to reduce the Federal permitting review process timeline 

by 50 percent for project sponsors, giving them tremendous savings of time and money. We are 

also encouraging cost-effective innovation and creative new approaches to construction, 

operations and project delivery. 

MAP-21 also provided DOT with unprecedented opportunities to improve freight movement 

throughout our nation. This is an area where we have already made great progress. 

Last summer, Secretary LaHood announced the creation of our Freight Policy Council. The 

Council, which is chaired by Deputy Secretary Porcari, brings together senior leadership, modal 

administrators, as well as policy, budget, economic and research experts -- to oversee the 

implementation ofMAP-21 's freight provisions, including development of the National Freight 

Strategic Plan. 

And last week, the Department announced the establishment of the National Freight Advisory 

Committee to engage a variety of public and private sector stakeholders in the implementation of 

the MAP-21 freight provisions. As the Federal Register notice outlines, the Department is 

accepting nominations for committee members until March 21. 

On the aviation side, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is moving forward aggressively 

with the NextGen satellite navigation program, which will provide tremendous economic returns 

by improving the safety, efficiency, and capacity of air travel. NextGen will ultimately save 

hundreds of dollars per flight for our Nation's airlines, and millions of hours of travel time for 

the public. 

In 2009, the FAA estimated airline operations alone generated $300 billion in economic output 

to the GDP and supplied more than two million jobs. Making air travel more convenient, 

dependable, safe, and efficient has far-reaching implications for the nation's economy. 

MAP-21 and NextGen are important first steps to rebuilding our transportation system, but the 

demands on our Nation's transportation infrastructure will only increase. By 2050, the U.S. 

population is expected to grow by approximately 100 million people, with many of them 

projected to live in already congested metropolitan areas. 

In 2008, Federal, State, and local governments spent approximately a combined $182 billion in 

total on highways and bridges, of which $91 billion was spent on capital improvements. 

However, the 2010 Conditions and Performance Report, which DOT publishes biennially, 

estimated that maintaining the Nation's highway system, and improving it to meet future 

demand, requires that all levels of government combined increase capital investments from $91 

billion currently spent to $170 billion annually over a 20-year period. 
98 

On the transit side, Federal, State, and local governments spent a total of about $52.5 billion, of 

which $11 billion was spent on capital improvements. Yet the same 2010 report estimates that 

achieving a state of good repair for the nation's transit systems, while accommodating future 

ridership growth over a 20-year period, requires an annual increase in capital investments from 

$11 billion to between $21 billion and $25 billion. 

Both of these investment need estimates do not take into account operations and maintenance 

costs, and are based on 2008 data. The Department is currently preparing a new Conditions and 

Performance report which will contain updated investment need figures. 

Moving people will not be the only challenge. Currently, the U.S. freight system moves 57 tons 

of freight per person per year. The addition of approximately 100 million people will result in 

nearly six billion tons of additional freight that the Nation will need to move through our often 

congested roadways, rails, airports and ports. We have to find ways to move those goods more 

efficiently. 

Last year, the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) collected only $40 billion in revenue, but spent close 

to $50 billion. This is not a new problem. The HTF has had a funding shortfall every year for the 

past five years. 

By the end of MAP-2 1 in 2014, Congress will have transferred almost $54 billion in General 

Funds into the HTF to keep the surface transportation program afloat, which is of growing 

concern as we seek to address our Nation's fiscal challenges. 

As Federal dollars have grown scarcer, many States and localities have attempted to make up the 

shortfall, often by taking on significant debt. The Federal Highway Administration reported that, 

in 2010, States owed a combined $154 billion in road bond debt, nearly triple the $56 billion 

they owed in 1995. On the transit side, local transit agencies also amassed tens of billions of 

dollars in debt, in some cases threatening their ability to fund annual maintenance and capital 

needs. 

Meanwhile, our economic competitors in Europe and Asia continue to invest significantly more 

in maintaining, modernizing, and expanding their transportation networks. In 2012, the World 

Economic Forum rated the competitiveness of U.S. infrastructure as 14(h in the world, below 

Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, and Korea. 

But we also need political consensus on how to sustainably fund surface transportation in this 

time of severe budgetary challenges so that States and localities can plan for and build long-term 

projects. The President has proposed to pay for our investments in surface transportation 

through the savings from winding down our contingency operations overseas. We believe this is 

the right course because it would allow us to move forward with critical investments in our 

transportation infrastructure now while working together to consider the fiscal challenges the 

Highway Trust Fund faces. Others may have different proposals. I know that is one of the many 

important issues that the leaders on this Committee and throughout Congress will be grappling 

with in the months to come and the Administration looks forward to seeking a shared solution. 
99 

We owe it to future generations of Americans to provide them with a transportation system as 

remarkable, safe, and productive as the one our parents and grandparents built for us. 

Thank you and I am happy to answer any questions you may have. 
100 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. RAWLINGS. 

STATEMENT OF HUNTER R. RAWLINGS III, PH.D., PRESIDENT, 

ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 

Mr. RAWLINGS. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, 

members of the Committee, it is a pleasure and an honor to be 

here to talk to you about this important challenge facing America. 

My name is Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities, who are 60 of the leading research universities 

in the United States. 

We believe the sequester is terrible policy in the short and the 

long term, and that is what I would like to speak with you briefly 

about this morning. 

We need to address budget deficits, as you all have said, and our 

long-term debt. But so far, discretionary funding, especially nondefense discretionary spending, which represents only 17 percent of 

the budget, has borne the brunt of the cuts. It includes vital investments in education and innovation as well as infrastructure. The 

sequester will force additional cuts, equivalent to nearly 10 percent 

for the remainder of this year and more in future years. This is the 

part of the Federal budget where our future lies. It is not the way 

to solve the Nation’s deficit problem. It is very stupid policy. 

Faculty members and the next generation of researchers are already feeling the effects of the sequester as agencies hold back 

funds for concern about the sequester’s effect. The sequester could 

cause vast problems in our research enterprise and could also 

cause a low-income undergraduate student to lose up to $876 a 

year in Federal financial aid. It will cut work-study and other financial aid and increase student loan borrowing costs. Why penalize young students working their way through college? What kind 

of message does that send? It is not a message of opportunity. 

All of these cuts will have even greater impact on the longer 

term, the economy, and the Nation that we leave to our children 

and grandchildren. 

The Federal Government invests approximately $29 billion in research at the Nation’s colleges and universities, mostly in basic research. Private sector R&D is primarily for the purpose of developing products; businesses cannot afford riskier, long-term basic research. That is why there has long been a bipartisan consensus 

that this is primarily a responsibility of the Federal Government, 

and the Federal Government has made great decisions in the past 

to support research, which has led to enormous economic advantages for this country. 

As Senator Lamar Alexander and I wrote in an op-ed very recently, scientific research is a high-yield investment. Economists 

estimate—and this is a critical fact—that at least half of GDP 

growth since World War II has come from technological advances, 

almost none of which would be possible without federally funded 

innovation. This research gave us the technology behind Google, as 

the Chairman noted, Cisco, and Genentech and entire new industries. And the NIH’s Human Genome Project has spurred not only 

advances in human health but nearly $800 billion in economic 

growth. That is an enormous return on investment. 
101 

Why is this so important? Well, let me just hold up a 

smartphone. Every one of you has one of these, and you use it now 

constantly. It is wonderful that we have companies that make 

these fantastic instruments. But they would not work, they could 

not be built, they would not have been thought of without federally 

funded research. 

Why is that? Because the GPS that guides you to your destination was made possible by the federally funded research that produced the atomic clock. The touch screen came directly from innovation funded by the National Science Foundation. The liquid crystal display, the LCD monitor used on these phones, came from research funded by NIH, the National Science Foundation, and the 

Defense Department. The rechargeable lithium ion batteries that 

run these phones came out of basic research funded by the Department of Energy. The integrated circuit, which you find in practically all electronic equipment today, benefitted from federally 

funded research. And, finally, the Internet and the World Wide 

Web, which we spend so much time on with these devices, are results of federally funded research along with private sector innovation. 

Why would we reduce the part of the Federal budget that generates these returns in science, innovation, and economics just at 

the time when the rest of the world is investing heavily in precisely 

those areas? I do not want the next Google to come from China. 

I want it to come from here. And the only way to make sure that 

is going to happen is if we continue to be the leader in science and 

technology internationally. 

We face a challenge, a big challenge to our leadership in these 

fields today. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Chinese and 

other countries are now borrowing our model, spending heavily on 

research as we reduce research. Why would we cut when they are 

increasing their investment? 

To conclude, the sequester is dangerous. Please do not let it happen. Universities have repeatedly urged Congress and the President to stop the sequester and address our fiscal problems in a balanced, sensible way that preserves investment in the future. 

Thank you for this opportunity. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rawlings follows:] 
102 

Testimony of Hunter R. Rawlings III 

President, Association of American Universities 

Before the United States Senate Committee on the Budget 

February 26, 2013 

Chairwoman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and members of the committee, thank you for 

the opportunity to testify today about the impact of budget sequestration on federal investments 

in research and higher education. I am Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association or 

American Universities, which represents 60 of the nation's leading public and private research 

universities. We believe the sequester is terrible policy in the short and long term. My 

testimony will focus on two critical areas offederal spending that generate enormous returns on 

investment - university research and student financial aid, both of which will suffer significantly 

under sequestration with consequences not only for scientists, engineers, and students, but also 

for our nation's innovation enterprise and economy. 

One ofthe greatest challenges facing the nation is the need to address federal budget deficits and 

our long-term debt. Unfortunately, deficit reduction efforts to date have focused primarily on the 

part of the federal budget where America's future lies - discretionary spending. Discretionary 

spending, which constitutes only one-third of the federal budget, has had to carry the vast 

majority of the deficit reduction load and will carry even more under sequestration. In particular, 

nondefense discretionary spending, which is only 17 percent of the budget, includes vital 

investments in education and innovation, as well as infrastructure needs. As a result ofthe tough 

discretionary spending caps established by the Budget Control Act, non-defense discretionary 

spending, even in the absence of sequestration, will decline within 10 years to its lowest level 

relative to GOP since 1962. 

Federal support for research and student financial aid laid the foundation for the dramatic 

expansion of the 20th century U.S. economy and can do the same in the 21st century. These 

investments produce the educated people and the ideas that lead to new products, new 

businesses, and entire new industries, as well as to the jobs that go with them. Cutting these 

investments in our future is not the way to solve our nation's deficit problem. Such cuts would 

undermine economic growth that is essential to deficit reduction. Yet that is exactly what the 

sequester will do. To put it kindly, this is an irrational approach to deficit reduction. To put it 

not so kindly, it is just plain stupid. 

Members of both political parties believe that a long-term deficit reduction agreement should 

specifically incorporate such investments. For example, the majority repott of the bipartisan 

Bowles-Simpson Commission stated, "we must invest in education, infrastructure, and highvalue research and development to help our economy grow, keep us globally competitive, and 
103 

Testimony to Senate Budget Committee - February 26, 2013 

Hunter R. Rawlings III, Association of American Universities 

Page 2 of5 

make it easier for businesses to create jobs." And the new Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction 

Jllill also calls for "preserving high-value investments." 

Faculty members and the next generation of researchers at our universities are already feeling the 

effects of the potential sequester. Well before the March I deadline, federal science agencies 

began withholding funding and postponing research awards because they did not know how 

much funding they would ultimately have for grants. Michael Purugganan, the Dean of Science 

at New York University (NYU), wrote in an op-cd last month that just the mere threat of 

sequestration is taking its toll. He and his research collaborators are working on a new way to 

map genes in plant genomes which could help pave the way for new crop varieties able to 

withstand environmental stress. But they have delayed their work for months while waiting for a 

resolution to this budget mess. Purugganan is not alone in feeling the effects. AAU universities 

inform us that the threat of sequester is affecting hiring decisions for research scientists and 

postdoctoral researchers (those who have received doctoral degrees and hold temporary jobs in 

hope of attaining permanent positions). It is also causing great uncertainty for graduate students 

who do not know ifthey will continue to be supported by research grants. 

The sequester will also hurt students from low-income families through cuts in student financial 

aid. If Congress allows the mandated cuts to go forward, students who receive federal aid could 

lose up to $876 a year according to the Student Aid Alliance. The sequester will cut work-study 

and other financial aid programs and increase student loan borrowing costs at the very time we 

are seeking to ensure greater access and improve college completion so as to have the educated 

citizenry and highly skilled workforce we need to grow our economy. Why would we penalize 

young Americans working their way through college? Why would we reduce access to higher 

education when other nations are improving access? What kind of message does that send to 

current and future college students and their families? It is not a message of opportunity. 

The impact of these cuts is even more significant in the long term for research, the economy, and 

the nation that we will leave to our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. 

The sequester will cut university innovation that is critical to health, quality of life, and 

economic and national security of future generations, just as past research has provided these 

benefits to us. Research in all of the disciplines is how we, as a nation, come up with medical 

advances that save lives and ultimately reduce the cost of health care, advance our economy, 

figure out cleaner forms of energy, and develop the technologies that defend our country and 

make our fighting men and women safer. We have also leveraged these research investments to 

educate and train the next generation of scientists and engineers, who are most often supported 

by research grants. 

To get an idea of the sequester's likely impact on these activities, I would encourage you to visit 

www.ScienceWorksForUS.org. a website established by AAU, the Association of Public and 

Land-grant Universities, and The Science Coalition to show the impact ofthe sequester on 

university research. There you will find useful state-by-state data and a series of brief videos of 

university presidents, administrators, faculty members, and postdoctoral researchers describing 

their work and how it could be affected. 
104 

Testimony to Senate Budget Committee - February 26, 2013 

Hunter R. Rawlings Ill, Association of American Universities 

Page 3 0[5 

The federal government invests approximately $29 billion each year in research at the nation's 

colleges and universities, most of this in basic research. While the private sector invests in 

R&D, its investment is primarily in development of products; businesses cannot afford to make 

investments in the riskier, long-term basic scientific research that produces the breakthrough 

discoveries essential to innovation. As the Congressional Joint Economic Committee has staled, 

"Despite its value to society as a whole, basic research is underfunded by private firms precisely 

because it is performed with no specific commercial applications in mind." That is why there 

has long been a bipartisan consensus that funding basic research is primarily the responsibility of 

the federal government. 

As Senator Lamar Alexander and I wrote in a joint op-ed last year, scientific research is a highyield investment. More than half of economic growth since World War]] has resulted from 

technological advances, almost none of which would have been possible without federally 

funded innovations. For example, federally funded research at the university level gave us the 

technology behind companies like Google, Cisco, and Genentech and has resulted in entire new 

industrial sectors that few would even have imagined, such as those in information and 

biotechnology. 

A recent study by United tor Medical Research demonstrates the extraordinary return on 

investment by scientific research, showing that government funding through the National 

Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2012 alone supported nearly half a million jobs and $58 billion in 

economic activity nationwide. The long-term impact is far greater. One single project supported 

by NIH - the Human Genome Project has spurred more than $796 billion in economic growth. 

This is a l41-fold return on investment, in addition to the extraordinary advances in human 

health which it has only begun to make possible. 

Two weeks ago at a press conference on the issue of the sequester, I provided a concrete example 

of the fruits offederal investments in scientific research that I think is worth my repeating here to 

illustrate what is at stake. 

All of us have an iPhone, Android phone, or some other smartphone in our pockets nearly all of 

the time. That phone would not exist were it not for federally funded research. Here are just a 

few examples of why; 

The global positioning system CGPS) that enables your device to guide you to your 

destination would not exist without the federally funded research that produced the atomic 

clock. 

• The amazing touch screen came directly from research funded by the National Science 

Foundation (NSF). 

• The liquid crystal display, or LCD, monitor used on these phones comes from research 

funded by NIH, NSF, and the Defense Department. 

• The rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that run these phones came out of basic research 

funded by the Department of Energy. 
105 

Testimony to Senate Budget Committee - February 26, 2013 

Hunter R. Rawlings HI) Association of American Universities 

Page 4 of 5 

The integrated circuit, which you find in practically all electronic equipment, also 

benefited from federally funded research, as well as great skill by industry. 

• And finally the Internet and World Wide Web, which we spend so much time on with 

these devices, are results of federally funded research and private sector innovation. 

I commend to you a video of a briefing provided by the Task Force on American Innovation 

entitled "Deconstructing the iPad," in which scientists describe the history of some of these 

amazing technologies. 

These great products that we take for granted each day cannot keep coming if the nation fails to 

adequately invest in scientific research. More than half a century ago, our nation's leaders made 

a wise decision to fund university research and graduate education. And when the launch of 

Sputnik posed a challenge to our technological leadership from abroad, it spurred us to 

extraordinary investments in these areas. 

Today we face a similar challenge to our leadership from overseas. Let me assure you that if the 

U.S. government falls short in its investments in education and research, other nations will be 

there to take our leadership position. At the very time we as a nation are squabbling about how 

much further to cut investments in research and education, Singapore, China, and South Korea 

are increasing their spending in these areas. Why are they doing this? Because they are smart. 

They are imitating the model we created decades ago that has led to unrivaled wealth creation, 

economic prosperity, and quality oflife. 

We should all be clear: our competitors are watching closely to see how we respond to their 

challenge, and are fully prepared to take advantage of our mistakes. For example, over the last 

10 years, R&D expenditures as a share of economic output have remained nearly constant in the 

U.S. but have increased by nearly 50 percent in South Korea and nearly 90 percent in China. 

(Source: NSF S&E Indicators 2012) Also, according to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures, government R&D spending between 2000 and 

2009 increased by 250 percent in South Korea and 330 percent in China, while U.S. government 

R&D spending increased by about 45 percent. I commend to you a recent report by the Task 

Force on American Innovation entitled: American Lxceplionaiisill. ,'\merican Declinc'? This 

report illustrates that despite a strong history of being the world leader in research and discovery, 

the United States has failed to sufficiently heed indications that our advantage is diminishing and 

that we may soon be overtaken by other nations in these areas, which are critical to economic 

growth and job creation. 

Now, let me share with you four examples of what will happen if sequestration is fully 

implemented in FYI3 and beyond. 

First, a recent analysis by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation finds that 

sequestration will shrink federal R&D by nearly nine percent from 20 II spending levels over 

nine years, reducing the gross domestic product by anywhere from $203 billion to $860 billion 

over that period. As the report states, this is equivalent to "taking away all the new motor 

vehicles purchased by U.S. consumers over the last six months [or] all their airline travel over 

the last two years." 
106 

Testimony to Senate Budget Committee - February 26, 20]3 

Hunter R. Rawlings HI, Association of American Universities 

Page 5 of5 

The second example is perhaps even more sobering. The sequester would damage the nation's 

security efforts by cutting research funding for cyber security. NSF, the Department of 

Homeland Security's (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, and the Department of 

Defense all would experience across-the-board cuts to cyber security research in FY 13. 

According to a report released recently by the House Appropriations Committee minority, cyber 

security at DHS would be cut by 30 percent. These spending cuts could not come at a worse 

time. Just last week, we learned that hackers in China are engaged in prolific cyber espionage 

against the United States government and some of America's largest companies. America's 

cyber infrastructure needs to be protected, and the best way to do that is to support critical cyber 

security research and educate and train the next generation of cyber security experts. Yet here 

we are cutting this funding. 

The impact of sequestration will not only reduce funding offederal research agencies, it will 

have a direct impact on those who conduct basic research at the nation's colleges and 

universities. The sequester seriously undermines opportunities for young, talented graduate 

students and postdoctoral researchers to train with world-renowned researchers, and to conduct 

cutting-edge scientific research. In a recent Marketplace Morning Report, Dr. Jennifer Elisseeff 

of Johns Hopkins University said that many in her lab are suffering from "sequester-stress." Dr. 

Elisseeff leads a 25-person laboratory that conducts research on re-growing tissue that can later 

be attached to scaffolding and be placed in a human body. This is vital research that will be 

harmed if cuts to the NIH and Defense Department budgets come to pass. And the first to feel 

that impact will be the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers working in her lab. 

Finally, these cuts will have a detrimental impact upon our ability to fully leverage wise 

investments that the nation has already made in large-scale, world-class scientific research 

facilities and tools located at both universities and our national laboratories. If the sequester is 

allowed to move forward, operations of major scientific user facilities will have to be 

significantly curtailed and thereby adversely affect many of the more than 25,000 researchers 

and students who rely on these research tools to advance basic science and to develop advance 

commercial technologies. Department of Energy national laboratory personnel who help to 

operate these facilities may be furloughed and laid off, and university and industrial access to 

these facilities will be reduced. 

In summary, let me state this as plainly as possible: the sequester is dangerous. You should not 

let it happen. It undermines both immediate and long-term support for the nation's education 

and research enterprise. It jeopardizes our nation's economy now and for years to come. We in 

the university community have repeatedly urged Congress and the President to stop the sequester 

and address our fiscal challenges in a balanced, sensible way that preserves our nation's ability to 

continue to invest in areas that wiJIlead to sustained economic growth. I do so again here today. 

Thank you for this opportunity to share my views. 
107 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Dr. CARNEVALE. 

STATEMENT OF ANTHONY P. CARNEVALE, PH.D., DIRECTOR 

AND RESEARCH PROFESSOR GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 

CENTER ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Mr. CARNEVALE. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Ranking 

Member Sessions, for inviting me here. I have a fairly simple story 

to tell, and that is that in these times, and really beginning in the 

early 1980s and moving toward these times, we have become a Nation where, if you are going to get a good middle-class job, you have 

to have some kind of postsecondary education and training, not 

necessarily a B.A. or graduate degree but some kind of postsecondary education and training. And that was not always so. A lot 

of people find this difficult to understand because they remember 

an economy where that was not true. I do. And it was not that long 

ago. 

In 1973, at the end of the great American post-war boom, 72 percent of American workers had high school or less; 35 to 40 percent 

were high school dropouts. When we look at those people retrospectively, we find that the majority of them, almost 65 percent, earn 

more than $35,000 a year in current dollars and on up from there. 

It really was a high school economy, especially for blue-collar 

males. 

What changed was somewhat mysterious at first. Actually, in the 

1970s, the value of a college education went down relative to the 

value of high school, and everybody was worried about that. Books 

were written, one by a famous economist called ‘‘The Overeducated 

American.’’ We were all worried. And then in 1980–81, we had the 

Volcker recession, which crashed the economy and reduced and all 

but killed off inflation. And after that, the economy began to reorganize very rapidly. What drove it was computer-based technology. 

And what happened and has been happening ever since is that 

computer-based technology automates any task in a job that is repetitive, and more and more it automates whole sets of tasks. 

As a result of that, the tasks that were left over were nonrepetitive and required higher skill. In America, the only way we could 

get higher skill, because the only institution we had available was 

higher education or postsecondary education—it could have been 

done otherwise. But here, when we wanted more skill, we shifted 

demand upward to higher education. The population went first. 

Economists debated for a decade about what was going on. But 

Americans started going to college in very great numbers, such 

that between 1983 and 2002 most analysis agrees that the supply 

of college-educated workers went up by about 1 percent, the demand by employers went up by 3 percent per annum. 

As a result of that, we created a huge wage premium for college. 

It went all the way to 74 percent, advantage for people with some 

college or better. 

As a result of that as well—this is a major part of the story 

about the growing income disparity in America, apart from minimum wages and all the rest of it—we are really divided now into 

a Nation of postsecondary haves and postsecondary have-nots. 
108 

There are two things that have come from this that are very 

clear. One is the increasing value of college. As you said in the beginning, if you go to high school, you will make about 900 grand 

over a career. If you get a high school degree, you will make about 

a million three. If you get an A.A. degree, you will make about a 

million seven. If you get a B.A., about $2,300,000. If you get a graduate degree, you can make anywhere from $3.1 million to $3.7 million. So the demand for college grew, and the cost of college grew. 

But there was a second effect that is even more important, I 

think, from a policy perspective, and that is, the variation in the 

value of degrees grew even more. So it is now true that a worker 

with a certificate of one year in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning can make more than 25 percent of people with B.A.s. Thirty 

percent of people with associate’s degrees make more than people 

with bachelor’s degrees. Forty-four percent of people with bachelor’s degrees make more than people with graduate degrees. 

What that is telling us is that the field of study is what is driving the value of education, not the degree level, not the institution. 

And so the system is now driven by a relationship between college 

majors, fields of studies, and programs, and the access they give individuals to occupations. 

And so in the end, what this says to me and it said to many others is that we need to begin to make the higher education system 

more transparent. We need to let students know, administrators 

know, and policymakers know what the value of different degrees 

are, give them choices, in the hopes that ultimately it will increase 

efficiency in the system, because beyond the sequester, what we are 

going to need is efficiency in policy with whatever money we have 

left over. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carnevale follows:] 
109 

qEORqEI.Ow..J..( UNIVERSI7Y 

Georgetown Public 

Policy Institute 

Center on Education and the Workfurce 

u.s. Senate 

Committee On The Budget 

February 26, 2013 

Hearing On 

3300 Whitehaven St NW, Suite 5000 

Washington, DC 20007 

Tel: 202.687.4971 

Fax: 202.687.3110 

cewgeorgetown@georgetown.edu 

http://cew,georgetown.edu 

The Impact of Federal Investment on People, Communites 

and 

Long Term Economic Growth 

Testimony 

By 

Anthony P. Carnevale 

Director 

The Georgetown University 

Center on Education and The Workforce 

Good morning, Madam Chairman and esteemed Members of the Budget Committee. Thank you for the 

opportunity to speak with you today about the effects of investing in education and job training for 

individual opportunity and our long-term economic growth. 

I am the Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, a nonpartisan, 

research center at Georgetown University that focuses on higher education policy from a workforce and 

global competitiveness perspective. 

The U.S. spends $1.4 trillion on human capital development annually in the private and public sectors, 

an amount that is roughly 10 percent of GOP. K-12 and postsecondary programs make up 41 percent of 

that spending and formal and informal employer-based training account for most of the other 59 

percent. In addition to its spending on K-12 and postsecondary education and training, the federal 

government spends $13 billion annually on 47 employment and training programs, which represents 
110 

one percent of the national investment in human capitaL1 By comparison, the private sector spends 

approximately $110 billion each year on staffing and recruitment services alone, six-times what the 

federal government spends on employment and training programs.' 

The U.S. invests roughly $1.4 trillion in human capital development each year. 

Public and private spending on human capital development by 

category (in billions) 

Federal employment and Iroining 

programs 

Apprenticeships & industry-based 

certifications 

Employer-hosed training {formal) 

Employer·bosed training (informal) 

Elementary and secondary education 

Higher education 

SOURCE: CEW analysis using data from the US Department of Education's Integrated Posts!:'condary Education Data System (IP£DS), the U.S. Department of 

labors Employment and Training Administration (DOLETA), the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the U.S. Education Department's Office 

of Vocational and Adult EdUcation {DVAE), Survey (If Employer Provided Trainlng (DOL), and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BL5). 

Educational attainment beyond high school has become an increasingly significant 

driver of long-run economic growth and productivity. 

Education promotes economic growth by making workers more productive. For example, education 

contributed one-third of the productivity gains between 1950 and 2000. Between the 1950s and 1980s 

I GAO. Multiple Employment and Training Programs: Providing information on Collocating Services and Consolidating 

Administrative Structures Could Promote Efficiencies, GAO-I 1-92, January 20 II. 

2 American Staffing Association (ASA), Structural Shift?: Annual Economic Analysis Explores Data and Trends in Flexible 

Workforce Management, Staffing Success, 2012. 
111 

increasing high school attainment was the principle source of education's contribution to economic 

growth and productivity improvements. But as improvement in high school graduation rates plateaued 

in the early eighties, the marginal contributions of education to growth shifted toward increasing 

postsecondary attainment. 

The payoff of investments in education in terms of economic growth and tax revenue is substantial. We 

estimate that an extra year of schooling beyond high school for all Americans by 2025 would increase 

GDP growth by between $500 billion and $1 trillion, providing an additional $150 billion in state, local, 

and federal taxes. 

The supply of educated workers has not kept up with economic demand since the 

eighties. 

Since the end of the 1980 -81 recession the U.S. economy has been undergoing rapid structural change. 

This evolution has been driven by what economists call skill-biased technological change. Since the early 

eighties, technology, led by computing technology, has been automating repetitive tasks and activities in 

jobs. As a result, more and more jobs, tasks, and activities left to people at work are non-repetitive and 

require skills beyond high school. The resultant increasing entry level skill requirements for work have 

made postsecondary education and training the gatekeeper for access to training on the job and state of 

the art technology. The synergy between postsecondary preparation and formal and informal learning 

on the job account for a growing major share of the ingredients in the recipe for U.S. economic growth. 

Consequently, postsecondary education and training has become more important than ever in today's 

economy. 

Since 1983, the supply of college-educated workers hasn't kept up with demand. Demand has grown at 

an average annual rate of 3 percent, while supply has grown by 1 percent annually. As a consequence, 

the college wage premium over high school increased from 40 percent to 74 percent over this time 

period. 
112 

Since 1983, the supply 01 colleg<ceducated workers has grown by 1% annually. while dr'mand "", grown by 3%. 

-1iG% ______ _ 

~ ~ - E - ~ ~ ~ ~ 

$Q,!rce:(;akfinandK<1tz(2QOO) 

~ ~ ~ - ~ ~ ~ 

supply 

-dem<'l!'Id 

~ ~ ~ 
113 

The college wage premium over high school grew from 40 percent in 1980 to 74 percent 

in 2010, and will grow to 96 percent in 2025. 

The growing SA premium over high school 

• High sf.nooJ earnings 

Ba(helcr'5~greee<lmings 

40% larger 

1980 

74% larger 

2010 

SOURCE: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce 

96% larger 

2025 

(wrrentsupplytrend) 

The failure to provide the u.s. workforce with enough postsecondary education and training to keep up 

with the demands of the information economy is one of the principal causes of the growth in wage 

inequality since the early 1980s. In 1970, workers with a high school education or less captured 63 

percent of national wages. In 2007, they captured only 27 percent. 

Since the beginning of the 2007-09 recession, historically high unemployment among 

recent college graduates has hidden the continued structural shift from an economy 

that provided good jobs for high school-educated workers to an economy in which the 

vast majority of good jobs require at least some postsecondary education. 
114 

What is clear in this recession, as in the last several recessions, is that most of the jobs lost that required 

high school or less are gone are not coming back, while jobs that require at least some college will 

recover and grow as a share of all jobs. 

Almost half of the jobs lost in the recession have been recovered and virtually all of those jobs recovered 

required some form of postsecondary education . 

., 

t: 

.2 0 

i -I 

~ 

-5 -2 

'C 

<II E -3 

~ 

Ii E -4 

'" -5 

-6 

-7 

--High schoo! or less -~Associate':s degree or some college 'Bachelor's degree or better 

SOURCE: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, The College Advantage, 2012 

Wages declined for all workers since the beginning of the recession, but cOllege-educated workers' wage 

advantage over high school-educated workers has remained high and has held mostly stable since the 

recession began. 

The peak unemployment rate for college-educated workers in the Great Recession was 5.1 percent 

compared to 15.7 percent for high school dropouts. The current unemployment rate for collegeeducated workers is 3.7 percent, compared to 12 percent for high school dropouts. 

Although the unemployment rate for all cOllege-educated workers has been low, it has been a tough job 

market for new college graduates but far worse for those without a college education. In 2012, 7 

percent of new college graduates are still unemployed and another 14 percent are underemployed in 
115 

jobs beneath their skill levels. By comparison, the unemployment rate for new high school graduates is 

24 percent and 42 percent for those underemployed. 

Jobs that require BAs have been the big winner, increasing by 2.2 million jobs since the recession began. 

Those jobs that required some college or an AA declined by 1.8 million in the recession but have 

regained 1.6 million of those job losses since the recovery began in 2010. At the same time 5.8 million 

jobs for those with high school or less have been lost since the recession began. 

Education and training beyond high school, once the preferred pathway to middle-class 

earnings, has become the most well traveled pathway to the middle class. Whereas in 

1973, more than half of workers with high school or less were in the middle class, only 

two in five were in the middle class in 2007. 

From 1970 to 2007, coll.lI ...... ucaled work ... • share of national 

wall.' incr.ased from 20 to 49 percent, whil. the share for work ... 

with hillh school or I ... f.U from 63 to 27 percent. 

1970 1980 1990 2000 2007 

BA+ 

"Some coHege/AA 

High lIehoo! Of tess 
116 

The share of jobs requiring high school has declined 

from 72 percent in 1973 to 41 percent in 201 O. 

1973 1992 2010 

SOURCE: Current Population Survey 

2020 

BA+ 

Some college/AA 

"HS or tess 

Since the 1980s, college-educated workers' earnings have grown relative to those with no college 

credentials, especially those with graduate or professional degrees. Obtaining a postsecondary 

credential is almost always worth it, as evidenced by higher earnings over a lifetime: the higher the level 

of educational attainment, the greater the payoff. What's more, the gap is widening. In 2002, a BAholder could expect to earn 75 percent more over a lifetime than someone with only a high school 

diploma. Today, that premium is 84 percent. 

On average: 

• High school dropouts earn $973,000 over a lifetime. 

High school-educated workers earn $1.3 million over a lifetime. 

• Workers with some college credit earn $1.5 million over a lifetime. 

AA-holders earn $1.7 million over a lifetime. 

BA-holders earns $2.3 million over a lifetime. 

Graduate degrees confer even higher earnings: 

• MA-holders earn $2.7 million over a lifetime. 

• PhD-holders earn $3.3 million over a lifetime. 

Professional degree-holders earn $3.6 million over a lifetime. 
117 

Lifetime earnings by educational attainment (in 2009$) 

Higher level degrees are worth more than lower level degrees on average. But averages 

are deceiving. The other major trend since the 1980s is that employability and earnings 

increasingly depend on individuals' field of study in postsecondary programs. 

What you make depends more and more on what you take. Oftentimes, lower-level programs can 

outperform higher-level programs. For example, some workers with one-year certificates in fields like 

information technology, electronics, and drafting earn more than a substantial share of people with AAs 

and BAs. 

There are significant earnings variations between different levels of educational attainment depending 

on postsecondary fields of study. 

• 31 percent of high school dropouts earn more than the median earnings of workers 

with high school diplomas; 
118 

37 percent of high school-educated workers earn more than the median worker with 

some college credit, but no degree; 

42 percent of people with some college credit, but no degree earn more than the 

median AA-holder; 

28 percent of AA-holders earn more than the median BA-holder; 

40 percent of BA-holders earn more than the median MA-holder; 

36 percent of MA-holders earn more than the median PhD-holder; 

37 percent of phD-holders earn more than the median professional degree-holder. 

While education has become the arbiter of opportunity, access to opportunity has been unequal 

between men and women, Education confers a large wage premium for both men and women, but men 

earn more than women at every education level, in large part due to differences in fields of study and 

college majors, 

Education brings an enormous benefit to both men and women, but men still earn 

more than women at every level of education. 

$ll:!Q,OOO 

$160,000 

1 $140,000 

:'$12D,O(}O 

.. 

fS1CO,OOO 

'; $80,000 i .560,000 

j $4(1,000 

$20,000 

'0 

£duc.atiC:OI! ill a major determinant of men'$ wage$.. 

SOURCE: Current Population Survey 

PhD 

'W"'Som"~o!l~(l'" 

J-H<;lh""hoo.i 

fdu(ati';m i$ Q moior dlJterminant of w~men's \flIges, bl.Jt 

wonwn eQm wn than men (It every fKi!J<;:Qthm leVi:ti. 

$1.80,(}00 

$100000 

~$140,OOO 

j$12(l,.ooO 

'f S10Q,QOO 

J $60,000 

! S60,DOO 

.~ 

~ $AO,OOO 

$:<'0.000 

so 
119 

In the U.S., compared to other countries, the circumstances you are born into playa greater role in 

where you end up as an adult. The U.S. ranks first in the extent to which parental education determines 

individual's future educational attainment. 

As access to postsecondary education determines earnings, college completion is a 

major source of the intergenerational transfer of privilege. 

o 

Parental background has a stronger influence on educational 

aHainment in the U.S. than in other developed countries. 

10 20 30 40 50 60 

Influenc. of parental background 

(lociCt-*Conomic i"fluence taking croueCountry dillriltutional diffe,.nc •• into account, 

SOURCE: Calculations based on the 2006 OECD PISA database 

70 
120 

The future promises continued growth in the demand for postsecondary education and 

training. 

Our projections over the next ten years show, if the recovery continues, that there will be 55 million job 

openings - 24 million new jobs and 31 million openings from Baby Boomer retirements. Two-thirds of 

these openings, or 36 million, will require some education beyond high school, but we will not have 

enough workers to fill those jobs - we will fall short by 5 million. 

Two-thirds of tile job openings between 2010 and 2020 will require some postsecondary education. 

Job openings by education requirement (in millions), 

2010-2020 

SOURCE: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce Projections 

Our workforce is struggling to compete internationally in postsecondary completion. 

After leading the way in college attainment through the early-1990's, United States now ranks 13th in 

young workers with a postsecondary credential. Since 1997, postsecondary attainment has been 

growing by 1 percent each year, compared to 4 percent in other industrialized countries. 

South Korea, Japan, Canada, Norway, Britain, Australia, and France are outperforming us at preparing 

young people for the 21" century economy. 
121 

70% 

60% 

50% 

The U.S. ranks 13th among developed countries in 

postsecondary aHainment: 43% of young Americans 

(ages 25-34) have a postsecondary credential. 

43% 

We have the second lowest public spending on active labor market programs, with only Mexico devoting 

a lower share of its GOP to these programs. Major European countries, for example, spend seven to 

eight times more on employment and training programs than we do. 
122 

Public spending on employment and training programs is far below other 

countries. 

Public spending on active labor market programs as 

share of GOP (0/0) 

France 

Germany 0.9.4 

Spain 0.89 

italy 0..46 

Korea 0..42 

Canada 0.33 

Australia 

Japan 

United States 0.14 

Mexico ; 0.01 

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 

SOURCE: DECO, Public expenditure of LMP by main categories, Employment Outlook, 2012. 

1.14 

1.2 

While the value of education and training has increased significantly in the modern economy, as 

evidenced by the growing college wage premium, the increasing demand from employers, and the rising 

share of high-skill occupations, the share of government spending invested in these human capital 

development functions has remained roughly flat over the past 40 years, and is currently at a historically 

low level. 
123 

Federal investment in human capital development declined from 3 percent of the 

budget in 1970 to 2 percent in 2011. 

Investment in education, training, and employment as 

share of federal government spending, 197()"2011 

8% 

7% 

6% 

5% 

4% 3<% 

3% 

2~~ 

1% 

0% 

2% 

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 

SOURCE: Office 01 Management and Budget (OM B), Outlays by Function and Sublunction: 1962-2017, Historical Tables (Table 

3,2), 
124 

Hislorically, human (apital development ha$ represented a small share of 

the federal budget, 

SOURCE: Office of Management and Budget (OM B), Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962-2017, Historical Tables 

(Table 3.2). 

Employment and training programs, such as WIA, have declined as a share of federal spending on 

human capital development_ WIA and Employment Services (ES) provide irreplaceable training, support, 

and labor market services that connect education and training to real jobs. Yet these services continue 

to be devalued by the federal government. In 1980, 34 percent of human capital investments by the 

federal government were spent on job training and employment services; by 2010, that share had 

decreased to 9 percent. This is a substantial loss in employment and training services programs. 
125 

Distribution of Fundion 500 (Education. Training. Employment and 

50cial5ervices) 5pending by 5ubfunction category. 1990-2010 

1980 1990 2000 2010 

Troining, employment 

cnd olner lobor ,ervices 

Sodol services and olher 

Higher educolion 

'< Elementory, secondary, 

ond vecationel educotion 

SOURCE: Office of Management and Budget (OM B), Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962-2017, 

Historical Tables (Table 3.2). 

Reforming education and training programs 

As this committee is painfully aware we have entered an age of austerity in the use of public resources. 

At current productivity rates in many of our public institutions we cannot afford all the public services 

we need to support a thriving republic and a thriving opportunity-based economy. This is particularly 

true in education and health care, the only two American industries with negative productivity rates. 

The bottom line seems to be that we need more efficiency in our public programs, including our 

education, employment, and training programs. We are, by our back of the envelope calculations at the 

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, at least $150 billion short of the 

revenues necessary to meet the President's educational goal of making us number one in global 

postsecondary completions. And we are able to provide employment training services to only a small 

portion of the tens of millions of Americans who apply for unemployment insurance every year. 

The surest way to efficiency and maximum choice without interference in complex institutional and 

consumer-driven decisions is transparency in measured outcomes. This is the essential lesson of the 

private sector productivity and quality improvements since the eighties. The top-down hierarchies of Big 

Business in manufacturing, for example, have been displaced by complex global networks that allow us 
126 

to assemble and sell cars by coordinating the work ofthousands of parts' suppliers and sellers. There are 

more independent institutions in these complex manufacturing networks, not fewer, and they all work 

to measured standards of cost, quality, customization, timeliness and customer service. 

These fundamental changes in outcomes-driven networks have moved well beyond manufacturing into 

many private sector services and growing array of governmental services. Education and health care 

have become the last frontiers in the spread of this fundamental shift from top down hierarchies to 

complex networks driven by common outcomes standards. 

The fledgling movement toward higher education reform reflects these trends. Affordability, debt and 

default issues have fostered a growing interest in measured outcomes that gauge costs and completion 

rates at education and training institutions. In my view, cost and completion are good outcome metrics, 

but they beg the question of economic value. Cost only makes sense in the context of economic benefit 

as measured by employability and earnings. And completion metrics need to be disciplined by 

employment and earnings standards. Consider, for example, that one quarter of men who complete 

one- or two-year postsecondary certificates earn more than the average worker who completes a fouryear BA. 

We also need to be concerned about equity. If postsecondary institutions focus exclusively on cost and 

completion, they will do so by catering to the most advantaged students who typically attend full-time 

and pay full cost. Moreover, in the current system, higher education institutions are already separate 

and unequal. White students from advantaged background are concentrated in four-year colleges and 

universities, especially those with selective admissions, while minorities and students from low-income 

families are concentrated in open-admission community colleges. Race- and class-based stratification in 

higher education is especially troubling when you consider that four-year colleges spend twice as much 

per student annually as community colleges and have significantly higher graduation rates, even among 

equally qualified students. 

While costs and completion outcomes can be usefully, if not fully, measured at the institutional level, 

economic outcomes need to be measured at the program level. The institutional cost and completion 

metrics are useful because cost and completion are largely institutional variables. However, as you can 

see in the data above, employment and earnings outcomes are less about institutions and more about 

fields of study and majors: Both whether you get a job and what you make depends on what you take. 

This is the essential wisdom of the "gainful employment metrics." Employment and earnings effects of 

postsecondary education and training operate at the program level. Teachers are similarly employed 

and compensated, regardless of whether they attended Harvard or.an open-admissions college. 

Recently, there have been efforts to consolidate the 47 employment and training programs. It's hard to 

argue with consolidation efforts. Surely eliminating duplication can encourage efficiency. But too much 

standardization can reduce quality from the program participant point of view. Many of these programs 

are tailored toward targeted populations. While efforts to consolidate programs may result in some 

administrative savings, the government would not achieve real efficiency gains or contain costs simply 

by shifting around the program boxes, and could potentially undermine program efficacy that arises 

from the specialized knowledge and familiarity targeted programs have developed with the populations 

they serve. 
127 

Program consolidation can bring efficiencies but can also interfere with customization for the particular 

needs of distinctive populations and policy purposes. In addition to the rationalization of administrative 

structures, I would recommend that you consider integrating diverse programs by using common 

outcomes standards that apply to one degree or another in all publically funded education and training 

programs. Common metrics that cut across all programs can be very effective in promoting 

accountability and informed student choices. Information can help education and training markets work 

better. By adding information into the transactions between students and providers we can increase 

returns to our public education investments. 

Using outcome metrics can accomplish much of what programs consolidation sets out to do, with much 

less political and administrative fuss. It can also increase the efficacy of program consolidation. And I 

would argue that the most common metrics - which apply to virtually all federal postsecondary 

education and training programs - are measures of common labor market outcomes, such as earnings, 

employment, and working in field.' 

At current productivity rates in education and training, we cannot afford all the postsecondary 

education and training we need. The first step toward higher productivity in the postsecondary system is 

greater transparency in the alignment between postsecondary programs and labor market outcomes. 

Greater transparency in the relationship between postsecondary education and training curricula and 

careers is a relatively cost-free, self-regulating way to get more bang for our educational buck. 

Choosing a postsecondary program is the first big investment decision made by young people, especially 

the majority of students who will finance their postsecondary programs with loans. They need to 

understand the risks and rewards associated with their choice of colleges and fields of study. As the cost 

of particular certificates and degrees grows and the labor market returns shift, prospective students 

need more information to guide their choices and to ensure high-returns on their investments. 

Aligning education more closely with careers is also the best way to encourage student success. People 

with some sense of where they are gong are more likely to get there. A student's choice of career is the 

primary motivation for going to college. Helping students connect their college studies with their future 

careers captures this motivation and increases graduation rates. 

The basic elements of a college and career information system already exist (including the Department 

of Education's College Navigator system); we just need to connect the dots. All the necessary data exists 

we just need to move it from the nation's statistical warehouses to the kitchen tables where college and 

career choices are made. Ultimately, we need to make the connection between postsecondary costs, 

completion and gainful employment at the institutional and program levels. Cost and completion data 

are more and more available in states and at the national level. The most important missing piece of the 

puzzle to current information systems is pUblicly available data on employment and earnings attached to 

particular postsecondary programs. Most states have made the effort to connect programs with labor 

markets in their internal data systems but have not developed usable formats for students, policy 

makers, or postsecondary administrators. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have 

3 I.e., working in the same occupational field the individual received education and training in. 
128 

introduced the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, which would take the next step in developing 

these state systems in useable formats, Similar bipartisan legislation, H,R, 4282, has been introduced in 

the House, 

As an advocate of better data on the relationships between postsecondary programs and careers, we 

want to be careful not to slight the non-economic purposes of postsecondary education and training 

programs, Employment and career building is not the only purpose of federal education and training 

programs, In a republic such as ours the general purpose of education, especially college education is to 

allow individual to live fully in their time, But in a work-based society such as ours, it is very difficult to 

live fully as a private individual or a citizen without a job, Ultimately the economic role of postsecondary 

education, especially its role in preparing American youth for work and helping adults stay abreast of 

economic change, is central. The inescapable reality is that ours is a society based on work, Those who 

are not equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to get, and keep, good jobs are denied full 

social inclusion and tend to drop out of the mainstream culture, polity, and economy, In the worst cases, 

they are drawn into alternative cultures, political movements, and economic activities that are a threat 

to mainstream American life, 

Hence, if secondary and postsecondary educators and trainers cannot fulfill their economic mission to 

help grow the economy and help youths and adults become successful workers, they also will fail in their 

cultural and political missions to create good neighbors and good citizens, And increasing the economic 

relevance of education should, if done properly, extend the educator's ability to empower Americans to 

do work on the world, rather than retreat from it, 

As we strive to deal with the budgetary challenges, we must not lose sight of our most important 

investments, those that promote competitiveness, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of American people, 
129 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Ferguson? 

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN L. FERGUSON, CHAIRMAN, COOK 

GROUP, INC. 

Mr. FERGUSON. Thank you, Chairman Murray and Ranking 

Member Sessions and members of the Committee. We appreciate 

the opportunity to testify here today. My name is Steve Ferguson. 

I am chairman of the board of Cook. I am pleased to be representing and speaking on behalf of the medical device industry 

today. 

My message is not just about a company. It is about employees, 

jobs, and patients. 

I have nearly five decades of experience in the medical device industry. Recently, I was approached by an employee who said, ‘‘Your 

company has now saved two lives in my family.’’ She told me her 

father had been diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm and traditional 

surgery was not an option. However, the new stent graft saved her 

father’s life. 

She then spoke of her step-daughter who benefitted from a device 

which stops the bleeding of mothers after birth. The doctors said 

the device saved her step-daughter’s life. 

When someone tells you personal stories about medical technology that saved lives, it drives home how important our mission 

is at Cook and how important our industry is to the people of this 

country. 

In 1963, our company started in the spare bedroom of Bill and 

Gayle Cook’s apartment with those two as the only employees. 

Cook is the largest family-owned medical device manufacturer in 

the world today. We have manufacturing facilities in Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and California. We also have 

plants in Ireland, Denmark, and Australia. 

While 57 percent of our sales are outside the United States, more 

than 80 percent of our 14,000 products are manufactured in this 

country. We employ about 7,500 in the United States and 10,000 

worldwide. 

The U.S. medical technology industry has been a global leader in 

the medical revolution that has taken place over the last 50 years. 

That has led to increased longevity and treatments for conditions 

and illnesses that were not even dreamed of in my father’s generation. 

We are an industry of thousands of companies; 98 percent of 

them have fewer than 500 employees. The industry is directly responsible for 2 million American jobs and generates $5.4 billion in 

trade surplus. 

As chairman of Cook, not a month goes by without a representative of a foreign nation coming to Cook headquarters to recruit jobs 

to their country. The device excise tax has been the latest recruiting tool. 

Our company, like nearly all medical device companies, is facing 

road blocks to growing jobs in the U.S. The most significant barrier 

to future job growth is the 2.3 percent medical device excise tax 

that became effective January 1. While this does not seem like 

much, it is a tax on gross revenue. It comes off the top, not on 
130 

earnings, and it is huge. Whether a manufacturer makes a profit 

or not, it pays the excise tax. 

For a company like ours, which pays about 33 percent of our U.S. 

earnings in Federal and State corporate taxes, the excise tax will 

increase our effective rate to more than 42 percent. This is more 

than a 25-percent increase. Ernst & Young projects that the Federal tax liability of the medical device industry will increase 29 percent as a result of the tax. 

Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have stated a key component to turning our economy around is to invest in high technology 

and manufacturing, and they are is right. To create jobs you would 

not impose a special tax on the fastest-growing and most innovative industry. The med tech industry is the type of industry we 

want to stay in this country. 

In order to offset big expenses like the excise tax, a company can 

only look to reduce employees, research and development, and capital investment. Those are your three big items. Everything else is 

minor, the cost of materials, et cetera. Cook has never had a layoff 

in 50 years, and we do not intend to start now. However, we must 

make hard choices. Cook will start important new projects outside 

the United States as we already have employees there. Our previous plans to open five new manufacturing facilities in American 

towns are now on hold. 

The impact of this tax falls squarely on patients and employees. 

Make no mistake about it. Cuts in research and development will 

adversely impact patient care. The tax will drive manufacturing 

outside the United States. It is a shame that potential Cook employees who can compete with any place in the world based on 

their productivity are now going to be denied the chance because 

of Government action. 

Fortunately, Congress can act to repeal the tax. We hope that 

you deliberate further about ways to encourage innovation and investment in long-term economic growth and that you will support 

the repeal of the medical device excise tax. The country needs your 

leadership. We must do everything we can to create an environment so that the next Bill and Gayle Cook can begin their journey 

to improve patient care in the United States. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ferguson follows:] 
131 

Testimony ot 

Stephen L. Ferguson 

Chairman, Cook Group, Inc. 

Betore the U.'S. Senate Budget CommiHee 

February 26,2013 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions and Members of the 

Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify at today's hearing on 

"The Impact of Federal Investments on People, Communities, and Long-Term 

Care Economic Growth." I am pleased to be here representing the medical 

device industry. 

I am testifying today as the Chairman of Cook and appreciate the 

opportunity to tell you a bit about our company, Cook, and about the 

impact we and thousands of companies like us have had on patients, 

communities and the economic health of our nation. 

Today, my message is not just about a company, but employees, jobs, 

and patients. I have nearly five decades of experience in the medical 

device industry, so I've seen and heard a lot but more often than I'd ever 

imagine, I'm told a story that stops me in my tracks. Two years ago, I was 

approached by an employee who said she wanted to stop and thank me. 

She said to me, "A second member of my family is alive today thanks to a 

Cook product. Your company has now saved two lives in my family.· Months 

before, I was talking with her in the sundry store where she worked and she 

told me about her father who had been diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm. 

I contacted the Cleveland Clinic and asked them to expect a call. Her 

father could not survive traditional surgery but our new stent graft that had 

just been approved was a possible alternative. He was admitted and 

received the new device saving her father's life. The second involved 

technology that was approved in the U.S. in 2005. This time, it was a Bakri 

Balloon, a device that stops potentially fatal bleeding for mothers after they 

give birth. The doctors told her this device saved her step-daughter's life. 

When somebody tells you about medical technologies that save lives, it 

drives home just how important our mission is at Cook. 

History ot Cook 

Since 1963, the company has grown from its birth in a spare bedroom 

in Bill and Gayle Cook's apartment to a world leader in advancing medical 

care for patients worldwide. There were many setbacks and countless 

challenges that threatened the success of Cook as our founder, Bill Cook, 

sought to build an innovative American company that would improve 

patient care. But Bill was resilient and had the same entrepreneurial spirit that 

makes this country so unique. These traits, combined with his focus on the 
132 

patient. are the foundation of Cook's success. The company has been the 

first to introduce new medical devices in more than 70 procedures. 

Today, Cook is the largest, family-owned medical device 

manufacturer in the world, We are best known as a pioneer in the field of 

inteNentional medicine. Our products benefit patients by providing doctors 

with a means of diagnosis and inteNention using minimally invasive 

techniques, as well as by providing innovative products for surgical 

applications. Cook sells more than 14,000 different products with 13,600 of 

these products seNing markets of $1 million or less worldwide. The other 400 

are large market technologies. These devices are used by physicians in the 

more than 40 medical disciplines and range from simple wire guides, needles 

and catheters, to grafts, drug-eluting stents and tissue engineering. 

Cook is headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana with its U.S, 

manufacturing plants in Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Illinois and 

California. We also have manufacturing facilities in Ireland, Denmark and 

Australia. We have direct sales in most of the world where the health care 

system is developed. Our company employs about 10,000 people around 

the world with approximately 7,500 of these employees based in the United 

States. While more than 57 percent of our sales are outside the United States, 

more than 80 percent of the devices are manufactured in this country. 

It has been my privilege to be associated with Cook for 45 years. 

The Medical Device Industrv 

0) Contributing to Improved Patient Health 

Over the years, improvements in medical technology have led to 

significant advances in the health of patients, Today, patients are living 

healthier, more productive and Independent lives. Many of these advances 

are due to the development of minimally invasive medical technologies that 

make it easier to diagnose and treat patient problems. These advances 

have resulted in improved patient outcomes with fewer complications. Since 

1950, the life expectancy for American men and women has increased 

nearly 10 years, We have also seen significant results from 1980 to 2000: 

• 15 percent deciine in annual mortality 

• 50 percent decline in the overall mortality rate from heart attack 

• 25 percent decline in disability rates 

• 56 percent reduction in hospital stays. 
133 

b) Contributing to Increases in Jobs, Payroll and the Economy 

In addition to patient health, the medical technology industry has 

been a strong and vibrant contributor to the U.S. economy. The medical 

technology industry is responsible directly and indirectly for two million U.S 

jobs. As we strive for policies that improve our economy, policymakers on 

both sides of the aisle have stated that a key component to turning our 

economy around is to invest in high technology, manufacturing, and growth 

industries of the future. I agree whole-heartedly and that is why we must do 

everything we can to ensure the U.S. maintains its leadership position In 

medical technology, innovation and manufacturing. 

Our company is not alone when it comes to that sort of impact. 

According to the National American Industry Classification System (NAICS), 80 

percent of the 16,424 medical device companies in the nation have fewer 

than 50 employees. It is an industry dominated by small companies. Cook is 

relatively large in the device industry, but small compared with the drug 

companies. 

The medical device industry is one of the few U.S. industries that 

enjoy a net trade surplus exporting more than we import. The U.S. is the only 

net exporter of medical devices in the world - the U.S. medical technology 

industry generates a $5,4 billion trade surplus. It is the envy of the world, and 

make no mistake, we hear repeatedly from countries around the world that 

they want to compete with the U.S. for this market share and actively recruit 

companies in the U.S. 

c) Contributing to Advances In Medlcallnnovaflon 

While the medical technology industry has helped to fuel our fragile 

economy In recent years, its position as a global leader may erode over the 

next decade. This will no doubt affect the ability of Americans to access 

future break-through medical advancements, and the growth of U.S. jobs. A 

recent study found that in the future, China, India and Brazil will experience 

the strongest gains In developing next-generation lifesaving 

products. Without changes to U.S. policies, capital. jobs and research will 

move away from the U.S. and toward these markets. (PWC, "Medical 

Technology Innovation Scorecard; The Race for Global Leadership, • January 

2011.) 

What effectively spurs medical innovation in this country is the 

association and talents of American doctors, engineers and innovators who 

are dedicated to discovering new treatments and therapies for patients. This 

requires an atmosphere that encourages innovation and a dynamic market 

that does not impede job creation but encourages it. Our company, like 

nearly all medical device companies, is facing road blocks to growing jobs in 

the U.S. 
134 

Policy Challenges 

a) The Medical Device Excise 

The most significant barrier to our future U.S. job growth is the medical 

device excise tax. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) contained a 

revenue provision that placed an excise tax of 2.3 percent on the sale of 

medical devices in the U.S. beginning January 1, 2013. While that does not 

sound like much it is a tax on gross revenue. It comes off the top and not on 

earnings, and it is huge. Further, whether a manufacturer makes a profit or 

not, the excise tax applies. For a company like ours, which pays about 33 

percent of our U.S. eamlngs in federal and state corporate income taxes, the 

excise tax will increase our effective rate on those U.S. eamings to 42 percent 

- this is more than a 25 percent increase. It is true that imported goods are 

subject to the excise tax when sold in the U.S.; however, corporate tax rates 

on manufacturing income earned outside the U.S. are much lower. It is also 

important to note that there is not a state corporate tax on top of the federal 

corporate tax in countries such as Ireland (at 12.5 percent). 

Since its enactment, there have been frequent announcements about 

device companies freezing capital expenditures, reducing research and 

development, expanding overseas rather than in the U.S" and/or in many 

instances, laying off employees due to the excise tax. It makes no sense to 

encourage manufacturing in the U.S. and at the same time impose an excise 

tax on one of the few industries that exports more products than it imports. 

Why would we want to Impose an excise tax on one of our fastest growing 

and most innovative industries - medical technology - that increases the 

federal tax burden on medical device manufacturers by 29 percent? (Ernst & 

Young, Effect of the Medical Device Excise Tax on the Federal Tax Liability of 

the Medical Device Industry, November 2012). 

Myths About the Device Excise Tax 

1) Device manufacturers will pass along the amount of the tax - False. 

Some say that a new 2.3 percent tax will only lead device 

manufacturers to pass on the cost of the new excise tax to purchasers 

(generally hospitals). That simply Is not true for most companies. Hospitals are 

under tremendous cost pressure today with 40 percent of hospitals operating 

in the red. The hospitals and group purchasing organizations are saying no. 

This is a very competitive industry and customers have many suppliers. 

Furthermore, our company, like most in our industry. has experienced 

significant increases in operational costs: health care costs for employees. 

salaries and wages, utilities, raw materials. regulatory costs, etc. We have 

seen the unemployment insurance tax increase along with other state. local 

and property taxes. The vast majority of companies simply cannot pass all 
135 

those costs on, let alone a 2.3 percent tax on gross sales. 

Finally, we have existing contracts of 3 to 5 years with prices already 

negotiated. Even if we did not face other restraints in passing along the 

costs, we simply would be unable to do so because of existing contracts. 

2) Device manufacturers will have an increased market of new patients 

as the uninsured now become insured and therefore seek out new 

treatments - False. 

Many believe that the ACA will add more patients and device 

companies will make more money as a result. This, too, is a myth for the vast 

majority of device companies. According to The U.S. Department of Health 

and Human Services (HHS), 71 percent of the "new Insured" are younger than 

45 years, a great majority of whom will not need our technologies. I have 

seen no credible studies that indicate an increase in sales and our research 

and other studies demonstrate that there will not be an increase in the sales 

of medical devices and no windfall profits. 

I must also point out that a 2012 Roth Capital survey of companies 

showed that their experience in Massachusetts after universal health care 

was enacted showed no increase In the rate of growth compared to the 

increase in growth of rest of the nation. Indeed, Cook's growth rate in 

Massachusetts trends slightly behind the national growth. 

Device Company Investment in the Community 

Let me tell you a bit more about the vision of our late founder and 

my good friend, Bill Cook. Bill believed in giving back to the community and 

investing in America. He believed that companies should create 

technologies that benefit patients, but also that the companies themselves 

should create jobs that benefit not just indIviduals and families but 

communities as well. Bill grew up in the small town of Canton, Illinois. A few 

years ago, before the excise tax, Bill decided to open up a manufacturing 

plant in the small community of Canton. At the time, unemployment in 

Canton was very high and the International Harvester plant which employed 

so many, had closed. Bill made the deCision for Cook to invest in Canton and 

today we have two new factories where 140 people now work. More than 

1,000 applicants applied for the initial 30 jobs at that factory, which makes 

catheters. The plant will employ 300 when we are at peak capacity. This 

growth has had a ripple effect as the local community also invested resulting 

in further growth. Canton is a model of what we would like to replicate in 

many other mid-western towns, but unfortunately this tax has forced us to 

shelve plans to build a similar factory every year for the next five years. 

Impact of the Device Excise Tax on Cook 

In order to offset a big expense like the excise tax, a company can 
136 

only look to employees. research and development or capital. Cook has 

never had to lay-off an employee in our 50 years of business. and we will not 

start now. However. we must make hard choices. 

Cook has made the difficult decision that without repeal, we will 

move important new product lines outside of the U.S. Our previous plans to 

open up five new manufacturing facilities in American towns are now on hold 

as we use capital intended for these projects to pay the excise tax. 

The impact of this tax Is squarely on U.S. jobs. Cook will adjust, but 

those that will be most affected by the device excise tax will be the potential 

future employees. Make no mistake about It: we want to develop and 

manufacture in the U.S. but this tax Is preventing our growth in this country. If 

is a shame that potential employees in Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, 

Collfomia and North Corolina can compete with any place in the world 

based on their productivity, but are going to be denied the chance by 

govemment. 

Over time, we will see an acceleration of companies manufacturing 

outside the U.S. to lower the costs of goods sold in an effort to offset the 

impact of the tax, I emphasize that this is not about labor costs. Our industry 

needs an educated, skilled labor force wherever we locate. 

This migration of manufacturing, coupled with the fact that most 

clinical studIes are now being conducted outside the U.S. will result in new, 

self-sustaining medical technology clusters that will threaten the U.S. 's global 

leadership position in medical technology. innovation and manufacturing. 

This migration will result in delays and in some cases barriers for American 

patients and their providers who need innovative technology to ensure 

quality care. 

Impact of Device Tax on other Device Companies 

Cook is not alone in feeling the adverse Impact of the device tax. A 

25 to 30 percent increase federal taxes will dramatically change this industry. 

Remember that this is an industry of small companies and the industry profit 

margin is between 6 and 10 percent. 

A good example is Orthopediatrics. a Warsaw. Indiana company 

whose President and CEO Mark Throdal, says his company has shelved 

research and mothballed developing product lines that would help disabled 

children walk again. He needs to devote that R&D funding to pay this 

medical device tax. Usten to what others say. executives who came to the 

Web site www.no2point3.com to urge lawmakers to repeal this tax. Dozens of 

founders and senior executives replied. Here are a few of their comments. 

We have lower net profit margins than competitors solely due to our 

choice to keep prices competitive while keeping 100% of sourcing and 
137 

production domestic. For one of the products we'll be releasing for 

20 13 my domestic cost per unit runs in the high 40s per unit. My total 

cost in having it manufactured offshore, including logistics, runs about 

18 per piece. That cost goes even lower if production runs become 

larger. By doing nothing but moving my production offshore we 

immediately see around a 65% savings per unit - which becomes all 

profit margin. There needs to be a distinction between those 

manufacturing domestically, paying decent wages, employment 

taxes, providing benefits for their workers, etc., and those who bypass 

our system by offshoring production. From Michael Shaffer, president 

of Atlanta-based Vendition Partners 

Or this from Dr. Stephen R. Kerr of Pullyalup, Washington: 

I am a surgeon and surgical device developer In Puyallup. I have a 

surgical device that I am now in the process of marketing to the major 

surgical device manufacturers in the US. I had the fortune ... or should I say, 

eventual misfortune, of having dinner with the VP of sales and member of 

the board of directors of one of our country's major medical device 

manufacturers. The purpose of the dinner was for him to evaluate my new 

medical device. The upshot of the meeting, he loved the idea, and 

thought it was a significant improvement not only over what their 

company had available, but better than any of the other competitive 

devices as well. Sounds promising. He then proceeded to tell me that, 

unfortunately, due to the looming new medical device tax. that they 

would not be investing In any new medical device technology anytime 

soon. Regarding manufactUring of their current medical device portfoliO, 

he informed me that their company, which does the majority of their 

manufacturing in the US, was now building new plants overseas and 

would be shifting their manufacturing there permanently. In order to offset 

the costs associated with the medical device tax. The president has 

stated that the ACA will increase the number of patients available and 

thereby Increase their sales to make up for that. Unfortunately, as a 

surgeon, I can tell you with utmost certainty that this reasoning is flawed. 

Not once In my career did I not use, or downgrade the quality of the 

medical technology or devices that I use due to a lack of insurance. 

NEVER. I implore you to further examine the 2.3% medical device tax and 

its negative effects on medical innovators. 

Perhaps John Micek of Buford, Georgia, has the most sobering 

perspective: "I have lost my job due to this tax. So have 50 to 60 other 

people at Remington Medical, Inc. My past employer is moving to the 

Dominican Republic .• 

Senate Legislation to Repeal the Medical Device Excise Tax - S. 232 

But before this happens Congress can act to repeal this onerous 

excise tax. We are grateful to the 29 sponsors of S. 232, a bill introduced by 
138 

Senators Hatch and Klobuchar, as well as our home-state Senators Burr, 

Casey, Coats, Donnelly and Toomey, to repeal the medical device excise 

tax. In fact, many Senators seNing on this committee have cosponsored this 

legislation or expressed support for either a delay or repeal of this tax, and we 

are grateful for your acknowledgment that this excise tax will have serious. 

unintended consequences. We hope as you deliberate further about ways 

to encourage medical innovation and investment in long-term economic 

growth you will consider advancing the repeal legislation. 

b) Other Important Steps to Maintain Leadership in the Development and 

Manufacture of Medical Devices. 

It is important to note that the medical technology industry faces 

other challenges from the federal government. The U.S. has been able to put 

a man on the moon and ought to be able to have the best system for the 

approval of safe and effective medical devices. Today, we have good 

people working hard at the FDA but Americans access to the latest 

technology is behind those outside the U.S. Congress needs to support 

changes In the system (not lower standards) to give American patients 

access to the latest technology. Cook histOrically has Introduced all of Its 

devices In the U.S. Now, almost 100 percent are first introduced outside the 

U.S. 

I also would like to mention the broader issue of taxation. The U.S. 

medical device industry conducts most of its manufacturing and invests the 

majority of its research and development dollars within the U.S. but as 

mentioned previously this trend is changing. Both Congress and the 

Administration recognize the importance of creating a climate to retain and 

expand these jobs. Passing legislation to enact a manufacturing tax credit 

and a permanent research and development tax credit are two steps toward 

making this happen. The current manufacturing deduction should be 

replaced with a manufacturing tax credit that results in qualifying 

manufacturing income being taxed at 20 percent. The research and 

development tax credit should be made permanent because a credit that 

continually expires and is reinstated does not provide the necessary 

predictability when companies are planning to conduct research and 

development in 3. 5 or 10 years. 

Not many years ago, 75 percent of Cook device sales were in the U.S. 

Now. 57 percent of Cook sales are outside the U.S. while more than 80 

percent of Cook devices are manufactured in the U.S. International markets 

are growing much faster than domestic markets. Thus, for U.S. companies to 

grow and prosper, their products must be sold internationally. This requires 

having operations outside the U.S. to cultivate these markets. In the medical 

device industry, it is necessary to have employees close to our customers to 

demonstrate products to health care professionals and to be able to deliver 

products for next day procedures. With the current U.S. tax system, 

companies are effectively locked out from repatriating earnings from these 
139 

operations located outside the United States due to the incremental U.S. tax 

cost. Thus, a repatriation incentive should be created to allow these funds to 

be retumed to the U.S. at a minimal incremental cost with appropriate 

safeguards to ensure the funds create jobs. During the prior repatriation 

holiday in 2004-2005, Cook invested repatriated funds in 2 start-up companies 

that currently employ a total of 500 people - up from a total of 73 prior to the 

repatriation. Another example of the use of repatriated funds at Cook was to 

allow for expansion at another of its subsidiaries by purchasing and 

renovating a larger building. This allowed the company to increase 

employment from 104 to 224 employees. 

Closing 

I come to you today as the Chairman of the Board of a multi-national 

medical device company. I shared with you quotes from other device 

companies to demonstrate the breadth of concern in the industry and am 

happy to assist you in reaching out to these companies if helpful to you. But 

today, I also sit here and speak to you not jut as a Chairman of Cook, but as 

a husband. father, grandfather. patient. and. finally, as an employee myself. 

I spoke earlier of our catheter plant and what we've done In Canton. 

Illinois. and in closing I want to tell you a story about the first person hired at 

the new plant which opened two years. I heard this story on a tour given to a 

new Congresswoman representing our district: "When I was hired I was a 

single mother on welfare and lived in a small. subsidized apartment in 

Canton. I could not afford to get married and lose my benefits. Now, I have 

health care, I am married, and I just purchased a home because I got the job 

at Cook." Uke more than 1,000 others from her town, she applied for a job at 

Cook and she got that job, she has a 401 (k), she has profit-sharing, along with 

health insurance and steady income. Getting off welfare enabled her to 

finally get married to her boyfriend. She no longer needed access to 

government care. She just bought a house. This job, she will willingly tell you, 

has changed her life - brought her and her young family self-reliance and 

hope for a better future. 

The country needs your leadership on this issue - your statesmanship -

and we need it now. I urge every Member of this Committee and beyond to 

put partisanship aside and do what's right: protect families and patients. 

Repeal this medical device excise tax. Future generations are counting on it. 

Thank you. 
140 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MALPASS. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID R. MALPASS, PRESIDENT, ENCIMA 

GLOBAL LLC 

Mr. MALPASS. Thank you, Chairman Murray, Senator Sessions, 

and members of the Committee. Thank you for the invitation to 

discuss the impact of Federal spending on economic growth. 

I welcomed the Chairman’s introduction on the need to tackle the 

debt and deficit and to cut spending responsibly. That is the spirit 

of my statement today, which I will summarize. 

By way of background, my company is Encima Global. We provide economic research to a variety of financial firms. 

My view is that reducing the path of Federal spending would 

cause faster economic growth and more jobs. To have a positive impact on growth, it is important to convince the private sector that 

the Government will create a continuous process of spending restraint and downsizing. The best way to convince the private sector 

is to make a responsible reductions now. 

The debt limit should be rewritten, in my view, to install a lasting limitation on the U.S. marketable debt-to-GDP ratio, which, if 

exceeded, forces Washington to cut spending. 

A process to restrain spending growth is all the more urgent because the economic recovery continues to be much slower than normal. The unemployment rate is still 7.9 percent, and the growth in 

the Nation’s prime working-age population has stalled. I am going 

to refer to a few of the graphs in my prepared statement. 

On the graph on page 2, we can see that we have fewer workers 

in the prime working-age population. Apart from recessions, 2012 

was the weakest nominal growth rate since World War II. The real 

median household income—and there is a graph of that on page 

3—has fallen over the last 13 years, and especially in the last 5 

years. Current policies, which I will characterize as spending more, 

raising taxes and relying on the Federal Reserve to provide the 

funding, are simply not working, as shown in the graph on the top 

of page 3. 

CBO has had to repeatedly lower its forecasts, at the bottom of 

page 3, and the Federal Reserve, on page 4, has also had to lower 

its forecasts repeatedly as the effect of the policies became clear on 

the economy. 

In my view, the inability to control spending is hurting growth. 

That includes the expansion of entitlement spending; the lack of a 

Senate budget in 2010, 2011, and again in 2012; the routine 

sidestepping of the PAYGO scorecard; and the decision not to offset 

spending increases with restraint elsewhere in the budget. Those 

have slowed GDP growth and job creation. The result is a policy 

that will require much higher future debt and taxes, discouraging 

business investment. 

Government spending causes the private sector to expect more 

taxes and Government debt issuance. That causes it to reduce investment and hiring. The converse is also true. A convincing reduction in the long-term growth of Government spending would encourage private sector investment and hiring, and I will refer you 

to the graph on page 6 to show the problem. 
141 

CBO’s projections of spending are that in the out-years they go 

up faster than the economy. That is daunting to the private sector. 

It looks at that graph, spending going up even faster than the economy, and decides not to invest, and that is what we have been facing. 

The picture facing the private sector is even worse than the CBO 

baseline because it is based on two rosy assumptions. CBO is assuming that interest rates stay very low by historical standards despite the high levels of debt; and they are also assuming—and I 

refer you to the graph on page 7—that discretionary spending 

plunges from 8 percent of GDP now down to 5.5 percent of GDP 

by 2023. It is highly unlikely that we will see that level of spending 

restraint, nor would that be beneficial to economic growth if we did 

that. And yet that is the baseline assumption that CBO is operating on. 

In making budget decisions, one of the confusing issues is whether austerity is bad for growth. The confusion is that austerity or 

‘‘fiscal consolidation’’ encompasses two separate economic policies: 

Government downsizing on the one hand, which I think causes 

more growth; and private sector downsizing on the other hand, 

which causes recessions. 

Many of the reform programs underway in Europe are harmful 

because they are built on austerity aimed at the private sector. In 

general, the unsuccessful programs provide minimal reductions in 

the size of Government, few labor reforms, and minimal asset 

sales. The Greek Government, for example, sold no assets in 2012 

despite the austerity that they were under. 

I see my time has expired, so, in conclusion, I would like to emphasize the urgency of this Committee’s work in restraining spending growth and making decisions on a better composition of spending. Private sector investment is very responsive to future Government spending and taxation, so cutting Government spending, 

downsizing Government, helps growth by encouraging private sector investment and hiring. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Malpass follows:] 
142 

Statement of 

David R. Malpass before the 

Senate Budget Committee 

February 26, 2013 

Chainnan Murray, Senator Sessions, members of the Committee, thank you for the 

invitation to testifY on the impact offederal spending on economic growth. 

My view is that reducing the path of federal spending would cause faster economic 

growth and more jobs. The private sector would celebrate. Government spending is a 

drain on the private sector because it has to provide the funding to the government 

through either taxes or loans. If you want more growth and jobs, you should convince the 

private sector that you will begin restraining spending. The best way to do this is to 

announce a few cutbacks today. The more convincing you can be in lowering the path of 

spending, the more the private sector will respond by investing and hiring workers. 

Before continuing, I'd like to provide a little of my background. I am president of 

Encima Global, which I founded in 2008. We provide economic research to a variety of 

finns primarily in the financial industry. I also write a regular column in Forbes magazine 

with historians Paul Johnson and Amity Shlaes and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. I served 

at Treasury and State in the Reagan and Bush-41 Administrations and, prior to that, was 

the tax analyst on this Committee's staff during the development of the 1986 tax refonn. 

I was a CPA before that and have a long-standing interest improving the federal budget. I 

live in New York with my wife Adele who was also worked on the staff of this 

Committee. 

1 was privileged to testifY before this committee two years ago on the fiscal crisis. My 

February 1,2011 statement recommended an upheaval in our federal spending and 

budgeting culture and made policy recommendations which I think would improve 

growth and jobs creation. I would like to repeat those recommendations today and hope 

that you will consider them: 

• The expiration of the continuing resolution on March 4. 2011 (and on March 27. 

2013) should be used as an opportunity to make numerous spending cuts now -- to 

put Washington on a diet where it shrinks day by day. Waiting for a deficit 

reduction package ducks responsibility and is a recipe for continued out-ofcontrol deficit spending. 

• The debt limit increase should be used to install a lasting limitation on the U.S. 

marketable debt-to-GDP ratio. enforced by escalating penalties on Washington. 

There should also be a minimum maturity for the debt to stop the government 

from artificially lowering near-tenn interest costs. 

• By buying long-tenn assets, the Federal Reserve is conducting fiscal policy. QE2 

should be wound down. It is shortening the effective maturity of the national debt 

and is causing substantial market distortions. 
143 

• I believe these policy approaches would give new confidence to American 

businesses and financial markets, causing an inflow of capital and jobs to the U.S. 

private sector. (The above is an extract from my 21112011 statement.) 

Most of the issues you face are the same as they were in 2011, with the added 

urgency that the economic recovery continues to be much slower than normal, the 

unemployment rate is still 7.9% and the growth in the nation's prime working age 

population has stalled. The demographic climate points to weakness in payroll and 

income taxes, especially given high unemployment, at a time when federal outlays on 

the elderly will be increasing. 

U.S. Population by Age Groups (last obs. 2012, projected to 2050) 

225 

200 

175 

150 

:!! 125 ~ 

E 100 

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 

Source: Census Bureau; Encima Global 

In nominal terms, our economic growth of 3.3% in 2012 was even weaker than in 2010 or 

20 I I. Apart from recessions, 2012 was the weakest nominal four quarter growth 

rate since World War II. The real median household income has fallen over the last \3 

years, and especially in the last 5 years, a dismal economic performance. 
144 

Real Median Household Income (last obs. 2011, estimates to 2013) 

$56,000 

$54,000 

" 

~ $52,000 Cl 

~ $50,000 

G 

~ 

E 1: $48,000 

.E 

:a 

i! 

~ $46,000 

5 

J: 

~ $44,000 .!!! 

" ::i "$42,000 

, 

, 

$40,000 ;'---T- -",." ---..- _ .. _._ ..... _-, -~--..."--.-,-" -"-:-'---,.,--"""~- ·--~-"---~"·-""""r-·"--" '-"~ "-"""~.~--~--""-~~-~~_ 

Source: Census Bureau; Encima Global 

• CBO's growth forecasts have been overly optimistic and been reduced. 

CBO Declining Growth Rate Forecasts for '12, '13 and '14 (last obs. 2-5-13) 

4,0 .I..~~---"" 

;f!. 

iii 

~ 3.0 

II;! 

a 

L"-

.c 

~ 2.0 

<.9 

a. 

g 1.0 

-1.0 

Jan-10 Jul-10 

Source: CBO; Encima Global 

Jan-11 JUI-11 Jan-12 Jul-12 Jan-13 
145 

• Similarly, the Federal Reserve's original growth projections for 2011,2012 and 

2013 were too optimistic. 

Fed Projected Real GDP Growth Rates (last obs. December 12,2012) 

4.0 

3.5 

a.. 

Cl 

C) 

'" 

~ 2.5 .S 

OJ 

en 

c: 

'" 2,0 "" (.) 

1.5 

2011 2012 

1.0 

Source: Federal Reserve; Encima Global 

Spending and Debt Contribute to Weak Growth 

Current spending policies contribute to our economic weakness. In rough terms, the 

current policy consists of the federal government spending $3.6 trillion per year, 50% 

greater than the tax revenues of $2.4 trillion. The inability to control spending is hurting 

growth -- including the expansion of entitlement spending, the lack of a Senate budget in 

2010,2011 and 2012, the routine side-stepping of the pay-go scorecard and the decision 

not to offset spending increases with restraint elsewhere in the budget. The result is a 

policy that will require much higher future debt and taxes, discouraging business 

investment. 

• Net business investment (gross non-residential fixed investment less depreciation) 

was only 1.\% ofGDP in 2011 and an estimated 1.7% in 2012. 
146 

Net Business Investment as a % of GDP (last obs. 2011, estimated for 2012) 

6.0% Cl. 

0 

(D 

(; 5.0% 

*' 'E 4.0% ~ 1ii 

1 3.0% III 

Ul 

Q) 

c: 

'iIi 2.0% 

~ 

~ 1.0% 

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis; Encima Global 

Milton Friedman explained that government spending has the effect of a tax. In a 2000 

Media Research Center essay, he argued it this way: "An increase in government 

spending clearly benefits the individuals who receive the additional spending. Considered 

by itself, it looks as if the additional spending is a stimulus to the economy ... But that is 

hardly the end of the story. We have to ask where the government gets the money it 

spends." He concludes that: "Government spending crowds out private investment." 

In CBO's discussion of this problem, its recent study on alternative budget paths finds 

that "larger deficits would reduce national saving and 'crowd out' domestic investment 

(as savings that would otherwise fund private investment were instead used to purchase 

government debt), lowering output." 

The issue before the Committee, as I understand it, is how much the government should 

spend in trying to encourage growth and jobs. The short answer is that you should 

spend much less if you want a stronger economy and, if possible, you should make 

spending reductions now rather than putting them off. Government spending causes 

the private sector to expect more taxes and government debt issuance, causing it to 

reduce investment and hiring. 

Again quoting Friedman: "Japan provides a dramatic recent example. During the 1990s, 

the Japanese economy was depressed. The government tried repeated fiscals stimulus 

packages, each involving increases in government spending financed by borrowing. Yet -

- or maybe therefore -- the Japanese economy remained depressed." 

The converse is also true. A convincing reduction in the long-term growth of 

government spending would encourage private sector investment and hiring. 

Looking at CBO spending forecasts on the graph below, the economic growth problem is 
147 

clear - government spending per GOP is high and goes up in the out years, confronting 

the private sector with the prospect of paying more taxes and lending more to the 

government rather than to the private sector. 

CBO Baseline: Federal Receipts and Outlays as pct of GDP (last obs. Q4 2012) 

26% 

eso 

24% 0-

0 

(!) / 

'0 22% ...... -/' 

~ 

.. 

'" 20% .. 

a; 

Cl / ...... - ~. "0 

:::J 18% / \ co 

16% eso 

Projection 

14% +-.--r----.,---.. ,.-.. --~----.,. .. -.---r_--,-... --.-.. ..,.-~~ .. 

Sep- Sep- Sep- Sep- Sep- Sep- Sep- Sep- Sep- Sep75 80 85 90 95 00 05 10 15 20 

Source: eBO; Encima Global 

• The picture facing the private sector is even worse than CBO's baseline forecasts 

because they are based on two rosy assumptions: that interest rates stay very low 

by historical standards despite high debt levels and the assumption of faster 

growth; and that discretionary spending plunges from 8% ofGDP now to 5.5% of 

GDP by 2023, a highly unlikely degree of spending restraint. 
148 

CBO Baseline: Discretionary Spending as pet of GDP (last obs. 2012, est. to 2023) 

11% 

a.. 

Cl 10% C) 

a 

~ 9% 

'" <II 

'" '" c: 8% '0 

c: 

Q) 

c. 

en 7% ~ 

'" c: 

<Q 

!1 6% " <II 

i5 

1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 

Source: CBO; Encima Global 

In making budget decisions, one of the confusing issues is whether austerity is bad for 

growth. The confusion is that austerity or "fiscal consolidation" encompasses two 

separate economic policies, government downsizing on the one hand, which I think 

causes more growth; and private sector downsizing on the other hand, which causes 

recessions. 

Many of the reform programs underway in Europe are harmful because they are built on 

austerity aimed at the private sector. The austerity often takes the form of higher valueadded taxes, wealth taxes, reductions in transfer payments to private sector retirees and 

increases in government fees for its monopolies. In the Asian and Latin American crises 

that I worked on, the austerity included currency devaluations, while the European 

programs are relying on "internal devaluations," primarily cuts in private sector wages, in 

an effort to respond to high unemployment and low productivity. This type of austerity 

has repeatedly failed. 

In general, the unsuccessful programs provide minimal reductions in the size of 

government, few labor reforms, and minimal asset sales (the Greek government sold no 

assets in 2012 despite a severe cash shortage). I discussed the different forms of austerity 

in two Wall Street Journal articles: The Crisis Winner Is Government on 12-16-11 and 

Greece's False Austerity on 5-24-12. 

This is of course a hotly contested field in macro-economics because it gets to the heart 

of whether governments should spend less, or more. A 2009 study by Harvard's Alberto 

Alesina and Silvia Ardagna concluded that fiscal adjustments based on spending cuts 

tend to be successful whereas fiscal adjustments that involved tax increases tend to be 

unsuccessful. Kevin Hassett of AEI and others have repeated the Alesina research and 
149 

reached similar conclusions. This coincides with my experience working on several 

dozen country programs beginning with a review of Central American reform programs 

in 1984 for this Committee. 

In contrast, the Congressional Research Service's Jane Gravelle reviewed the economic 

literature in January 2013 and concluded that the studies showing that spending cuts help 

economic growth "are generally inconsistent with the mainstream view of fiscal policy 

where short-term multipliers for spending decreases are negative and also tend to be 

larger in absolute value than those for tax cuts." The reference to multipliers means that 

spending cuts tend to hurt growth more than tax cuts help growth. Extending this logic, it 

might follow that spending increases help growth more than tax increases hurt growth, 

supporting an expansion of government. 

The IMF issued a study in October 2012 prior to the G20 meeting supporting this 

mainstream government view. The study connected fiscal consolidation (i.e. smaller 

fiscal deficits) to slower-than-expected growth rates. It showed that countries which 

widened their deficits or reduced their fiscal surpluses grew faster-than-expected. This 

supported the French government's arguments to Germany that Germany should stop 

pushing so hard on austerity. 

• This mainstream IMF view is lumping together two separate types of fiscal 

consolidation. Greece and the UK both imposed major tax increases as part of 

their consolidation, helping explain the deterioration in their growth forecasts 

during the IMF study. 

• In contrast, Germany decided against tax increases, allowing the fiscal balance to 

move from a surplus of 0.2% of GDP in 2007 to a deficit of 4.1 % of GDP in 2010 

during the timeframe of the IMF study. 

• It is clear to me from my experience in numerous countries that reforms that add 

to growth include labor mobility, restraint on government spending, asset sales 

and tax reform aimed at simplification and lower rates; whereas reforms that 

subtract from growth, as are often required in IMF programs, include value-added 

tax increases, wealth taxes and increased fees for government services. 

• Whatever the conclusions from the various studies of government spending, the 

connection between spending and growth also depends on the level of debt. 

Spending increases will not be as damaging to growth (or spending cuts as helpful 

to growth) if the debt level is low, whereas spending increases will damage 

growth (and spending cuts help growth) when debt levels are high. 
150 

Fiscal Consolidation vs. Growth Forecast Error (IMF est. for 2010-2011) 

Germany 

1 

• Sweden 

I 

Rnlan~ 

• fta~ Pt>land 

•• 1 .Belgium 

I 

Cyprus • Spain ,eland ~- - ~.~.--- -,-.. ---+------,-----------r------------, 

Denmark I' 

~. 

-8 -6 -4 -2 

Source: IMF; Encima Global 

Too Much Debt 

Austtalia I 

0 

Romania • 

2 4 

fiscal consolidation forecast 

• Greece 

6 8 

8 

6 

4 

2 1? 0 

~ 

0 13 

~ .r: 

-2 ~ co 

-4 

-6 

-8 

The high and rising level of the U.S. national debt should be a key concern facing the 

Committee. It's clear from a variety of studies that the high federal debt burden slows 

growth. A key characteristic of our current economic policy is the rapid rise in 

government debt. When I testified here in 2011, federal debt was 64% of GOP. It's now 

73% of GOP, very near the red flag levels established in recent economic studies. 

Including state and local debt, the IMP now puts our net debt level at 84% ofGDP. 

While our debt probably won't go up as much in the next two years as it did in the last 

two, the current massive level of government borrowing undercuts the financial system's 

ability and desire to provide credit to the private sector. 

• Credit to the government has been growing much faster than credit to the private 

sector, slowing growth. In effect, there's been a diversion of credit from the 

private sector to the government. This shows up in weak private sector 

investment which in tum has caused weak growth in Jabor productivity and GOP. 
151 

Credit to the Private Sector Vs. Government (last obs. Q3 2012) 

'" c: 

~ 

E 

:JO 

25 

20 

15 

10 

5 

Federal, Slate and 

Local Debt 

/ 

Mar-70 Mar-75 Mar-80 Mar-85 Mar-90 Mar-95 Mar-OO Mar-05 Mar-10 

Source: Federal Reserve; Encima Global 

With the government borrowing huge amounts, the credit available to households and 

unincorporated businesses, which tend to be small, job-rich enterprises, has gone down, 

not up as it should. The Fed's flow of funds data makes clear the dramatic reallocation of 

credit to governments and corporations. In the year ending September 30, credit to the 

government was up 8,9% to $14.3 trillion (including federal, state and local marketable 

debt). Private sector credit was up only 1.9% year-over-year to $25 trillion. Credit to 

corporations was up 6.3% to $8.4 trillion, but non-corporate credit was up only 1% to 

$3.8 trillion and credit to households was down 0.5% to $12.8 trillion. The December 31 

data, due from the Fed on March 7, is likely to show an extension of these trends. The 

economic result of the dramatic increase in government debt has been weak growth in 

jobs and GDP because small and new businesses have lagged. 
152 

Debt by Major Sectors (last obs. Q3 2012) 

14 

12 

'" 10 c 

g 

E 

6 

/ 

/ 

Government 

Household 

Nonfinancial 

Corporate 

Business 

_--___ Noncorporate 

Business 

Mar-90 Mar-92 Mar-94 Mar-96 Mar-98 Mar-DO Mar-02 Mar-04 Mar-De Mar-08 Mar-10 Mar-12 

Source: Federal Reserve; Encima Global 

Studies by Reinhart and Rogoff show that countries with debt levels approaching 90% 

begin to grow more slowly. A study by the BIS's Stephen Cecchetti found that each 10% 

increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio tended to cause a 0.2% decrease in subsequent growth 

rates once debt reaches excessive levels. Using different methodology, an IMF working 

paper by Kumar and Woo found about the same sensitivity - that growth slows by 0.2% 

for each 10% increase in debt, once debt levels exceed 90%, a direction we are heading. 

There's a lot at stake as the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio continues its rapid rise. Translating 

the growth impact from the high level of U.S. government debt into the impact on the 

employment rate, we may already be seeing a 0.5% increase in unemployment due to 

debt. 

Federal Reserve's Role 

In a change from past fiscal practices, the Federal Reserve is now providing much of the 

government's incremental borrowing capacity by borrowing from commercial banks to 

indirectly provide the funding for government spending. 

The Fed's overnight IOUs to banks will soon reach $2 trillion, reminding me of the 

famous quote attributed to John Paul Getty: "If you owe the bank $100 that's your 

problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." The Fed will owe 

banks 20,000 times that amount and has plans to borrow another 10,000 times the Getty 

amount in 2013 alone. This will create a huge $3 trillion distortion in the composition of 

commercial bank assets, which are increasingly invested in the U.S. government through 

the Fed. 
153 

One goal of good financing policy is to lengthen the maturity of the debt. The U.S. is 

doing the opposite. This is a major risk in the event that interest rates rise, adding to the 

uncertainty in the business community from the expectation of higher taxes due to high 

levels of government spending. 

The maturity of the U.S. national debt issued by Treasury is 65 months, only a little 

below the average maturity in the 1980s and 1990s. 

• However, the Federal Reserve's large buyback oflonger-dated Treasury notes and 

bonds, paid for by over-night loans from commercial banks, has substantially 

shortened the effective maturity of the U.S. national debt - to roughly 47 months-

- which is near the crisis point of the 1970s. 

• In addition to Treasury bonds, the Fed holds $1.1 trillion oflong-maturity MBS 

and GSE agency notes financed overnight, an added exposure for the taxpayer in 

the event markets require higher interest rates -- as they did in the 1970s when the 

debt maturity was also short. 

Maturity of Public Debt (last obs. Q3 2012, estimated through Q2 2013) 

75 1 

70 

" I 

'E I o 65 J 

E i .5 

j 60 c;; 

E 

~ 55 

" :> 

'" 50 

45 

40 0 ;;; N 

'r '" .!. .!. 

::; ::; ::; '" '" '" 

.., ..,. '" 'r '" .!. '" .!. 

::; ::; ::; '" '" '" ~ ::; '" 

a'll maturity of 

total outstanding 

mar1<etable debt 

Estimated Effectil.e 

OE1, OE2, 

maturity 

OE3 

with 

and 

Fed's 

Twist. 

~ 

Source: Treasury Dept and Federal Reserve; Encima Global 

Thus, the policy mix - high spending levels at a time of high debt levels, with 

funding provided by a wholly new financing scheme based on trillions of dollars in 

short-term Fed borrowing from commercial banks -- creates uncertainty about 

future interest rates and the dollar, further discouraging investment. This 
154 

uncertainty is compounded by the short effective maturity of the national debt held by the 

private sector. 

Not Worth the Risk 

In evaluating the U.S. debt problem versus other countries, I look at the current debt 

burden relative to GOP (ours is now high); the rate of growth of the debt burden (ours is 

fast, given the fiscal deficit); the foreign currency exposure (ours is minima\); the 

nation's offsetting assets (ours have fallen, but are still very high); and the maturity of the 

debt (ours is way too short). 

• On the positive side, very little of the U.S. national debt is non-dollar. Crises in 

Asia and Russia in the late 1990s and Mexico in 1994 involved foreign currency 

debts that mushroomed during their devaluations. 

• U.S. household assets are the largest in the world by far ($78 trillion or 495% of 

GOP). 

• By these metrics, the U.S. is in a less precarious debt position than several 

European countries, arguing against a near-term federal crisis. 

Household Assets and Total Debt I GDP (last obs. Q3 2012) 

600% I 

i 

500% ~ 

400% 1 0. I 

§ i 

15 300% ~ 

~ i 

0% L_~ ________ 

~ ;\ 

. . . 

U il ~ ~ 

" " " " ~ ~ ~ OJ 

" . 

~ ~ " " " " " 

Source: Federal Reserve; BEA; Encima Global 

t-busehold Assets to GOP 

"' "' ~ " ~ ., 

~ "' m 

~ . il il 

" " " " " " 

--,~.--" .. ---~-

~ m 9 m 11 "' 0 

~ . ~ il ~ 

" " " " " . 

~ 

" 

No one knows whether the U.S. will hit a tipping point where creditors stop buying our 

debt. Such a problem would be catastrophic, so responsible public policy should be 

aimed at lowering the risk. 

• Spain thought it was in good shape until early 2011 when its bond yields jumped 

and it found itself in deep fiscal trouble almost overnight. Unemployment is now 
155 

27%. One of the triggering events was the government's admission that the fiscal 

deficit was worse than it expected and the debt-to-GOP ratio was going to surgeit's now 90% of GOP and rising fast versus 107% for U.S gross general 

goverment debt under similar IMF methodology. 

Spain and U.S. 10 Year Gov't Yields (last obs. February 22, 2013) 

Source: Bloomberg; Encima Global 

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the urgency of this Committee's work in 

restraining spending growth and making decisions on a better composition of spending. 

Many government programs run on auto-pilot with little review of whether current 

spending levels are necessary in light of the huge national debt. 

Much attention has been focused on the U.S. entitlement problem and the underfunding 

of the social security and Medicare trust funds. From an economic perspective, I think 

there's no real difference between dollars spent on entitlements and those spent on 

discretionary programs. Under our current system, all spending ends up being funded on 

a pay-as-you-go basis whether accounted for as an entitlement with a trust fund (like 

Social Security) or as discretionary spending (like defense.) In this way, all government 

programs are a commitment of future spending, though some will be harder to restrain 

than others. Rather than separate the categories of restraint between discretionary 

spending and entitlements, [ think it is more important to agree that much more spending 

restraint is necessary and would be pro-growth, and then to get started on it. 

Reducing the path of federal spending would cause faster economic growth and more 

jobs. The private sector would celebrate. Even though some economic models contend 

that cuts in government spending hurt GDP, the reality is that private sector investment is 

very responsive to future government spending and taxation - so cutting government 

spending helps growth by encouraging private sector investment and hiring. 
156 

Chairman MURRAY. Absolutely, and thank you to all of you for 

your testimony. We will now go to 5-minute rounds for all of our 

Senators for asking questions. 

Ms. Trottenberg, I want to start with you. There has been a 

steady stream of studies in recent years highlighting a perceived 

investment gap in the Nation’s transportation infrastructure. Certainly the public is very sensitive to the worsening congestion on 

our roads and at our airports and throughout our infrastructure. 

Can you talk a little bit about what the economic consequences 

associated with an aging infrastructure are? 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. Yes, there have been a lot of studies in that 

regard, and at DOT we put out a Conditions and Performance Report every few years, and we have seen that just to maintain the 

current state of good repair—which is essential for our economy to 

function efficiently—we would need in both the highway and transit context to basically double what we are investing now in capital 

investments. 

If we look at our economic competitors, I think they are doing a 

better job of the economic analysis of looking at where investments 

will bring us the highest return, and we have started to do more 

of that at DOT. The TIGER grants gave us a really good opportunity to start that process. And I will just mention a few areas 

where I think there are tremendous economic returns to be realized. 

I will start with NextGen. We are still using a 1950s groundbased navigation system. This gentleman held up his smartphone. 

We need to get to a satellite-based system. The economic returns 

on those investments are tremendous. They modernize our aviation 

system. They will save airlines fuel costs. They will make more capacity in our skyways. They will have tremendous benefits. 

There are a lot of key areas like that. We discovered in TIGER, 

in our freight system in particular, there are a lot of areas where, 

with a good combination of very modest public sector investment, 

you can leverage a lot of private investment, 5, 6, 7 times as much 

public investment, and get tremendous public and private benefits. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Let me ask all of our panelists a broader question. America has 

always been known for building large projects— Hoover Dam, 

Interstate Highway System, investing in innovative technologies, 

as Dr. Rawlings talked about, producing the Internet and communication industries, educating our students, working to support 

these efforts. 

You know, historically, investments in education, infrastructure, 

and research and development have really had strong bipartisan 

support. Eisenhower built our highways. Republicans in Congress 

worked with President Roosevelt on the Montgomery GI bill. The 

COMPETES Act passed Congress on a bipartisan basis. It was actually signed into law by both President Bush and President 

Obama. 

I am worried about some signals on the horizon. Last year, after 

very long negotiations with the House, we were only able to pass 

a two-year transportation bill instead of a five-year bill. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the Workforce Investment Act, both have not been reauthorized. 
157 

I wanted to ask all of you what you think is behind that trend 

and what are the long-term consequences of failing to invest in 

these programs. 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. I can start on the transportation front. 

Chairman MURRAY. Great. 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. It is true MAP–21 was only a 2-year bill. We 

are grateful that Congress did come together, and obviously it was 

a bipartisan bill, led by Senators Boxer and Inhofe here in the Senate. 

I think on the transportation front, we have had an extraordinary tradition in this country of bipartisan consensus. In part 

that is because, the funding mechanism we have used for the past 

60 years, the Federal gas tax, has risen pretty regularly, and Congress has actually only had to raise it a few times. And because of 

the amount of mileage that Americans are driving has increased 

every year, we had a pretty good stream of revenue, and that enabled us, to build a stable program and achieve political consensus. 

Obviously, now we have not had the gas tax raised in 20 years, 

and we have been searching for a way to achieve consensus on how 

to fund the program going forward. We have put a lot of general 

funds into the program, something that we started doing about 5 

years ago and had not done prior to that at all. Obviously I think 

a lot of us worry that that is not fiscally and politically sustainable. 

As Senator Sessions was saying, that is adding to the debt future 

generations are going to have to pay to keep the program going. 

So for us, we clearly need consensus on a long-term, sustainable 

funding path. 

Chairman MURRAY. How about on the education and research 

side? 

Mr. RAWLINGS. What I would cite there is the following: NIH has 

great bipartisan support. Republicans and Democrats support NIH, 

and that is terrific. It has helped us build great biomedical research in this country. 

But because of what has been happening to the budget, with the 

steady squeeze on the domestic discretionary side of the budget, appropriations for NIH actually decreased over the last two years. 

Down, not up. And in terms of its purchasing power, it is down 20 

percent over the past 10 years. That is a big number. It affects the 

University of Alabama at Birmingham, which is a great research 

institution in biomedical research. It affects the University of 

Washington, another great one. Both stand to lose tens of millions 

of dollars because of NIH reductions, which are already occurring, 

because NIH, worried about the sequester, is holding back research 

grants. So the estimate at Birmingham is a $25 million loss. At UW it is $75 to $100 million. And the new president at Birmingham, Ray 

Watts, devoted most of his first public address to the danger of the 

sequester specifically for his institution in Alabama. So that is how 

it hurts. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. Unfortunately, I am out of time. I am 

going to keep us all to 5 minutes, so I am going to turn to Senator 

Sessions at this point. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. We are proud of the University of 

Alabama at Birmingham, and they get about $300 million from the 
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Federal Government, and that is so important to a lot of the good 

work they do. And a $25 million reduction is significant, and it is 

a bit troubling through the sequester where the cuts falls are not 

as smart as they need to be. We did double NIH funding in the 

early part of 2000, but it is an important matter. 

With regard to highway funding and the sequester, the sequester 

does not impact Federal highway spending, does it? 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. Correct. 

Senator SESSIONS. So we hear a lot of talk, you know, they go 

around and poll, I guess, and figure what is most important to the 

American people. They like roads and bridges. They like improved 

transportation. And we sort of imply that roads are getting cut, 

and in this program it is one of the things that is exempt, as is 

food stamps, as is Medicaid, as is many of the Pell Grant programs 

that are entitlement programs. 

Mr. Ferguson, you mentioned something I have seen from talking 

to real business people, and you are one of those. You were actually 

solicited to move some of your manufacturing out of America to foreign countries because you could avoid the increase in the medical 

device tax. And that was an argument I guess some of the people 

asking you to consider that made. Do you think other companies 

may succumb to that argument? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Well, I think you can see by the reports and releases that companies are making that decision every day to move 

outside the country. 

Senator SESSIONS. So as a result, this tax would accelerate job 

loss in America. 

Mr. FERGUSON. Yes. The answer to that question is yes. Ireland, 

Canada, and other nations constantly recruit U.S. companies to 

come locate in their countries. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you for sharing that real-life perspective. 

Mr. Malpass, with regard to the debt and Government size and 

spending, this is really important. I think all of us have to be honest. It is not all win-win, that somebody comes up with a plan and 

they say it is going to produce al these benefits, and if we would 

just tax a little more or borrow a little more and fund this program, 

it is going to make America better. But you are raising the question that it is not always so. 

Would you share a little more with us on that? 

Mr. MALPASS. Yes, Senator. As the debt grows, the private sector 

has to assume that that debt is going to be paid. So as the Government spends more, the borrowing has to come from the private sector or else taxes come from the private sector. 

To the Chairman’s point about why is it that we are having trouble making long-term investments, I would answer that we have so 

much debt, and each time you do a budget, you find that the entitlements and the annual spending are, in effect, crowding out. If 

you have a budget horizon that is 10 years and you say, well, the 

first thing we have to do is fund all the entitlements and then we 

have to fund the necessary discretionary expenditures, it does 

not— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, second, we fund the interest on the debt. 
159 

Mr. MALPASS. Yes, the interest on the debt, it does not leave 

much room for the longer-term projects that are going to create future growth. So, in my view, the best way to address that problem 

would be to make choices on all of these areas starting now, meaning you have to make spending choices, responsible spending 

choices, today. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, we know that recovery is slow. They are 

saying it was because there was a financial recession and other excuses. However, just a few years ago, 2, 3 years, after we were coming out of the recession, after we were out of it, the projections for 

economic growth that were expected last year and this year and 

next year made a couple of years ago are not being met. Is that 

not correct? 

Mr. MALPASS. That is right. And I think we have tried the idea 

of having the Government spend more money to see if that causes 

growth, and we have the answer definitively. It absolutely does not 

cause growth. And Japan tried this. Japan has tried over and over 

again to have big spending increases and see if it gets the economy 

going. And each time the private sector reacts by reducing investment, which hurts jobs. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, it is so important, and I appreciate your 

testimony. My time has expired. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator Baldwin? 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you, Chairman Murray and Ranking 

Member Sessions. Today’s hearing is especially timely given the 

across-the-board sequestration that is scheduled to take effect this 

Friday. These arbitrary and indiscriminate across-the-board cuts 

will reduce, according to many economists, expected GDP growth 

by as much as half at a time when we need to be focused on growing our economy. And it is another in a series of what I would describe as ‘‘self-inflicted wounds’’ that congressional gridlock is really responsible for. 

We have to do better. We have an obligation to come together to 

find a balanced solution to avoid sequester and get back to the regular order of annual budgeting. 

Our budget is about choices, and it is about values. And this 

week the Senate Democrats will offer a balanced solution to remove 

the sequester for a year by safeguarding investments that we need 

to grow our economy and cutting spending and closing tax loopholes that we can no longer afford. 

Here are some of the choices that I see as we move forward. In 

my home State, do we kick 900 Wisconsin children out of Head 

Start? Or do we close oil and gas tax loopholes for one of the 

world’s most profitable set of companies? 

Do we ensure that 23,000 Wisconsinites continue to get job 

search assistance to get them back on their feet? Or do we continue 

with tax breaks for companies who ship American jobs overseas? 

Do we provide nutrition assistance for our most vulnerable Wisconsin seniors? Or do we continue with billions of dollars of wasteful direct payment subsidies to large corporate farmers? 

These are just some of the choices that we are facing that demand our action. 
160 

I want to focus my questions on two areas— infrastructure investments and workforce development—and I would start with a 

question about ports for Ms. Trottenberg. Wisconsin is home to one 

of the largest ports on the Great Lakes, the port of Duluth-Superior, and I had some time this past week to visit with residents of 

Superior, Wisconsin, about the topic of harbor maintenance. 

As you may know, Senators Levin and Isakson have introduced 

the Harbor Maintenance Act, which would ensure that all fees 

charged to shippers through the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, 

which amounted to $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2013, are spent on 

harbor maintenance and operations. Presently, only half that 

amount is actually spent on those activities. And I am happy to say 

my colleague from Wisconsin and I are both cosponsors of this legislation. 

Ms. Trottenberg, could you discuss what kind of economic impact 

the doubling of investments we make in harbor maintenance would 

have on communities like Superior, Wisconsin? Green Bay also has 

a big harbor. 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. Yes, I would be happy to, Senator Baldwin, 

and certainly ports is another area where at the Department we 

get a lot of interest, and they are clearly a key focus for our administration in terms of investment. 

Again, having to do four rounds of the TIGER grant program, we 

were able to put investments into 25 ports around the country. It 

was pretty unprecedented. And with a lot of those projects, the economic analysis showed benefits that greatly surpassed the investments. And, again, a lot of these projects were public-private partnerships where there was a lot of private investment being leveraged. Clearly, there are a lot of ports around the country that are 

interested in accessing more of the Harbor Maintenance Trust 

Funds. There are great dredging needs. There are great both port 

infrastructure needs and transportation needs linking to the 

ports— roadways, railways, et cetera. 

There is no question, through the economic analysis our Department has done, there is great economic value to be unlocked in investing in our Nation’s ports, and clearly, as we anticipate less of 

an issue in the Great Lakes but certainly in the southeast as we 

anticipating the widening of the Panama Canal, our Department is 

right now undertaking an analysis to see exactly what the potential impacts of that are going to be and how we can best target investments to make sure our country remains competitive in the 

global economy. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator Johnson? 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Chairwoman Murray. 

The Chairwoman in her opening statement said that the goal 

here is to help our economy grow and keep us globally competitive. 

I just want to ask any member of the panel, is there any tax increase that you know of that helps our economy grow or keeps us 

competitively globally? Any? Anybody want to volunteer? I will 

take that as a no. 

Mr. FERGUSON. Well, I would say that the device tax, makes it 

more difficult for the U.S. to compete globally. 
161 

Senator JOHNSON. Exactly. 

Mr. FERGUSON. And the private side exceeds the public side in 

investment in R&D. And so when you have a tax and businesses 

have only three places to cut—employees and R&D and captial— 

and this tax has a strong impact. 

Senator JOHNSON. I think my point has been made. There are no 

tax increases that are going to help our economy grow. 

We have also heard a number of times—and really over the number of weeks—people talking about the sequester devastating our 

economy; $85 billion on $16 trillion, or sixteen thousand billion, is 

about 0.5 percent. Is a 0.5-percent reduction in spending by one 

component of the economy going to be devastating to any economy? 

Is that an accurate term? 

Mr. MALPASS. I do not think it is devastating. I think it is correct 

to say this is not the best way to make your spending decisions. 

So as the Chairwoman opened the hearing, the goal is to find responsible ways to restrain spending, and that would be very progrowth. 

One concern I have on the sequester itself is this. If it is perceived as a one-time cut, then it will not have the positive impact 

that you would get from a continuous process of spending restraint. 

The private sector has seen one-time temporary tax cuts. For example, in May of 2008, there was a Bush tax rebate that did not work. 

And in 2011 and 2012, we had the payroll tax cut that, again, did 

not provide stimulus. We have seen the economy actually slow. 

So it is the same with the sequester. If it is perceived as a onetime cut rather than a continuous process of cutting, I do not think 

we will get the benefits that we would get from continuous spending restraint. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. I believe the whole point of sequester 

is to lower the baseline and that is why you would get about 1.2 

trillion. 

Dr. Rawlings, you asked why would we possibly want to reduce 

this. You know, quite honestly, I do not want to reduce infrastructure spending or basic science and research. But here is why we 

have to reduce something in the Federal Government, is because 

we have taken 65 percent of our Federal budget off budget, so that 

all of these cuts are falling on a very small sliver. And the other 

reason we have to do this is from 1970 to 1999 the average interest 

rate we paid on our debt was 5.3 percent. We have been keeping 

that interest rate artificially low. If we revert to that average when 

global competitors say we are not going to loan you this money, not 

at that rate, we could add $600 billion per year to our interest expense. That is 60 percent of discretionary spending. That is why we 

have to address this. 

Dr. Carnevale— 

Mr. RAWLINGS. Could I just say something? 

Senator JOHNSON. Sure. 

Mr. RAWLINGS. Those are very good points, Senator, and I certainly do not disagree. The problem here, of course, is that all the 

cuts are falling on this tiny piece of the budget where we— 

Senator JOHNSON. So don’t you think we need to expand and 

take a look at all of the budget? And that is part of the problem. 

You know, certainly on this side of the aisle, we actually want to 
162 

save those other programs for future generations. It seems like the 

other side is always taking them off the table, and that is the real 

problem here, all these cuts are disproportionately falling on a 

small sliver of— 

Mr. RAWLINGS. I think that is a big part of the problem, and it 

does seem to me that we need a much better balanced approach. 

Senator JOHNSON. Yes. But the balanced approach, if you increase taxes, it is going to harm economic growth, so the balanced 

approach you are talking about then was why don’t we actually address Social Security, Medicare, other mandatory spending programs that are really the bulk of our long-term deficit drivers. Correct? 

Mr. RAWLINGS. If we protect the vulnerable, which I strongly believe in, then it seems to me that people like me could indeed suffer— 

Senator JOHNSON. And we all want a strong social safety net. We 

are a very compassionate society. 

Dr. Carnevale, you mentioned the escalating costs of higher education. I agree. In the 1960s, room, board, and tuition of a 4-year 

college was about $1,000. Had that just grown by the rate of inflation, today college room and board for a year would be about 

$7,400. But, in fact, it is about $18,000. 

Can you explain what is so different about higher education that 

it would grow in its cost at 2.4 times the rate of inflation and 

make, quite honestly, higher education less accessible? 

Mr. CARNEVALE. In the end, a lot of the growth really is—and I 

understand your point. You are right. The cost of higher education 

has gone up. But a fair amount of it is quality. The question is: 

Can we afford the quality? That really is—and can we afford 

spending 18 to 20 grand a student for 65 percent of— 

Senator JOHNSON. In business, all the time, quality has dramatically improved. I mean, we pulled this thing out. Quality is dramatically improving as the price is decreasing. So, again, so what 

is it? What is higher in quality in education that you cannot also 

squeeze out economies? 

Mr. CARNEVALE. Oh, sure, you can squeeze out economies. I 

agree with that completely. Not only that, we are going to have to 

squeeze out economies. I do not think there is any alternative here. 

We simply cannot educate 65 percent of us at the postsecondary 

level at the current productivity rate in higher education. It is not 

possible. 

Senator JOHNSON. We have enticed our children to incur collectively $1 trillion of debt in higher education. Fifty percent are unemployed or underemployed recent college graduates. And we have 

poured Federal support into those programs. I guess I am just kind 

of wondering if maybe that is one of the reasons higher education 

has increased 2.4 times the rate of inflation, the money we have 

poured into it? 

Mr. RAWLINGS. If I could just respond quickly, what is happening 

is a really dire problem, and part of it is because States have cut 

so much back on their support for public higher education. So, in 

Oregon, for example, repeated cuts in State funding have led, as 

you say, to increases in tuition. We cannot just keep doing that, 
163 

and the result is that right now budgets just keep going down, 

down, down. So— 

Senator JOHNSON. But the cost has gone up, up, up— 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Johnson— 

Senator JOHNSON. I am sorry. 

Chairman MURRAY. I hate to interrupt you, but we have a lot of 

Senators and a vote coming. 

Senator Warner? 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

I do want to follow up, though, from where Senator Johnson was. 

I agree that entitlement reform has to be part of the mix. One of 

the things I find interesting, though, is, you know, our revenue as 

a percent of our GDP is at a historic low. Having been involved in 

a variety of the effort to try to find that common ground, all of 

them have had substantial amounts of revenue increases to try to 

get us back towards our historic levels, what we did on New Year’s 

Eve was less than half of what everything from Simpson-Bowles to 

every other plan had out there. 

So the notion that we are going to somehow do this without having revenues as part of the mix, as somebody who has read—I will 

match my capitalist credentials against anybody at this dais and 

job creation credentials against anybody on this dais, you know, 

and can read a balance sheet, you know, it has to have a balance. 

I do want to come back to the sequestration issue, which I have 

been running back and forth, along with some of my colleagues, 

with Chairman Bernanke downstairs, you know, everybody concurs, you take this hit, and in a way that was set up to be the 

stupidest way possible, you are going to have at least a 750,000 job 

hit. 

What I pressed Chairman Bernanke on was how deep was your 

analysis, was it just, you know, taking this much money out, this 

many jobs, and he acknowledged that is only as deep as it went. 

It did not go to the point of where—and I think the American public will be even more outraged as we kind of go down the line. How 

stupid this was set up where in many cases we will be costing the 

taxpayer money under the guise of savings. Let me cite three examples, and one, Dr. Rawlings, I would like your comment on, 

where like any volume purchaser we buy more tanks, bullets, guns, 

planes, you get a volume discount. We will be breaking volume discount contracts because of this—taking the Navy, 975 separate line 

items. They are not all of equal value to the taxpayer, but they are 

all going to take a whack. 

The idea of furloughing a meat inspector or a poultry inspector, 

where you can take that cost of that individual’s job, what has not 

been factored into the analysis is what happens when not as much 

food gets to the marketplace and, consequently, food prices go up 

overall? 

And, Dr. Rawlings, I had—my good friend Tim Kaine has one of 

our university presidents in today, and I have heard this from a 

number of them, as well as folks at NIH, where— and you may 

want to comment on this—where because of this kind of arbitrary, 

non—and I agree with actually Senator Toomey, lack of discretion, 

and even with discretion you are still going to have bad outcomes, 

you will have cases, isn’t it true, where you may have multiple 
164 

years of research where you need that last year to finish the research to get valid results, where you will not be able to issue that 

last year contract and consequently will literally flush from a scientific standpoint the prior year workings. Is that not correct, sir? 

Mr. RAWLINGS. That is correct, and with that scientific loss goes 

something else. Think of most of these researchers on NIH grants 

as running small businesses— because that is what they do. They 

are not like me. I teach ancient Greek. I do not have a small business. I do not drive the economy. But these researchers on NIH 

grants do. So some of them have four-person companies. Think of 

it that way. Some of them have 12-person companies, some of them 

have 25-person companies doing grant work. 

So what do you do when you get this cut in the fourth or fifth 

year of your research? You let go your workers because you cannot 

pay them any longer. So the grad students and the post docs fall 

off the research team, and the research team cuts back. But worst 

of all is not knowing. 

I had one professor tell me that his lab is now suffering from sequester fatigue before the sequester begins because NIH has held 

back on the grants. 

Senator WARNER. Well, again, my point being that I very much 

believe you have to have a balanced approach, revenues, I do believe entitlement reform has to be part of this mix. But I think 

when we look at this kind of top-line number, we are looking at the 

top-line number as if it was as rational set of cuts, when in effect 

this was set up to be the most irrational—I use the ‘‘Blazing Saddles’’ analogy when the sheriff comes up and puts the gun to his 

head. You know, no rational group of folks would allow this to happen, yet we are 3 days from allowing this to happen. 

I know I am down to 35 seconds. I want to move to another subject, Ms. Trottenberg. There are a number of us, bipartisan—Senator Kerry and Senator Hutchison, who have since moved on to 

other careers, but Senator Lindsey Graham and I looked at the notion of how you better leverage our declining revenues for infrastructure, on any historic basis, again, our percent of GDP investing in infrastructure is pitifully small. So we have looked at a public-private combination of an infrastructure investment bank, and 

with my few remaining seconds, I would like to get your comments 

on that. 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. Yes, and— 

Senator WARNER. And let me add, one that on the Senate side 

did not have direct loans but—did not have direct grants, but was 

much more loans, loan guarantees, married a model much after the 

Export-Import Bank, which has never lost a public dollar ever. 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. And we have sort of a prototype model of an 

infrastructure bank right now at USDOT, which is the TIFIA loan 

program, which Congress greatly increased the funding we have for 

that program in MAP–21. And I can tell you, the program has been 

very, very successful. It does leverage tremendous amounts of private dollars. I think it brings a lot of private sector efficiencies into 

transportation investments. It requires project sponsors, I think, to 

do the kind of due diligence that, particularly when you have some 

real skin in the game, you see very good work there. 
165 

There is one thing we have to acknowledge, though. Those types 

of programs do require some sorts of revenues to pay back the 

loans, and typically in transportation that has been tolling or a 

sales tax or something like an availability payment, which is a 

guaranteed revenue stream from a State or local government. 

So I think those bring tremendous efficiencies and can unlock all 

kinds of private capital that is waiting to get into the infrastructure investment space. But they do need some sort of a revenue 

stream, obviously, to pay back the loan. 

Senator WARNER. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Senator Ayotte? 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I wanted to ask Mr. Ferguson, I have been very concerned about 

this medical device tax. In fact, in New Hampshire, we have approximately 50 medical device companies employing almost 3,800 

people, and that was just in 2008. It has really been a growth industry for me. I have visited many of them, both when I campaigned and also since I have been a Senator. And I know you are 

a larger company, Cook. What does this do to startups, the medical 

device tax? 

Mr. FERGUSON. It hurts them very badly. There is a startup that 

I know in Warsaw, Indiana, called OrthoPediatrics, which builds 

orthopedic devices for kids and makes them able to walk when they 

cannot. They have about $19 million in revenue. They are not profitable. This tax drops to the bottom line. They had to cut two R&D 

projects that would have helped kids walk. 

Senator AYOTTE. Is that because this tax is also a tax on revenue 

as opposed to profit and, therefore, when you are a startup, you do 

not generally make a profit so your revenue is reinvested in research and running your company? 

Mr. FERGUSON. It does, for what you say, since it is a gross tax, 

it drops directly to the bottom. You have to remember, out of the 

public companies that are publicly traded, over half of them lost 

money last year. So it is dropping directly to the bottom, and they 

are having to make decisions between employees, and R&D, and 

capital. So it is not just the small companies. It is big companies, 

too. 

Senator AYOTTE. Who is ultimately going to pay this tax? You 

know, we are really concerned about health care costs increasing. 

What does this do to health care costs? 

Mr. FERGUSON. I think patients pay the price for this tax, because they will not have the latest technology. I think U.S. employees and R&D will pay the price. Ultimately patients will pay the 

buggest price. I think that is where it falls. 

Senator AYOTTE. Will it ultimately drive up health care costs as 

well? I mean, these costs—you can only sustain so much in terms 

of what you can—what will not be able to pass—will some of it be 

passed through to the consumer? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Well, you know, in our cases, you raise wages 4 

percent, you have a 10-, 13-percent increase in health care costs, 

you had other expenses every year. The hospitals are under tremendous pressure. The GPOs are saying you cannot pass it on to 

us. We have a lot more expenses than we could possibly pass on, 
166 

so we have to look at the other side, which is how to reduce your 

costs, and that is the reason I say it is going to go to the employees 

and patients. 

Senator AYOTTE. You were going to open up five new facilities or 

plants, as I think you described in recently testimony, here in the 

United States. What kind of jobs were you talking about there? 

Mr. FERGUSON. We had just opened a plant in Canton, Illinois. 

We started out—and it was interesting. Our new Representative, 

the Congresswoman from that area, took a tour, and she introduced herself to our employees. One young lady stood up and said, 

‘‘You know, before Cook I was on welfare. I could not get married 

because I could not give up the benefits. I was living in subsidized 

housing. Now I have health care. I just bought a house. I got married,’’ et cetera. 

We had 1,000 people apply for the first 30 jobs. We are going to 

have 300 employed there. We wanted to build five more plants like 

that so we could employ 300 per plant, about 1,500 more people 

who are productive, who work, who want to work, who need the 

jobs, and we want to do it in the United States. 

Senator AYOTTE. And also, do you see this, if this tax remains 

in place, that we will see more investment in medical device innovation overseas? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Absolutely. I think you can see that right now by 

what is happening. I hope that you act quickly to try and turn this. 

You know, we are an American company. We want to stay here. 

We want to build jobs. I think this industry does, too. But you are 

going to have to take action quickly to keep the momentum. 

Senator AYOTTE. Mr. Malpass, I wanted to ask you, is there another way we could grow revenue other than increasing taxes? 

What will the growth in economic—growth in the private sector in 

terms of growth there do to increased revenue to our Government? 

Mr. MALPASS. Yes, I think we can grow revenues. In 1986 we 

lowered the rate and broadened the base, and that was very stimulative to the private sector. The private sector sees that coming and 

begins to invest more. 

The same happened in 2003 and 2004 with the Bush tax cut, 

which was very successful in terms of causing more revenues to 

come into the Government, even though the rates were lower. 

As you look at tax provisions, tax reform that makes the code 

more logical or less illogical would be a big step forward. This medical device tax, by taxing gross revenues, is a stupid tax. We are 

using that term about the sequester, but we are doing it also on 

the revenue side. It is a bad way to raise revenues. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate it. 

Chairman MURRAY. We have four Senators remaining: King, 

Toomey, Kaine, and Wyden. Senator King? 

Senator KING. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Madam Chairman and Ranking Member, this has been a very interesting hearing, and I want to thank you for setting it up. 

Mr. Malpass, a couple of questions. I was fascinated by your testimony. I think one of the issues that really has not come out explicitly in this hearing is that all Federal spending is not created 

equal, and that there are areas that certainly need to be cut and 
167 

restrained, and there are other areas that are legitimate investments. Would you agree that that is the case? 

Mr. MALPASS. Yes. I think what is important is that the United 

States be perceived as a Government that has a process to restrain 

spending and to make logical choices. I was listening with interest 

to the other statements today and agreed with most everything. 

The projects that are put forward sound like good projects. Within 

the same Departments, for example, the Department of Transportation, it would be very useful to have areas of restraint where 

there is a process that the business community can see, the private 

sector can see, and that would spur growth. 

Senator KING. Well, one of the ironies about the sequester—and 

Senator Johnson pointed this out—is that it is aimed at the areas 

of the budget which, if you look historically, are flat or actually declining. Nondiscretionary difference is at the lowest percentage of 

GDP it has been in about 40 years. And the real driver of the deficit over time is health care. And there is nothing in the sequester 

or—I mean, we have to talk about health care, we have to talk 

about entitlements, because that is the long-term driver. So I agree 

with Senator Johnson on that. 

One other sort of mega question, and I do not have an answer 

to this, I am interested in all of your answers, but particularly you, 

Mr. Malpass, because you are talking about it. By the way, when 

I first heard your name, I thought it was ‘‘Malthus,’’ and I thought 

how ironic. 

Mr. MALPASS. I have tried to live that down. 

Senator KING. That is too poetic for the Federal Government, I 

think. 

What is the appropriate level of Federal spending as a percentage of GDP? Historically, it has been between 20 and 22 percent. 

What is the appropriate level of taxes, revenues, as a percent of 

GDP? Historically, it has been between about 17 and 18 or 19. 

What is the right number? If we can figure out what those numbers should be, then it gives us targets that we can then talk about 

in terms of budgets and revenues. Do you have a theory about 

where that number should be? 

Mr. MALPASS. My view is that there is no one magic number, but 

the ranges you cited would be very pro-growth. So if this Committee decided that that was going to be the objective, to have 

spending in the historical range, you would see businesses across 

the country begin hiring workers. 

The problem is, as I showed in the graph, the CBO baseline has 

much more spending than that. It has tax revenues going up to 

nearly 20 percent of GDP, which we have never been able to 

achieve. So there are already plenty of taxes in the budget, but just 

way too much spending, and so the private sector responds negatively. 

Senator KING. Well, I would point out that revenues right now 

are about a point below the 40-year average in terms of percent of 

GDP, so there is some upward space for revenues. 

Mr. MALPASS. And CBO has that in the baseline that revenues 

we go up. The assumption in the current law baseline is that revenues are going to go up and actually exceed historical averages 
168 

with the current taxes. So there is no real room for more taxes. 

There is room for less spending. 

Senator KING. Would you distinguish between raising—I notice 

you like the 1986 act because it lowered rates and broadened the 

base. If we are talking about revenues, shouldn’t that be where we 

are looking, tax expenditures, broadening the base, rather than 

rate increases? Simpson-Bowles says we can actually lower rates if 

we significantly cut back on tax expenditures. 

Mr. MALPASS. That is true, and I think, again, if the Committee 

in forming a budget were to seek that as a goal, that would cause 

immediate reaction in the private sector with people hiring. It 

would mean that the U.S. Government has a goal of having tax reform, which streamlines the Tax Code, is less horrible than our 

current Code, with lower rates and a broader base. The private sector reaction would be huge to that. 

Senator KING. I would agree with that. I think the most stimulative thing we could do is make a deal, a long-term, sustainable 

deal. 

Mr. MALPASS. And in my testimony, and 2 years ago when I testified here under the same circumstances, the key point is to make 

some small cuts now on the idea that there is a desire to have restraint. The impression across the country is that Washington 

wants to have more spending and more taxes, and so that is what 

is holding back the business community. There is plenty of cash out 

there, but people just are not investing it under these conditions. 

Senator KING. And we need to unleash that. 

Mr. MALPASS. Yes. 

Senator KING. The only other, the final—I realize I am over time, 

but the percentages, going back to whether the right number is 20 

or 21 or 22, we also, when we are figuring that out, have to take 

into account the effect of the aging of the population. 

Mr. MALPASS. That is right, and that actually is a very tough 

question. And Senator Wyden is an expert. I showed earlier in my 

testimony the demographics changing. Even if you went to the high 

end of those ranges that you specified, that would still be a huge 

surprise to the country and would be very pro-growth if it were 

achieved. 

Senator KING. Thank you very much. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Senator Toomey? 

Senator TOOMEY. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Just to follow up on this, my own perspective on the question 

that Senator King posed is that the optimal size of Government depends in part on how much growth you want to have. I think the 

evidence is overwhelmingly clear. Societies that have government 

expenditures smaller as a percentage of their economy have a higher standard of living. They have higher growth, higher income, 

higher wages, and greater wealth. And countries that have the government occupying a larger segment of the economy, they have 

slower growth, fewer jobs, lower standards of living, and lower incomes. So a big part of this comes down to how much prosperity 

do we want. If we want more, we will spend less. And it makes 

sense not only because the Government spends money through a 

political process that is not following the kind of economic incen-
169 

tives that the markets use, but also it has to be paid for. This 

spending always ultimately gets paid for by confiscating it from the 

more productive private sector, which brings me to the sequester, 

which I just want to stress for the record that, despite the description, the apocalyptic descriptions about this, this is really small in 

the context of total spending and the economy, where the Federal 

Government has doubled its spending in the last 10 years, and we 

are talking about a 2.5-percent reduction in spending from that 

100-percent growth. And, by the way, that is budget authority. Actual outlays for this year, it is about 1–1/4 percent. That is onequarter of 1 percent of GDP. This is not some kind of severe austerity plan. 

Now, I think it could be done more wisely, and I wanted to see 

if there was any disagreement on the idea that since the current 

law forces the across-the-board cuts with no opportunity to exercise 

any discretion with respect to those spending areas that have more 

merit and those that have less, could you comment on whether you 

think it makes sense for us to, in the event that the sequester goes 

forward, grant to OMB and the Defense Department in their responsive areas the flexibility to make these cuts in a more thoughtful fashion? Does that make sense to anybody? 

Mr. MALPASS. The short answer is yes, very much so, and I think 

the private sector response would be huge because it would show 

Washington trying. Rather than trying to maximize the damage 

from the sequester, it would be trying to reduce the damage or 

make it less onerous than Washington has made it out to be. 

Senator TOOMEY. Any other thoughts on that? 

Mr. RAWLINGS. Yes, I would disagree with that comment because, while it sounds better to make flexibility, in fact, if what it 

means is we are going to stick with the cuts at the level of the sequester and then leave it up to NIH and NSF to make the cuts in 

a slightly better fashion, they can do that. But if that becomes the 

new baseline, all you have done is succeeded in cutting NIH and 

NSF, letting them figure out— 

Senator TOOMEY. Let me just interrupt for a second because it 

is not—depending on how you formulate this, it is not necessarily 

the case that NIH per se has to take the cut. 

Mr. RAWLINGS. Right. 

Senator TOOMEY. If the administration has the discretion across 

all nondefense categories, they might decide that, building new 

taxiways on a seldom-used airport somewhere should be a lower 

priority than NIH. 

Mr. RAWLINGS. The problem is it is going to look like a good solution, everyone is going to say, great, now they can make their own 

decisions. But the bottom line is going to be cuts in the areas 

where we need investment because our competitors are investing 

and we are reducing. 

Senator TOOMEY. Okay. But that sounds like an argument that 

we cannot cut anywhere, and when we have had a Government 

that has doubled in size in the last 10 years, to think that we cannot find, a little over one penny on every dollar anywhere throughout this Government strikes me as not very appropriate. 

Let me ask a specific question, if I could, of Mr. Ferguson because I know you touched on the medical device tax, and as you 
170 

may know, there is bipartisan concern that this is a really egregiously, badly designed tax. That happens to be my view, in part 

because it applies to sales, irrespective of whether a company is 

making any money. And if I understood your testimony correctly, 

am I right in understanding that because of the medical device tax 

and if it stays in effect, you will forgo expanding production in the 

United States of medical device manufacturing? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Yes, and our future growth will have to be in Ireland or Denmark or Australia. 

Senator TOOMEY. So this medical device tax, in your view is this 

a pretty direct incentive to go overseas, go offshore, create jobs 

somewhere else? 

Mr. FERGUSON. When combined with other issues, the answer is 

yes, it is the straw that broke the camel’s back. But the other thing 

is it falls directly on R&D because when you look at the size of this 

type of tax and it is an expense, then the only places you have to 

cut are employees or R&D, or you have to go look for cost savings 

someplace else. 

Senator TOOMEY. Thank you very much. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Senator Kaine? 

Senator KAINE. Thank you. Just three quick follow-ups. 

We built a Federal Interstate Highway System largely off of a 

Federal excise tax on gasoline. Do any of you believe that that tax 

and the way it was spent was harmful to economic growth? Would 

you all agree that the construction of an Interstate Highway System was helpful to economic growth? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Absolutely. 

Senator KAINE. All right. Thank you. 

The second question I want to ask is a follow-up on Senator Warner’s discussion. As he indicated and as did Senator King, we are 

now—we have a balance sheet problem. That is what we are wrestling with as a Budget Committee. We spend more than historic 

averages. We are taking in less than historic averages. 

To the new guy on the block, it seems like there are three ways 

we can fix it: we can fix it all on the revenue side, more revenue; 

we can fix it all on the expense side, cut expenses; or we can find— 

and the details are important—or we can find some kind of a balanced approach that looks at expenditure reductions and revenues. 

Which of you favor fixing it all on one side of the balance sheet, 

either all through expense reductions or all through revenue increases? 

And which of you feel like we need to fix it by, if we are going 

to fix the balance sheet, trying to find some fixes on both sides of 

the balance sheet? 

Okay. The last thing, I worry about this medical device tax, too, 

and I want to drill into it a minute to find out what is the right 

contour of the fix. The first piece, talking about the international 

competition, it was my understanding that the device tax does 

apply to foreign manufactured devices that are sold in the United 

States. So a foreign manufacturer gains no edge over a U.S. manufacturer. If they are selling devices in the United States, the excise 

tax applies to those sales as well. Is that right, Mr. Ferguson? 
171 

Mr. FERGUSON.It increases their ability to compete with us because they are starting with a lower base and cost. For instance, 

coming from Ireland, the Federal tax rate is 12.5 percent versus 35 

percent in the U.S., plus we have State taxes on top of it. So when 

you look at it, what this has done is just exacerbated the difference 

between being an American manufacturer and manufacturing overseas. 

The thing to remember is a lot of times people say that the problem is because personnel costs. That is absolutely not true. 

Senator KAINE. So the differential between the countries is not 

the excise tax, which gets applied regardless of where the device 

is manufactured, but it is other tax policies that create a differential? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Well, it is really the excise tax that makes the 

differential. When you add a 30-percent bottom-line tax in this 

country, then it makes the differential. And so it is the marginal 

differential that this tax imposes that makes the international 

versus the U.S. tax such a large— 

Senator KAINE. So just the real simple question, because I have 

to make sure I am right on this. The excise tax is applied to foreign 

manufactured items if they are sold in the United States. 

Mr. FERGUSON. Yes, it does. 

Senator KAINE. Okay. The other questions, I just want to make 

sure, for medical device manufacturers, many of the revenues that 

come into medical device manufacturers are revenues that come in 

through Medicaid or Medicare reimbursements. Isn’t that correct? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Yes, indirectly, but through our customers. 

Senator KAINE. Okay. I do not have any other questions, Madam 

Chair. Thank you all very much. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Kaine, thank you very much. 

A vote has been called. Senator Sessions and I need to go vote. 

Senator Wyden wants to return to ask his questions, so I am 

going to leave the hearing open and put us in a small recess and 

let him close this out today, if you all would not mind staying. Senator Sessions, if you do not object to that. 

I would just let all of our colleagues know that I think this was 

a really good hearing, and I want to just say I am really committed 

to a budget that reflects the values and priorities, and today’s hearing I think was really important in helping us create a path to future successes. 

I would remind all of our colleagues that additional statements 

need to be in today by 6 o’clock p.m. Senator Wyden will gavel us 

out shortly as soon as he returns, and with that I will just put us 

into a short recess. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, could I just thank the panel? It was, I 

think, a very good discussion. We learned some things, and it helps 

us wrestle with the great choices we are being forced to make. 

When you are borrowing 36 cents out of every dollar you spend, 

you are on an unsustainable course. We have to confront that and 

make the tough choices. So thank you for helping us. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. I agree. Thank you very much to 

all of our panelists, and we will give you a moment’s respite here, 

and Senator Wyden will return in just a minute. 

[Recess.] 
172 

Senator WYDEN. [Presiding.] Thank you all very much for your 

patience. This is a hectic day, even by standards 

of the United States Senate. 

I have questions for each of you. Let me start with you, Dr. 

Carnevale, and I will profess right at the outset to have long been 

an admirer of your work and the scholarship you have done in the 

education field. I would like to ask you a question in a sense about 

where we are in terms of higher education policy because I believe 

we are in something of a fork in the road. Higher education policy 

has always been about access, and I certainly do not take a back 

seat to anybody in terms of access, and particularly ensuring that 

our young people can get access to Pell grants and Stafford loans 

and the array of programs that ensure that they get in the door, 

that they can actually get into college. 

I think, however, that we are now moving to a day when we are 

going to look at a policy that I in effect call access plus so that we 

also say it is extraordinarily important that students get more 

value for their education, because this is going to be, after buying 

a house, their second biggest expenditure. And Senator Rubio and 

I have introduced a bipartisan piece of legislation. There are other 

approaches that in many respects are similar. And we have been 

able to get support across the political spectrum, from very progressive groups to conservative organizations. And my understanding is 

you are a long-time advocate for transparency. We have said young 

people should be able to find out about graduation rates and remedial education and particularly be in a position to get some sense 

of what they would be likely to earn when they got a degree from 

a particular school. 

In advocating for transparency, what have you seen as the primary opposition over the years, and what are the principal arguments to counter that? 

Mr. CARNEVALE. I agree with you we have hit a fork in the road 

here. Part of it has to do with fiscal constraint—that is, we do not 

have any money—and the other part has to do with the fact that 

the role of higher education has changed. It is now our workforce 

development system. And that has a real economic history, beginning in 1983, when it all began to accelerate very rapidly. 

The opposition to the notion of transparency, of telling people, as 

your bill says, giving people the right to know before they go what 

the outcome is likely to be of their program, the opposition comes 

at a value level, a normative level, and it is the most difficult piece 

of it because higher education leadership sees itself as an institution that is supposed to help people live more fully in their time, 

a very broad goal. I doubt many of us disagree with that. 

But the reality now is that in order to get a decent job, you have 

to get some higher education, and whether or not you get a decent 

job or how good the job is depends on what you take. And given 

increasing prices and loans and all the rest of it, I think we need 

to start telling people this. 

In the end, my bias is that in this culture and economy you cannot live more fully in your time if you are living under a bridge and 

out of a shopping cart. That is, people need to know that their education is going to give them gainful employment at the end of the 

day. It does not mean they should not take English or study the 
173 

role of feminism in the French Revolution. It just means that they 

need to know what they are going to do with that after they graduate because they are going to be doing that for the next 45 years 

of their life after breakfast every day. 

Senator WYDEN. Well said. I would ask you more questions if I 

had more time, but thank you again. We are going to be working 

very closely with you, and staff is very appreciative as well. 

Ms. Trottenberg, welcome, and you will not be surprised that I 

want to talk about infrastructure spending, and particularly about 

new approaches that can support a bigger role for the private sector. For literally a decade, I worked with a number of Republicans 

to put in place the Build America Bonds program, and the night 

of the debate about the Recovery Act, Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus, who I think as much as anything had heard me talk 

about this so often, they said, well, let us look at this because Ron 

has been bringing this up, you know, for eons. They said, ‘‘Well, so 

what is going to happen with Build America Bonds?’’ I said, ‘‘Well, 

we have maybe a year and a half. We might generate $4 or $5 billion worth of investment.’’ And everybody said, ‘‘Oh, my goodness. 

We have never done bonding at the Federal level before. And you 

think this will get $4 or $5 billion worth? That sounds terrific.’’ 

As you know, Build America Bonds in a year and a half gen- erated $180 billion worth of investment, a 30-fold increase beyond 

anything that was projected. And I just think that given the fact 

we have all of this work that needs to be done, and you cannot 

have a Big League period of economic growth with Little League 

transportation systems, that we are going to keep coming back to 

what are the effective ways to fund infrastructure. 

Now, Senator Hoeven and I have teamed up on an approach that 

really is quite similar. We call it ‘‘TRIP bonds’’ to, in effect, have 

Federal tax credit bonding to leverage private dollars for investment in infrastructure. And I do not know of any other approach 

that will drive down the costs more and increase the private sector 

role in transportation than this particular concept. And we have 

talked to you all many times, and I am encouraged that you all 

seem to be moving in that direction as well. 

The American Fast Forward Bond program it seems to me sort 

of tracks the bipartisan efforts up here in terms of trying to look 

at these kinds of approaches. Am I reading this right or what is 

your sense of it? 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. Absolutely. Thank you for your leadership on 

the Build America Bonds. As you pointed out, it was wildly successful and brought in an enormous new class— 

Senator WYDEN. I think that, by the way—excuse me for interrupting. I think Alan Krueger deserves a lot of credit for this because, as you know, there was a lot of pushback early on, and he 

really prosecuted the case. Excuse me for interrupting. 

Ms. TROTTENBERG. And brought in, tremendous new classes of 

investors who could not benefit from traditional municipal bonds. 

We in the Department now have several programs which are 

somewhat along those lines. We have the private activity bonds 

where essentially we use them to incentivize the private sector to 

develop projects which have very clear public benefits. We are looking for ways to increase the use of that program, and as Congress 
174 

has given us the expanded TIFIA funds, we are finding more and 

more that project sponsors are coming to the Department wanting 

to make use of both of those programs in concert. We are well familiar with your TRIP program, Senator Wyden, and I think we 

are very keen to work with you, and we are thrilled there is so 

much bipartisan support here in Congress on how we can continue 

to broaden the pool of investors that want to come in and invest 

in infrastructure. Obviously, from the Treasury’s point of view, 

make sure we do it in the way that is the most efficient, and I 

know that is—you know, one question that we have is how we set 

the subsidies, the interest rates, whatever it would be, so that we 

are using the taxpayer dollar as efficiently as possible. But, clearly, 

we are going to need to bring in much greater private sector investment and participation to close the gap on what we need in terms 

of infrastructure. 

Senator WYDEN. Well, I am going to look forward to following up 

with you, Ms. Trottenberg, on it because I think particularly when 

you look at something that can attract private sector support, it 

has significant support from labor union groups, Doug Holtz-Eakin, 

as you know, has said dollar for dollar he thinks this is the attractive approach in the transportation field. Given the President’s 

comments in the State of the Union—and I thought he was spot 

on in terms of talking about infrastructure and roads and bridges 

and rails—I really hope that this is an area that can become a 

prime focus of your work because I may be missing something, but 

I just look around and there are no rallies outside my office calling 

for increases in the gas tax, you know, for example. It is going to 

be increasingly difficult to find approaches that are substantively 

sound and politically viable. And I think that this concept that we 

are talking about in terms of trying particularly to look at tax credit bonding is something that holds the tariff down on the Federal 

side—and I noted your comments earlier with respect to infrastructure—and is the one that the private sector is saying looks flexible 

and appealing. So I am anxious to work with you on it. 

Let me talk a little bit about health care and taxes, and we will 

kind of go into your area, Mr. Malpass, and I have followed your 

comments as well. Suffice it to say the debate about the sequester, 

when you really strip it down, has largely been because there has 

not been agreement in health care and taxes. Those are the two 

kind of driving kinds of areas. And my sense is—let us take them 

separately. I just came from the Finance Committee where we were 

talking mostly about the health care issue, and I may be able to 

get back to talk about tax reform. But, again, there are some opportunities to bring people together. 

For example, the latest evidence on Medicare—which the costs 

have gone down a little bit here recently, we are pleased to see, but 

I think we all understand the demographic tsunami that we are 

dealing with—70 percent of the Medicare spending goes to treat 

those with three or more chronic conditions. So you get into a strategy that will promote quality of care that the seniors deserve with 

a strategy that will hold down costs. You go a long way to trying 

to address the agenda for Medicare reform. 

The accountable care organizations are clearly a step in the right 

direction. We had them in our part of the world long before any-
175 

body thought about them at the Federal level. But what is your 

sense in terms of particularly looking at chronic care as a key element of Medicare reform and also creating incentives for those on 

the program for holding costs down as well? 

Mr. MALPASS. Thank you, Senator. I am not going to be able to 

respond as an expert on the chronic care issue, and will look to colleagues on the panel for that if they have comments. Your point is 

excellent about how do we find a way to make reasonable choices 

within the Medicare program and that it has a massive impact on 

the budget. 

Right now we are in this impasse where we end up with a sequester. Republicans are not claiming invention of that idea. You 

have been a leader in trying to find ways to work across the aisle, 

to find a way to break the impasse. 

My own view is that we are at a point where there needs to be 

some spending restraint, some agreement that there could be some 

spending restraint, and that might then break the logjam on taxes 

and on revenues and on health care. But right now the Nation is 

waiting for Washington to find a single program that it thinks 

could be downsized. That would be the starting point for the debate 

and discussion. 

Senator WYDEN. Let me do this, because staff tells me that we 

have to wrap up and get out the door here. On tax reform, I will 

pose this to you in writing. One of the things that we are asking 

experts in the field is to identify the tax expenditures, which is, of 

course, spending in any kind of literal sense, that they think ought 

to be either altered or removed altogether as a way to generate the 

opportunity for tax reform. I have had an approach with Senator 

Coats and Senator Begich and Senator Gregg and others over the 

years. I think we all understand, after what we were dealing with 

in terms of the special committee and also Bowles-Simpson, that 

much of this is the challenge of modernizing what a big group of 

Democrats and Ronald Reagan agreed to in the 1980s. It created 

millions of jobs and psychologically gave a big boost to the economy. 

So I would ask you more questions if time allowed, but I will put 

in writing to you a question asking you on the basis of your expertise to identify the tax expenditures that you think ought to be 

changed. 

Mr. MALPASS. And if I may, just one point. If any savings on the 

tax credits could be used to reduce the overall rate, let us say, on 

the corporate side, if that were proposed and became a concept, it 

would be hugely pro-growth. 

Senator WYDEN. Very good. With that, the Budget Committee is 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
176 

RONWYOEN OREGON 

COMMITTEES: 

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WASHINGTON, OC 20510 SPECIAL COMMmEE ON AGING 

{l02) 224--5244 

(202) 224-1280(1OD) WASHINGTON, DC 20510-3703 SH.ECT COMMmEf ON INTEWGENO, 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE 

Question for the Record 

from 

Senator Ron Wyden 

for 

David Malpass 

"The Impact of Federal Investments on People, Communities, and Long-term 

Economic Growth" 

February 26, 2013 

Committee on the Budget 

United States Senate 

In the Wall Street Journal last week, Dr, Martin Feldstein wrote: "Republicans want to 

reduce the deficit by cutting government spending while Democrats insist that 

raising revenue must be part of the solution, Yet the distinction between spending 

cuts and revenue increases breaks down if one considers tax expenditures. Here are 

some examples. If I buy a solar panel for my house, a hybrid car, or an energyefficient refrigerator, the government pays me. But instead of sending me a check, it 

gives me a tax credit or a tax deduction. There are dozens of such examples that 

increase the annual budget deficit by billions of dollars. Congress should review 

these tax expenditures and eliminate those that the country cannot afford," 

Dr. Feldstein has also written that "tax expenditures are the single largest source of 

wasteful and low-priority spending in the federal budget and one of the first places 

policymakers should go to restrain spending." 

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177 

• CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf, in testimony before the House Budget 

Committee, made a similar point when he stated that tax expenditures" are really 

best viewed as a form of government spending because they are directed at 

particular people or entities or designed to subsidize particular activities," almost 

precisely analogous to other government spending. 

• Alan Greenspan has suggested that tax expenditures represent just as great a threat 

to a sustainable budget path as any other spending, including entitlements. 

• With that background, what, in your view, are some of the least economically 

efficient and/or justifiable tax expenditures? What economic effects-positive or 

negative - would you expect from their repeal? How would you propose we 

mitigate those effects? 

In a similar vein, there is a great debate among Republicans and Democrats as to 

what we should do with any additional revenue generated by rolling back or 

reducing tax expenditures, also commonly referred to as closing loopholes. On 

the one hand, some would have us use any additional revenue to buy down 

marginal tax rates, while, on the other, some would have us use the revenue for 

deficit reduction or other investments. Weighing in on that debate, Martin 

Sullivan, a widely read commentator on tax policy, suggested that perhaps the 

best solution was to devote half of any resulting revenues to reducing rates and 

half to reducing the deficit. Do you feel that Sullivan has the ratio about right? 

Or would you suggest a different allocation of revenue and why? 
178 

The thrust of my testimony is that Congress, in the interest of growth and jobs, should 

continuously pursue spending restraint, restraint on tax credits, tax rate reduction and 

tax simplification. I advocate a stronger debt limit that would encourage Congress in 

pursuing these. This discipline is vital to achieving faster growth, more job creation and 

a higher median income. 

It is important that Congress start each of these processes now, even if it means small 

steps. For example, tax simplification would have a huge payoff for the economy, so 

Congress could start by agreeing each month to a small bipartisan simplification bill 

repairing the most egregious inefficiencies in the tax code. Similarly, spending has 

grown to such large amounts, with inadequate trade-offs among programs, that 

Congress should agree each month on a small bipartisan spending reduction bill to 

save money and show leadership. 

A growth-oriented approach to tax reform is to lower rates while broadening the 

base. The ideal would be to start that process tomorrow. Many of the tax expenditures 

narrow the base and are expensive and inefficient. A general approach is to try to 

reduce their size and scope as part of the tax rate reduction effort. 

Given the difficulty of coordinating the two processes - reducing the expenditures and 

agreeing on which tax rates to lower - I think it might be useful for Congress to explore 

ways to allow tax expenditure reductions to be "banked" and applied to a subsequent 

rate-reduction effort. There would have to be a clear agreement that tax rate reduction 

was a near-term goal and that tax expenditure reductions would be used to reduce tax 

rates. 

Regarding the inefficiency of various tax expenditures, my view is that most are 

inefficient in the sense that their cost isn't worth the higher tax rates needed to pay for 

them. There are many publications on this. My view is that Congress should work out 

compromises within a budget that reduces the growth in spending and applies 

reductions in tax expenditures to tax rate reduction. 

Reducing or repealing tax expenditures would cause dislocations for those dependent 

on the tax credit, but the resulting tax rate reduction would have a substantially larger 

benefit for the overall economy. The question asked how to mitigate the negative effects 

for those dependent on the tax expenditure. I think Congress could address ways to 

mitigate the dislocations within its budget just as it does in considering ways to mitigate 

spending restraint or trade liberalization as part of the budget. I note that tax deductions 

and exclusions benefit those in high tax brackets the most, so most of the harm from 

reducing them would fall on higher incomes, perhaps reducing the need for targeted 

mitigation. In a similar vein, non-refundable tax credits can only be used to the extent of 

taxable income. This applies to a diminishing portion of the population, reducing the 

cost of mitigation. I emphasize the magnitude of the beneficial effects on growth and 

jobs from proceeding with tax expenditure reductions applied to tax rate reductions. 

Regarding the percentage of tax expenditure reductions that could be applied to tax 

reform versus deficit reduction, my view is that tax revenues have been growing rapidly 
179 

and would increase with the extra growth generated by applying tax expenditure 

reduction to tax reform. I think it would be growth-maximizing to apply all of the savings 

from reduced tax expenditures to improving the tax code. That would add to economic 

growth, providing deficit reduction. 

Some have advocated using reductions in tax expenditures to increase 

appropriations. Given the overgrown size of current and projected expenditures, I don't 

think this approach should be pursued. 

In conclusion, tax reform is urgent. Congress has a tendency to put off individual 

decisions with the idea of achieving a grand compromise that never comes to 

fruition. As discussed in my testimony, Congress should start today with achievable 

steps to restrain spending. I think it would also be helpful to make small improvements 

in the tax code on a regular basis, with the idea that reductions in tax expenditures 

could be used to reduce tax rates. This approach would generate a large payoff in terms 

of jobs and a higher median income. 

Sincerely, 

David Malpass 

Encima Global 

212-876-4400 

(181) 

REDUCING THE DEFICIT BY ELIMINATING 

WASTEFUL SPENDING IN THE TAX CODE 

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:31 a.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Wyden, Stabenow, Sanders, 

Whitehouse, Warner, Merkley, Baldwin, King, Sessions, Grassley, 

Crapo, Johnson, and Ayotte. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and 

Marcus Peacock, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. Good morning. This hearing will come to 

order. 

I want to thank all of our witnesses, who I will introduce in just 

a moment. And Ranking Member Senator Sessions and all of our 

colleagues who are here today, thank you for joining us. 

Over the next few weeks, both chambers of Congress will be debating fundamental choices about our country’s direction and what 

kind of nation we will leave to our next generation. We will lay out 

proposals that reflect very different approaches to the many challenges we face. 

One central question that we are looking at is: How can we bring 

down our debt and deficits while putting the middle class and 

broad-based economic growth first? Today’s hearing will focus on 

how cutting wasteful spending from our Tax Code can help us meet 

this challenge. 

As we have looked for ways to reduce our deficits and debt, we 

have heard a lot of outrage about waste and excess in Government 

programs. My Republican colleagues, in particular, tend to focus on 

cutting programs the most vulnerable families depend on to get 

back on their feet. They say spending on food stamps is out of control and we cannot afford so many education and job training programs and unemployment benefits are driving up the deficit. 

Now, there is no question that we do need to look at Government 

programs carefully so we can make fair, responsible cuts that put 

families and our economy first. But a big source of spending, and 

one that deserves to be just as closely examined, is expenditures 

in our Tax Code. While we do not often think of tax expenditures 

as a form of spending, they require us to make the same kinds of 
182 

tradeoffs that other forms of Government spending would, and lots 

of them. 

Tax expenditures have grown over the last 20 years to become 

one of the largest impacts on our deficits and debt. Just this year, 

the Treasury will lose $1.3 trillion to tax expenditures. That is 

more than we will spend on either Social Security or Medicare. 

But unlike funding for Government programs like Pell grants or 

Head Start or road repairs, which is limited and reviewed regularly, tax expenditures have flown largely under the radar. Since 

they generally do not need to be reauthorized, they receive much 

less scrutiny than programs that do need to be reauthorized. That 

is why Alan Greenspan once called them ‘‘tax entitlements.’’ 

But here is a big difference: When we think of entitlements, we 

typically think of Social Security and Medicare, which keep our 

promises to seniors, or nutrition assistance for families who have 

fallen on hard times. These programs allow our country to fulfill 

its part of the bargain with those who have already done their 

share and enable us to give those most in need some relief. 

However, for the vast majority of tax expenditures, about 70 percent of them, it is the other way around. For that 70 percent of tax 

expenditures, the higher your income, the more you benefit. So the 

wealthiest households benefit the most while middle-class families 

receive much smaller benefits, and many of our most vulnerable do 

not qualify at all. The less you need, the more you get. And we all 

pay for it. 

In 2012, on average, the top 1 percent of income earners saw their after-tax income increase by nearly $250,000 as a result of 

tax expenditures. But middle-class families received an average 

benefit of only about $3,500, which means that when we talk about 

big Government welfare, maybe we should not always jump to cut 

spending for those who are most in need. Maybe we should think 

about what we are spending on those who are least in need. 

The skewed nature of tax breaks like these has helped drive the 

amount the wealthiest Americans pay in taxes to historically low 

levels as a share of their income. IRS data show that the effective 

tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers has fallen from almost 30 

percent in 1995 to only 19.9 percent in 2009. This is less than the 

rate paid by many middle-class families. And meanwhile, over the 

same time period, the average income for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers rose five-fold. That is probably why some tax expenditures 

are often called ‘‘back-door spending’’ or ‘‘special-interest earmarks’’ 

for the largest corporations and wealthiest Americans. 

Of course, not all expenditures in the Tax Code are wasteful. 

Many help hard-working families reach goals like sending a child 

to college, which helps them, their child, and the economy. But 

many, too many, are inefficient and unfair. 

There is no good reason, for example, that taxpayers currently 

subsidize millionaires more when they purchase a second home or 

a yacht than they do middle-class families purchasing their first 

home. And why should a hedge fund manager pay a lower tax rate 

on his income than a soldier or a police officer or a teacher? 

We have some clear opportunities to cut wasteful spending and 

make our tax system work better for middle-class families. And at 

a time when there is far too much we disagree on in Washington, 
183 

there does seem to be some acknowledgment by leaders on both 

sides of the aisle that we should seize these opportunities. 

Senator Tom Coburn said, and I quote, ‘‘Masquerading as tax 

cuts, many of these programs are no different from any other Federal program that spends taxpayer money.’’ Speaker Boehner recently proposed to raise $800 billion in new 

revenue by closing what he termed ‘‘special-interest loopholes and 

deductions.’’ Even House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan 

has noted that many preferences in our tax system are ‘‘patently 

unfair’’ and ‘‘mainly used by a relatively small group of mostly 

higher-income individuals.’’ 

I appreciate Senator Coburn, the Speaker, and Chairman Ryan 

for making these arguments and pointing out that these loopholes 

help special interests succeed, but do very little to help middleclass families succeed. I, like many of my Democratic colleagues, 

would like to know when Republicans will be willing to sit down 

with us and start looking strategically at which wasteful provisions 

we can eliminate. 

Experts across the political spectrum have also proposed eliminating wasteful spending in our Tax Code as a way to reduce our 

deficit. Discussing options for major deficit reduction, Ronald Reagan’s chief economist Martin Feldstein recently said, ‘‘The distinction between spending cuts and revenue increases breaks down if 

one considers tax expenditures.’’ Today we will hear from experts 

who have studied this issue at length. 

Professor Edward Kleinbard has noted that we spend twice as 

much on tax expenditures as we do through discretionary investments, like education, infrastructure, and research. But many of 

these subsidies are both poorly targeted and skewed to unfairly 

benefit high-income Americans more than low-income Americans. 

Economist Jared Bernstein recently explained that by reducing 

unfair tax expenditures we can essentially raise revenue by cutting 

spending. That sounds like a form of deficit reduction Democrats 

and Republicans should be able to agree on. 

I look forward to hearing their testimony, as well as the testimony from Mr. Roberts of the Hoover Institution, who Senator Sessions will introduce. 

If we agree there is wasteful spending in the Tax Code—and I 

think it is clear there is—the next question is: How should those 

savings be used? 

Many of my Republican colleagues would prefer to use every dollar of new revenue to dramatically lower tax rates rather than 

making critical investments in our competitiveness or paying down 

the debt. But that approach is more of the same. 

It would very likely make it easier for the wealthy to get even 

further ahead of middle-class families while making paths to opportunity for the middle class, through student loans or workforce 

training or job-creating research and innovation, more narrow. 

If the goal of our budget plan is to strengthen the middle class 

and work towards broad-based economic growth, finding savings 

from unfair tax provisions is an opportunity to responsibly reduce 

our deficit and invest in our future. 

And let us remember that all of the bipartisan groups— Simpson-Bowles, Gang of Six—agreed. They all recommended using a 
184 

significant portion of the revenue from eliminating tax breaks to 

reduce the deficit. 

As Democrats and Republicans both know, responsible deficit reduction is essential to our long-term prosperity. But that is not all 

we have to do. 

Just as we have to bring down our deficits and debt, we have to 

make sure we are educating our workforce for the 21st century. We 

need to repair our roads and bridges and airways so businesses can 

move their people and products efficiently. And we need to invest 

in research and development so we can continue growing new industries in the United States rather than ceding those new industries, and the jobs that come with them, to China or India. 

That is why proposals from nonpartisan experts include new revenue for deficit reduction and point out the need to continue making investments in our long-term economic well-being. The Simpson-Bowles plan, for example, described infrastructure, higher education, and research and development as ‘‘high-priority investments 

America will need to stay competitive.’’ 

And we have seen time and time again that the American people 

agree. The American people think we should get rid of inefficient, 

unfair tax breaks skewed towards the wealthiest Americans and 

corporations. In fact, a recent poll showed 57 percent of respondents strongly agreed we should eliminate the loophole that allows 

hedge fund managers to pay lower tax rates than the middle class. 

Fifty-eight percent strongly agreed with closing loopholes that will 

allow wealthy Americans and corporations to shift income overseas. 

And Americans want to see that new revenue used to lower the 

deficit and make crucial investments in our future rather than lowering tax rates for those who are already doing just fine. 

I am looking forward to today’s conversation because it seems 

that cutting wasteful spending in our Tax Code would help us 

move forward on a number of challenges. 

We know there is wasteful spending in our Tax Code. Chairman 

Ryan was absolutely correct; much of it is skewed towards the 

wealthiest Americans. 

So at a time when we absolutely must cut where we can, looking 

at ways we can close special tax breaks that are not targeted to 

help the middle class or the economy makes sense, especially when, 

by making those adjustments, we can stop giving an unfair advantage to those who are already doing far better than most Americans, and instead focus on making crucial investments in our future while cutting our deficit in a fair way. 

So, again, I want to thank all of our witnesses and colleagues 

who are here today. I hope this can be a very productive discussion. 

And with that, I will turn it over to Ranking Member, Senator Sessions. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I will offer my 

written remarks for the record and would note that the title of the 

hearing, ‘‘Reducing the Deficit by Eliminating Wasteful Spending 

in the Tax Code,’’ really suggests how much disconnect we have as 

we analyze the problems facing America today. 
185 

When you allow a person to keep money that they have earned 

because of a certain deduction for charitable or mortgage or health 

care payments, I do not believe that is spending by the United 

States Treasury. It is not spending. And we certainly have problems in our deductions, and there are some loopholes which are 

abuses of legitimate deductions, and there are things we can do to 

make our Tax Code flatter and simpler and more growth-oriented. 

Senator Crapo, Senator Warner, and others have worked really 

hard on some excellent ideas to try to move in that direction, and 

it is not so that Republicans have not sat down with Democrats to 

discuss these issues. They have spent months—years, working on 

these issues. 

We are facing a real debt crisis, a very real debt crisis. John 

Cochrane, a University of Chicago professor, wrote in the Wall 

Street Journal yesterday about the surge in interest we will be 

paying. He reminds us that the resumption of normal interest rates 

by the Federal Reserve, which Professor Cochrane said was all but 

inevitable in the next few years, this resumption of normal rates 

‘‘could raise this Government’s outlays for interest on the debt up 

to $900 billion per year,’’ or twice current levels, more than the Defense Department, more than Social Security, more than Medicare. 

So I think we do have a serious crisis. Dr. Elmendorf, CBO Director, testified just a couple of weeks ago that we cannot continue 

to sustain spending increases at a greater rate than the economy 

grows. You cannot have spending increase at 6 percent a year 

while the economy is growing at 2 and 3 percent a year. That is 

unsustainable. That is the very definition of unsustainability, and 

that is why spending is the critical factor. It has to be in line with 

the growth we can expect in the economy. 

Actually, David Malpass last week noted that the slow growth 

that we are having now proves that the stimulus that we have 

gone through has not been effective. 

So I think we just need to return to common sense and analyze 

our financial situation in a fair way. And, look, eliminating tax exemptions is a tax increase. You cannot spin it any other way. And 

I have heard it said recently— and it is troubling to me—that, well, 

we can pay for the sequester, we will not have to have these cuts 

in growth, we will not have to have that happen, because we will 

just eliminate these loopholes. But that is not going to happen, colleagues. You need to know this. That will not happen, it cannot 

happen, because we agreed in August of 2011 we were on a path 

to increase spending over the next 10 years from $37 trillion to $49 

trillion. We agreed to reduce that growth to $47 trillion by raising 

the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion and reducing spending over 10 years 

$2.1 trillion. There were no tax increases in that. The President 

signed that. Many of you voted for it. Senator Reid voted for it, and 

the House and Senate both passed it. And that was the agreement. 

So we are not now going to raise taxes in order to increase spending above the baseline that we are now on, which would be still a 

substantial increase in spending over the next 10 years. That is 

what we are talking about. It is just not going to happen and 

should not happen. It would be a retreat from the promises we 

made to the American people. 
186 

We said, American people, we voted to raise the debt ceiling, but we promise to cut spending over the next 10 years by $2.1 trillion. 

And the President, of course, got a tax increase in January, some 

$650 billion to the Treasury. 

So this is not going to happen. I hope it will help—we have to 

get this straight as we discuss the difficult choices we face. 

Now, the CRS sent us a report in December that lists the socalled tax expenditures or tax deductions that are out there, and 

they list the top ten: Exclusion for employers for Medicare payments, $109 billion, the 

largest one; 

Second was exclusion of contributions to retirement plans, the fact that that is not taxable, that is the second biggest one, $105 

billion. 

Reduced tax rates on dividends and long-term capital gains, instead of taxing at earned income rates, you get a less rate for dividends. That is $90 billion. 

The fourth one is mortgage interest, $77 billion. 

Earned income tax credit for the poor, $59 billion. 

Exclusion from Medicare benefits—that is an exclusion. Medicare 

should be really income. They do not pay income tax on it. 

Child tax credit is next, and so forth. 

There are about $750 billion in the top ten expenditures, about 

70 percent of those expenditures. 

So I just would say to my colleagues, I doubt that we are going 

to agree to eliminate all of that. And if we do, we have to ask ourselves, Can the economy sustain such a massive sucking out of its 

wealth? Should not it be part of what Senator Crapo and Senator 

Warner and the Debt Commission talked about—reducing rates 

and simplifying the Tax Code and not just using this money to increase spending? And if we do increase taxes, should not we be absolutely sure that that money goes to paying down the deficit, not 

funding new spending programs, as the President has repeatedly 

asked? 

Professor Roberts, thank you for being with us. He is from Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and he will talk to us about the importance of a better functioning tax system. We can agree on that. We 

can improve fairness, and we can improve growth. 

So let me just conclude and say we cannot—I do not feel like I 

can sit silent while this Committee describes tax deductions which 

allow people to keep wealth that they have earned as wasteful Government spending in the Tax Code. So we have a disagreement on 

that. But there is potential for agreement, Madam Chairman. I 

thank you for having the hearing. This is a very important issue. 

If we work at it, I am sure we can learn something today and 

maybe reach some agreements in the future. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

With that, I am going to turn it over to our panel. Professor 

Kleinbard, we are going to start with you and just move across. 

STATEMENT OF EDWARD D. KLEINBARD, PROFESSOR OF LAW, 

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GOULD SCHOOL OF 

LAW 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Thank you for inviting me to testify. 
187 

You know, actually, I agree with the Ranking Member that the 

long-term fiscal policies of the United States are unsustainable. 

Something must be done. But I have reluctantly concluded that 

this ‘‘something’’ means higher taxes. 

Personally, I do not want to pay higher taxes every year, but 

there is no practical alternative. But as it turns out, there is a way 

to do this that actually leads to smaller Government, not a bigger 

one. 

I emphasize tax revenues for five reasons: 

First, our budget deficits over the next decade are mostly the result of forgone tax revenues. As a result of the Great Recession, we 

lost about $2 trillion in tax revenue relative to our historic rate of 

tax collections. And looking forward, the fiscal cliff tax deal with 

reduce tax revenues by an additional $4 trillion. To a large extent, 

both sequestration and the 2011 budget caps are efforts to recoup 

on the spending side monies that have been forgone on the revenue 

side. 

Second, in the short term, there is no crisis in financing the national debt; Treasury borrowing rates are at near-record lows. The 

short-term crisis is about jobs. Yet the CBO projects that further 

cuts to Government spending through the sequester will put 

700,000 more Americans out of work. 

Third, our biggest spending problem is health care. The United 

States today spends much more on health care— public and private 

combined—per capita than does any other developed country in the 

world. If we were to spend per capita what Norway, which is the 

second place country, does on health care, our aggregate health 

care spending would immediately decline by some $880 billion a 

year. But our citizens’ expectations and our health care delivery institutions are built around current policies. Change must be phased 

in slowly. 

Fourth, nondefense discretionary spending is modest by world 

norms, and both defense and nondefense discretionary spending already are on a path to reach their lowest levels in 50 years. Even 

if we were to eliminate the entirety of our nondefense discretionary 

spending, the CBO projects that we would still run deficits in 2023. 

And, fifth, the number of Americans age 65 or older will increase 

by more than one-third over the next 10 years. This has obvious 

adverse implications for Government spending. 

These points imply that revenue, not spending, must be the driver of medium-term deficit reduction. Whatever the long-term world 

we transition to, we will need to finance the costs of getting there, 

and that in turns means higher tax revenues. We therefore have 

no practical choice but to raise the level of tax collections in the 

medium term to the range of 21 percent of GDP rather than the 

19-percent level currently projected. 

Fortunately, the United States is an extraordinarily low-tax 

country by world norms. In fact, in 2012, we were the lowest taxed 

country in the OECD as a percentage of GDP, and that includes 

Federal, State, and local combined. The United States can afford 

to increase the total taxes it collects. A little more than a decade 

ago, we ran budget surpluses and enjoyed a robust economy and 

job growth while tax collections exceeded 20 percent of GDP. 
188 

Now, ironically, the smart way to raise revenues actually is to 

cut spending, but a special kind of hidden Government spending 

baked into the Tax Code, which is to say tax expenditures. Of the 

$1.3 trillion of annual tax expenditures, I believe that the most important to address first are the personal itemized deductions. These 

subsidize homeownership, charitable contributions, State and local 

taxes, and the like. They are extraordinarily costly Government 

subsidy programs of personal expenses, about $250 billion a year 

in forgone tax revenues in subsidizing personal consumption decisions. They are inefficient in that they lead to major economic 

misallocations. They are poorly targeted in that the subsidies go to 

individuals who would have behaved the same without them. And 

they are unfair in that they are upside down. They subsidize highincome Americans more than low-income ones. 

I therefore recommend that we replace the personal itemized deductions with 15-percent tax credits. My preliminary estimate is 

that by doing so, we could raise as much as $1.5 trillion in revenues over the next 10-years. A 15-percent credit preserves about 

one-half the aggregate current economic value of personal itemized 

deductions, but does so in a way that adds to the progressivity of 

the Tax Code. 

Look, I fully recognize that the home mortgage interest deduction 

and the other personal itemized deductions invariably are described as ‘‘sacred cows.’’ But they are sacred cows that we simply 

can no longer afford to maintain. Either we corral these sacred 

cows or we will allow them to stampede over us. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kleinbard follows:] 
189 

ANGUS S. KING, JR. MAINE 

'llnitnl ~tatcs ~cnetc 

Statement for the Record 

from Senator Angus S. King, Jr. 

SUITESA-18S 

RUSSELL BUILDING 

WASHINGTON. DC 20510-1905 

{20l) 224-5344 

Reducing the Deficit by Eliminating Wasteful Spending in the Tax Code 

March 5, 2013 

Senate Budget Committee 

I would like to submit this commentary from Harlem Children's Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada on 

his behalf. 

March 5, 2013 

Mr. Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO, Harlem Children's Zone 

In today's Senate Budget Committee Hearing at I 0:30am, Mr. Russell Roberts provided 

testimony for Ranking Member Senator Jeff Sessions, Mr. Roberts mentioned my work at the 

Harlem Children's Zone as an example of private philanthropy succeeding where government 

could not. He advocated for less government spending on similar programs. 

At the Harlem Children's Zone, we run our programs with a rich mix of federal, state, and local 

funding as well as private dollars, Both public and private funds are essential to our work. 

Private dollars often act as the "glue" that brings many funding streams together to provide a 

seamless pipeline of services and supports for our community. 

We are accountable not just to our funders, but to the children and families we serve, and it is for 

this reason that we track hundreds of goals and indicators at the student level to carefully monitor 

our results. Like us, Promise Neighborhoods operating around the country with federal dollars 

are required to report on a common set of strict indicators and outcomes. The accountability 

piece of the Promise Neighborhoods program is part of what makes it so strong. The Federal 

dollars awarded in competitive grants to these communities help incentivize more private and 

public spending and bring much needed resources into struggling rural, suburban, urban, and 

tribal areas around the country. 
190 

TESTIMONY OF PROF. EDWARD D. KLEINBARD 

HEARING TITLED 

"REDUCING THE DEFICIT BY ELIMINATING WASTEFUL 

SPENDING IN THE TAX CODE" 

U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget 

March 5,2013 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and distinguished members, 

Thank you for inviting me to testify at this hearing. My name is Edward Kleinbard and I 

am a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law. 

From 2007-2009 I was privileged to serve as Chief of Staff of the Congress's Joint 

Committee on Taxation. 

I. SUMMARY OF TESTIMONY. 

There is a broad bipartisan consensus that the long-term fiscal policies of the 

United States are unsustainable. The CBO projects that the January 2013 fiscal 

cliff tax deal will triple our deficits over the next 10 years, relative to what deficits 

would have been had all the 2001-03 tax cuts expired. 

• To a surprising extent, our adverse budget deficit picture over the next decade is 

the result of forgone tax revenues. As a result of the Great Recession, we lost 

about $2 trillion in revenue over the last few years, relative to our historic rate of 

tax collections as a percentage of GDP. Looking ahead, the fiscal cliff tax deal 

will reduce future tax revenues by $4 trillion, relative to what CBO had projected 

under its 2012 baseline. Together, these past and future forgone revenues amount 

to a roughly $7 trillion contribution to our deficits from 2008 - 2023 (including 

interest costs on increased borrowings). To a large extent, both sequestration and 

the budget caps of the 2011 Budget Control Act are efforts to recoup on the 

spending side monies that were forgone from the revenue side. 
191 

There is no short-tenn crisis in financing the national debt; Treasury borrowing 

rates are at near-record lows. Nor is there a general crisis in the availability or cost 

of capital for the private sector. The short-tenn crisis is about jobs; the CBO 

projects that 2014 will be the first time since the Great Depression that 

unemployment remains over 7.5 percent for six consecutive years. But deficit 

reduction through eliminating wasteful tax expenditures can offer little short-tenn 

help here. 

The long-tenn problem is entitlements spending, particularly spending on 

healthcare. For that matter, healthcare is our biggest immediate spending problem 

as well. The United States today spends much more on healthcare (public and 

private) per capita than does any other developed economy in the world. If the 

United Slates were to expend per capita what Norway (the second place country) 

does on healthcare, our aggregate healthcare spending (public and private) 

would immediately decline by some $880 billion/year. 

While long-tenn entitlement spending refonn is critical, we must "boil the frog 

slowly," to borrow a phrase from Senate Finance Committee Chainnan Baucus. 

Both our citizens' expectations and our health care delivery institutions are built 

around current policies. Change must follow a predictable path that starts in the 

near future, phases in slowly, and comes to rest with new institutions that will 

serve the needs of Americans for decades to come. The requirement that we boil 

the frog slowly in tum has important implications for tax revenues over the 

medium tenn. 

Defense discretionary spending is the other great outlier in U.S. government 

spending policies. By one estimate, the United States spends as much on its 

military as do the next 14 countries combined - 41 percent of the entire world's 

military expenditures. 

Current levels of nondefense discretionary spending are modest by world nonns. 

This "spending" includes some items, like infrastructure, that are bona fide 

investments with long-tenn economic benefits. And both defense and nondefense 

discretionary spending already are on downward paths to reach their lowest levels 
192 

in 50 years. This unrealistically aggressive asswnption is baked into the CBO's 

2013 deficit projections. 

The number of Americans age 65 or older will increase by more than 113 over the 

next 10 years. This has obvious implications for healthcare, social security and 

other governrnent spending programs. 

All these points imply that spending cuts cannot by themselves fund all of our 

deficit reduction requirements in the medium term. Whatever the long-term world 

we transition to, we will need to finance the costs of getting there, and that in 

turns means higher tax revenues than those we currently collect. 

The United States is an extraordinarily low-taxed country by world norms - in 

fact, in 2012 we were the lowest taxed country in the DEeD. as a percentage of 

GDP. And even by our own standards we have been collecting historically low 

levels of tax. This level of revenues cannot be reconciled with our outsized 

spending on healthcare and defense, and our rapidly aging population. 

By all measures, the United States can afford to increase the total taxes it collects 

as a fraction of GDP. Just a decade ago, the country ran budget surpluses and 

enjoyed both a robust economy and job growth, while tax collections exceeded 20 

percent of GDP. 

We therefore have no practical choice but to raise the level of tax collections in 

the medium term to the range of 21 percent of GDP, rather than the 19 percent 

figure projected by the 2013 CBO baseline. 

Economists prefer to raise additional tax revenues, when necessary, through 

broadening the tax base, rather than raising marginal rates. Unlike 1986, when the 

tax system overflowed with unintended tax shelters that could be cleaned up and 

traded off against lower rates, this means directly tackling some of the deliberate 

Congressional subsidy programs baked into the tax code, which is to say, taX 

expenditures. 

Of all current law's tax expenditures, the most important to address in tax reform 

are the personal itemized deductions, such as the deductions for home mortgage 
193 

interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes. They are 

extraordinarily costly subsidies - about $250 billion/year in forgone tax revenues. 

They are inefficient, in that they lead to major misallocations of economic 

resources, particularly with respect to housing. They are poorly targeted, in that 

the government subsidies go to individuals who would have behaved the same 

without the subsidies. And they are unfair, in that they are ''upside down" 

subsidies - they subsidize high-income Americans more than low-income ones. 

I recommend that we replace the personal itemized deductions (and the standard 

deduction) with 15 percent tax credits. My preliminary estimate is that doing so 

will raise about $1.5 trillion in revenues over the next 10 years (without taking 

into account any transition relief). 

My suggestion would still preserve about one-half the aggregate current economic 

value of personal itemized deductions, but would do so in a way that adds to the 

progressivity of the tax code. Nonetheless, the scale-back in the value of the 

personal itemized deductions should be phased in over several years. 

I fully recognize that the home mortgage interest deduction and other personal 

itemized deductions invariably are described as "sacred cows." But they are 

sacred cows that we can no longer afford to maintain. Either we corral these 

sacred cows, or we allow them to stampede over us. 

II. THINKING ABOUT THE DEFICIT. 

A. There is No Immediate Fiscal Crisis. 

There is no short-term crisis in financing the national debt; Treasury borrowing 

rates are at near-record lows. (Indeed, a strong case can be made that this is an ideal time 

for the federal government to stretch out the average maturity of its debt, to lock in 

today's very favorable rates.) Nor is there a general crisis in the availability or cost of 

capital for the private sector. I (Of course small or less creditworthy firms may continue to 

I See, e.g., Bain & Co., Inc., A World Awash in Money: Capital Trends Through 2020 ("Our 
194 

experience difficulties in borrowing at reasonable rates.) We can see the plentiful supply 

of credit for strong borrowers in the recent boom in debt-financed mergers and 

acquisitions, such as the recently-announced leveraged acquisition ofH.J. Heinz 

Corporation. 

The United States, is, however, mired in an immense jobs crisis. The 2013 edition 

of the Congressional Budget Office's Annual Budget and Economic Outlook points out 

that the United States is on track to record by 2014 unemployment rates exceeding 7.S 

percent for the sixth consecutive year, for the first time since the Oreat Depression? This 

topic is desperately important to millions of Americans, but is far afield from my 

understanding of the purpose of today's hearing, and tax reform would have little 

immediate impact on this problem. 

B. The Long-Term Fiscal Problem is Real. 

While the federal government is able to finance its deficits at very low rates today, 

there is a broad bipartisan consensus that the long-term fiscal policies of the United States 

are unsustainable. The 2013 edition of the Congressional Budget Office's Annual Budget 

and Economic Outlook predicts that, under the CBO's relatively optimistic baseline 

assumptions, federal debt held by the public will amount to roughly 77 percent ofODP in 

2023 (comparable to its 2013 level), and will be trending upwards. Under plausible 

alternative assumptions, the 2023 ratio would be 87 percent.3 

The Congressional Budget Office further predicts that our projected deficits over 

the next 10 years will "lead to lower output and income later in the decade than would 

have occurred under prior law. The [fiscal difl] legislation lowers tax rates for many 

people-thereby boosting output-but it also expands budget deficits-which will reduce 

2 Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023, at 

I (Feb. 2013). 

3 Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023, at 

4 (Feb. 2013). 
195 

national saving and lower the stock of productive capital, thereby reducing output relative 

to what would have occurred under prior law.,,4 

There is no generaIIy-accepted theory in public finance economics of what 

constitutes a country's optimal debt-to-GDP ratio. Nonetheless, most observers would 

agree that these projections are troubling, because (i) they leave very little room to absorb 

unexpected economic or national security calamities in the coming decade, (ii) they 

imply that even within the next decade the economy will be adversely affected by the 

crowding out of private investment by government borrowing, and (iii) the adverse 

projected trend in the debt-to-GDP ratio continues to accelerate in the decades that follow. 

Against this background, it is understandable that this Committee would be 

concerned about the fiscal path on which our country is pointed. I therefore wish to make 

only a few brief observations about our overall deficit trends. I do so to focus the 

discussion on the relative contributions to deficit reduction that we should expect from 

spending cuts, on the one hand, or revenue increases, on the other. 

C. Forgone Revenues Tell the Underlying Story. 

The CBO's February 2013 to-year deficit projections are much more dire than 

were those contained in the CBO 2012 baseline, for the simple reason that, as required by 

law, the CBO 2012 baseline assumed the expiration of all the 2001-2003 tax cuts, as well 

as the lapse of other temporary tax provisions. The recent "fiscal cliff' tax deal (the 

American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012) essentially gives every taxpayer an income tax 

discount relative to what would have been the case had those temporary tax cuts fully 

expired. (Even the highest-income taxpayer filing a joint return enjoys the benefit of the 

lower tax rates on his first $450,000 of income.) As a result, the fiscal cliff tax deal is 

projected to add $4.6 trillion to our accumulated deficits over the next to years, which 

represents a tripling in the size of the 10-year projected deficit compared with the 2012 

baseline. 

Post-fiscal cliff revenues are expected to climb over the next few years to about 

19 percent of GDP, and then to stabilize there for the rest of the coming decade. By 

4 http://www.cbo.gov!publicationi43835 
196 

contrast, the 2012 baseline, which by law assumed the expiration of all the 2001-03 tax 

cuts, projected that tax revenues would rise to 21 percent of GOP by 2022. As a result, 

the 2012 baseline also projected that the country's fiscal crises would be largely resolved, 

at least for a considerable period. Deficits were projected to average only 1.5 percent of 

GOP for the entire 2012 - 2022 period, and debt held by the public was projected to 

decline to 62 percent of GDP by 2022 - a full 15 percentage points lower than the 

relatively optimistic base case in the 2013 projections. 

Forgone revenues also figure into the federal government's deficits looking back 

over the last several years. The country is slowly climbing out of the worst financial and 

economic crisis since the Great Depression. To address the crisis required some 

extraordinary new spending measures and temporary tax reductions. But in addition to 

these new legislative measures, the Great Recession led to a collapse in existing federal 

tax revenues and a surge in certain income security spending programs, particularly 

unemployment insurance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food 

stamps, colloquially). These consequences are known as "automatic stabilizers" - just by 

the design of these programs, they operate without any new legislative interventions to 

mitigate the consequences of a recession, by leading to smaller tax bills and more 

payments to individuals who qualify for some modest assistance towards meeting current 

living expenses.s Of course, the automatic stabilizers also generate deficits until the 

economy recovers and the programs in question return to normal levels. Because we have 

not endured an economic collapse of this magnitude in the living memory of most 

Americans, we have generally underappreciated the role that automatic stabilizers played 

in our surge in national debt. 

A quick review of tax revenues during the 2008-2013 period illustrates this point. 

For the decades leading up to the crisis, federal tax revenues averaged 18.3 percent of 

GOp.6 (This of course does not mean that revenues approximated this number each year; 

5 For a discussion of how automatic stabilizers operate, see, e.g., Congressional Budget Office, 

The Budget and Economic Outlook, Fiscal Years 2012-2022 (Jan. 2012), Appendix C. 

6 More specifically, using CBO data, I calculated that the unweighted average debt-to-GDP ratio 

for the 20 years 1988-2007, and for the 30-year period 1978-2007, was 18.3 percent. For the 40-

year period 1968-2007, it was 18.2 percent. 
197 

revenues topped out at 20.6 percent of GDP at the end of the Clinton administration, for 

example, and revenues fell significantly in earlier recessions.) During the current crisis 

years, by contrast, federal revenues have fallen precipitously, to about 15.1 percent of 

GDP in 2009 and 2010, for example. To be fair, not all of this decline in revenue was the 

result of the automatic stabilization properties of the income tax, as Congress 

implemented new temporary tax reductions to stimulate the economy, but a significant 

portion was attributable to the automatic stabilization function. 

To make this more concrete, I calculated what the federal government's tax 

revenues would have been in the 2008-2013 period, if revenues each year totaled 18.3 

percent of that year's GDP, and compared those hypothetical revenue figures to the 

revenues actually collected (or in the case of 2013, the revenues that are projected to be 

collected). The difference is a gap of $2.1 trillion - without regard to the increased 

interest costs incurred to finance this contribution to the deficit. 

In short, forgone revenues (compared to historical norms) are a large part of the 

story of where our most recent deficit problems have arisen. In past years (e.g., the 

1990' s) we used years of strong economic performance to pay back this "missing" 

revenue, by allowing tax revenues to rise above the long-term average. After all, 18.3 

percent of GDP could not have been the average revenues collected over many years if 

some years fell below that number, and no year rose above it. 

Summing up the two streams, and removing any double counting for 2013, leads 

to the following observation: if the federal government had collected its historic average 

of 18.3 percent of revenue during the 2008-2012 period, and then switched to the higher 

revenue levels contemplated by the 2012 CBO baseline (i.e, the expiration in particular of 

the 2001-03 tax cuts in their entirety) for 2013-2023, total deficits would have been on 

the order of$7 trillion lower (taking into account debt service savings).7 

7 My calculation of forgone revenues in the 2008-2012 period is not a general equilibrium 

calculation; that is, it does not take into account the effect on GDP of collecting higher taxes in a 

recession. 
198 

So both looking forward to projected revenues after the fiscal cliff tax deal, and 

looking back to the revenues forgone through the automatic stabilization function of the 

income tax (as well as various temporary tax relief measures), we see a consistent story 

of missing revenues that to a large extent explain our worrisome fiscal trends. And to be 

clear, the 2012 CBO baseline numbers contemplated revenue collections at levels not 

very different from those that prevailed at the end of the Clinton administration; these are 

levels that are not beyond our wildest contemplation. To a large extent, both 

sequestration and the budget caps of the 2011 Budget Control Act are efforts to recoup on 

the spending side monies that might have been collected on the revenue side. 

D. Explicit Spending. 

This section lI.D. discusses government spending that is presented as such in 

standard budget presentations. Section IV, below, discusses disguised government 

spending baked into our tax code - what specialists call "tax expenditures." 

Over a longer horizon than the 10-year window considered above, our country 

does have a spending problem, driven to a surprisingly large degree by one paramount 

issue: healthcare spending, and to a much lesser extent by Social Security.8 The 

Congressional Budget Office has projected that government spending on Social Security 

and the major healthcare programs will amount to 11.7 percent of GDP in 2023. In 2007 

that figure was 8.2 percent, and in 19703.8 percent. 

These adverse spending trends reflect among other factors the inescapable 

demographic fact that our popUlation is growing older, and doing so rapidly.9 The 

Congressional Budget Office reminds us that the number of Americans age 65 or older 

will increase by II3 in the next decade. That fact in turn has direct implications for the 

8 For a recent discussion of some Social Security policy options, see Thomas L. Hungerford, 

Increasing the Social Security Payroll Tax Base: Options and Effects on Tax Burdens, 

Congressional Research Service publication RL33943 (Feb. 5, 2013). 

9 This of course is a universal phenomenon in developed countries. See, e.g., OECD, OEeD in 

Figures 2009. at 6-7. 
199 

level of tax revenues required to provide basic services to an aging population, and also 

to the design of these entitlements programs. Phrasing things more directly, it is simply 

unreasonable to expect that we can maintain tax revenues at pre-crisis average levels 

while at the same time the number of elderly Americans increases so rapidly. 

Healthcare actually is a large-scale current fiscal problem, because our healthcare 

spending is so large, and so disproportionate to the value we receive, that it imposes large 

economic efficiency losses on all of us. Here, OECD data are extremely useful in helping 

us to see just what an outlier the United States is today in respect of healthcare costs. 

The United States today spends much more on healthcare than does any other 

developed economy in the world, whether measured as a percentage of GDP or as per 

capita healthcare spending. Applying consistent OECD metrics, in 20 I 0, the United 

States spent 17.6 percent of GDP on healthcare; the next most profligate country, the 

Netherlands, spent 12.0 percent. 10 If the United States spent the same percentage o/GDP 

on healthcare as did the Netherlands, our total public and private healthcare spending 

would have been $812 billion lower. 

17 f 15 

13 

Figure 3.23. Health expenditure 

Percentage of GDP 

<>2004 

St:ar1.lnk ~~;D' l1ttp:!la"'LdoLorg110.178118BS932:37,3S14 

(Source: GEeD, Economic Policy Reforms: Goingfor Growth 2011 at 174.) 

10 http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/socia1-issues-migration-healthltotal-expenditure-onhealth _20758480-table I 
200 

It also is true when measured as dollars spent per capita. In 2010, the United 

States spent $8,233 per capita on healthcare, by far the highest in the world; the next most 

profligate country, Norway, spent $5,388 per capita. I I If the United States were to spend 

per capita what Norway does on healthcare. our aggregate healthcare spending (public 

and private) would immediately decline by some $880 billion/year. 

More remarkably, the United States today is second in the world (only to Norway) 

in government spending per capita on healthcare. 12 In 2010, U.S. federal, state and local 

governments spent more per capita on healthcare than did the governments of Germany, 

Denmark, Switzerland, France or Canada. Our extraordinary profligacy in government 

spending on health care has nothing whatsoever to do with the Patient Protection and 

Affordable Care Act, which had no impact on 2010 healthcare spending (the year covered 

by the data), and which in fact is projected by the CBO to mitigate somewhat the 

accelerating path of government healthcare spending. 

And of course, in return for this profligate spending on healthcare, the United 

States enjoys poor health outcomes; our life expectancy, for example, is at the bottom end 

of the OECD, well below that of the countries mentioned above. 

In short, the government's long-termfiscal health depends directly on grappling 

much more fundamentally than we have to date with how we provide healthcare services 

to our citizens. 13 But change in this area will be challenging, and as Chairman Baucus of 

the Senate Finance Committee has pointed out, in such situations it is important that you 

"boil the frog slowly.,,14 This means that we must rely on long transition periods to move 

from where we are to where we need to be without unfairly upsetting settled expectations 

11 OECD Health Data: Health expenditure and financing: OECD Health Statistics (database), 

http://dx.doi.org/l0./787/hlthxp-cap-table-2012-2-en. 

12 http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-healthlpublic-expenditure-on-health-percapitayubexhltcap-table-en. 

13 Congressional Budget Office, 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook at 45-47 (June 2011). 

14 Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wikilBoiling frog. 
201 

and modes of healthcare delivery systems. In the meantime. however. the resulting costs 

must be financed. 

Government discretionary spending has been on a decades-long downward trend, 

interrupted only by the emergency spending to deal with the Great Recession. Regardless 

of what one thinks about the efficacy of those programs, they were in fact temporary and 

will not contribute further to the deficit in future years. As the figure below shows, this 

downwards trend is true regardless of the application of the sequester and the 2011 

Budget Control Act's caps on discretionary spending. As the Congressional Budget 

Office noted in its 2013 annual Budget and Economic Outlook: 

With funding as assumed in the baseline [i.e., including 2011 BCA caps and the 

sequester], discretionary outlays would fall to 5.5 percent of GOP by 2023, more 

than 3 percentage points below their average from 1973 to 2012. Specifically, 

defense outlays in 2023 would equal 2.8 percent of GOP, compared with a 40-

year average of 4.7 percent, and nondefense outlays in 2023 would equal 2.7 

percent of GOP, compared with a 40-year average of 4.0 percent. 15 

These are wholly unrealistic projected levels of spending. As Martin Feldstein, a 

prominent conservative economist, recently concluded in an op-ed in the Wall Street 

Journal that "The truth is that federal finances cannot be stabilized by reducing 

discretionary outlays alone.,,16 

Put another way, the Congressional Budget Office's 2013 annual Budget and 

Economic Outlook projects that the federal government in 2023 will spend 2.7 percent of 

GOP on all nondefense discretionary spending, but will run a deficit of 3.8 percent of 

GOP. This means that the federal government would run a significant deficit in that year 

even if it were to spend zero on all nondefense discretionary spending programs. 

15 Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023, 

at 25 (Feb. 2013). 

16 Martin Feldstein, A Simple Route to Major Deficit Reduction, Wall St. J., Feb. 21, 2013, at A15. 
202 

Total Discretionary Budget Authority Excluding War 

Funding, Disaster Relief, and Program Integrity Initiatives 

Actual PrQjected 

10 

Proccduws 

0 ' 1986 19f!.S 1990 2000 2002 2004 2006 100B 2010 2m2 

In general, our nondefense discretionary spending today is modest by world 

standards.! 7 Moreover, our standard budget presentation of discretionary "spending" is a 

hopeless muddle, because it mixes what in a private business would be treated as current 

expenses (salary for government employees, for example) with items that a private firm 

would properly characterize, not as an expense, but as the purchase of an asset. In effect, 

we confuse income statement and balance sheet items. In doing so, we overstate 

government nondefense discretionary spending. 

By contrast, the U.S. military budget is a discretionary spending outlier. We all 

are proud of our Armed Forces and are grateful for their work in keeping our country 

secure, but I nonetheless suspect that it would corne as a surprise to many Americans to 

learn that, by at least one third-party estimate, we spend almost exactly as much on our 

military services as do the next 14 largest militaries combined (in fact, 41 percent of the 

17 This is particularly the case if veterans' benefits and services are properly recharacterized as a 

component of defense spending, rather than as nondefense discretionary spending (the current 

budget presentation). 
203 

world's total military expenditures), and more per capita than does Israel, for which 

existential threats are arguably much more immediate. '8 

OECD data that combine all national and subnational government spending, both 

mandatory and discretionary (including social security), confirm that the United States is 

not the victim of government spending run amok. Of the 31 OECD member countries, the 

United States ranks 6th from the bottom in total government spending as a percentage of 

GDP .'9 Given our outsized military and healthcare spending, this implies that the United 

States is a very parsimonious government spender in all other respects, when compared 

with our world peers. 

Finally, when difficult decisions about taxing and spending must be made, some 

find it tempting to think that the place to cut back is on government programs designed to 

alleviate poverty. The federal government's income security programs include the 

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income, 

unemployment insurance, the earned income and child tax credits, family support, child 

nutrition, foster care, and miscellaneous tax credits?O Impressive though this list may 

sound, our government's total outlays for all of these programs combined is much smaller 

than many observers realize. More specifically, the Congressional Budget Office 

projections contained in the 2013 annual Budget and Economic Outlook contemplate that 

government outlays for income security programs will decline as a percentage of GDP 

from 2.0% in 2014 to 1.3% by 2023.21 I do not believe that, for the largest and most 

successful economy in the world, this level of support for Americans struggling with 

unemployment or in poverty can in any way be described as lavish. 

18 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 

ht.!Pj!~ v,,,,,,~ipILQ~g(~"'.~"'ilITb!<lIJ.l1a.t11.,nts./IJlil'''LrlCsll]tQlltPU.tilll i \c.X_L?/Ih,(::.I.~. :<:.9.11rtIri.cJ!:.""i.!b::1hr;= 

highest-militarv-cxpcnditurc-in-2011-tableNiew, and Yearbook 2012, at 183. 

19 OECD Economic Outlook Annex Table 25, available at 

http://www.occd.org/ccoioutlook/economicoutlookannextables.hlm. 

20 Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outloak: Fiscal Years 2013 TO 2023, 

16,24 (2013). 

21 Id. at 24. 
204 

All this suggests to me that further cuts to explicit discretionary spending will 

make at most only a modest impact on the federal budget deficit in the medium term. 

And if one further accepts the maxim that one must boil the entitlements spending frog 

slowly, our worrying fiscal trends over the next decade wi!! not be addressed within that 

time frame by revisions to mandatory spending programs. That leaves larger tax 

revenues (which includes eliminating hidden spending in the form of tax expenditures) as 

the only means of fmancing the policies to which we largely are committed. 

III. WHY TAX REVENUES MUST ruSE. 

The previous discussion has demonstrated that the gap between projected federal 

government spending and tax revenues wi!! have measurable adverse consequences in 

reduced economic output and greater fiscal fragility within a decade. But at the same time, 

federal government discretionary spending already is projected to reach unsustainably 

low levels, and reforms to mandatory spending programs (which in some cases may not 

necessarily be good policy) would in all events require long transition rules. 

This leaves tax revenues as the only way to finance our transition from here to 

there. It is for this reason that bipartisan majorities on deficit reduction panels (for 

example, the Bowles-Simpson and Rivlin-Domenici commissions), major nonpartisan 

studies (for example, the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform's report), the 

staff of the OECD, thoughtful budget experts like Robert Greenstein at the Center for 

Budget and Policy Priorities and prominent economists like Alan Greenspan and Martin 

Feldstein have all agreed that tax revenues must rise from their current levels in order to 

finance our government. 

Bluntly, there is no rational alternative. The need to repay the revenue shortfalls 

of the Great Recession, the rapid increase in the number of elderly Americans, the 

continuing needs of the many Americans who are unemployed or in poverty, our 

oversized and inefficient healthcare system, our large military expenditures, and the costs 

of supervising the world's largest, most complex and most sophisticated economy 
205 

collectively require government revenues greater than those we currently are on track to 

collect. 

Fortunately, we begin with such an extraordinarily low level of tax collections in 

the United States that it is feasible to raise tax collections over the next several years 

without unduly disrupting the U.S. economy. The United States is an extraordinarily lowtax country by world norms, and of course in recent years the automatic stabilization 

properties of the income tax have mitigated even those modest levels of tax burdens. 

Here OECD comparative data (which combine national and subnational taxes) are 

again extremely helpful. Those data show that for 2012, the United States had the 

lowest total tax collections as a percentage of GDP of any country in the DEeD. 22 

Yet at the same time, we finance a military as big as that of the next 14 countries 

combined, and the most expensive and inefficient healthcare system in the world. Why 

are we then surprised that we are running budget deficits? 

Another way of getting a sense of our modest current tax burdens is to look at the 

"tax wedge" on labor - the difference between what an employer pays (including social 

security contributions) and what an employee takes home as after-tax wages. Here again 

OECD data demonstrate that the United States is at the low end of developed country 

norms: 

22 DEeD Economic Outlook Annex Table 26, available at 

http://www.oecd.org/eco/outlook/economicoutlookannextables.htm. 
206 

Average Tax Wedge on Labor (As Percentage of Compensation) 

(Couple with 100% of Average Earnings and 2 Children) 

.2009 <>2006 

50 

40 ¢ 

30 

~ 

'" 

¢ 

I 

o ~~~.w.w~~~~w.w.~~~~~.w~~~~w.w.~~~~.w.w~ 

"./~~l /-,'/ ~~~~.l;,/~?,~~.,f:,.t"O'<"~$~~.;:~", ... <$> .,<f;.,,~~'..J",/.r;/ /~~-4~/ ~~~ ..j>~ ~~ 4' \:J~";' if'iit CJ""~ ~'Ii 

Note: Users of the data must be aware that they may no longer fully reflect the current situation in fast reforming countries. 

1. Measured as the difference between totallabouT compensation paid by the employer and the net take-home pay of employees, as a 

ratio of total labour compensation. It therefore includes both employer and employ~ social security contributions. 

2. Average of three situations regarding the wage of the second earner. 

Source: OECD (20l0), Taring Wages Darahase. 

S~ati.f"'" ~ http://dx.doior9/10 1787/888932373134 

The conclusion that tax revenues must rise sits badly with some. They like to 

point out that high taxes impede economic growth and job creation. These sorts of 

nostrums have as much policy utility as the old adage that, all other things being equal, it 

is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick. Tax revenues need to increase not 

because higher taxes are desirable as an independent goal, but because there is no other 

choice. 

Others object that we should look to reducing mandatory spending programs 

before thinking of raising overall tax revenues. Again, I fully recognize the need to 

rethink healthcare spending in America, in particular, but whatever the shape of the longterm world we transition to, we will need to finance the costs of getting there, and that in 

turns means higher tax revenues than those we currently collect. 

Realizing that any mention of one Administration can be perceived as politically 

charged, the undeniable facts are that in the 1992-2000 period the economy grew much 

faster than it has since that time, and that the economy did so notwithstanding the burdens 

of tax rates that did not reflect the application of the 2001-03 tax discounts. All other 

things being equal, lower taxes are better than higher taxes Gust as being rich and healthy 
207 

beats being poor and sick), but whether viewed from the perspective of world norms or 

our own recent history, it is simply not credible to argue that the U.S. economy cannot 

sustain higher levels of tax collections than the historically low levels of the last few 

years, or even slightly higher levels than historical averages. 

A close reading of the 2013 CBO annual Budget and Economic Outlook in 

conjunction with the same report for 2012 gives a clear picture of what we need by way 

of additional federal revenues. The 2013 baseline projection predicts that federal 

government revenues will reach about 19 percent of GDP during the coming 10 years; as 

previously explained, this level appears to be too low for optimal fiscal health. 

Conversely, the 2012 CBO baseline projection contemplated that revenues slowly would 

climb to about 21 percent of GDP; this level enabled a significant paydown of the 

national debt. 

This is the bid-ask spread, to put things into a Wall Street jargon. The closer we 

can get over the next 10 years to a revenue base on the order of 21 percent of GDP, the 

stronger our fiscal health will be. And again, for all the reasons developed above, I do not 

think it particularly credible to argue that a phased step up to tax revenues at this level 

will choke our economy or erode our fundamental liberties. 

IV. REDUCING THE DEFICIT THROUGH CURBING TAX EXPENDITURES. 

A. How Should Revenues Be Raised? 

Acknowledging that tax revenues must rise is the first step on the road to fiscal 

healing, but of course that leaves open how exactly to do so, and to whom should it be 

done? 

Let us consider the second question - on whom should incremental tax burdens 

fall - first. Here it is important to clarify some widespread confusion about how different 

taxes relate to each other, because from the perspective of a taxpayer what matters is how 

many dollars are removed from her personal resources to pay for government, not what 

the name of the tax is, or even which level of government is doing the removal. For 

example, it often is observed that 47 percent (or thereabouts) of taxpayers pay no federal 
208 

income tax. But this is an incomplete and ultimately misleading observation, because it 

ignores the fact that payroll taxes are paid from the first dollar of wages, and that other 

taxes (e.g. Federal excise taxes or state sales taxes) also are highly regressive. 

Citizens for Tax Justice is the only organization of which I am aware that prepares 

a comprehensive and regularly updated calculation of the total tax burdens (federal, state 

and local) imposed on Americans of different income levels?3 Their analysis shows how 

important it is to look at the entire suite of taxes to which individuals are subject when 

making claims about how tax burdens are shared: 

Incomes and Federal, State & Local Taxes in 2011 

Sha.res of TAXES AS A % OF fNCOME 

Average Total Total Federal State & Total cash local 

income Income taxes tBII!1I taxes taxes 

Lo_st2O% $13,000 3.4~b 2.1% 5.0% 12.3% 17.4% 

Second 20% 26,100 7.0% 5.3% 9.5% 11.7% 21.2% 

Middle 20% 42.000 11-4% 10.3% 13.9% 11.3% 25.2% 

Fourth 20% 68.700 18.7% 19,0% 17.1% 11.2% 28.3% 

Next 10% 1C5,ooo 14.2% 15,0% 18.5% 11.0% 29.5% 

Next 5% 147,000 10.1% 11.0% 19.7% 10.7% 30.3% 

Next 4% 254,000 14.3% 15,5~~ 20.6% 9.9% 30.4% 

Top 1% 1,371,000 21.0% 21,6% 21.1% 7.9% 29.00/0 

ALL $ 71,600 100.0% 100.0% 17.6% 10.3% 27.9% 

Addendum: 

Bottom 99'l>~ $ 58,500 79.1% 78,3% 16.5% 11.0% 27.5% 

Notes: 

a... Taxes incitJde arl fedet-~. state &. bc.aJ taxes (petSonaJ. and corpor:aI e il""'CCK'ne.. payroll. 

pmperty. Sales. excise. estate ele.), 

h For eab.Jlations of income shares and taxes as a % of income, income includes ~. 

I'8id FICA taxes and eorpo:xa!e protls net 01 tal<abie dividen:lS. neither of whiel\ is Incit.ded in tm 

average cash income figures shoWn 

Source: Instil ute on T8X8!ion and ECOI'lOrr'Iie Pdicy Tax Model. April 2012 

Citizens tor Tax Justice. April 2012 

(Source: Citizens for Tax Justice, Who Pays Taxes in America?, April 4, 2012) 

23 The Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation has in the past prepared distribution tables 

showing the distribution of the tax burdens of all federal taxes other than the corporate income 

tax. See, e.g., Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, JCX-19-10, Table II (March 22, 2010). 
209 

From the other direction, and as widely covered in the press, the academic work 

of Emmanuel Saez and others has demonstrated that income inequality in the United 

States has risen dramatically in recent decades. I cannot review all the literature here, but 

a chart from the OECD I think helps to illustrate that, while growth in income inequality 

is a phenomenon with global reach, the United States is a real outlier in this regard: 

Figure 5.5. Share of the top 1% of earners in total taxable inc:ome, 1980 and 2008 

s,....,.·f~nl)O 1"S1!'15~eC'A:i1)'<'drs 

;,:: r 

Ie ~ I 

:: f 12 

Ie 

~ j" ~l -I' <i)-(:' of' 'i'? *' .~ / " .. r¥;:.'"' '" c:}' ,5~~~ .:'.J~ .. 

N«!: Tht 9ft'·:ax income {J,a:.o, .exdude capi!aJ gains for all countries C'xceptA'"I.s:n1ia and f'irlhnd The- data are based on tax retums, 

5ouJ't:r: J'Jvwedo, f. r1 til (2011J. Tht 'rap l11comn: DGt:l.bosr. U1U.I~pa"is:sd'Ioo!oja.."">nCmia.,fl~/(I"JI"WWstt'..ht·top'~n'Ie:S'-d4tata'N,(u.HLltbsitff; 

Ma-:'thcws. 5. (2011,. '"'n'ends in TO;J lr.com<.'S and their Thx rolky tmphcatior.s", OCco nttation \M::II'~1'\!l Pa.~. No. ". OOCO Publishing. 

SUI(t.1nk ~ nttpJld:.r.d:::lLorgIlO.178118889.32'S66SS4 

( Source: OEeD, Economic Policy Reforms 2012: Goingfor Growth, at 188.) 

What is more, it does not follow that our greater income inequality has fueled 

faster economic growth, as this OECD chart shows: 
210 

Figure 5.9. The~ is no simple link betwe<i!n inequality and growth 

i:}ccrM is :l';e .. Sl.ired !.'Iy the Cir.i l:r.dex, l'r:c i.ltt~qu.i;itJ' meD.S:ltt!:$ re;i!f tc ~he la:c lC<':{l$~ eXCi!pt 

:1,:k!· :2000s 

( Source: DEeD, Economic Policy Reforms 2012: Goingfor Growth, at 194.) 

I believe that these data support the view that most Americans pay significant 

taxes, and that additional tax revenues should be raised in a progressive manner. But at 

the same time, I am sympathetic to the view that the very highest marginal tax rate, once 

one factors in the new 3.8 percent Medicare tax and the effects of section 68 of the tax 

code ("Pease"), has reached a level that should not be increased at this time. 

It can fairly be argued that certain new taxes (e.g. a carbon tax) can have a longterm positive impact on the country, by addressing "externalities" and the like, but I am 

not aware of any broad sentiment on this Committee in favor of entirely new taxes. I 

therefore conclude that the increased tax revenues that we require should corne from the 

income tax, but, for the reasons developed above, should be raised in a way that adds to 

rather than subtracts from the progressive structure of the Internal Revenue Code. 

Finally, I think that significant increases in tax revenues necessarily will corne 

from the personal income tax. The reason is simply that the corporate income tax's 

statutory rate of 35 percent is today far outside world norms. The rate needs to come 

down, but at the same time we cannot afford to lose revenue. I therefore conceive of 
211 

corporate tax reform as a roughly revenue neutral undertaking, in which the corporate tax 

base will be broadened through closing business tax expenditures and loopholes, and the 

resulting revenues used to "pay down" the corporate rate. 

The straightforward goals of an incremental reform of the personal income tax 

should be (I) to raise the targeted level of revenues with (2) the desired distributional 

consequences while (3) keeping marginal tax rates - the tax imposed on your last dollar 

of income - as low as possible. The intuition here is simple: people are more sensitive to 

the tax rate imposed on their last dollar of income than to their average tax burden. The 

deadweight loss of taxation can be minimized by keeping marginal tax rates as low as 

possible, consistent with the other two goals. 

Raising average tax rates without raising marginal rates (beyond the expiration of 

the 2001-03 tax discounts) requires broadening the tax base. Unlike 1986, the individual 

income tax today has not been eroded through suspect tax shelters or other schemes to 

avoid the tax system that Congress anticipated when drafting the tax code. (There are of 

course exceptions, but they are not significant to the overall revenue picture.) This means 

that the only way to raise significant revenues without raising marginal tax rates is to 

tackle directly some of the deliberate Congressional subsidy programs baked into the tax 

code, which is to say, tax expenditures. 

Tax expenditures, particularly those that can be phrased as "tax subsidies," are a 

form of government spending, not tax reductions.24 As such, they are the economic 

equivalents of cash entitlements programs, but ones that in many cases are poorly 

targeted, economically wasteful, and awarded to those taxpayers who need subsidies the 

least. The United States prides itself on being a market-based economy, where market 

prices, not central planners, determine the allocations of goods and services. All too often, 

however, tax expenditures undercut this premise, and in fact represent a government 

thumb on the scale of market prices - with all the inefficiencies that this implies. 

24 The history and theory oftax expenditure analysis is developed at length in the Staff of the 

Joint Committee on Taxation's publication, A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure Analysis, JCX37-08 (May 12,2008). 
212 

The magnitude of hidden spending baked into our tax code is staggering: the 

federal government spends today almost twice as much through tax expenditures as we 

do through old-fashioned explicit non-defense discretionary spending programs. In fact, 

we spend more in tax expenditures than we collect in cash through the personal income 

tax - about $1.2 trillion/year. This spending is divided roughly 90 percent on personal tax 

expenditures and 10 percent on business tax expenditures. It is as if our tax base were 

twice as large as it appears, and then we gave half or so of those revenues back through 

various ersatz subsidies that in many cases are poorly targeted and result in 

misallocations of economic activity. 

Because tax expenditures are so large, and because so many are poorly targeted 

ersatz subsidies, it is perfectly feasible to envision raising very large sums of money -

perhaps on the order of $1.5 to $2 trillion - over 10 years without raising tax rates. I offer 

a specific suggestion to this effect at the end of this Section IV. 

B. The Central Importance of Tax Expenditures.25 

Tax expenditures dissolve the boundaries between government revenues and 

government spending. As a result, they reduce both the coherence of the tax law and our 

ability to conceptualize the very size and activities of our government. To see how, 

consider a little example involving the small but self-reliant country of Freedonia. Its 

economy is comprised of 10 fruit and vegetable growers, each earning $1,000 pre-tax, for 

a total gross domestic product of $10,000. Each grower pays income tax to support the 

Freedonian army at a flat rate of 15 percent, for total tax revenues of $1,500. 

Freedonia's sole kumquat producer is particularly resourceful. Armed with 

scientific reports showing the many health benefits of kumquat consumption, he 

convinces the Freedonian legislature that kumquat production deserves tax incentives, to 

bring kumquats within the reach of every Freedonian family. The legislature responds by 

2S Some of this subsection is abstracted from Edward Kleinbard, The Hidden Hand of 

Government Spending, Regulation (Cato Inst., pub.), Fall 2010, at 18. 
213 

effectively exempting kumquat production from its income tax through an innovative 

kumquat production tax credit. 

But Freedonia is not a profligate state, and it believes in fiscal discipline in the 

form. of pay-as-you-go budget rules. Therefore, to keep the kumquat credit revenueneutral, the legislature pairs the new preference with an 11.1 percent tax hike on the other 

producers, to maintain tax revenues at $1,500. (Freedonian tax policy allows for rounding 

error.) That means that the other fruit and vegetable farmers will each pay $167 (instead 

of $150) in tax on their $1,000 of income. 

In a world without tax expenditure analysis, Freedonian legislators can argue that 

nothing has changed: government revenues are constant, and there is no increase in 

government spending or borrowing. But this is plainly wrong; things have changed, in 

both the private and public sectors. 

First, the tax incentive increases kumquat production and consumption. The 

equilibrium price and quantities sold of kumquats will be different relative to other fruits 

and vegetables after the tax incentive. Economists believe that, in the absence of some 

identifiable market failure, markets set prices better than legislatures do, but the kumquat 

credit alters the quantity of kumquats sold relative to the case in which the tax burden of 

all fruit and vegetable growers was equal. Unless the health of Freedonians really is 

improved by the kumquat credit (perhaps due to prior rampant borderline scurvy among 

the population), the result will be a less efficient allocation of our collective resources. 

Second, the introduction of the kumquat credit in an apparently virtuous "revenue 

neutral" fashion has another profound economic effect: tax rate increases on the incomes 

of all the fruit and vegetable producers who do not receive targeted tax relief. All taxes, 

no matter how beautifully implemented, impose "deadweight losses." That is, some 

transactions that are rational in a world without taxes become too expensive in a world 

with those taxes and do not take place. And deadweight loss increases faster than the tax 

rate - in standard presentations, in fact, at the square of the tax rate. 

What all this means is that, by virtue of granting "revenue neutral targeted tax 

relief," the Freedonian government may raise the same aggregate revenues as it did 

previously, but impose more deadweight loss on the remaining taxable Freedonian 
214 

private sector. This result is one of the great ironies of many tax expenditures, 

particularly those that fall mto the category of business incentives - once the incentive's 

impact on tax burdens for others is considered, it impoverishes the country even more 

than it enriches the beneficiaries of the legislative largesse. (Deadweight loss of course 

cannot be avoided for long by electing "targeted tax relief' without revenu,e offsets. 

Unfortunately, recent U.S. tax history has some of this flavor.) 

Third, by virtue of its new kumquat credit, the Freedonian government just got 

bigger, even though aggregate nominal tax revenues remain constant. The best way to 

analogize the new kumquat credit to a uniform ILl percent tax hike on all of Freedonia's 

fruit and vegetable producers, followed by a $167 kumquat crop farm subsidy payment to 

the kumquat producer. By recasting the tax expenditure in this way, as a constant tax 

burden and a separate transfer payment, the two different functions of government are 

restored to their customary formal presentation, and the words "revenue" and "spending" 

can be applied consistently to economically identical (but formally different) modes of 

implementation. As so recast, it is easy to see that Freedonia's economic handprint on the 

private sector is no longer $1,500 in tax revenues, but rather $1,667 in economic terms. 

The government is bigger in every meaningful sense of the word. 

C. Tax Expenditures Must Be Evaluated on the Merits. 

Tax expenditures serve many different purposes. Some (the earned income tax 

credit, the special tax rates on long-term capital gains) might be viewed as adjustments to 

the tax rate tables; others (the child credit, the refundable portion of the EITC) serve 

important social and distributional goals; still others (pension plan contributions) can be 

explained as moves towards a consumption rather than an income tax. But many fall into 

the category of well-intentioned but ultimately inadvisable instances of Congressional 

meddling with our market economy, by subsidizing different forms of personal 

consumption or business activity. These latter sorts of tax expenditures typically 

introduce economic inefficiencies, miss the target of their intended beneficiaries, and 

waste a great deal of money. 
215 

Every tax expenditure therefore must be evaluated on its own merits. Nonetheless, 

when one does perform this sort of evaluation, many tax expenditures, including some of 

the most expensive ones, fail miserably: that is, they represent extraordinarily costly 

government spending programs that do not deliver commensurate social welfare benefits. 

In 2008 the Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation undertook a comprehensive 

review of tax expenditure analysis in a pamphlet titled A Reconsideration of Tax 

Expenditure Analysis. Its purpose was to assist policymakers in using tax expenditure 

analysis "as an effective and neutral analytical tool" to analyze tax proposals.26 One of 

the principal contributions of A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure Analysis was to urge 

that tax expenditures be grouped into different conceptual buckets, so that each could 

fairly be analyzed in accordance with its overall purpose, and compared to other 

expenditures serving a similar overall purpose. To my regret, the Staff of the Joint 

Committee on Taxation later retreated from the presentation recommended in this 

pamphlet. I think that this reversal unfortunately weakened the utility of tax expenditure 

analysis in general. 

Tax expenditure analysis traditionally has identified "tax expenditures" as those 

provisions of the tax code that are said to deviate from a hypothetical "normal tax" 

system. The fundamental problem, however, is that the "normal tax" system is itself a 

normative assertion, rather than an economic fact. To mitigate the importance of the 

"normal tax" concept, A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure Analysis recommended that 

items traditionally labeled as tax expenditures be divided into two main groups: tax 

subsidies and tax-induced structural distortions. The former category contained the 

majority of tax expenditures; it comprised those items that a fair reading of the Internal 

Revenue Code would suggest were exceptions, not to some hypothetical ideal called the 

normal tax, but rather to the general rules visible on the face of the Code itself. Tax26 Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure AnalysiS. 

JCX-37-08 (May 12.2008). Since that date the Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation has 

retreated from the analysis proposed therein to its traditional presentations of tax expenditure 

analysis. I think that this is a mistake, because reverting to an excessive reliance on a "normal tax" 

as the analytical starting point weakens the case for bipartisan agreement on the central 

importance of tax expenditure reform. 
216 

induced structural distortions comprised important tax provisions traditionally 

categorized as tax expenditures, but where the general rules of the Code were not clearly 

visible, so that it was impossible to say which was the exception and which the rule. The 

treatment of the international income of U.S. multinational corporations is a perfect 

example of an economically important tax provision that cannot fairly be described as a 

simple exception to a general rule of the Internal Revenue Code. 

A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure Analysis further recommended that the 

world of tax subsidies (which again comprised the vast bulk of tax expenditures) be 

subdivided into three conceptual buckets: Tax Transfers (refundable credits); Social 

Spending (tax subsidies unrelated to the production of business income, which are 

intended to subsidize or incentivize non-business behaviors, such as the subsidy for 

charitable giving); and Business Synthetic Spending. Tax expenditures that fall into the 

last category in particular in my view are inherently suspect, as they represent direct 

Congressional meddling in the operation of our marketplace economy. 

A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure Analysis showed how tax expenditures 

could be analyzed under traditional tax considerations of equity, efficiency and ease of 

administration. These considerations weigh differently across the different conceptual 

buckets described above. For example, one might expect a Business Synthetic Spending 

tax expenditure to be justifiable primarily on efficiency grounds, while equity 

considerations in general dominate the design of Tax Transfers. 

Finally, A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure Analysis offered some insights into 

how best to design a tax expenditure, once the decision to offer a tax subsidy had been 

made through the political process. The pamphlet emphasized the goals of designing 

subsidies that are transparent (so that costs are easily identifiable, and the identity of 

beneficiaries made clear), well-targeted (so that the subsidy goes to change behavior in 

the direction that policymakers intend, and not to reward people who would have 

engaged in the activity in any event), and certain (so that intended beneficiaries know that 

they qualify, and can plan accordingly). 

Here is an excerpt from the report that applied some of these principles to the 

vexing question of our very large government subsidies for owner-occupied housing: 
217 

To take a well-known example, the Federal income tax today contains 

several large subsidies (incentives) for home ownership. Most economists would 

agree that these tax subsidies are welfare-diminishing. The tax expenditures can 

be described as introducing inequality of after-tax treatment between otherwise 

similarly-situated home owners and home renters. The incentives can also be seen 

as introducing inequities in another sense, by virtue of what Stanley Surrey called 

their "upside down" design - that is, the fact that these tax expenditures, by being 

structured as tax deductions, give proportionately greater government subsidies to 

taxpayers with higher incomes (because the value of a tax deduction is determined 

by the taxpayer's marginal tax rate). Housing tax subsidies can also be viewed as 

inefficient, in at least three respects. First, they encourage private capital to be 

diverted into the housing sector from other investments that would have been 

made in a world without such incentives, thereby raising the cost of capital for the 

rest of the economy. Second, the revenues forgone by providing these tax 

subsidies must be made up by raising marginal tax rates, and those higher tax 

rates by themselves introduce distortions in behavior. Finally, current law's 

housing incentives certainly add significant complexity to our tax system. 

Nonetheless, the political process has concluded that subsidizing home 

ownership is desirable. This conclusion can be explained as reflecting factors 

other than efficiency - for example, "externalities" such as the possible 

advantages to society of having its citizens feel more "invested" in their 

communities, and committed to the larger political system, that might stem from 

home ownership. Moreover, a simple application of tax expenditure analysis 

along the lines summarized above might be criticized in this context (when one is 

reviewing a longstanding tax expenditure) for assuming a world where decisions 

had not been distorted for many decades by these incentives; the technical 

analysis of what to do with those tax expenditures in light of that past history, or 

in light (in this case) of the market dislocations that this sector of the economy 

currently is suffering, might be completely different from the analysis that would 

be applied to a completely new proposed tax expenditure. 

To conclude this example, tax expenditure analysis can shed helpful light 

on the costs (in the broad sense, including, as noted above, environmental costs 

and similar externalities) of tax subsidies associated with owner-occupied housing, 

or can propose ways of rethinking the subsidies that might reduce their costs (for 

example, the replacement of housing-related tax deductions with tax credits). The 

ultimate decision as to the net societal welfare to be gained by subsidizing home 

ownership, however, can only be resolved through the political process.27 

27 A Reconsideration of Tax Expenditure Analysis at 49-50. 
218 

As it happens, I believe that the opponents of this subsidy have by far the better of 

the argument. The subsidy is inefficient, because it induces Americans systematically to 

overinvest their capital in homes, rather than in productive business investments; the 

subsidy is inequitable, in that its benefits go primarily to the highest-income Americans 

(the "upside down" subsidy problem associated with any subsidy that takes the form of a 

tax deduction); and the subsidy is poorly targeted, in that its benefits in many cases go to 

individuals who would have bought a home in any event. 

The poor design of our large tax subsidies is neatly captured in the following chart, 

from an article by Adam Cole, Geoffrey Gee and Nicholas Tumer.28 It shows how the 

benefits of the home mortgage interest deduction in fact are distributed across Americans 

of different incomes. What the authors' research tells us is that roughly the top quintile of 

Americans by income get 80 percent of the value of this government subsidy, and the top 

10 percent get over half its value. 

28 Adam J. Cole, Geoffrey Gee and Nicholas Turner, The Distributional and Revenue 

Consequences of Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction, 64 National Tax J. 977 (2011). 
219 

Figure 3 

Cumulative Shares of the Value of the Mortgage Interest Deduction and Mortgage 

Interest Expenses by AGI Percentile, 2007 

i.O 

0.9 

0.3 

0.2 

0.1 

0.0 

o 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 

Percentile of Taxpayer (by AOI} 

Note: Ntm·fHers are excluded from t"is semple. 

Source: Authors' calculations based 011 data from the SO! OMsl00 of the !RS. 

80 90 100 

(Source: Adam J. Cole, Geoffrey Gee and Nicholas Turner, The Distributional and Revenue 

Consequences of Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction, 64 National Tax J. 977 (2011)) 

Can anyone imagine proposing to Congress in this difficult fiscal environment the 

creation of a gigantic cash subsidy - totaling $379 billion in forgone tax revenues over 

the next five years, according to the Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation29 - the 

purpose of which is to put roughly $200 billion directly into the pockets of the most 

29 Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal 

Years 2012-2017, JCS-I-13, Feb. 1,2013, at 33. 
220 

affiuent 10 percent of Americans? Yet this is exactly what we have done with this one 

tax expenditure. 

In practice, we do not focus on the enormous expense, the deadweight loss or 

bizarre targeting of the government's subsidy of horne mortgage interest in the same way 

Congress and the public do when Congress considers the Farm Bill. The reasons are that 

the horne mortgage interest deduction is invisible in our standard government accounts, 

as just another feature of the tax law that leads to a certain level of tax revenues, and 

because the deduction functions as an entitlement - a permanent feature of the law that 

people claim if they are qualified, without annual appropriations by Congress. The horne 

mortgage interest deduction and other similar tax expenditures rely to a large extent on 

this relative invisibility, not on their economic or equity merits, to survive. 

As another quick example of the muddle in which we find ourselves, consider that 

we use the tax system today both to subsidize alternative energy sources, and to subsidize 

the fossil fuels that those alternative energy sources are designed to supplant. 30 Together 

the two efforts counteract each other, by incentivizing production and consumption of 

what amount to competing products. 3! If the policy behind subsidies for alternative 

energy is to increase the likelihood of consumers using those sources, the subsidy on 

fossil fuels is directly in opposition to that policy by incentivizing producers and 

consumers to. continue their existing use of fossil fuels. 32 

It is important to stress that not all tax expenditures are wasteful. The earned 

income tax credit, for example, is a great success story, to the point where it has been 

copied in countries around the world, under the general rubric of "making work pay." 

30 In 2009, tax expenditures supporting fossil fuels totaled $3.2 billion, compared to $1.47 billion 

for alternative energy. SUBSIDY SCOPE, Tax Expenditures in the Energy Sector, PEW 

CHARITABLE TRUSTS (Sep. 9, 2010), available at subsidyscope.org/energyltax-expenditures. 

3! Diane Cardwell, Renewable Energy Industries Push for New Financing Options, N.Y. TIMES 

(Jan. 30 2013), available at dealbook.nytimes.coml20 1310 1I30/renewable-energy-industrie spush-for-new-financing-options. 

32 Id. 
221 

Over 20 million Americans claim the benefits of the EITe each year. The EITe 

has lowered the barriers to entry into the job market for these millions of Americans. 

There are very large costs associated with moving from unemployed status to one's first 

job - child care, uniforms or tools, commuting expenses, and so on. These are not taxes 

in a formal sense, but in practice operate effectively as very high marginal taxes on an 

individual's first dollar of wage income. 

The EITe helps to overcome these sorts of barriers, and to enable individuals to 

develop the skills and work habits that will enable them to move up the income ladder, 

until they 'graduate' from EITC.3

) For thiS reason, most EITe recipients in practice 

receive EITes only for only one or two years in a roW. 34 The EITe thus solves a 

fundamental economic problem in the labor markets (the very high implicit tax on 

entering the workforce), thereby increasing the labor supply, our national wealth and our 

collective social welfare.35 

Some observers emphasize the possibility of fraud in taxpayers' claiming the 

EITe, to the exclusion of considering the credit's demonstrated labor market benefits. 

The IRS is well aware of this risk, and applies much more rigorous vetting procedures to 

every return claiming the EITe than it does, for example with the home mortgage interest 

deduction. The IRS checks the social security number of each taxpayer and of each child 

33 Molly Dahl, Thomas Deleire, and Johathan Schwabish. Stepping Stone or Dead End? The 

Effect o/the EITC on Earnings Growth, 62 National Tax J. 329 (2009) (Jobs that single mothers 

took because ofthe incentives from the EITC were not dead-end jobs, but rather jobs with the 

potential of earnings growth). 

34 Tim Dowd and John B. Horowitz, Income Mobility and the Earned Income Tax Credit: ShortTerm Safety Net or Long-Term Income Support, 39 Pub. Fin Rev. 619 (Sept. 2011) (61 percent of 

taxpayers claiming the EITC do so for no more than two consecutive years). Some taxpayers with 

children, in particular, receive EITC benefits for longer periods. Id. The authors conclude: 

"Therefore, for some taxpayers, the EITC acts as a temporary safety net during periods of either 

anticipated or unanticipated income or family structure shocks. But the EITC also acts as a longterm mechanism of providing assistance to taxpayers with children who are entrenched in the 

lowest-income brackets." 

35 See e.g. Jeffrey Grogger, Welfare Transitions in the 1990s: The Economy, Welfare Policy, and 

the EITC, 23 J. of Policy Analysis and Management 671 (2004); Timothy Dowd, Distinguishing 

Between Short-Term and Long-Term Recipients o/the Earned Income Tax Credit, 58 National 

Tax J. 807 (2005). 
222 

claimed against other government databases. If the IRS finds a problem, it will not give 

the EITC portion of the refund until after audit. The IRS further uses a variety of 

automated algorithms to detect suspect EITe filings. And relying in part on section 

6695(g) of the Internal Revenue Code, added specifically to increase compliance among 

paid return preparers, the IRS reviews the returns submitted by commercial tax preparers 

and looks with more scrutiny at preparers who have submitted erroneous claims in past. 

D. Healthcare Tax Expenditures. 

The two largest clusters of tax expenditures are those for healthcare and those for 

owner-occupied housing. Each has had a large and profoundly negative allocative effect 

on the economy - that is, each has distorted what goods and services we all purchase, by 

changing relative prices through hidden government subsidies. Each also is poorly 

targeted, in the sense that the subsidy often goes to taxpayers who would have purchased 

those goods or services without the help of the subsidy. 

The most important healthcare tax subsidy is the treatment of wages paid by an 

employer in the form of healthcare benefits (whether called insurance or out of pocket 

reimbursements) as tax-exempt in the hands of an employee. This "exclusion" from 

employees' incomes of wages paid in the form employer-provided healthcare will cost 

some $132 billion in forgone income taxes in 2013 alone (and $760 billion over the five 

years 2013-2017),36 but even these enormous costs understate the true picture, because 

they do not include the payroll tax revenues forgone by the exclusion. In 2008, the JCT 

Staff estimated these payroll tax costs at some $100 billion for one year alone.37 

In short, the total value of this government subsidy for one mode· of healthcare 

delivery is on the order of $250lbillion year. Yet precisely because this subsidy is 

delivered as an income "exclusion," its recipients are largely unaware that they are the 

36 Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal 

Years 2012-2017, JCS-I-!3, Feb. 1,2013, at 3S. 

37 Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, Tax Expendituresfor Healthcare, JCX-66-0S (July 

200S). 
223 

beneficiaries of a hidden government handout. The result is a terrible distortion in public 

discourse, as seen in the debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care 

Act. Many Americans believed that the Act represented an unprecedented government 

intrusion into the private sector, but were unaware that the government had long been 

subsidizing their healthcare (but not necessarily those of other Americans with different 

employers). This is why in my academic writing I have emphasized the corrosive effects 

of tax expenditures on our ability to conceptualize the role of government in our lives.38 

Substantively, the subsidy for employer-sponsored distorts our spending patterns, 

by encouraging us to take compensation in the form of generous healthcare programs (its 

allocative consequences), does so inefficiently (by subsidizing higher-income Americans 

more, since tax-exemption is more valuable to them - the classic ''upside down" subsidy 

pattern of many tax expenditures), and does so unfairly (because its availability depends 

on the programs offered by your employer, not consistent national standards available to 

everyone). 

For these reasons, every health economist of whom I am aware believes that the 

tax subsidy for employer-sponsored health insurance is both unaffordable and bad policy. 

Many I believe were acutely disappointed that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care 

Act left the subsidy largely intact (except for certain "Cadillac" plans). 

The difficulty is not with this ultimate conclusion, but rather with the frog boiling 

procedure. The tax subsidy for employer-provided healthcare is so deeply engrained in 

the healthcare delivery system that it cannot be removed except through a carefully 

thought-out transition to a different system. Whether the Patient Protection and 

Affordable Care Act is that system, or only a steppingstone to a more comprehensive 

rewriting of how healthcare is delivered in the United States, is a complex question, but 

the unwinding of the tax subsidy for employer-sponsored healthcare should take place in 

the context of a plan that assures Americans that healthcare will not become less 

available or wholly unaffordable. 

3& E.g., Edward Kleinbard, The Congress Within a Congress: How Tax Expenditures Distort Our 

Budget and Our Political Process, 36 Ohio Northern L. Rev. 1 (2010). 
224 

E. The Sacred Tax Cows of Personal Itemized Deductions - It's Them or Us 

Employer-provided healthcare is the largest single government subsidy program 

delivered through the tax system. As a group, however, the personal itemized deductions 

-in particular, the deductions we claim that subsidize our homes (the home mortgage 

interest deduction, the deduction for property taxes, etc.), our charitable contributions, 

our state and local income taxes, and so on are even larger. The Staff of the Joint 

Committee on Taxation has estimated that our tax subsidies for home ownership, 

charitable contributions, and state and local taxes together will cost $1.2 trillion in 

forgone federal tax revenues over the next jive years. 

Following the recommendations developed in an article I co-authored with Joseph 

Rosenberg of the Tax Policy Center/9 I urge that these deductions be converted into 

nonrefundable tax credits at a 15 percent tax benefit rate: that is, a $100 deduction would 

be converted into a $15 cash equivalent, in the form of a tax credit. 40 The result will be 

that these activities still will be subsidized, but to a much smaller degree, and the subsidy 

no longer will be "upside down." In other words, all taxpayers who itemize will get the 

same $15 tax benefit from a $100 charitable contribution (or whatever), rather than 

getting a bigger subsidy if they are in a higher tax bracket. To ease the pain for those 

taxpayers living in particular at the margin of affordability of their homes, the new 

principles should be phased in over a few years. 

This same principle can even be extended to the standard deduction (with 

adjustments to deal with the 10 percent tax rate bracket). The standard deduction 

invariably gets a free pass when tax expenditures are examined, but the standard 

deduction has all the same "upside-down" subsidy characteristics that itemized 

deductions do and no greater justification as a normative income tax matter. Converting 

the standard deduction to a 15 percent credit (with an adjustment for income in the 10 

J9Edward Kleinbard and Joseph Rosenberg, The Better Base Case, 135 Tax Notes 1237 (2012). 

40 See also Lily L. Batchelder et aI., Efficiency and Tax Incentives: The Case/or Refundable Tax 

Credits, 59 Stanford L. Rev. 23, 44-48 (2006). Batchelder and her co-authors recommended that 

credits be refundable; for revenue reasons, I am proposing that they would not be. 
225 

percent bracket) raises substantial revenues and addresses the upside down subsidy 

problem. 

I do not have a complete revenue estimate for the revenues that this proposal will 

raise under the new tax rate brackets adopted as part of the fiscal cliff tax deal, but my 

preliminary estimate is that this proposal alone will raise about $1.5 trillion over the 10-

year budget window (ignoring any staged transition rule to minimize the pain of adjusting 

to the new principles). At the same time, a 15 percent tax credit leaves in place about 

one-half the aggregate value of the personal itemized deductions, which mitigates some 

of the transition concerns. 

There is a widespread bipartisan consensus that the current personal itemized 

deductions are perverse, inefficient, and unaffordable.4

! In his Presidential campaign, 

Governor Romney urged that tax expenditures be scaled back, and of course President 

Obama has proposed a 28 percent cap on the value of personal itemized deductions. The 

difference between the parties is not, I think, with regard to the merits of scaling back the 

value of personal itemized deductions, but rather whether the resulting revenues should 

be used to fund government, or to "buy down" tax rates. 

A powerful argument can be made that the personal itemized deductions should 

be entirely eliminated. My proposal does not go that far, but it is possible to imagine that 

subsequent Congresses could choose to phase out the personal itemized deductions 

starting at some later date by reducing the tax benefit of the deductions by, say, 1 percent 

each year for 15 years. 

I recognize that the personal itemized items are frequently described as political 

"sacred cows," but they are simply unaffordable luxuries in the current environment. 

Either we eliminate these sacred cows, or they will stampede us. 

By scaling back the value of personal itemized deductions, we can not only raise a 

very large amount of revenue, but we do so efficiently. We can raise this incremental 

41 See, e.g., Michael M. Gleeson and Michael Beller, "Ryan Budget Calls for Top Tax Rates of 

25 Percent," Tax Noles, Mar. 26, 2012, p. 1595. For example, both Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and 

Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi, R-Ohio, have argued that tax expenditures must be scaled back. 
226 

revenue without raising marginal tax rates. The elimination of the tax preferences for 

these items also will add to the progressivity of the tax system, because itemizers 

generally have higher pretax incomes than do taxpayers claiming the standard 

deduction.42 (Only about one-third of tax filers itemize their deductions today.) 

Moreover, by eliminating these sacred tax cows we directly address a 

fundamental misallocation of capital in the private sector, which is our overinvestment in 

single-family homes compared to other forms of capital investment. 43 We also will 

eliminate the inefficiencies by which we provide these subsidies to those who would have 

bought their homes (or made charitable contributions, or chosen to live in high-tax states) 

regardless of the tax incentives.44 

At bottom, the personal itemized deductions, as the name implies, are all personal 

expenses. Their replacement by a 15 percent credit would make the tax system more 

progressive, more efficient, less distortive and simpler. Doing so also would raise great 

deal of money without adding unduly to the deadweight loss from taxation, and raising a 

great deal of tax revenue in general is something that we have no choice but to embrace. 

The reason to convert all the personal itemized deductions to a 15 percent credit is 

that it is impossible to choose among them. Each can be defended as an incentive for one 

desirable goal or another. Our only practical hope is to round up and eliminate all these 

tax sacred cows at once. 

Martin Feldstein has ma.de a somewhat similar proposal, which he describes as a 2 

percent cap on the tax benefits that an individual taxpayer can claim from tax 

42 See, e.g., Testimony of Robert Greenstein Before the Senate Committee on Budget, March 9, 

2011, Table 1 (listing distributional consequences of itemized deductions by income quintiles). 

43 Robert Carroll, John F. O'Hare and Phillip L. Swagel, Costs and Benefits of Housing Tax 

Subsidies, Pew Charitable Trusts (June 2011); Evridiki Tsounta, Home Sweet Home: 

Government's Role in Reaching the American Dream, International Monetary Fund Working 

Paper Wp/11I191 (August 2011). 

44 For example, Tsounta, supra n. 43, finds (Table 8 at 28) that Canada's tax subsidies for home 

ownership are perhaps"I/S as large as a percentage ofGDP as those of the United States, yet 

Canada has a higher rate of home ownership. 
227 

expenditures.45 Feldstein proposes that taxpayers can claim any combination that they 

wish of the personal itemized deductions and two income exclusions (described below) 

that are caught by his proposed rule, provided that in doing so taxpayers cannot reduce 

their tax bills by more than 2 percent of their adjusted gross incomes. (For example, if a 

hypothetical taxpayer had $100,000 in adjusted gross income, that taxpayer would be 

limited in claiming deductions and exclusions to an amount that translated into a $2,000 

cash tax savings. At a hypothetical flat 25 percent tax rate, this would mean that the 

taxpayer could claim a total of $8,000 in deductions and exclusions, because 25 percent 

of $8,000 is $2,000 of cash.taxes saved.) Marty and I share a common emphasis on the 

importance of addressing tax expenditures as the right way to raise revenue, but I do not 

agree with his specific recommendation. 

First, the Feldstein proposal would be extremely complex to implement, much 

more so than suggested by op-ed I reference in a note. Second, Feldstein proposes to 

include in his list of tax subsidies subject to the 2 percent cap excludible tax-exempt bond 

interest. At least as written this does not appear to be economically sensible, because 

investors in tax-exempt bonds already suffer an implicit tax in the form oflower coupons. 

(The idea of the exclusion for interest on state and local government debt is not to 

subsidize investors, but rather the state and local governments that issue the securities.) 

Third, whether by design or not, the Feldstein proposal appears to impose very 

large tax burdens on many middle class Americans. The reason is that he includes in his 

list of tax subsidies subject to the new 2 percent cap the income exclusion for employerprovided health care insurance, subject to an $8,000 allowance. This allowance sounds 

very generous, and in fact would fully protect most single taxpayers, but if (as I think is 

intended) Feldstein gives only one $8,000 allowance to a family filing a joint return, then 

millions of working Americans with employer-provided health insurance would find that 

much of their previously-excludible health benefits had become taxable. I understand 

completely the impulse to dismantle the tax subsidy for employer-provided healthcare, 

45 The most recent iteration of this proposal is Martin Feldstein, A Simple Route to Major Deficit 

Reduction, Wall St. J., Feb. 21, 2013, at A"15. 
228 

but as I emphasized earlier, we should do so only in the context of a completely secure 

path to a superior healthcare delivery system that is still affordable. 

Fourth, the Feldstein proposal has the odd effect of giving two affluent taxpayers 

completely different answers, depending on whether their incomes are derived from labor 

(taxed at the maximum marginal rates) or capital gains taxed at 20 percent. Taxpayers 

whose income comprised entirely capital gains would get essentially twice as many 

personal itemized deductions as would high-income wage earners. 

Finally, Feldstein excuses charitable contributions from the reach of his proposal. 

While I understand the impulse to protect charitable giving, I do not agree with this 

recommendation. Charitable giving is very top-weighted by incomes, and leaving it 

protected vitiates much of the progressivity of the proposal. Moreover, charitable giving 

is rife with questionable practices (for example, donor-advised funds or the aggressive 

use of charitable remainder unitrusts) that have little to do with the eleemosynary 

purposes for which the charitable contribution deduction was intended. 
229 

Chairman MURRAY. Dr. Bernstein? 

STATEMENT OF JARED BERNSTEIN, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, 

CENTER FOR BOARD OF GOVERNORS AND POLICY PRIORITIES 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 

These are uniquely challenging times for fiscal policy. Our national economy continues to face a series of self-imposed fiscal 

deadlines in the forms of cliffs, ceilings, and, most recently, sequestration. This latter automatic cut, if it remains in place, is estimated to shave half a percent off of real GDP growth this year and 

cost the labor market over half a million jobs. 

While I understand that there are often principled stands behind 

these deadlines, operationally they have consistently and needlessly damaged an economic recovery that needs your support, not 

the fiscal drag and uncertainty that they are causing. 

In that spirit, my testimony argues that repealing or reducing 

some of our tax expenditures offers a promising way forward. 

First, compromise on a deficit reduction package is clearly 

blocked by seemingly intractable disagreements about the composition of such a package. Republicans argue for a ‘‘spending cuts 

only’’ approach while and Democrats and the President argue for 

a package that balances spending cuts and tax increases. 

Tax expenditures sit astride both of these categories because 

while they are administered through the Tax Code, many serve the 

same function as spending programs. For example, Pell grants and 

subsidized child care are both spending programs that help lowand moderate-income families afford college and child care. But 529 

accounts— those are tax-deferred savings accounts for college—and 

the child care tax credit are tax expenditures that serve the same 

purposes for higher-income families. Thus, if you believe we have 

a spending problem, you should also believe we have a tax expenditure problem. At the same time, since tax expenditures currently forgo over $1 

trillion in revenue each year that would otherwise be in the tax 

base, their reform offers significant contributions to a balanced 

deal. Such balance is essential. 

Chairman Murray has pointed out that the original SimpsonBowles plan and the Senate’s Gang of Six plan had ratios of spending cuts to tax increases of roughly 1:1. But given the spending 

cuts legislated in the Budget Control Act and the tax increases in 

the fiscal cliff deal, that ratio today stands at $2.30 of spending 

cuts for every $1 of tax increases. 

Now, of course, every spending program should not be cut, and 

neither should all tax expenditures be repealed or reduced. I recommend three criteria to evaluate the utility of tax expenditures: 

revenue forgone, efficiency, and fairness. Members will not be at all 

surprised to find that it is far too easy to find many tax expenditures that are trifectas. They forgo significant revenue, induce inefficiencies, and return most of their benefits to the wealthiest households, boosting after-tax inequality and failing on the fairness criterion. 

For example, the carried interest loophole allows equity fund 

managers to pay taxes on their earnings at half the normal rate, 
230 

violating the fairness criterions. Far more revenue is forgone 

through the ability of multinational corporations to defer taxation 

on profits earned by foreign subsidiaries, a privilege domestic firms 

lack. Since most firms with overseas operations can hold their profits abroad for as long as they want without paying U.S. taxes, this 

break gives them a strong incentive to both reinvest their income 

abroad and/or shift their operations, or at least their profits, to lowtax havens. Deferral in this case violates all three criteria. It is inefficient for firms to make investment and location choices based 

on tax savings versus production or sales efficiencies. Considerable 

revenue is forgone, and since small businesses and domestic firms 

do not face this option, it provides multinationals with a strong 

comparative advantage over domestic firms and, thus, fails on fairness grounds as well. 

Of course, no matter how reasonable the criteria, picking which 

tax expenditures should be curtailed amounts to a huge political 

challenge. In that regard, capping most deductions at a lower 

rate—the President has suggested 28 percent—for taxpayers above 

a certain income level also scores highly on the three criteria noted 

above: raising significant revenue, reducing both inefficiencies and 

the upside down subsidies embedded in the current system. 

In sum, tax expenditure reform offers an excellent option to reduce wasteful spending through the tax system while helping to 

meet our fiscal challenges in ways that will simultaneously improve our deficit outlook, increase economic efficiency, and add 

much-needed fairness back into the Tax Code. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bernstein follows:] 
231 

Tax Expenditures: How Cutting Spending Through the Tax Code Can Lower the Deficit, Improve 

Efficiency, and Boost Fairness in the US Tax Code 

Testimony Before the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, Chairman 

3/5/2013 

Jared Bernstein 

Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 
232 

Introduction 

Chairman Murray, ranking member Sessions, I thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 

These are uniquely challenging times for fiscal policy. Our national economy continues to face a series 

of self-imposed fiscal deadlines in the forms of cliffs, ceilings, and most recently, sequestration. Various 

independent analyses find that if these automatic cuts remain in place, they will shave around 0.5% off 

of 2013 real Gross Domestic Product (GOP) growth and cost our labor market between 500,000 and one 

million jobs. While I understand that there are often principled stands behind these deadlines, 

operationally, they have consistently and needlessly damaged an economic recovery that needs your 

support, not the fiscal drag and uncertainty caused by these manufactured crises. 

In that spirit, a significant part of this testimony develops recent bipartisan suggestions that some of our 

tax expenditures be repealed or reduced. There are numerous rationales for this. First, it is clear that 

compromise on a deficit-reduction package is blocked by seemingly intractable disagreements about the 

composition of such a package. Republicans have argued for a "spending-cuts-only" approach while the 

Presidents and Democrats in this chamber have argued for a package that balances spending cuts and 

tax increases. 

Tax expenditures sit astride both of these categories, because while they are administered through the 

tax code, many serve the same function as spending programs. Thus, those who believe we have a 

spending problem should also believe we have a tax expenditure problem. At the same time, since tax 

expenditures currently forgo over $1 trillion in revenue each year that would otherwise be in the tax 

base, their reform offers significant contributions to a balanced deal. 

Of course, just as not every spending program should be cut, neither should all tax expenditures be 

repealed or reduced. In discussing examples below, I use three criteria to evaluate the utility of tax 

expenditures: revenue forgone, efficiency, and fairness. Members will not be surprised that it is far too 

easy to find many tax expenditures that are "trifectas": they forego significant revenue, they induce 

inefficiencies, and they return most of their benefits to the wealthiest households, boosting after-tax 

inequality and failing on the fairness criterion. 

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this last point regarding fairness. As I point out below, not 

only do we have record high levels of income and wealth inequality in America, but changes in our tax 

code over the last decade have often exacerbated those inequalities with certain tax expenditures, like 

favorable treatment for capital gains and opportunities to defer taxation on appreciated assets, 

contributing to that outcome. These issues took center stage in the last election and President Obama 

frequently cited a fairer tax code as a central part of his agenda. 

In my own work on these issues, I've raised concerns about how taxpayers view the legitimacy of the 

American tax system. If the average taxpayer feels like the privileged can get a much better deal out of 

the tax code than they can, that system's legitimacy is at risk, and this is a serious concern for a 
233 

democracy. In that sense, these revenue issues are not merely about cash flow and budget balancing. 

They are existential. 

My testimony begins by establishing the importance of new tax revenues as part of forthcoming budget 

deals, then turns to why reforming tax expenditures offers a rich set of opportunities to raise revenues 

while reducing inefficient spending through the tax code. I then offer numerous examples of tax 

expenditures that I urge the committee to consider for reform. Finally, I discuss an important dimension 

of the fairness part of this debate: linkages between the growth of tax expenditures and the growth of 

income inequality. 

Tax Revenues Must Be Part of Ongoing Fiscal Deals 

As Chairman Murray emphasized in her budget memo from a few weeks back, Congress and the 

Administration worked together to achieve around $2.4 trillion in deficit savings, 2013-2022, including 

(with interest savings) $1.7 trillion in spending cuts and $700 billion in tax increases. Thus, using just the 

policy changes (leaving off interest savings) in this recent round of deficit reduction, Congress has so far 

legislated $2.40 of spending cuts for everyone dollar of tax increases (note that these numbers reflect 

neither the sequester nor savings from reduced war spending). 

My Center on Budget and Policy Priorities colleague Richard Kogan has updated these estimates for the 

most recent budget window, 2014-2023, and also added what it would take to stabilize the ratio of 

debt-to-GDP (the debt ratio) over that window, an accomplishment I would consider the first step to 

getting the nation on a sustainable fiscal path. The results shown in Table 1 reveal that it would take 

another $1.5 trillion in savings over this period to stabilize the debt at 73% of GDP. 

Table 1 

Deficit Reduction to Stabilize the Debt 

Cumulative totals. 2014-2023, In billions 

POliCY Interest 

savings savings 

Discretionary savings from cuts in 2011 

funding and caps Imposed Dy the BrA 1.576 336 

Savings from tile ATR.A 732 117 

Further sailings to staDllize deDt at 73% Of GOP 1.327 202 

TOTAL 3.636 655 

Total defiCit 

reductlc)rI 

1.912 

850 

1529 , 4.290 

Notes: BGA stands for the Budget COlltIol Act. August 2011: AffiA stands for the Amencan Taxpayer 

Rehef Act. Jal.uary 2013: all savings measured relatr;ll) to current pOlicy (see Appendix I) 

Source: Center on Budget alld POliCy Priorities based 011 Congresslollal Budget Office and JOII.t 

Committee all laxation data. 

Source: Kogan,2013 
234 

Over the longer term, more savings will need to be generated to lower the debt ratio further and 

achieve more lasting fiscal stability, a point that is well-appreciated by analysts from all sides of the 

debate. But policymakers' initial focus should be to implement the savings needed to stop the nation's 

stock of debt from growing faster than the economy (GDP growth) and to do so in a balanced way 

including new revenues and new spending cuts. 

As this committee well knows given the ongoing debate over the sequester, this raises the question as 

to how best to raise this next $1.5 trillion. The same Chairman's memo noted above makes the 

following point regarding bipartisan plans, including the original Simpson-Bowles plan and the Senate's 

"Gang of Six": 

These bipartisan frameworks include significant new revenue and have far more balance 

between spending cuts and revenue increases than the deficit reduction measures we've 

enacted to date. For instance, the President's Fiscal Commission and the Senate's Gang of Six 

each proposed roughly $4.8 trillion in deficit reduction over the 2012-2021 period with over $2 

trillion coming in the form of new revenue. Excluding the interest savings of roughly 

$800 billion, the two bipartisan efforts proposed a roughly 1:1 ratio of spending and revenue 

savings ... 

Further, measured over the same ten-year window used to estimate the effects of the ATRA 

legislation (2013-2022), the two bipartisan efforts each provide for revenue of between $2.4 

trillion and $2.5 trillion, or roughly four times the amount of new revenue to be generated by 

the year-end deal [ATRA]. 

Figure 1 shows that ratio of cuts to revenues prevailing so far and the ratio if Congress were to split the 

needed $1.5 trillion between both budget categories (using data from Table 1, i.e., CBPP's update to 

2014-2023). An even split at this point would still not reach the roughly 1:1 ratio proposed by the earlier 

commissions, but it would narrow the ratio some, bringing it to 1.7 to 11 On the other hand, a 75/25 

split (cuts to revenues) would result in a less balanced split than the current ratio. 

Figure 1 

1 The $732 billion in ATRA savings in Table 1 include $29 billion in program cuts (as opposed to tax increases); I've 

adjusted the numbers accordingly in the figure. 
235 

2.0 

1.5 

1.0 

0.5 

Balancing Deficit: Reduc~ion:: 

RaUos of Spending Cuts to Tax Increases 

(using CBPP es~irnat:es .. 2014-2023) 

2.3 

SoF .. "lr 

l.7 

If RCOrl'.::J1Tling 

Savings 

VV';'r':'" F,-on) • l.;dr 

R,-·v~. I 'dlf Cl..lt~ 

If Re-rYl.:lillinH 

S .. lving'S 

VV':"'rc' F,'Or') 2. So'?(, 

Rev~, 75~{' C\.-lt~ 

Source: Table 1 above 

It is also notable that in recent fiscal negotiations, revenue offers from both the White House and 

Speaker Boehner were all considerably higher than the enacted revenue increases in ATRA of $560 

billion. These offers ranged from $800 billion to $1 trillion offered by the speaker, to $1.2 to $1.6 trillion 

offered by the President (all for 2013-2022).' 

Thus, a balanced plan requires new revenues as part of the deal. I recognize that this flies in the face of 

a recent partisan position that essentially maintains "we've already raised taxes and we won't do it 

again." I believe that the analysis above, using standard, widely-accepted estimates, reveals that 

position to make no more sense than were partisans on the other side were to say "we've already cut 

spending, we're not going to do it again." Achieving our medium-term goal of debt stabilization will 

require compromise, which in practice implies both new revenues and new spending cuts. 

Tax Expenditure Reform 

The above analysis raises the question as to how new revenues should be raised. As President Obama 

has suggested, and many members of Congress from both parties have at various times agreed, the right 

place to start is by reducing or repealing certain tax expenditures. 

There are good, substantive reasons for the bipartisan appeal of tax expenditure reform. First, it is 

increasingly recognized by experts including President Reagan's former chief economist Martin Feldstein 

and current CBO director Doug Elmendorfthat in many cases, tax expenditures are simply ways of 

2 See this piece by Chye-Ching Huang, http://www.offthechartsblog.org/both-sides-have-offered-higher-revenuesthan-those-in-fiscal-C/iff-deal!. 
236 

spending through the tax code.' Marr et al (2013) point out that child care assistance and education 

supports are provided both through spending programs and through tax expenditures, but the 

distinctions are substantively meaningless. For example, Pell Grants and subsidized child care are both 

spending programs that help low- and moderate-income families afford college and child care, 

respectively; "529 accounts" (tax deferred savings for college) and the child care tax credit are tax 

expenditures that serve the same purposes for higher-income families. 

All of these programs provide help acquiring services that Congress has deemed to be worthy. Why 

should the difference in their delivery mechanisms - the tax code on one side or direct spending from 

general outlays on the other - determine which ones get cut in the service of deficit reduction? In that 

regard, policymakers who believe we have a spending problem must also believe we have a tax 

expenditure problem. 

For other policymakers seeking a balanced approach to deficit reduction, cutting regressive tax 

expenditures that have little economic rationale makes obvious sense, especially given that the Treasury 

now forgoes more than $1 trillion in revenues from tax expenditures each year and, as emphasized 

below, most of their benefits flow to those at the top of the income scale, thus exacerbating the 

problem of high and growing income inequality. 

Finally, economists agree that some of the tax expenditures have distortionary economic effects, 

distorting price signals and providing inefficient subsidies. 

So, reforming - as in restructuring, cutting back, or repealing - certain tax expenditures has three very 

important benefits right now: they offer a balanced path to deficit reduction, they cut spending through 

the tax code, and their reduction can add both fairness and effiCiency to the tax code. The next sections 

demonstrate these points. 

--Tax Expenditures Now Cast the Treasury Over $1 Trillion in Annual Revenue Forgone: as Figure 2 

below, from Marr et al (2013), shows, tax expenditures are now greater than these other major 

spending categories of the budget. As a share of GOP, total tax expenditures were cut significantly in 

the 1986 tax reform, but "subsequently re-bounded, recovering more than half their decline from tax 

reform GOP," and now are worth about 7% of GOP' As noted above, many of these expenditures 

through the tax code are economically indistinguishable from spending through the mandatory or 

discretionary sides of the budget. And as Figure 2 reveals, if tax expenditures were classified as 

spending, they'd be the largest category in the budget. 

Figure 2 

, See recent testimony by Robert Greenstein on these points: 

http:Uwww.cbpp.org{cms{index.cfm?fa=view&id=3908. 

4 See http:/{www.taxpolicycenter.org!UploadedPDF!412404-Tax-Expenditure-Trends.pdf. 
237 

Cost of Tax Expenditures and Other Parts of the Budget 

Tax expenditures and outlays for other major spending categories in 2011, in billions 

$1,200 $1,072 

1,000 

800 

600 

400 

200 

Tax 

Expendttures 

Medicare & 

Medicaid 

Social 

Security 

Defense 

discretionary 

Nondefense 

discretionary 

Notes', Tax e,I:.penditure estimates do not a c\X)u nt for Inter.:'1ctlon effects: estimate does not 

mclude outlays. 

Source: Office of Management and Budget. Historical Tables 8.5 and 8. 7 and Analytical 

Perspectives Table 17-2 

--Tax Expenditures Disproportionately Benefit the Well Off: as discussed in greater detail in the next 

section, most, though certainly not all, of the benefits of tax expenditures flow to households at the top 

of the household income distribution. One reason for this skewed outcome is that the majority of 

individual tax expenditures (around 70%) take the form of tax deductions or exemptions whose value 

increases with tax brackets and thus with household income. As Marr et al point out: 

As a result, these tax expenditures provide their largest subsidies to high-income people even 

though those are the individuals least likely to need a financial incentive to engage in the 

activities that tax incentives are generally designed to promote, such as buying a home, sending 

a child to college, or saving for retirement. Meanwhile, middle-class families receive 

conSiderably smaller tax-expenditure benefits for engaging in these activities. In this regard, 

these tax expenditures are "upside down," which makes them less efficient, as well as less 

equitable. 

These authors also provide the following example, using the mortgage interest deduction, a tax 

expenditure that cost the Treasury over $600 billion (2013-17) in forgone revenue: 

Consider how the deduction for home mortgage interest affects two households' decisions to 

buy a home. An investment banker making $675,000 who has a $1 million mortgage and pays 

$40,000 in mortgage interest each year receives a housing subsidy of about $14,000 annually 

from the mortgage interest deduction. By contrast, a middle-class family led by a nurse making 
238 

$60,000, and paying $10,000 a year in mortgage interest on a more modest home, receives a 

housing subsidy worth $1,500 annually. Not only does the mortgage interest deduction provide 

the high-income banker with a larger total subsidy (in dollar terms) than the nurse, but the 

subsidy also represents a greater share of the banker's mortgage interest expenses. In fact, the 

proportion of the banker's mortgage interest expense covered by the subsidy is more than twice 

as large as the percentage subsidy that the nurse receives. 

--Tax Expenditures Are Often Inefficient: the regressive aspect of many tax expenditures just noted also 

makes them inefficient. By disproportionately subsidizing higher-income households that are relatively 

less income constrained, these tax breaks help offset the costs of economic activities that would likely 

have occurred even without the subsidy. Both theory and evidence support the view that to be most 

effective in incentivizing desired behaviors, whether that's home ownership, saving, work, or 

investment, tax policies must reach those most likely to respond to the incentive. 

Here, the "upside down" design of the credits contributes to their inefficiency. Since wealthier 

households are more likely to purchase a home, save, invest in capital assets, send their kids to college, 

and so on, without any incentives relative to lower-income households, tax expenditures that 

disproportionately reach the wealthy, as most do (see Figure 3 below), are inefficiently targeted. 

tax expenditures are also inefficient in that they can distort prices and production in sectors of the 

market where they channel significant tax breaks. The mortgage interest deduction again provides a 

good example of the impact of these inefficiencies on the housing market. Analysts widely agree that in 

its current structure it subsidizes home purchases that would be made anyway, and thus leads to an 

inefficient subsidy that artificially inflates both the market prices and the size of home purchases, 

particularly among the most well off. 

Another example, one that is perhaps underappreciated relative to the mortgage interest deduction, is 

the large variation tax expenditures generate in tax rates across industries leading to the misallocation 

of capital and dampening innovation and growth. Recent Treasury Department analysis shows that due 

to the variation of tax expenditures across industries, average tax rates ranged from 14% to 31% 

(around a mean of 26%) and importantly in terms of investment behavior, effective marginal rates (as 

opposed to average rates) differed widely as well:' 

"For example, because of accelerated depreciation and other features of the tax code, in 2005 

income from a typical investment in structures for oil and gas faced an effective total marginal 

tax rate (including corporate and investor level taxes) of about 9 percent as compared to a 32 

percent rate for manufacturing buildings." 

Other examples of distortionary tax breaks are not categorized as tax expenditures but work in much 

the same way, privileging a certain type of income or activity in ways that lose significant revenue while 

violating efficiency and fairness criteria. For example, by allowing the deduction of interest expenses, 

5 See http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center /tax-policy/Docu men ts/The-Presidents-Fra mework-for-BusinessTax-Reform-02-22-2012.pdf. 
239 

our tax code heavily favors debt financing over equity financing (the effective rate on debt financing is, 

in fact, negative). This incentivizes financial leverage which both helps inflate debt bubbles and leaves 

the economy more vulnerable to shocks when those bubbles burst. A 2009 International Monetary 

Fund report concluded that large biases toward debt financing in the tax code is "hard to justify given 

the potential impact on financial stability" and that "one lesson of the [recent financial] crisis may be 

that the benefits from mitigating [these biases] are far greater than previously thought.'" 

Another example is the incentive of corporations to structure themselves as so-called "5 corporations" 

in order to pass corporate profits through to the individual side of the tax code. Thirty years ago, passthrough entities accounted for around a quarter of business income; recent data from the late 2000s 

show that they now account for about 70%.' 

Here again, such restructuring is not done in pursuit of economic efficiencies, but in pursuit of tax 

advantages, leading to inefficient allocation and lost revenue. As the Treasury report states: "By 

allowing large pass-through entities preferential treatment, the tax code distorts choices of 

organizational form, which can lead to losses in economic efficiency; business managers should make 

choices about organizational form based on criteria other than tax treatment." 

--Specific Tax Expenditures Warth Reducing or Repealing: along with the ones noted above, here are a 

few other examples of tax expenditures that policymakers should take a critical look at from the three 

perspectives I've highlighted throughout: forgone revenues, fairness, and equity (this section borrows 

heavily from Marr et ai, 2013). 

Carried Interest Laaphale: a common and often distortionary problem with tax expenditures involves 

privileging one type of income over another, creating an incentive for taxpayers to redefine their income 

to meet the favored definition. A potent current example of this is the carried interest loophole which 

allows managers of investment funds to redefine their earnings as capital gains, allowing them to pay a 

top tax rate of 20% - the capital gains rate - instead of almost 40%. 

Many of these managers are paid 20% of the profits on the funds they manage and even though they 

may have none of their own capital in the fund, this part of their compensation is taxed at the lower 

capital gains rate. Closing this loophole would raise around $15 billion in revenue currently forgone over 

the next decade (and iffund managers happened to have some of their own capital in the fund, once 

this loophole is closed, their realized gains would be taxed at the lower rate). 

Variaus Types af Deferrals: I still recall from a line from my public finance textbook from many decades 

back: taxes deferred are taxes saved. To the extent that tax expenditures shield various types of income 

- foreign earnings, bequests to heirs, debt-financing - from taxation, revenue is lost, inefficiencies can 

be generated, and fairness is violated. 

6 International Monetary Fund, "Debt Bias and Other Distortions: Crisis-Related Issues in Tax Policy," June 12, 2009, 

www,imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2009/061209.pdf. 

'This trend towards 5 corporation income continued even through the Clinton era, when, like today, the statutory 

corporate rate was set below the top marginal individual tax rate. 
240 

For example, a sale of property that gained value since it was acquired would normally trigger a capital 

gains tax liability. But if the property is exchanged for a "like-kind" property (or business), the tax 

liability is deferred. Originally, like-kind exchanges protected small farmers trading acreage or barter 

transactions from taxation, but it has grown into a major tax avoidance scheme for sellers of large assets 

such as commercial real estate or oil wells. Moreover, Marr et al point out that " ... if the owner passes 

the property to an heir instead of selling it, capital gains tax is not just deferred but permanently 

eliminated, since capital gains become exempt from taxation once the individual who owns the asset 

dies." These authors also note that full repeal of this tax expenditure would raise about $18 billion over 

10 years. 

A much larger amount of revenue forgone comes from the ability of multinational corporations to defer 

taxation on profits earned by foreign subsidiaries, a privilege domestic firms lack. Since most firms with 

overseas operations can, in practice, defer repatriation of their profits (at which point they'd be taxed as 

corporate income) for as long as they want, they have a strong incentive to both reinvest their income 

abroad and/or shift their operations, or at least their profits, to low-tax havens. 

Deferral in this case thus violates all three criteria: it is inefficient for firms to make investment and 

location choices based on tax savings versus production or sales efficiencies, considerable revenue is 

forgone, and since small businesses and domestic firms don't face this option, it provides multinationals 

with a strong comparative advantage over domestic firms and thus fails on fairness grounds as well. It is 

notable that as regards two ofthese criteria, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) 

recently noted that " ... eliminating or curtailing deferral of U.S. taxes on income earned abroad ... would 

dampen incentives to shift investment or reported income on the basis of concerns about tax liability. As 

a result, those options would generally lead to more economically efficient business investment and 

increase corporate tax revenues from firms that remained incorporated in the United States." 

CBO goes on, however, to warn that this change has the potential to incentivize more firms to 

incorporate abroad to avoid US corporate taxation. Even so, they judge that "[o]n balance ... eliminating 

deferral would boost both efficiency and tax revenues. In fact, eliminating deferral entirely would boost 

U.S. tax revenues by more than $100 billion over a 10-year period, according to an estimate by the staff 

of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT)." 

Tax Expenditures and Inequality 

Extensive research from disparate sources reveals that income inequality, both before and after tax, is at 

historically high levels. Prior to the recent recession, pre-tax market income inequality (Le., without 

transfers; with realized capital gains) had grown to levels of concentration not seen since the Great 

Depression.s For example, the share of income going to the top 1% was about 10% in the late 1970s, 

8 See, for example, this recent analysis by Emmanuel Saez: http:Uelsa.berkeley.edu/-saez!saez-UStopincomes2011.pdf. 
241 

but had doubled by the end of the 2000s expansion, and now stands at 19.8%. Wealth holdings are 

even more concentrated than income: 

Is there any relation between tax expenditures and this increase in inequality? In fact, as research by 

economist Thomas Hungerford has shown, "by far, the largest contributor to [the increase in after-tax 

income inequality from 1991 to 2006] was changes in income from capital gains and dividends" income 

sources that are consistently favored through the tax code across this period. As capital gains, interest 

income, and dividends increased have become a larger share of the income of the wealthiest 

households, this is among the factors that have pushed down their effective tax rates (of course, cuts in 

top tax rates, such as those in the 2001 and 2003, also played a role). IRS data on the 400 taxpayers 

with the highest incomes show effective rates falling from 26% in 1992 to 20% in 2009.10 

Figure 3, using data from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, shows how individual income tax 

expenditures can amplify pretax trends toward higher income inequality, as their benefits flow 

disproportionately to those at the top of income scale. Fully two-thirds of the benefits go to households 

in the top fifth of the income scale, half go the top 10%, and 26% of the benefits go to households in the 

top 1%, whose average income is about $2 million." 

Figure 3 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

30% 

20% 

10% 

0% 

Income Tax Expenditures By Income Group: Who 

Benefits the Most? 

66% 

52% 

18% 

10% I 1% 5% • II1II 

Bottom Second Middle Fourth Top 20% Top 10% 

20% 20% 20% 20% 

26% 

I 

Top 1% 

Source: Tax Policy Center, Table Tll-00B7 (Note: analysis uses 2012 tax law and thus does not incorporate changes under 

ATRA. However, ATRA is unlikely to have changed the overall regressivity of tax expenditures; the reinstatement of Pease may 

9 Research by the Economic Policy Institute finds that in 2010, the top 1% held 17% of household income but 35% 

of household wealth (net worth). See http://stateofworkingamerica.org!files!book!Chapter6-Wealth.pdf, table 

6.1. 

10 See http://www.irs.gov!pub!irs-soi/09intop400.pdf. 

11 These data are for 2015 but reflect 2012 federal tax law. Thus, they do not reflect changes under ATRA, but 

those changes would not alter the results much at all. 
242 

have somewhat reduced the total value of itemized deductions for some high~income filers, however the return of the top tax 

rates to Clinton-era levels for some taxpayers will increase the value of deductions and exemptions for high-income filers.) 

In what specific ways do tax expenditures contribute to this problem of growing income inequality, and 

more specifically, diminished income mobility? As noted, one way is through providing favorable tax 

treatment to forms of income that are concentrated at the top of the scale, such as realized capital gains 

and dividend payouts. Another is through protecting appreciated wealth holdings from taxation when 

they are transferred between generations. For example, heirs who inherit wealth from a deceased 

relative do not have to pay capital gains taxes because of the "stepped-up basis" exemption, which 

exempts any accrued gains from taxation. Similarly, by transferring family assets to a family limited 

partnership and restricting access to the partnership for a few years, parents can transfer their wealth to 

their children at a highly discounted value. Once the restriction period is over and heirs claim the assets, 

such "valuation discounts" enable them to benefit from the full value of the asset while incurring a 

minimal wealth tax liability. 

It should also be noted that permanent changes recently enacted in wealth taxation already make this 

part of the tax code less progressive. Under the tax deal passed to resolve the fiscal cliff, wealthy 

couples face zero taxes on wealth transfers up to $10.5 million. According to TPC estimates, this cutoff 

shields all but the top 0.14% estates from any liability, and the small number that do face the tax pay an 

effective rate of only 17%.12 This increased regressivity now locked into the tax code is all the more 

reason to close tax expenditure loopholes which further protect wealth transfers from taxation. 

Conclusion 

As we meet today, our already-too-weak economy is taking a hit from a mindless set of across-the-board 

spending cuts that neither party endorses. Yet compromise on the components of a deficit-reduction 

package to offset the sequester has been elusive as members continue to disagree on whether the 

package should be balanced between revenues and spending cuts, or just have spending cuts alone. 

Tax expenditure reform should offer a solution palatable to both sides. Though they operate through 

the tax code, many of these programs are indistinguishable from spending programs. In that regard, 

policymakers who believe the federal government has a spending problem should thus also believe it 

has a tax expenditure problem. Moreover, many tax expenditures fail on both efficiency and fairness 

criteria. Finally, as I have pointed out throughout, tax expenditures forgo significant revenue and thus 

could handily be part of a balanced deal. 

In fact, in light of this logic, policymakers of both parties have advocated for reducing or repealing tax 

expenditures. Yet, even ones that are widely agreed to be quite egregious, like the carried interest 

loophole discussed above, remain in place. Clearly, politics makes it a serious challenge for would-be 

reformers to pick and choose who wins and who loses when it comes to tax expenditure reform. 

12 Tax Policy Center table T13-0020. 
243 

That's why part of the way forward may well be to cap most deductions for taxpayers above a certain 

income level. This solution scores highly on the three criteria I've stressed throughout. President 

Obama has proposed to limit the value of itemized deductions and certain other tax expenditures to 28 

cents on the dollar, which would raise about $500 billion in revenue, otherwise forgone, over the next 

decade. Regarding the fairness criterion, it reduces the "upside down" problem, by partially closing the 

gap between the value of deductions claimed by those with the highest incomes relative to lower 

income tax units. And while the lower deduction amount reduces incentives at the margin, such 

incentives still exist, a feature which distinguishes this approach to reform tax expenditures to those 

which cap expenditures at a certain dollar amount or at a set percentage of income. Under those 

approaches, no marginal incentives exist above the cap. 

Still, such a cap would miss other tax expenditures that are also ripe for reform, including carried 

interest, like-kind exchanges, and some of the other deferral loopholes noted above. 

In sum, tax expenditure reform offers an excellent option to reduce wasteful spending through the tax 

system, while helping to meet our fiscal challenges in ways that will simultaneously improve our deficit 

outlook, increase economic efficiency, and add much-needed fairness back into the code. 
244 

I thank Grace Leeper, Chye-Ching Huang, and Nate Frentz for help in preparing this testimony, though 

any mistakes are my own. The testimony borrows heavily from the recent CBPP paper "Tax Expenditure 

Reform: An Essential Ingredient of Needed Deficit Reduction" by Chuck Marr, Chye-Ching Huang, and 

Joel Friedman. 
245 

Chairman MURRAY. Dr. Roberts. 

STATEMENT OF RUSSELL ROBERTS, PH.D., RESEARCH 

FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. ROBERTS. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and 

distinguished members of the Committee, I am wildly enthusiastic 

about eliminating wasteful spending in the Tax Code. 

Our tax system should be more transparent, simpler, and fair. 

We should get rid of special exemptions for the rich, for parents, 

farmers, homeowners, and all the other ways that the Tax Code 

panders to special interests. 

But how we finance Government—the structure of the tax system and the mix between taxes and borrowing—is rarely as important as whether Government spends money wisely. It is not just 

that we spend more than we take in. We spend too much, and 

much of it we spend poorly. Raising taxes does not solve that problem. 

In recent years we have ignored the size of Government spending 

because it is tempting to believe that all spending stimulates the 

economy during times of recession. But economists do not agree on 

the effects of the 2009 stimulus package. Even the Congressional 

Budget Office has conceded it is unable to separate out the impact 

of Government spending independently of the changes that occur at 

the same time. 

And it is tempting to see Government expanding as an inevitable 

force for good—more help for children, the disadvantaged, the poor, 

and the elderly. Who is against helping children, disadvantaged, 

the poor, and the elderly? No one. 

The problem is that a lot of spending goes to people who are 

merely politically important—rich financial executives, rich farmers, rich old people who do not need a Government retirement program. And much spending is ineffective because it is spent poorly. 

Sometimes less is more. 

What would happen if Government actually got smaller? Not just 

a reduction in the rate of growth, but real cuts? There would be 

more private spending. But we do not just spend our own money 

on ourselves as consumers buying more stuff. We are also givers. 

We give our time and our money to causes and communities that 

we cherish. 

Consider the Harlem Children Zone—a $75 million charitable organization that has transformed the lives of 10,000 children. 

Roughly two-thirds of their money comes from private donations. 

Those donations have been made because the public programs we 

are forced to pay for through taxation have failed those children. 

We need more Harlem Children Zones. But they are not easy to reproduce. They cannot be replicated from the top down simply by 

spending money, even if that money goes to the same activities. 

Great organizations have to be grown. The incentives are the soil 

that allows them to thrive. The freedom people have to donate to 

organizations that work and to stop donating to organizations that 

do not. The founder and head of the Harlem Children Zone is Geoffrey Canada. To keep his organization alive, he has to make the 

case he is doing a good job with his donors’ money. He earns the 

money that people give him. 
246 

When Government gets smaller, you create more room for private organizations to thrive, for civil society, for schools that actually educate the poor, programs for the elderly that give meaning 

to their lives, training programs that work, soup kitchens that do 

not just feed the homeless but find them jobs. If Government spent 

less, great organizations would find it easier to raise the money to 

do more. 

The alternative to Government spending is not selfish spending 

by our own individual selves. The alternative to Government is voluntary cooperation instead of forced cooperation through the tax 

system. 

As the Hayek character says in ‘‘Fight of the Century,’’ my rap 

video on the stimulus debate written with John Papola: ‘‘Give us 

a chance so we can discover, the most valuable ways to serve one 

another.’’ Let entrepreneurs of all kinds emerge from the competition for investors and donors, entrepreneurs who get others to cooperate and produce something so much greater than themselves, 

not just entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs or Jeffrey Bezos, but social 

entrepreneurs like Geoffrey Canada. 

The Talmud says, ‘‘In a place where there are no men, strive to 

be a man.’’ To put it in modern language, in a place where people 

have no principles, remember yours. In a place where everyone is 

a coward, be brave. Principles and courage are scarce here in the 

Nation’s capital. We have charted an unsustainable fiscal course— 

our promises cannot be kept. 

Brave men and women of principle of both political parties need 

to stand up and chart a different course. We need to focus Government spending on those activities Government does better than the 

private sector, not just those activities that are politically expedient. 

So, please, stop spending our money on bankers and rich farmers 

and rich retirees. But the world might be a better place if you 

spent less on even the best of causes. Give us a chance so we can 

discover the most valuable ways to serve one another. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Roberts follows:] 
247 

Cutting Spending vs. Raising Taxes 

TESTIMONY 

by 

Russ Roberts 

Research Fellow 

Hoover Institution 

Stanford University 

Senate Budget Committee Hearing entitled 

"Reducing the Deficit by Eliminating 

Wasteful Spending in the Tax Code" 

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 10:30 am 

50-608 Dirksen Senate Office Building 

Russ Roberts is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover 

Institution. He is the author of three books on market processes and 

hosts the award-winning weekly podcast EconTalk. His Ph. D. is 

from the University of Chicago. 
248 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and distinguished 

members of the Committee: 

I am wildly enthusiastic about eliminating wasteful spending in the 

tax code. 

Our tax system should be more transparent, simpler, and fair. We 

should get rid of special exemptions for the rich, for people with 

children, for farmers, home owners, and all the other ways that the 

tax code panders to special interests. 

But how we finance government--the structure of the tax system 

and the mix between taxes and borrowing--is rarely as important as 

whether government spends money wisely. 

It's not just that we spend more than we take in. We spend too 

much and much of it we spend poorly. Raising taxes doesn't solve 

that problem--it turns it into the status quo. 

In recent years we've ignored the size of government spending 

because it's tempting to believe that all spending stimulates the 

economy during times of recession. We're like the alcoholic who 

thinks that if one glass of red wine a day is good for your heart, 

then a bottle is even better. 

But there's no irrefutable evidence that stimulus spending works. 

First-rate economists on different sides of the issue cannot convince 

the other side. Even the Congressional Budget Office has confessed 

that it's unable to separate out the impact of government spending 

independently of the changes that occur at the same time. 

And it's tempting to see expanding government as an inevitable 

force for good--more help for children, the disadvantaged, the 

poor, and the elderly. Who's against helping children, 

disadvantaged, the poor, and the elderly? 

No one. The problem is that a lot of spending goes to people who 

are merely politically important--rich financial executives, rich 
249 

farmers, rich old people who don't need a government retirement 

program. And much spending is ineffective because it's spent 

poorly. Spending on education, for example, is not the same as 

more education. Don't we actually want to help children rather than 

giving the appearance of helping them? 

Sometimes less is more. What would happen if government actually 

got smaller? Not just a reduction in the rate of growth, but real cuts? 

If government spending were to fall, there would be more private 

spending. But private spending on what? It's natural to think that 

smaller government means we'll then have more money to spend on 

ourselves. But we don't just spend our own money on ourselves, as 

consumers, buying more stuff. 

We are also givers. We give our time and money to the causes and 

communities we cherish. 

Consider the Harlem's Children Zone--a $75 million charitable 

organization that has transformed the lives of 10,000 children. 

Roughly 2/3 of their money comes from private donations. Those 

donations have been made because the public programs we are 

forced to pay for through taxation have failed those 10,000 

children. 

We need more Harlem Children Zones. But they're not easy to 

reproduce. They cannot be replicated simply by spending money, 

even if that money goes to the exact same activities done by the 

Harlem's Children Zone. That's like drawing an eagle and expecting 

your drawing to fly. Wings alone are not enough. Something vital is 

missing. 

Great organizations can't be replicated from the top down. They 

have to be grown. The incentives are the soil that allows an 

enterprise like the Harlem Children's Zone to thrive. The freedom 

people have to donate to organizations that work and to stop 

donating to organizations that don't work. 
250 

The founder and head of the Harlem's Children Zone is Geoffrey 

Canada. To keep his organization alive, he has to make the case 

that he's dOing a good job with his donors' money. He earns the 

money people give him. 

When government gets smaller, you create more room for private 

organizations to thrive--schools that actually help the poor, 

programs for the elderly that give meaning to their lives, training 

programs that work, soup kitchens that don't just feed the 

homeless but find them jobs. If government spent less, great 

organizations would find it easier to raise the money to do more. 

The alternative to government isn't selfishness. The alternative to 

government is voluntary cooperation instead of forced cooperation 

through the tax system. 

Make government smaller and you get more private enterprise and 

more entrepreneurs. But the enterprises that will spring up aren't 

just commercial enterprises. There will be organizations that help 

others. 

As the Hayek character says in Fight of the Century, my rap video on 

the stimulus debate written with John Papola: 

Give us a chance so we can discover, the most valuable ways to 

serve one another. 

That's what we try to do when we're given the chance. If you're 

Jeffrey Bezos, you serve others by creating the Kindle. If you're 

Geoffrey Canada you serve others by creating the Harlem Children's 

Zone. Both Bezos and Canada are entrepreneurs who get others to 

cooperate and produce something so much greater than 

themselves. 

The Talmud says in a place where there are no men, strive to be a 

man. To put it in modern language, in a place where people have no 

principles, remember yours. In a place where everyone is a coward, 

be brave. Principles and courage are scare here in the nation's 
251 

capital. We have charted an unsustainable fiscal course--our 

promises cannot be kept. 

Brave men and women of principle of both political parties need to 

stand up and chart a different course. We can't have everything we 

want. We can't keep living beyond our means. We have to learn to 

say no. We need to focus government spending on those activities 

government does better than the private sector, not just those 

activities that are politically expedient. 

So please stop spending our money on banks and rich farmers, and 

rich retirees. But the world might be a better place if you spent less 

on even the best of causes. 

Give is a chance so we can discover the most valuable ways to serve 

one another. 
252 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you, to all three of you, for your testimony. 

We are now going to turn to opening rounds of questions, and, 

Dr. Bernstein, let me start with you. As you noted in your testimony, in general, tax expenditures are very regressive, meaning, of 

course, that the benefit of these special tax breaks flow to high-income individuals. 

You also mentioned that by giving special tax treatment to certain activities, investments and industries, our Tax Code creates— 

and I am quoting you—‘‘misallocation of capital,’’ which you said is 

bad for economic growth. 

As an economist, can you explain in layman’s terms how this 

misallocation of capital occurs and why exactly it is not good for 

the economy? 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Sure. Let me begin by referring those to Figure 

3 in my written testimony, which shows the distribution of tax expenditures through the income code, and it is a point that all three 

of us made, including Russ here to my left. 

Mr. ROBERTS. Enjoy it. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. You know what I mean. 

Mr. ROBERTS. Yes. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Where 66 percent of the benefits of these expenditures go to the top fifth and 26 percent go to the top 1 percent 

of households. 

Look, because of these tax expenditures, the effective tax rates 

on corporations, if you divide them into their industries, range from 

about 14 percent to about 30 percent. That is a very large range 

for effective tax rates, and right there, Chairman Murray, you get 

a sense of the answer to your question. We are clearly incentivizing 

investments in some industries over others. Oil and gas faces an 

effective marginal rate of something like 10 percent. Manufacturing 

faces an effective marginal rate of something like 30 percent. When 

you have those kinds of differences in the Tax Code, you are influencing which industries investors will invest in because their aftertax returns will be higher, not based on any economic criteria, like 

we need more of this and less of that to make the economy grow 

better, but because I will get faster after-tax returns because my 

write-offs will be bigger in Industry A versus Industry B. 

Secondly—and I will stop after this point—as I mentioned in my 

spoken testimony, because multinationals with foreign subsidiaries 

abroad are able to defer the income that they earn, relative to domestic firms, it is actually cheaper from the perspective of the Tax 

Code to build a factory in Singapore or China than it is in Illinois. 

And, again, those kinds of location decisions made not because here 

is the best place for me to produce geographically in an economic 

sense, but are being made because here is the place where, if I 

produce there, I can get the biggest tax breaks. That is the kind 

of inefficiencies that undermines economic growth and creates 

those differentials between industries. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. And on another point, because our 

Tax Code so often gives outsized subsidies to high-income Americans as compared to families in the middle class, are we not essentially providing tax breaks to folks who very likely might engage 

in tax-favored activities even without an incentive? 
253 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Very much so. I mean, again, if I may quote my 

colleague Russ, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, he pointed out that 

too much spending goes to people who do not need it. 

Now, again, from a perspective of fairness, that is wrong. But 

your point is well taken. From a perspective of inefficiency, that is 

another big problem. 

One of the things you do not want to do with subsidies—and not 

all subsidies are bad. You named some, Chairman Murray, in your 

introduction that actually score high on efficiency criteria: food 

stamps; the earned income tax credit, which incentivizes work; the 

child tax credit, which incentivizes work. Those are tax credits that 

are very important to create positive incentives for low-income people. 

But when you give a subsidy to someone who would have done 

it anyway, not only are you wasting much-needed revenue, but you 

are overincentivizing a particular activity at the cost of efficiency 

and optimal decision making. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, thank you. And I am going to retain 

the balance of my time. We have a lot of members here and a vote 

at 12:15. I want to make sure everybody has a chance, so I will 

turn it over to Senator Sessions. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Well, we certainly all believe and 

share the view there is a great opportunity for bipartisanship in 

simplifying this Tax Code and making it more productive and creating more growth, creating, therefore, more jobs and better wages 

for working Americans, who are not doing very well and have not 

done well for some time, in my view. 

With regard to the ‘‘tax expenditures,’’ a phrase I am not comfortable with—however, it is used—we have the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, Dr. Roberts. That represents 13 

percent of that. Do not a lot of lower- and middle-class families 

benefit from that? 

Mr. ROBERTS. Sure, they do. 

Senator SESSIONS. And with regard to lower- and middle-class 

families, we had a witness here a couple of weeks ago from Pennsylvania, their welfare system, that low-income people receive as 

much as $29,000 a year from the Government in support through 

multiple programs that benefit them. So it is not really fair to say 

that poor people are paying in more than their fair share or less 

than their fair share. I think we just need to analyze the system 

and see how it all works out. 

The home mortgage interest deduction is the second largest or 

one of the largest. It is 9 percent of all expenditures. Over 70 percent of the benefit goes to taxpayers with incomes under $200,000. 

Eliminating that deduction would be a major tax increase, Dr. Roberts, would it not, on middle-class America? 

Mr. ROBERTS. Sure. 

Senator SESSIONS. And is it not fair to say, Dr. Roberts, that 

while we ought to simplify the system, the big question for us is, 

if you eliminate some of the exclusions, deductions, and loopholes 

that are out there, if you eliminate those, you bring in a lot more 

revenue, you have created a tax increase? And the question is: 

What do we do with it? Would you have a suggestion that it should 
254 

be utilized to fund more spending, or should we utilize it in other 

ways that would be better for the country? 

Mr. ROBERTS. Well, it will definitely bring in more spending. I 

think the challenge we have is, as you say, what do we do with 

that extra opportunity. Do we allow people to keep more of their 

money in more effective ways, say with lower rates? Should we 

lower spending as a result to close the gap that is still going to 

exist possibly after you have changed that tax policy? 

I think the biggest problem with tax expenditures we have not 

talked about today—and although I use the phrase, I am also a little bit uneasy with that phrase, but let us call it ‘‘special deductions.’’ Although I am uneasy with the phrase ‘‘tax expenditures,’’ 

‘‘special deductions’’—maybe a better phrase—have a different 

problem that we have not talked about, which is it encourages people to come to you and ask for special treatment. And it is a long 

line. And I think that is lovely for you, but it is not so good for me. 

Senator SESSIONS. It is not so lovely for us, really. But it is 

true— 

Mr. ROBERTS. Well, it has costs, I understand. It can be frustrating and annoying, and it is hard to say no. But in economics, 

we call it ‘‘rent seeking.’’ It is people trying to get their share to 

get at the trough and elbow others aside. And I think that is a terrible waste of resources, both the time and energy, plus the behavior that then is incentivized by the Tax Code is often not healthy, 

not good. We have named a bunch of things that sound good. We 

talked about education. Everybody here is in favor of education. 

But the question is: Is the continual subsidy of education—which 

benefits me, by the way—is that continual subsidy a healthy way 

to improve the education system and the well-being of the people 

of the United States? Are you at risk of creating another bubble 

like we had in the housing market that is going to cause a very 

unhealthy situation where people find themselves, first of all, unable to find work to pay back their subsidized loans, the tuition 

rates that have skyrocketed as a result of that subsidy, an unintended consequence, which helps fund my salary? That is all lovely 

for the education sector. It is not necessarily so good for education. 

So I think we have to be extremely careful when we take specific 

examples of things that sound good but that in practice turn out 

to be fairly destructive. 

Senator SESSIONS. Dr. Roberts, is it not true that if these deductions, exclusions, or whatever you choose to call them, were to be 

eliminated, we would have a substantial tax increase on the middle 

class? Middle-class and lower-middle-class people would pay more 

in taxes to the Government? 

Mr. ROBERTS. If we got rid of all of them, we certainly would. 

And I think then we would have to have a choice about whether 

we should then lower rates, which would be my personal choice, 

but more importantly, to lower spending so that we could afford 

what we actually do, which I think is the responsible adult behavior that I wish we could do more of. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you so much. 

Madam Chairman, I think, if I could just have a second—do we 

have this chart on the screen? I would like to look at this chart 

when we talk about taxes. It was part of the front-page article in 
255 

Barron’s a couple of weeks ago, and the three lines represent this: 

the blue line represents what the debt would be in 2043 under the 

CBO estimate; the second would be under the CBO estimate, if the 

wealthy paid 50 percent, not the higher rate that we just passed 

at 40 but go to 50 percent, if they paid 50 percent; and then the 

third line was a CBO estimate with the wealthy paying 50 percent 

and all the Bush tax cuts were eliminated. 

So I would suggest that this gives further credence to the argument that we have a difficult—we are not going to get very far, getting our way out of the unsustainable debt course by raising taxes. 

It is just not there. The growth of spending is greater than the 

growth of the economy, and spending has to—cannot rise consistently higher than the economy grows. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Wyden. 

Senator WYDEN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. Kleinbard, the lead story in this morning’s New York Times 

highlights what to me is a growing abuse in the Tax Code, and that 

is the matter of tax-exempt bond finance. And if I might summarize, I think there is a general kind of sense in the Congress and 

in the country that tax-exempt bonds ought to be used for projects 

like roads and bridges, but not skyscrapers. And what this article 

essentially outlines in great detail is that the really increasing use 

of these tax-exempt bonds goes increasingly to these very powerful 

private interests who seem to be straying from a public purpose. 

What we do in our bipartisan tax reform bill—it started with 

Senator Gregg and Senator Coats and Senator Begich and myself— 

is more to a tax credit approach, so there would be a role in order 

to try to promote these public investments. But how serious an 

abuse is this? And would you favor something like that? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. The private activity bond rules in the Code 

today are fundamentally, in my view, inexcusable. They represent 

Government subsidies for particular private investments. They are 

the hand of Government distorting private behavior in ways that 

are simply not justifiable on anybody’s theory of what the economy 

of the United States is all about. And we are talking about tens 

of billions of dollars a year in Federal subsidies to individual firms 

to build factories or hotels, or whatever, that they would have done 

in any event. So it is just wasted money delivered through the Tax 

Code in the form of permitting these private firms to capture the 

benefits of tax-exempt financing. 

Senator, as you say, tax-exempt financing ought to be about general obligation bonds. It ought to be about the needs of the States 

to finance infrastructure and the like, and this is a terrible distortion. 

The second problem that we have with all tax-exempt financing 

is that the object of the subsidy is or should be the States and localities. It is about subsidizing the issuer, not the investor. But 

there are so many tax-exempt bonds chasing so many investors 

that high-income investors, in fact, are getting a spillover of that 

subsidy. They are capturing part of the subsidy that was never 

really intended for them, and that is not right. 

By switching to a tax credit structure, like the Build America 

bonds, by switching to that kind of a structure, you can target the 
256 

Federal subsidy to the people you mean it to, which are the States 

and local governments. So it is a much more efficient way of delivering the same subsidy. 

Senator WYDEN. You have just delivered a teach-in on the whole 

bond issue, and I thank you for it. 

Mr. Roberts, let me ask you a question about the charitable deduction, which I think was one of our big challenges in putting together the legislation. And I have come to the general conclusion 

that the charitable deduction is a lot more of a lifeline than a loophole, and I want to ask you your view about one particular point 

that we hear from philanthropists quite frequently. 

Philanthropists have basically told us that they believe people do 

not make a contribution to charity just to get a break. So you start 

with that as the proposition. But the philanthropists often say that 

they think people are giving more because there is the charitable 

deduction and the loss of that would be harmful. 

What is your sense of that? 

Mr. ROBERTS. Well, it is half—I think what they say is basically 

correct. Almost no one donates, quote, just to get the deduction because you have to lose money to get the deduction. You have to 

make an actual contribution. So it is a question of how much more 

or less people would give if we got rid of that deduction. 

If we got rid of that deduction, the effective price of charity for 

people in high tax brackets goes up quite a bit. They would still 

give. They would give less, though, presumably. And whether that 

extra amount less would be decisive or important would depend on 

what charity you are in and how it happened to your collections. 

I think we would raise less money from the charitable deduction— 

for the charitable sector if we got rid of the charitable deduction. 

Now, I think the charitable deduction is one of the best loopholes 

in the Tax Code, but I could argue equally well that maybe it is 

not appropriate that you have to subsidize the charities that I 

think are worth donating to. The return argument is, yes, but then 

you subsidize mine and I subsidize yours. That is not to me a very 

effective way to do things. 

There is a great economic argument for the charitable deduction. 

There is a great economic argument for almost every deduction we 

have in the Code. Again, the question is how prone are they to 

abuse once you open that Pandora’s box to skyscraper abuse and 

others. 

Senator WYDEN. My time is up, Madam Chair. I would just say 

we are going to have to make some tough calls in this. I think the 

kind of thing we saw on the front page of the New York Times is 

a little bit different than a deduction to loaves and fishes in Portland, Oregon, where we are trying to help seniors who are walking 

on an economic tightrope. But we will be working with you. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Grassley. 

Senator GRASSLEY. Let me say what I think is frustrating about 

this whole issue of raising taxes either to spend more or to reduce 

the deficit, whatever the motive is, particularly in a time of such 

high unemployment we have now and the longest period of unemployment I guess since the 1930s. 
257 

The President in 2008 ran on a platform of increasing taxes. Before he was sworn in, he made an announcement that during a 

time of such high unemployment—and it was not even 10 percent 

then; it eventually got to be 10 percent—you should not raise taxes 

in that period of time. The only thing that has changed since then, 

it is down to 7.9 now, but the President re-emphasized not raising 

taxes at least twice since he has been in office—not lately, of 

course, but in 2009 and 2010 he said that the economy had not improved enough to increase—or that we ought to increase taxes. Now, obviously it is different now because there is a $612 billion 

tax increase that we voted as a result of his last election. But it 

is kind of difficult for me to believe that we are raising taxes to 

reduce the deficit because last week we had the bill up by the majority to preempt sequester, and it raised taxes. But I also believe 

that the bill added $5 billion to the national debt instead of reducing the national debt. 

So the frustration comes, after 4 years we still hear about higher 

taxes because we need a balanced approach or we need a fair 

share. But I never see any definition of what is balanced. I never 

see any definition of ‘‘fair share.’’ And I think we ought to start policy making, whether it is at the White House or whether it is here 

in the Congress, based upon certain principles of taxation. 

Now, you may not like the principles of taxation that my party 

has had for a couple decades, but it is that after 50 years, about 

18 percent of the gross national product has come in for us to decide how to divvy up, and the other 82 percent has stayed in the 

pockets of the taxpayers because it turns over in the economy more 

often than if Government turns it over. You may not like that principle of taxation, but what is the principle of taxation? What is the 

policy of other people in this town of what the taxation policy is? 

Except just every time there is a crisis here in town, we have to 

be fair and we have to be balanced. 

The principles of taxation ought to be spelled out for us and then 

make a decision based upon the level of taxation on what those 

principles are. But if you do not have a definition of ‘‘fair share’’ 

or what ‘‘balanced’’ is, you really have nothing except just on a 

whim we are going to raise taxes. Well, when are taxes high 

enough to satisfy the level of people in this Congress to spend 

money, or any Congress, for that matter? So I beg for that sort of 

principle to be expressed. 

I probably only have time for one question now, and that would 

be to Mr. Kleinbard. I want to first express a concern I have about 

the focus of the hearing as evidenced by the title. There appears 

to be an assumption that tax expenditures are an untapped revenue source that can be used to finance more spending on other 

programs. This view could frustrate or replace comprehensive tax 

reform efforts. Mr. Kleinbard, your testimony correctly recognizes 

that our current corporate tax rate is out of line with the rest of 

the world, and am I correct in reading your testimony to say that 

reductions or eliminate of corporate tax expenditures should be 

used to reduce corporate tax rates and not as a source of new revenue? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Yes, sir. I believe very strongly in benchmarking 

of the U.S. against other countries as a general matter. When you 
258 

benchmark the United States, our statutory corporate tax rate is 

well out of line. The corporate tax rate needs to come down to the 

mid-20s. At the same time, our tax revenues from business generally are on the low side because we have so many tax expenditures, which are particularly pernicious in the business world. We 

do not have Soviet-style 5-year plans for how to run the economy 

except through the tax system where we do exactly that, where we 

favor this industry or that industry. 

So I believe quite strongly we should get Government out of the 

business of business by reducing the marginal tax rate on U.S. corporations to something in the mid-20s and to pay for that through 

the elimination of business tax subsidies. And by my estimates, in 

fact, the numbers work. You can do that. 

So I see business as a separate silo from the individual tax system, and the business tax reform, the lead item should be corporate 

tax rates in the mid-20s, pay for that by getting rid of the hand 

of Government that is distorting business behavior, and let business be business. 

Senator GRASSLEY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator Whitehouse? 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Dr. Bernstein, let me take you through where I think we are, 

and if you could double check the numbers for me so that I am in 

the right place. As we try to solve a $4 trillion deficit problem, we 

have looked at the spending side, and we have already agreed to 

spending cuts of $1.7 trillion. We have looked at increasing tax 

rates, and because we took back the Bush tax cuts for families 

making over $450,000 a year and went to Clinton era tax rates for 

families making over $450,000 a year, we raised $0.7 trillion in 

new taxes if you count the associated interest in both cases, which 

takes us to having gotten $2.4 trillion towards solving our $4 trillion problem. And by my math, that leaves $1.6 trillion that we 

still need to agree on in order to get to that goal. 

Now, we have looked at spending cuts. We have looked at tax 

rates. The one place we have not looked at is tax expenditures. And 

that is not a term we made up. That is Martin Feldstein’s term for 

this, Reagan’s Economic Chairman. That is Republican Alan 

Greenspan’s term for this. This is tax expenditures. And they add 

up, in my calculation, over a 10-year budget period to $13 trillion, 

roughly—$13 trillion in a 10-year budget period. 

So to the Ranking Member’s point that we might ‘‘eliminate’’ all 

of that, we do not need to come close to eliminating all of that. We 

could do the entire remainder of what we need to do to get to $4 

trillion out of this $13 trillion by only taking 12 percent of it back. 

And that probably understates it, because when you include the 

corporate piece in this, if you look at the personal side, the individual income side, for every dollar that the Government actually 

collects in revenue, it is about 99 cents that goes back out to people 

through the Tax Code. It is about a one for one. When you look at 

the corporate side, it is $181 billion that actually comes through in 

revenue and $157 billion that goes out to corporations through tax 

deductions, loopholes, gimmicks, various things. 
259 

My understanding is that the 181 and the 157 do not count the 

tricks that corporations use to hide offshore revenues. So it is actually way worse than that in terms of corporate collection, and 

Chairman Conrad used to show us the picture of that house in the 

Cayman Islands that had, you know, 17,000 companies pretending 

to do business in it in order to hide their revenue offshore. We have 

seen companies that have moved their intellectual property to Ireland in order to hide it from paying taxes, and as a result, corporations pay $1 in tax for every $6 that human beings spend, and a 

couple of decades ago, it was one for one. So they have really 

slipped out of the taxpaying picture in America. 

So I think those are the right numbers. You have been sort of 

nodding and following me. Have I been on base with the numbers 

so far? 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Yes. In Table 1 of my testimony, we have updated those numbers because the budget window has moved 1 year, 

but they amount to very close to what you said. At this point it 

would take $1.5 trillion over 10 years to stabilize the debt as a 

share of GDP. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Okay, not 1.6, so even less. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Correct. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. So out of the $13 trillion in tax expenditures, it is even a smaller percentage than I have suggested. And 

when you look at some of the stuff that is in this mess of tax expenditures, some of it, frankly, just seems slimy. I mean, the idea 

that a hedge fund billionaire pays a lower tax rate than a hospital 

orderly or a firefighter or a bricklayer, that is just—I mean, you 

do not need to be looking for revenue to find out that that is wrong. 

That is just plain wrong on its merits. If you have big oil companies that I think have made $1 trillion in profits in the last—I 

think it is 5 years, if I am not mistaken, maybe it is 10—$1 trillion 

in profits, and they are still coming to the American taxpayers’ 

pockets for subsidies? There is something wrong with that whether 

or not you need the revenue. And all the incentives for American 

businesses to offshore all the tax incentives they get when they 

move jobs overseas or hide revenue overseas, all of that, that is just 

wrong. And you mentioned, the top 400 taxpayers. You know, it is 

not just—we heard about Mitt Romney paying, what was it, 11 percent? He had to gimmick his taxes to get them up to 13 percent. 

It is not just him, though. It is the whole top 400 paying about 20 

percent, which is about what a bricklayer makes in Rhode Island. 

And it is about a third, if I remember correctly, of people making 

over $1 million who pay lower than what 10 million middle-class 

taxpayers pay. 

So we have a huge problem in our supposedly progressive health 

care system in that the lobbyists have been at it, the special interests have been at it. They have carved all these special interest 

loopholes in there. And so my position—I am sorry. I have gone 

over my time. My position would be this is stuff we should be cutting out of our Tax Code on moral and fairness reasons anyway, 

and to use it to avoid cuts to Head Start and special education and 

Medicare is a smart move. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator JOHNSON. 
260 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

You know, what is wrong is we have this monstrosity of a Tax 

Code that costs $200 to $300 billion a year to comply with. I will 

go on the record, I would like to scrap the entire thing, rebuild the 

tax system on pretty basic principles: raise the revenue you need, 

do no economic harm. We need to stop socially and economically 

engineering through the Tax Code, but we are a long ways from 

that. Right now we are just trying to nibble around the edges. 

Let me start with a basic question. What is the maximum marginal tax rate that each one of you thinks the Federal Government 

should charge on the next dollar of income? Maximum marginal tax 

rate. Professor? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. The maximum marginal tax rate that I would be 

comfortable with would be about 45 percent. That is what it is in 

the U.K. now. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. Good. 

Dr. Bernstein? 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Well, it is a good time to ask that question because there has recently been research by scholars in the field, recent papers by Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez that I commend you— 

Senator JOHNSON. Just give me a number. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Yes, so they come up with numbers that are way 

above what Professor Kleinbard said. 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, I am asking you. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. 60, 70 percent. I am more comfortable 45, 55, in 

that range. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. Dr. Roberts? 

Mr. ROBERTS. I do not have an answer for you, but I would say 

that if Government were the size it should be, meaning if Government only did the things that it does better than the private sector, 

I think it would be a fraction of its current size, and the goal of 

the tax system is not to maximize how much revenue we create, 

which a lot of these academic exercises are about how big could it 

be and we would still collect a lot of money. That is not my goal. 

My goal would be what is the right size of Government, and the 

answer to that is what Government does well, particularly what it 

does better than the private sector, and then I would have a fairly 

flat tax system with minimal deductions and minimize that compliance cost. And my guess is that that number is somewhere in the 

10 to 20 percent range for the tax rate. And I would have a broad 

base rather than the system we have now, where millions of Americans pay zero in income tax, and because they think their payroll 

tax is saved for them for their retirement, they see extra Government spending as being a free lunch. And that is a destructive political incentive. 

Senator JOHNSON. I just kind of have a common-sense notion 

that the way you really strengthen the middle class is have a 

strong economy, and you have businesses that have the incentive 

to risk their capital. And I guess I am just kind of scratching my 

head, when you have a top Federal tax rate of 40 to 50 percent, 

you are not allowing that entrepreneur, that risk taker, much from 

the standpoint of keeping the fruits of their labor. 
261 

Professor Kleinbard, you mentioned that we obviously have a 

revenue problem. The fact is in the latest CBO estimate, the spending over 10 years is 22.1 percent, which is 1.9 points higher than 

the 50-year average up to 2007; whereas, revenue is 18.9, which is 

0.8 points higher than the 18.1 percent. So the problem is we are 

just spending a lot more than we ever did. So I would just dispute 

that we have a tax problem. 

And here is my point: In 68 years, from 1944 to the present time, 

only 10 times have we generated revenue that exceeded 19 percent 

of GDP, 3 times over 20 percent. What makes you think that we 

can actually generate—no matter what the top marginal tax rate 

is—by the way, the top marginal tax rate during that period was 

91 percent, then 70 percent, then 50 percent. You know, what 

makes anybody think that we can actually generate more than that 

18.1 percent? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Oh, so I have a couple of answers to you. We 

know we can generate more. We have generated more. We know— 

Senator JOHNSON. Only infrequently. 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Because you have chosen to reduce rates. If you, 

in fact, look at our OECD peer countries, we are the lowest-taxed 

country. We are the best economy in the world; we are the most 

flexible, robust economy in the world. But we have the lowest 

rates. Those two are not necessarily causative, but they do indicate 

that we can have a tiny bit higher rate, a 21-percent rate, without 

destroying the economy. 

Senator JOHNSON. Let me ask the question I asked during the 

last budget hearing because you are all economists and, you know, 

maybe can answer this question. Do any of you know of a tax increase that is going to promote economic growth or that will make 

us more competitive globally? Does it one exist? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Sure. I can— 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Yes. 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Well, you go ahead, Jared. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Well, I was just going to say, not an increase in 

tax rates necessarily, but an increase in precisely the kinds of base 

issues and revenue issues we are talking about today. By lowering 

tax—by repealing or restructuring, lowering tax expenditures that 

distort economic behavior in the way we have discussed—they distort what people buy, they distort what people invest in, they distort where people set up their companies. Those would be both efficiency enhancing, which I know you like because of where your 

question is going— 

Senator JOHNSON. Just real quick— 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. —and revenue. 

Senator JOHANNS. It was interesting. I saw Joe Scarborough debating Paul Krugman, and they were basically saying that $1 spent 

in the private sector is the same as $1 spent in the public sector. 

Do you actually believe that? Do you really believe that Government is as efficient in allocating capital as the private sector when 

it comes to investment? 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. I do not. 

Senator JOHNSON. You do not? 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. No. 
262 

Senator JOHNSON. Anybody think Government is a good allocator 

of capital? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. I think the Government is a terrific allocator of 

capital in those places where markets fail. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Exactly. 

Mr. KLEINBARD. And markets fail all the time. It is not the case 

that markets are perfect. Markets fail in education. Markets fail in 

infrastructure. And those are the kinds of things that, in fact, we 

finance through Government. We are the lowest-taxed country in 

the world of any OECD country. It cannot be the case that we cannot afford a little bit more revenue to pay for the existing level of 

spending. The problem with spending that the CBO projects is 

health care. And until the Congress of the United States tackles 

health care in a much more comprehensive way, we are going to 

need to raise more taxes. 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, that is because Government pays 50 percent of it. 

Dr. Roberts, real quick. 

Mr. ROBERTS. Yes, I was just going to say we are the lowest of 

the OECD countries, but, of course, a lot of our taxes are hidden 

because we have promised to raise taxes tomorrow, which is what 

borrowing does. And I follow Milton Friedman’s rule, which is there 

are only two kinds of taxes, taxes today and—two ways to finance 

Government: taxes today and taxes tomorrow. Borrowing is just a 

way of hiding that fact. 

I do not want to be like Norway. I do not want to be like Greece. 

I do not think we should emulate them. And I think that is the 

wrong path to go. 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator Baldwin? 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you. 

We have had a little bit of discussion about the use of the term 

‘‘spending’’ in the Tax Code and ‘‘tax expenditures’’ that I found interesting and the origins of those phrases. My friend and colleague 

from Wisconsin, Paul Ryan, the Chairman of the House Budget 

Committee, had this to say about tax expenditures in the Tax Code 

in his previous budget. He said, and I quote: ‘‘These distortions are 

similar to Government spending. Instead of markets directing economic resources to their most efficient uses, the Government directs resources to politically favored uses, creating a drag on 

growth.’’ 

He went on to say, ‘‘Tax expenditures have a huge impact on the Federal budget, resulting in over $1 trillion in forgone revenue 

each year. To put that number in perspective, $1 trillion is roughly 

the total amount the Government collects each year in Federal income taxes.’’ 

And in this context, I wholeheartedly agree with Chairman 

Ryan’s statement, and I believe that spending in the Tax Code 

must be a part of our discussions on deficit reduction, and especially noting, as Professor Kleinbard did, that we have two crises 

facing our country: the need to get our economic engine back on 

track, job growth, rebuilding a strong and vibrant middle class; at 

the same time that we responsibly tackle our deficit and debt. 
263 

In terms of a focus on a strong and vibrant middle class, Mr. 

Bernstein, in your testimony, written testimony, you noted that the 

income going to top 1 percent was about 10 percent in the late 

1970s, but it now stands at 19.8 percent. I would like you to just 

elaborate a little bit about how our Tax Code has played a role in— 

I know there are multiple factors that do, but how our Tax Code 

has driven income and wealth inequality in America and, you 

know, which are the biggest drivers of that in our Tax Code. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Well, part of our discussion today has emphasized the increase in tax expenditures over time, and I have a figure—I think it is Figure 3 in my testimony—that shows the distribution of tax expenditures and how they disproportionately go to 

those at the very top of the income scale. I think 66 percent, twothirds of tax expenditures go to the top 20 percent, 26 percent of 

them go to the top 1 percent. 

So if we are seeing more and more income over time fit the category that Senator Whitehouse and others have talked about that 

gets treated favorably through the Tax Code, so capital income, 

dividend income, income from these corporate tax dodges we have 

been describing, the ability of equity managers to pay a rate that 

is half that of working persons in the middle class, as long as more 

income keeps going to those categories, it is just mathematics that 

that is going to lead to higher income concentration once you apply 

the Tax Code to the income distribution. 

So just to simplify, we have a Tax Code that favors income at the 

top of the scale. We have more and more of that type of income. 

Automatically, that helps generate the inequality result you cited. 

Senator BALDWIN. From an economic perspective, can you distinguish Government spending from spending in the Tax Code 

through tax expenditures? 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. In many of the examples that I have stressed in 

my testimony, you really cannot. It is purely a delivery mechanism. 

And I think this is an essential point. As I stressed, again, if you 

believe—and many Members of the Senate and the House believe 

that we have a spending problem. They said it all the time: ‘‘We 

have a spending problem.’’ Then you have to believe we have a tax 

expenditure problem, because if you look at—I gave you the example of child care, which in many ways is a perfectly venerable thing 

to subsidize. But we provide child care through direct spending, 

and we provide child care assistance through tax deductions. The 

difference is simply delivery. The substantive function is the same. 

Senator BALDWIN. It is more of a blunt instrument in terms of 

getting at a specific desired result. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Spending through the Tax Code. 

Senator BALDWIN. Yes. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Ayotte. 

Senator AYOTTE. I thank the witnesses for being here today. 

Dr. Kleinbard, I wanted to ask you, Senator Grassley had asked 

you about the corporate code. 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Yes. 

Senator AYOTTE. You recommended that we lower it to be looking 

relative to where we are with respect to other countries around the 

world. Do you believe that that rate does have an impact on how 

much investment we have in this country in economic growth? 
264 

Mr. KLEINBARD. You know, I do. The marginal tax rates are 

thought to distort the scale of investment decisions. By bringing 

down marginal rates, you enable firms to enhance the scale of their 

investment. You also make the United States a more attractive environment for foreign investors to come in and bring jobs, bring investment into the United States. You know, this is a global economy, and what we forget all the time when we talk about corporate 

tax and international tax is we forget that the United States is a 

capital importer as well as capital exporter. So we want to make 

the United States an attractive environment. 

And then if you have, in fact, a tax rate for corporate that it is 

in the mid-20s and you finance that largely by getting rid of all of 

these distortive subsidies, well, then, capital will be allocated more 

efficiently in the United States, which in turn leads to faster 

growth. Every time we distort investment, what we are doing is we 

are taking it from where it would be in a market economy and in 

doing so we are impeding growth over the long term. 

So from all those perspectives—and then to the point of view of 

the small business person, the small business person will incorporate to take advantage of the lower corporate tax rates. So we 

are offering those lowers rates, in fact, to everybody. Everybody can 

incorporate. 

So it would make, I believe, a much more attractive business environment for the United States. 

Senator AYOTTE. And where do you see—in terms of if we do 

that, given it is a global economy, and we lower rates, would not 

that system have to be consistent with what most of the world has, 

which is a territorial type rate? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. That actually is a more complicated question. 

Right now the territorial countries as a group are undergoing massive second thoughts about territorial taxation. You saw in the Financial Times the other day there was a letter from the Finance 

Ministers of the U.K., Germany, and France, a joint communique 

published as a letter, saying that they recognized the extent to 

which there was massive international tax avoidance and evasion, 

principally enabled by two things: territorial systems outside the 

United States and by some technical rules in the United States, including something called the ‘‘check the box’’ rules. 

So the EU member countries have become terribly concerned 

about the ease with which territorial systems are abused. The 

OECD itself has just put out a pamphlet on base erosion and profit 

shifting, or BEPS, as they call it, saying, you know what, we 

screwed up. Basically it says, you know, we have enabled, we, the 

OECD, in how we have urged that the international tax systems 

have evolved, have made it too easy to avoid tax internationally. 

Senator AYOTTE. So are you against a territorial system? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. I am in favor of one of two solutions: a territorial system with teeth that is one that has really strong safeguards, which I believe is almost impossible to do as a technical 

matter—this is a field I know a lot about, having worked in the 

area for many years—or a worldwide system but with a low rate. 

If our rate is 25 percent and the rate in China and the U.K. and 

France and Germany are all comparable rates, how can anybody 

complain that they are being treated to an uncompetitive tax envi-
265 

ronment if our worldwide rate is the same as the domestic rate of 

the countries in which we, in fact, do business? 

Senator AYOTTE. As I understand it just from your testimony, I 

am taking that our rate right now does make us less competitive. 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Right now as an economic matter—and I do not 

want to use too many technical terms. Right now, economists 

would describe the international tax system of the United States 

as ‘‘all screwed up.’’ And, you know, we have $1.7 trillion of money 

that U.S. firms keep outside the United States. It is ultimately invested back because they are buying U.S. Treasury bonds with it, 

so it is not like the dollar is— 

Senator AYOTTE. Thankfully, given how we are trying to finance 

our own debt. 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Yes, exactly. We have figured out a way to finance our debt through our crazy tax system. But our system is 

massively screwed up today. A territorial system with teeth could 

work. It is just technically much more difficult, frankly, than the 

members might appreciate. A worldwide system with a low rate— 

Senator AYOTTE. And I am sorry to interrupt you, but I have only 

have a few minutes, and I wanted to get Dr. Roberts’ comments on 

this thought, on our corporate rate, our competitiveness, what we 

should do in that regard. And also, our rates, in terms of thinking 

about tax rates, do they impact economic growth? 

Mr. ROBERTS. Well, for sure they interrupt economic growth, and 

most economists I think would argue that the corporate tax rates 

should probably be zero, which is a political non-starter. Most people argue that—most people like to think that corporations pay 

their taxes, but, of course, they are really paid for by their workers, 

by their consumers, their customers, and some by their shareholders. But, of course, a lot of people have their pensions and their 

shareholders. We like to think of their shareholders as somehow fat 

cats. They are not. A lot of them are everyday middle-class people. 

So I think the corporate tax system is a very poor way of satisfying 

envy. I wish we would pick a different method. 

It is expensive, meaning it costs us growth and investment, and 

that investment, of course, helps everybody. So I would like to see 

more of that. So reforming the corporate tax system to the extent 

that Democrats and Republicans could come together to lower that 

rate and maybe do something else elsewhere would be a good idea, 

like stop helping Wall Street. How about that for a political deal? 

That would be good. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator King? 

Senator KING. Well, I guess if we took the corporate rate to zero, 

it would establish the fact once and for all that corporations are not 

people. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. ROBERTS. There you go. 

Senator KING. Because people have to pay taxes. 

Mr. ROBERTS. Not all of them. 

Senator KING. It seems to me that this has been a fascinating 

and important discussion, and there is an important issue here 

that you guys can help us with, and that is, what is the appro-
266 

priate percentage of GDP for revenues and expenditures in a 21st 

century First World country? Historically, we know it has been— 

I think the Ranking Member said 18 percent, 18.5 percent. The 

question is: What is the effect of the retirement of the baby 

boomers, the demands they are going to make on the health care 

system? Which, as somebody pointed out, is where the real growth 

in their budgets are. So if we could agree on the right number, 

whether it is 19, 20, or 21, or whatever it is, then all the rest of 

our deliberations become kind of easy—not easy, but then we are 

just fighting about how to fill in those numbers. 

Go down the row. What is the right number? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Senator King, I think that you have exactly put 

the horse back where it belongs, in front of the cart. This is the 

question. And I think that the right number for the next decade is 

in the neighborhood of 21 percent of GDP, unless and until health 

care is brought down to world norms. 

You know, it is not just health care, just to be clear. The other 

place where this country is an outlier—only two places where we 

are an outlier in spending, and the other place, of course, is military, where we spend 43 percent of the entire world’s spending on 

military. Now, I am not saying that is a bad thing. I do not know 

whether it is a bad thing or a good thing. But I know that if we 

choose that, we have to pay for it. 

So we have two places where we are outliers in spending: health 

care, long term one would like to think we could get a handle on; 

but in the meantime, if you just run the numbers, that leads to 21 

percent of GDP. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. I also think this is a critical question, and I 

think it is wrong to simply fall back on 50-year averages and think 

you are saying anything about needs of today. In no small part, the 

demographics themselves are different, much more pressure from 

aging baby boomers, particularly in health care. So you have demographic pressures, you have health cost pressures. 

Now, the reason this is hard to answer is because that second 

part, the health cost pressures are a moving target. We recently 

found out that if you look at the CBO projections for Medicare 

spending over the next 10 years, just looking between 2010 projections and 2013 projections, they have come down $500 billion. That 

is very important and very good. There is a little bit more budget 

oxygen in the air because we are doing a bit better on controlling 

health care costs. We are nowhere near out of the woods, but we 

are doing better. 

However, because of the demographic pressures, because of the 

health care costs, because of things like veterans care that are 

going to be a greater pressure moving forward, interest on the debt 

is going to be pressure moving forward, we have things like climate 

and other pressures that we have to plan for. The 50-year average 

is a mistake, and I very strongly encourage members to not be susceptible to the tyranny of averages that are not applicable today. 

My guesstimate is that we are looking north of 22 percent say over 

the next decade. 

Senator KING. Mr. Roberts? 

Mr. ROBERTS. Well, respectfully, I do not think it is the right way 

to think about the question, to pick a particular number. 
267 

Senator KING. Gee, the first witness said it was a brilliant question. 

Mr. ROBERTS. Well, that is why we are here. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. ROBERTS. Different opinions. Maybe we can learn something 

from our disagreements. But we have a different tyranny, Jared, 

which is we have a bunch of programs that we put in place in the 

1930s that we have not changed much and that were passed at a 

time when demographics were very different and our economic ability to take care of ourselves was very different. 

I do not know why I am going to get a Social Security payment. 

I am 58 years old. I will be, quote, eligible for Social Security retiring potentially soon. Why? I do not need it. Yes, I paid in my 

money, but it did not get put aside for me. It went out to pay for 

my grandmother, and I am glad she got the money. But it is absurd that we have a retirement system that takes money from everybody and gives it to everybody. If we insist on maintaining that 

system and if we insist on maintaining a system that allows people 

to buy their health care with other people’s money, we are going 

to face a set of unpleasant choices: either a very high percentage— 

we can try to get there, we can try to get to 22 or 26 or 27. But 

my argument is I do not want to live in that world. I do not want 

my kids to live in that world, because that is going to be in a world 

where people are treated not as adults but as children, they are not 

responsible for their own retirement, they are not responsible for 

their own medical care, they are not responsible for their own 

health. We do not take advantage of innovations and technology 

that are coming that will allow those programs to be dramatically 

cheaper. So I have no particular goal that we should spend 22 or 

25 or 18. I would love to spend 12, either by shrinking the military 

or other things that maybe I hope we will not need in 2043. But 

I know we do not need to pay for my Social Security. If we insist 

on doing that for romantic or emotional reasons, we are going to 

handicap the rest of the economy and handicap people who desperately need the opportunities that come from lower tax rates, 

more private spending, and more innovation. 

So, to me, the crucial question is not how can we raise 22 percent 

or how can we get to 23 or can we really get to 19 even, or whether 

there is a tyranny of the past. The question is: What is the appropriate role for Government in these areas? And I just do not see 

that, again, paying for everybody’s retirement is an appropriate 

goal. Let us pay for people who cannot afford to make their own 

retirement provisions, people who have bad luck. But why are you 

paying for me? I have been blessed. I have a good salary. I have 

been prudent. Why are you paying for me? Why are you taxing 

other people, poor people, average people, to pay for higher-income 

people who have this opportunity? 

So I just think that is the central question as to whether we can 

face that level of flexibility and stop doing the things that do not 

need to be done and give people more freedom to do the things that 

they can do and create the innovation that will follow. 

Senator KING. I once asked my friend George Mitchell, who is the 

smartest guy I know, that very question, and his answer was very 
268 

different from yours, and he said, ‘‘If we start to means-test Social 

Security, it immediately becomes a welfare program.’’ 

Mr. ROBERTS. It should be a welfare program. It is a welfare program that is masquerading as a retirement program. I am not 

going to—I am not counting on it as part—by the way, most people 

under the age of 40 assume they are going to get zero. I think they 

are wrong. I think they will get something. But they do not expect 

to get what you promised them. And I think they are realistic. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Can I make a comment here? Is it okay? 

Senator KING. Sure. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Listening to Russ, you would think that the typical Social Security beneficiary’s income is like his income. In fact, 

it is not. The median is about $25,000. So we have a guaranteed 

pension, a retirement security system that helps economically vulnerable elderly, and that happens to describe a lot more people 

than I think you would understand from listening to Russ— 

Mr. ROBERTS. But not you and me. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. Let me finish, let me finish. Yes, and, therefore, 

absent these programs, many of our economically insecure elderly 

persons who have paid into these programs throughout their working career would not only be worse off, but would lack income and 

health care security in their later years, something that I think 

would be quite devastating to the social fabric. 

Now, that does not mean that every high-income person should 

get the same benefits they are getting now. We might have an 

agreement that there could be some flexibility there. But let us be 

clear about who we are talking about. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. I am going to—I hate to interrupt this 

conversation, but I am going to call on our last questioner who I 

do not think is going to interrupt this conversation. Senator Sanders. 

Senator SANDERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

You know, sometimes in economics, we forget what I think the 

real issue is, and that is, what is happening to ordinary people. 

How do we create a vibrant economy which provides decent jobs 

and decent benefits to people? 

I wanted to start off with Dr. Bernstein. Right now in America 

we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any 

major country on Earth. In English, what is happening is the middle class is disappearing. Since 1999, median family income has 

gone down by some $5,000. Real unemployment today is over 14 

percent. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Many of the new jobs that are being created are 

low-wage jobs. 

Meanwhile, the people on top are doing phenomenally well. You 

have an absolutely beyond belief situation where, according to the 

last study that I have seen, the top 1 percent is earning more than 

100 percent of all new income. You have the bottom 99 percent losing ground. All of the new income being generated is going to the 

top 1 percent. In terms of distribution of wealth, you have the absurdity of the top 1 percent owning 38 percent of the wealth, the 

bottom 60 percent owning 2.3 percent of the wealth. 

So my first question—forget the morality of some people having 

more wealth than they are going to spend in a million lifetimes 
269 

while the vast majority of people are struggling in America to keep 

their heads above water. Forget the morality of all that. Tell me 

about how you strengthen a strong economy. Can you have a 

strong economy when so few have so little in order to buy goods 

and services to create jobs when so few have so much? Dr. Bernstein? 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. I have just been writing about this very question, but I will try to be brief. It is very difficult to do so. There 

is an interesting wealthy entrepreneur named Nick Hanauer who 

writes about this very point, and he kind of puts it in terms of, you 

know, I am just not going to buy that many cars. So there is certainly a case to be made that if the benefits of growth were more 

widely shared—and as you suggest, they are intensely concentrated 

now—spending, consumption, overall economic demand would also 

reflect that in ways that would be positive for the broader economy, 

recoveries would not only or perhaps be stronger but would feel a 

lot better to most people who have been left out, as you have suggested, for decades now. 

Secondly, the thing that I found even more in my recent research—and this is fairly new stuff—is that these high levels of 

wealth and income concentration interact with money in politics in 

a way that buys a set of policies that inflates economic inequality— 

Senator SANDERS. Well, on that issue I think you do not have to 

tell the people in this room up here. We know that very well. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. So it has those problems as well. 

Senator SANDERS. All right. Professor Kleinbard 

Mr. KLEINBARD. You know, when I think about this issue—and, 

in fact, I am writing about it as well—I look around, and what I 

see is market failure everywhere. I see opportunities to invest that 

are not being taken advantage of, and the opportunities that I see 

are the opportunities to invest in the 310 million Americans who 

are here. 

We have 46 million Americans living today in poverty. They cannot afford to go to college. They cannot afford to invest in themselves. So the reason I disagree so fundamentally with Dr. Roberts 

about how to think about these issues is that what I see as market 

failure, I see a critical role for Government in investing in the most 

unproductive resource in America, which is our fellow Americans. 

Senator SANDERS. Good. I apologize, Dr. Roberts. I am going to 

get to you in a second here. But let me ask this: The great debate 

that is going on now on the budget is whether, in fact, we bring 

in more revenue by closing loopholes, by asking the wealthy, who 

are doing phenomenally well, to pay more, or as many of my Republicans feel, we should cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, 

education, nutrition? In other words, do you balance the budget on 

the backs of disabled veterans and the most vulnerable people in 

this country, or do you ask billionaires and very profitable corporations to pay more? 

Let me ask Dr. Roberts and everybody else a simple question. In 

2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the 

Cayman Islands to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did 

Bank of America pay nothing in Federal income taxes, but they received a rebate from the IRS of $1.9 billion that year. Citigroup, 

ExxonMobil, Chevron—all of these and many other major profitable 
270 

corporations invest their profits in the Cayman Islands; they pay 

very little or nothing in taxes in the United States of America. 

Dr. Roberts, does that make any sense to you? 

Mr. ROBERTS. I am deeply troubled by the interaction between 

politics and economics that you referenced a minute ago, especially 

with respect to the financial sector. And you mentioned inequality. 

The financial sector is a major source of that inequality. That is the 

bad kind. 

The good kind is Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin, the 

people who created Apple and Amazon and Google, and I think 

they should thrive because they thrive by making other people’s 

lives better. 

There is another group of people who thrive by taking money 

from the rest of us. Please stop coddling them. Stop giving them 

breaks. Stop giving them bailouts. And if you do, do it in a way 

that punishes them. None of them—very few of them went out of 

business, and the people who lent them the money that allowed 

them to make the lousy bets, they got all their money back 100 

cents on the dollar. That is a horrible— 

Senator SANDERS. So am I hearing you say that you think it is 

not a great idea that Bank of America is allowed to have hundreds 

of subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands? 

Mr. ROBERTS. I am not an expert on international corporate taxation. I do know that Bank of America gets too many privileges relative to what they produce for the rest of us. And the only other 

thing I would say is that there is a lot of market failures in our 

system, Professor Kleinbard. The question is: How good is Government doing in investing in our people, those causes that you care 

about and that I care about as well? And I would like to see a civil 

society, a private set of voluntary ways of helping poor children 

who are being horribly educated by that system that we have 

thrown billions of dollars at and lost two generations— 

Senator SANDERS. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. I apologize. 

Dr. Bernstein and Professor Kleinbard, that question. 

Mr. BERNSTEIN. The Congressional Budget Office is always very, 

very careful to be very nonpartisan, which is a very good thing, and 

to typically avoid making policy recommendations. But in this very 

area, I stress the issue of the ability of these foreign subsidiaries 

to defer income. So here is a quote from CBO that is in my written 

testimony: ‘‘...eliminating or curtailing deferral of U.S. taxes on income earned abroad...would dampen incentives to shift investment 

or reported income on the basis of concerns about tax liability. As 

a result, those options would generally lead to more economically 

efficient business investment and increase corporate tax revenues 

from firms that remained incorporated in the United States.’’ 

Okay? So that is a nonpartisan analysis of this question. Not 

only would ending these practices undermine an injustice that you 

are describing, but it would improve economic efficiency and revenue. I mean, this is a great deal. 

Senator SANDERS. Well, I would point out that we have introduced legislation, Madam Chair, to do just that. It would bring in 

$590 billion over a 10-year period. 

Professor Kleinbard, briefly. 
271 

Mr. KLEINBARD. I am, in fact, an expert on corporate international taxation, and as I said to Senator Ayotte, there are only 

two possibilities. One is that you design a territorial system that 

cannot be gamed. I do not think that is possible as a technical matter. We do not have time to go through why it is so difficult as a 

technical matter. That leads to the alternative, which is true worldwide tax consolidation so that the foreign income is treated exactly 

the same as domestic income and coupling that with a lower corporate tax rate, which in turn makes the United States a much 

more attractive environment in which to do business. 

So I come out thinking that a worldwide tax system is the right 

place, and then people will not need Ugland House, with its thousands of Cayman Islands shell companies. 

Senator SANDERS. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. We just have a couple minutes 

left, and Senator Sessions has asked to ask another question. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you, and I really do not believe 

that there is no waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government, and a sequester or BCA reduction of 2 or 3 percent in the 

growth is not going to—is poor management by the people who run 

this Government if children are being starved as a result of that, 

and I reject that. 

But one question, Dr. Kleinbard. You talked about I believe you 

favor reforming the corporate Tax Code, eliminating loopholes or 

deductions that are not justified, making it more growth and productive and honest. But if you use—and to do that to reduce the 

rate, so if you close corporate loopholes under your theory, that 

would not be money to pay down the debt with, it would be used 

to create a simpler, more productive corporate tax rate. Is that 

right? 

Mr. KLEINBARD. Yes, sir. I see the business tax environment as 

needing that kind of reform. There just are not enough dollars to 

go around to have a lot of dollars left over for deficit reduction. We 

cannot have the United States with a 35-percent corporate tax rate 

in the craziest international tax system in the world and call that 

a reasonable platform when other countries have their corporate 

rates in the mid-20s. So I think that that is a sensible package. 

I think, on the other hand, there are trillions of dollars of poorly 

targeted spending programs on the individual side where that 

money can be used for deficit reduction. So I make that distinction 

between the two silos in my thinking. 

Chairman MURRAY. All right. Well, thank you to all of our colleagues for participating today, and I especially want to thank our 

witnesses for a very productive discussion. 

As I said at the outset of this hearing, we have a debate ahead 

of us, which will include a variety of approaches to our many challenges. Today’s hearing really was an opportunity to highlight some 

wasteful spending in our Tax Code as one approach. And as a reminder to my colleagues, additional statements and/or questions 

for any of these witnesses from today’s hearing are due in by 6:00 

p.m. today to our chief clerk. And I again thank all of our witnesses 

for traveling here today and for participating, and all of our Senators as well. 
272 

With that, this hearing is coming to a close. 

[Whereupon, at 12:09 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
(273) 

SUPPORTING BROAD–BASED ECONOMIC 

GROWTH AND FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY 

THROUGH TAX REFORM 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:35 p.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Wyden, Whitehouse, Kaine, King, Sessions, Grassley, Portman, and Johnson. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and 

Marcus Peacock, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. This hearing will come to order. I want to 

thank Senator Sessions and all of our colleagues for joining me 

today to explore the ways in which tax reform can support broadbased economic growth while helping us tackle our long-term debt 

and deficit challenges. 

And I really want to thank all three of our witnesses who are 

here today. We will be hearing from Michael Linden, the managing 

director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress; 

Adam Looney, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings 

Institution; and Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at 

George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. We really appreciate 

all of you coming and sharing your expertise on these issues. 

I am pleased that the possibility of broad reform to our Tax Code 

has gained some momentum in recent months. With a Tax Code 

that we all realize is complicated, inefficient, and too often skewed 

to benefit the well-off and well-connected, there is much to improve. 

And reforming our Tax Code also offers opportunities to make 

progress on major challenges that we face today, like the need to 

grow our middle class and make sure we can compete in the 21st 

century global economy and restore our Nation’s long-term fiscal 

health. 

So I want to take this opportunity today to discuss a key principle, reflected in our Senate budget that we passed earlier this 

year, which should guide any tax reform effort. 

Tax reform has to be fair to the middle class, and that means we 

will need more revenue from those who can most afford it, both to 
274 

reduce the deficit and to make the necessary investments in our future economic strength, because expanding and supporting our 

middle class in the 21st century global economy is going to be a 

challenge. 

And to make sure we can do it, we have to focus on what the 

original Simpson-Bowles report called ‘‘high-priority investments’’— 

those in education, infrastructure, and research. 

Our schools need to prepare our workers—of all ages—to compete 

for 21st century jobs. Our roads, bridges, airports, and airways 

should be able to transport people and products quickly and reliably so that companies that want to invest here and hire American 

workers will. And we need to maintain our edge in research and 

development so that the innovations that drive future economic 

growth take root at home rather than overseas. 

At the same time, our Nation has made promises to millions of 

Americans that we absolutely must uphold. Current and future 

seniors, who have worked hard all their lives, deserve to know that 

Medicare will be there when they need it. And in the United 

States, we have always worked to help those struck by hard times 

get back on their feet. 

These commitments, to our future and to those who need and deserve our support, must be met. 

If sequestration is not replaced, we will see deep cuts to these 

kinds of investments—so much so that even the House Republican 

appropriations chairman called this ‘‘an austere budget year.’’ This 

would hurt us in the short term, at a time when we should be focused on creating jobs and boosting the economy. 

Slashing these priorities even further would ultimately make us 

a very different country—one that has a weaker economy in the 

long run, and one I think most of us here would agree we do not 

want to be. 

Also, while recent CBO analysis shows that we will run lower 

deficits in coming years than we expected, I think we also recognize 

that we have to get our long-term debt and deficits on a sustainable path. And we need to do this in a responsible way that allows 

us to confront the urgent need to create jobs and boost our country’s competitiveness. 

As Mr. Linden will discuss, this is why reducing the deficit with 

a combination of new revenue from tax reform, as well as smart 

spending cuts, is the fiscally responsible choice. 

Democrats are not alone in making this argument. Bipartisan 

groups have consistently included revenue for deficit reduction in 

their tax reform plans. Simpson-Bowles and the Senate Gang of Six 

each proposed more than $2 trillion. 

That is significantly more than the $600 billion in new revenue 

from the wealthiest that we have raised in deficit reduction efforts 

over the last 2 years. In fact, measured over the same time frame, 

Simpson-Bowles and the Senate Gang of Six each proposed more 

new revenue than what we got from the year-end deal and what 

we proposed in the Senate Budget combined. 

Let us remember that reform will require eliminating wasteful 

and inefficient tax expenditures that are unfairly skewed towards 

those who need them the least—like special tax breaks for cor-
275 

porate jet owners and hedge fund managers, and loopholes that 

allow multinational corporations to shift jobs and profits offshore. 

These kinds of special tax breaks are just spending by another 

name, and they often do little to support our economy or our middle class. 

So if you really think, like many of my colleagues do, that our 

fiscal problems are the greatest long-term threat to our Nation’s future, why wouldn’t you want to take some of the savings from ending inefficient and unfair tax breaks and use it to tackle our debt 

and deficit? Especially if, in doing so, you could also continue to 

prioritize the kinds of investments that make our country great 

and allow more Americans a shot at success. 

Unfortunately, some of the plans we have seen from the other 

side of the aisle take a very different approach. My Republican colleagues have put forward plans that prioritize dramatic reductions 

in tax rates while bringing in no new revenue for deficit reduction. 

The tax reform plan outlined in the House budget is a prime example. Experts have found that to remain revenue neutral, the 

House budget would cut taxes on those earning $1 million or more 

by an average of $245,000 while raising taxes on families with income under $200,000 by an average of $3,000. 

In other words, the only way the House budget’s tax reform plan 

could avoid raising taxes on the middle class would be to dramatically increase the deficit. 

At a time when we need to be thinking about how to secure both 

our long-term fiscal health and our economic leadership, we really 

do not need an expensive tax break paid for by shifting tax burdens 

onto the middle class. That approach would be deeply unfair. And 

it simply is not an option. 

As we will hear today from Mr. Looney, it is very difficult to see 

how tax reform can dramatically lower rates, help to reduce our 

deficit, and protect the middle class and most vulnerable from paying more, all at the same time. 

I believe we need to focus on what is best for the middle class 

by ensuring that any tax reform effort helps more Americans share 

in and contribute to our economic strength and helps reduce our 

deficit. 

Only once we have met these goals does it make sense to look 

at lowering rates. 

Until then, I think it would be very difficult to explain a plan to 

middle-class Americans that asks them to sacrifice but gives the 

wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations a pass, and does 

nothing to invest in our future or our fiscal health. 

So as we continue this debate, I encourage my Republican colleagues to be open to working with us on tax reform that puts the 

middle class first and our economic and fiscal strength first. 

Some leading Republicans have acknowledged in the past that 

there are opportunities for this kind of balanced approach. Speaker 

Boehner proposed raising $800 billion for deficit reduction by closing what he called special interest loopholes and deductions. 

So I really hope there is some room for agreement here, because 

even though this is not going to be easy, tax reform offers substantial opportunities to make our Tax Code work better for families 

and our economy. 
276 

If we do this the right way—meaning the fair way—tax reform 

has the potential to make our tax system simpler and more efficient, to ensure that those who invest here in the United States 

and play by the rules see the benefit, and to encourage the kind 

of long-term, broad-based economic growth we saw back in the 

1990s. 

So we should do everything we can to move this forward. 

And before I turn it over to Senator Sessions, I do want to note 

that any significant change to our Tax Code will have very real 

consequences for families and businesses across the country, and it 

will be very difficult to enact any changes without the taxpayers’ 

full trust—which is one reason why I, along with many, was appalled at the recent revelations about practices at the IRS, which 

indicate completely unacceptable and wrong-headed behavior. 

The Federal Government, and particularly the IRS, should maintain the highest ethical standards and should be held fully accountable for any failure to do so. I know that my colleagues on both 

sides of the aisle are working with President Obama to make sure 

that those involved are held responsible and that such a breach of 

public trust cannot occur again. And I really want to thank them 

for doing that crucial work. 

I am looking forward to what I think will be a very productive 

conversation at this hearing today. I do again want to thank all of 

our witnesses for being here, and with that, we will hear from Senator Sessions. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I thank 

our witnesses. This is a good panel, and we have a very important 

subject today that impacts policies that we will be setting for the 

United States in the years to come, and we value your opinions. 

We all agree that public policies need to support strong economic 

growth that benefits all Americans—middle-class Americans, working Americans—whose incomes have not kept up, whose unemployment rates are persistently high, who have dropped out of the 

workforce in record numbers, whose salaries are not keeping up 

with inflation for several decades. 

There is a growing consensus that one of the barriers to a strong 

growth is a badly broken tax system. I do reject your characterization of the House tax plan. I do not think they would turn out the 

way you project. But we all need to be talking about how to improve our tax system. 

Our broken Tax Code is but one expression of the burden bad fiscal policy places on the economy. Excessive, non-productive spending and the consequently high and growing national debt hurt the 

pace of economic activity. We need to adopt sensible fiscal policies 

to get our budget under control and allow the economy to grow 

more rapidly. That is why I am so pleased to have Dr. Veronique 

de Rugy with us testifying today. She is a widely recognized expert 

on how developed countries have attempted to stabilize their debt 

and bring their budget, both spending and taxes, under control. 

Some countries have done this well, others have not, and Dr. de 

Rugy is here to tell us what works and what does not from the 

studies she has examined. 
277 

There can be no more appropriate time than now to consider the 

role of tax and spending policies in facilitating higher levels of economic growth. If the fiscal situation is to significantly improve in 

the near term, then the pace of economic activity must improve 

very soon. This improvement, however, may be hard to achieve. 

This economic recovery remains the slowest since the end of World 

War II. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the end 

of the Great Recession in June of 2009. Since then, the economy 

has grown an average of only 2.1 percent. That is significantly less 

than the rate of previous recoveries after 15 quarters. 

The U.S. economy is 8.3 percent larger today than when the recession ended, which is a little less than half the average increase 

in the size of the economy after the previous 15 quarters following 

a recession. So this economic sluggishness comes with great human 

cost. There are fewer jobs today than when the recession started. 

Total non-farm employment in April of 2013 was 2.3 million below 

its level in December of 2007. The overall unemployment rate is 7.5 

percent, also higher than it should be this far from the end of the 

recession. And key unemployment rates for important demographic 

segments are even higher. The rates for Hispanics stands at 8.4 

percent, for blacks at 12.8 percent, and for teenagers at 24.1 percent. These high rates and a surprising workforce dropout rate 

have reduced personal income and, thus, Federal revenues. 

Add to this lost revenue and estimated outlays associated with 

unemployment being higher than it should be at this point in the 

recovery, and the total harm to our underachieving economy to the 

Federal budget is nearly $90 billion this year alone. 

Policymakers will note that this amount roughly equals the 2013 

fallback sequester reductions. Not all of this lost income, however, 

is due to unemployment. Some stems from people simply dropping 

out because the Government benefits are generous and it does not 

pay them to actually work. 

I am increasingly concerned by how well-meaning public policies 

are creating incentives for otherwise able-bodied workers to stay 

out of the labor force. The truth is that the generosity of program 

benefits has grown faster than inflation or wages since 2007. 

A paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research 

found that between 2007 and 2009, the value of means-tested benefits available to the average non-elderly unemployed worker grew 

from $10,000 to $15,000. More people but more benefits, higher 

benefits per each individual at a time when our deficits are soaring. 

As more people become eligible for increasingly generous benefits, the penalty for working if unemployment increases. This is especially true for workers who qualify for multiple means-tested programs. 

The CBO found that households with incomes just above the poverty line or between $23,000 and $29,000 for a family of four in 

2012 can experience a disincentive to work, and that is like a tax 

rate of up to 60 percent. That is, for every dollar in additional earnings a person might make through hard work or additional work, 

the households stand to lose a total of 60 cents in both increased 

taxes and lost Federal benefits. With a high penalty to earning 

more by working, many low-income people choose either not to 
278 

work or, as CBO finds, to ‘‘put in fewer hours and be less productive.’’ 

In my view, the key to stronger economic growth rests with removing burdens we impose on work, savings, and investment. In 

accomplishing that task, the Tax Code needs to be clearly in our 

sights. 

The economic effect of increased taxes is one of the most widely 

understood effects in the economic literature. We know what increased taxes do. Increases in marginal tax rates discourage work, 

discourage savings and investment. Taxes are only effective and efficient if the Government can better spend and allocate the resources than individuals in the market does. Money does not sit 

under someone’s mattress but is instead spent or saved so that 

taxes again remove money from the economy. Rather than increasing tax rates, we should take a lesson from the tax rate reductions 

of the 1920s, 1960s, and 1980s. These reductions led to increases 

in employment, higher returns for stocks, increased investment 

growth, and have generally promoted economic growth. 

There are limits on what reduced taxes can achieve. We are not 

in a position to sustain large tax reductions now, but I do believe 

that we have seen historically that good results can come from a 

lower take of the Federal Government from the economy. 

The reduction in taxes on income encourages people to work 

more because they get to keep more of their pay. A reduction in 

capital gains taxes increases future consumption because investors 

receive higher rates of return. 

Finally, I do not want us to repeat the mistakes made by some 

governments of increasing taxes when the real problem is excessive 

spending. Economists have shown that countries have been able to 

successfully reduce their debt while improving economic performance when the focus of the policy is on reducing government spending. At the same time, tax increases can damage the chances for 

success. This is a critical choice we are facing, and we need to honestly review it. 

So, Madam Chairman, let us be sure we adjust our leading public policies in a way that reduces the burden and makes our Government leaner and more productive while demanding less from 

the fragile public sector. 

Thank you for this important hearing, and I look forward to participating. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much, Senator Sessions. 

We will turn to our witnesses. Again, thank you all for coming 

and joining us today. Mr. Linden, we will begin with you. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL LINDEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR 

ECONOMIC POLICY, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS 

Mr. LINDEN. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chairman 

Murray, Senator Sessions. Thank you so much for inviting me to 

be here today. My name is Michael Linden. I am the managing director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress 

where my work focuses primarily on Federal fiscal policy. 

First, allow me to commend the Committee for considering the 

important issue of tax reform and for doing so explicitly within the 

context of broad-based economic growth. Coming out of the Great 
279 

Recession, we face some daunting economic challenges which we 

can meet and overcome, but only if public policy is properly calibrated. 

Now, the Tax Code is by no means the only tool available to the 

Federal Government to support broader and faster economic 

growth, but it is a very important one. And that is why tax reform 

must be designed to help address the larger economic challenges 

that we face. 

To that end, tax reform should begin with the basic understanding that the middle class is a critical driver of economic 

growth and that rising income inequality is a drag on that growth. 

A strong middle class provides the Nation with its most important source of stable demand for goods and services, it incubates 

the next generation of entrepreneurs, and it supports the inclusive 

political institutions that are most likely to reinvest in precisely 

the kinds of public investments that produce future economic 

growth and innovation. 

We often think about the middle class as an outcome of the economy, but, in fact, we now know that is backwards. The middle class 

is an input to the economy. The stronger it is, the stronger the 

economy will be. And, therefore, tax reform must seek to strengthen the middle class, and it can do so in three ways. 

First, tax reform must make the code fairer for the middle class. 

Second, tax reform must make the code simpler for the middle 

class. 

And, third, and most importantly, tax reform must ensure that 

the code is generating enough revenue to pay for the investments 

and protections that are critical to the success of the middle class. 

First, making the code fairer to the middle class means doing 

more to reduce rising income inequality. Three decades ago, a 

household in the richest 1 percent too home about ten times as 

much as a household in the middle class. By 2007, that ratio had 

nearly tripled. And while the Great Recession was certainly not 

kind to anyone, those at the top have rebounded far faster than everyone else. In fact, the entire gain from the economic recovery so 

far has flowed exclusively to those at the top. 

Now, while the Tax Code cannot by itself fully address this 

alarming trend, it can do much more to help. Since the beginning 

of the 1980s, changes in tax policy have generally made the code 

less effective at reducing post-tax income inequality. In fact, the 

Tax Code in 2007 was about one-third as effective at reducing income inequality as it had been three decades prior. And while we 

certainly have taken some steps since 2007 to improve the Tax 

Code in this regard, the sheer magnitude of the increase in income 

inequality suggests there is much more to do. 

Second, tax reform should seek to make the code simpler for the 

middle class. Making our tax system simpler means streamlining 

the code to clear out the dense thicket of tax expenditures that 

have grown up in the last few decades. Not only do many of these 

tax expenditures add enormous compliance costs, but they also 

open up massive opportunities for tax avoidance. And, of course, 

most of these opportunities are not available to middle-class families. They are only utilized by those who have the resources to hire 

expensive accountants. 
280 

Making the code simpler does not, however, mean reducing the 

number of tax brackets. The complexity of tax filing has nothing 

at all to do with how many brackets there are. There could be one 

or five or ten or a thousand, and it would not make any difference 

at all to how long it takes or how complicated it is to determine 

one’s tax liability. In fact, Congress should be very wary of proposals that shift the tax bill from the rich onto the middle class in 

the name of simplicity. 

Finally, and most critically, tax reform must strengthen the middle class by ensuring that the code generates adequate revenues to 

pay for the foundational public investments in middle-class protections. The primary task of any tax system is to generate revenue, 

sufficient revenue, and right now our system is failing at that. Because our tax system is generating inadequate revenues, we have 

been forced to cut the very investments—education, transportation 

infrastructure, scientific investment, economic development—that 

are most likely to spark future growth and prosperity. As a result, 

by 2016, and even without sequestration, our total share of national resources that are going to fund those investments will decline to its lowest levels since 1964. 

Going forward, we cannot afford to keep making that mistake. 

Middle-class families and those who aspire to the middle class rely 

on the public investments that complement those of the private sector. They depend on the protections afforded them by Medicare and 

Social Security and Medicaid. And they expect the public sector to 

provide the foundations for a middle-class lifestyle, such as basic 

transportation networks and educational opportunities for their 

children. To maintain those middle-class foundations, we will need 

additional revenue. 

Now one common objection to this is that it means generating 

more revenue than we have on average over the last 40 or 50 

years. But this objection is misleading. It is not at all apparent 

why revenue levels from the 1960s or 1970s should determine what 

our country needs in the 2020s or 2030s. Our needs change over 

time. We raised far more revenue in the 1960s and 1970s than we 

had in the 1910s or 1920s. And given the aging of the population 

and the dramatically higher costs of health care today, it is not at 

all surprising that we will need a slightly higher level of revenue 

than we did in the past. 

Indeed, every bipartisan plan put forward to address future 

budget deficits has incorporated this basic observation into their 

approach. The budget plans offered by Alan Simpson and Erskine 

Bowles, by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici, all called for revenues 

above the historical average. In fact, both Simpson-Bowles and 

Rivlin-Domenici called for revenue levels above those in either the 

President’s budget or in the Senate’s budget resolution. 

Tax reform is an important and necessary goal. With the economic head winds we are facing, we cannot afford to have a Tax 

Code that is not precisely designed to meet the needs of the middle 

class. To meet our economic challenges, we need a code that is fairer to the middle class, that is simpler for the middle class, and, 

most importantly, generates sufficient revenue to invest in the middle class. 
281 

Thank you very much for this opportunity, and I look forward to 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Linden follows:] 
282 

Center for American Progress £! .... 1333 H Street, NW, 10th FloDr 

Wa$hington. DC 20005 

Tel- 202 682 1611 ~ Fa,.;: 202682 1867 

WV'iw.,'.imericanprogres5,org 

Michael Linden 

Managing Director for Economic Policy 

Center for American Progress 

Testimony on "Supporting Broad-Based Economic Growth and Fiscal 

Responsibility through Tax Reform" 

United States Senate Committee on the Budget 

624 Dirksen Senate Office Building 

Washington, D.C. 

May 22,2013 
283 

Tax reform should strengthen the economy by strengthening 

the middle class 

For all the disagreements among policymakers, economists generally agree on the ingredients 

that make an economy grow: human capital, demand, strong institutions and governance, 

innovation, and financial capital. While all of these are important, since the late 1970s some tax 

policymakers have lost sight of the big picture, focusing on financial capital and the activities of 

the wealthy few. That focus produced supply-side economics and the belief that the 

government should focus its efforts on wealthy "job creators," and that if those "job creators" 

were released from the burdens of high taxation and regulation, prosperity for all would trickle 

down. 

But trickle-down economic policies have been a failure. Over the past several decades, the 

United States has undergone a remarkable transformation, with income growth stalling for the 

middle class while the incomes of those at the top continued to rise dramatically compared to 

the rest of the working population. Between 1979 and 2007, the last year before the Great 

Recession, median family income rose by 3S percent, while incomes for those at the 99th 

percentile rose by 278 percent.1 Families in the middle class have also pulled away from those 

at the bottom, but have achieved these modest income gains only by working longer hours, 

increasing their labor supply-particularly among wives and mothers-and increasing 

household debts to maintain consumption as wages failed to keep pace with inflation. 

The supply-siders had it backward-a strong middle class is the driver of economic growth, not 

merely an outcome. When one examines the factors that produce a growing economy, the 

strength of the middle class is critically important to them: 

• A strong middle class promotes the development of human capital and a well-educated 

population. 

A strong middle class creates a stable source of demand for goods and services. 

• A strong middle class incubates the next generation of entrepreneurs. 

• A strong middle class supports inclusive political and economic institutions, which 

underpin economic growth. 

Given that the middle class is key to economic growth, and given the mounting stress placed on 

the middle class over the last 30 years due to stagnant wage growth and rising costs, the 

question then becomes: What policies will grow and strengthen the middle class? 
284 

Tax reform should make the code fairer to the middle class 

Fairness to the middle class means doing more to reduce America's staggering 

inequality 

Over the past 30 years, our nation's income distribution has grown increasingly unequal. In 

1979 the average income for a household in the richest 1 percent was about 10 times higher 

than the average income for a household in the middle 20 percent. By 2007 that ratio had 

almost tripled. The average household in the richest 1 percent was now earning nearly 30 times 

as much as those in the middle. Yet even as income inequality increased dramatically, the effect 

of the federal tax code on income distribution declined substantial/y.l 

Between the early 1990s and the financial collapse, the effective federal tax rate of the richest 

1 percent of Americans has plummeted even while their incomes skyrocketed. Households in 

the top 1 percent more than doubled their incomes from an average of more than $800,000 in 

1993 to nearly $1.9 million in 2007. During that same period, their effective federal tax rate 

dropped from 35 percent to 30 percent. 

The Great Recession hit hard the income for those at the top, mostly due to a dramatic drop in 

capital-gains realizations during the stock-market turmoil of the past few years. Average real 

income for the top 1 percent dropped 36.3 percent from 2007 to 2009, while the bottom 99 

percent saw their income decline by 11.6 percent, shrinking the share of income flowing to the 

top 1 percent dramatically. It is already clear, however, that this is a temporary effect. Income 

growth during the recovery has so far favored those at the top. In fact, from 2009 to 2011, the 

top 1 percent saw their incomes grow by 11.2 percent, while the other 99 percent lost 0.4 

percent of their income; 99 percent of Americans were worse off two years into the recovery 

than during the recession, while 121 percent of the economy's growth flowed to the richest 1 

percent. As this pattern continues, and capital-gains realizations rebound with the stock 

market, America's inequality is likely to be worse after the Great Recession than before it. 3 

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, or ATRA, allowed some Bush-era tax cuts to expire 

for the very wealthiest Americans-those making more than $400,000 per year. The Tax Policy 

Center now estimates that the top 1 percent of income earners will face a 35.7 percent 

effective federal tax rate in 2013. 4 But with top incomes continuing to grow at a tremendous 

rate, this will do little to affect underlying inequality. As economists Thomas Picketty and 

Emanuel Saez explain: 

Looking further ahead, based on the US historical record, falls in income concentration 

due to economic downturns are temporary unless drastic regulation and tax policy 

changes are implemented and prevent income concentration from bouncing back. Such 

policy changes took place after the Great Depression during the New Deal and 

permanently reduced income concentration until the 1970's. In contrast, recent 
285 

downturns, such as the 2001 recession, lead to only very temporary drops in income 

concentration. 

The policy changes that are taking place coming out of the Great Recession (financial 

regulation and top tax rate increase in 2013) are not negligible but they are modest 

relative to the policy changes that took place coming out of the Great Depression. 

Therefore, it seems unlikely that US income concentration will fall much in the coming 

years.s 

Over the past several years, America has faced a historic economic challenge not seen since the 

Great Depression, yet we are stuck in the same tired fiscal and economic policy debates we 

were having before the financial crisis. Inequality keeps rising over time, and our policy 

responses have, so far, been inadequate. 

America fares very poorly in international comparisons as well. A recent OECD report shows 

how little the entire system of revenues and investments in the United States does to redress 

inequality. When the authors look only at the most progressive part of the U.S. tax system, 

federal income taxes, it appears as if the United States has a reasonably progressive system.6 

But this result is driven by the low levels of revenue the U.s. income tax collects compared to 

other rich countries, the high underlying inequality in U.s. income, and the American propensity 

for tax expenditures, which categorize things that other countries call social spending and 

transfers-subsidies for health care, retirement savings, and homeownership, for example-as 

"tax cuts." Once the total revenue and transfer system is taken into account, the only OECD 

country that does less to ameliorate inequality is Korea. 7 

Even looking only at income taxes, America's richest taxpayers pay substantially less than the 

wealthy pay in other countries. An independent analysis.s ranked the United States 53rd among 

nations for the effective income and payroll tax rate paid by a household making $300,000 per 

year; in the top 2 percent of the U.s. income distribution. According to the study, these 

households in the United States pay a similar tax rate to similar households in Sri Lanka and 

Malawi. The effective tax rate for rich households in the United Kingdom and Canada is almost 

40 percent higher than in the United States-in some wealthy European countries it's more 

than 75 percent higher. 

Fairness to the middle class means demanding that America's wealthiest pay 

their tilir share 

Other rich countries raise substantially more revenue from their wealthiest citizens than we do 

in the United States. This revenue allows them to invest in middle-class benefits and serviceslike world-class education starting in preschool, universal health care, and robust public pension 

and safety-net programs. Meanwhile, some of America's wealthiest families pay less in taxes 

than the middle class. 
286 

According to Congressional Research Service data, one in four households making more than $1 

million per year faces a lower federal tax rate than middle-class families. 9 In fact, according to 

the Tax POlicy Center, in 2011, 7,000 millionaires paid nothing in federal income taxes.1O 

Given that the top marginal income tax rate was 35 percent in 2011 and is now 39.6 percentstill substantially lower than the top rate in the United States in the early 1980s or in other 

wealthy countries-how is it that so many wealthy people avoid paying their fair share? 

Because the individual income tax code is riddled with exemptions, deductions, special 

preferences, and loopholes that disproportionately benefit high-income taxpayers. 

Most tax benefits and incentives come in the form of deductions or exclusions. Both are 

provisions that reduce one's taxable income and include many ofthe most important-and 

most costly-tax breaks, such as those for mortgage interest, charitable giving, employerprovided health insurance, and retirement savings. One of the unfortunate and largely 

unintended effects of structuring tax benefits as deductions or exclusions is that they tend to 

provide much bigger tax benefits to those in the highest tax brackets. 

For a wealthy taxpayer in the highest tax bracket-now 39.6 percent-a $10,000 itemized 

deduction, such as one for mortgage interest, results in $3,960 in tax savings. For a taxpayer in 

the 15 percent bracket, however, that same deduction is worth only $1,500. 

This "upside-down" effect is not only unfair, but it's also inefficient from a budgetary point of 

view: It gives the largest tax break to the people who are least likely to need it and also least 

likely to respond to the incentive. High-income people, for example, are already likely to be 

homeowners, and they would therefore likely use disposable income to save for retirement 

even without a tax incentive. We would not tolerate it if a federal spending program distributed 

benefits in such an inefficient way-and we should be equally cost conscious with programs 

and subsidies that operate through the tax code. 

The Center for American Progress has put forward a proposal to eliminate this inefficient 

"upside-down" effect by converting many deductions and exemptions into uniform credits that 

provide an equal value to all taxpayers. l1 The president has proposed partially addressing the 

problem by limiting tax breaks for the highest-income Americans: People whose high incomes 

place them in the top tax brackets would be able to claim the same value from deductions that 

a middle-class taxpayer in the 28 percent bracket gets, but not more. This proposal would make 

tax breaks fairer and more efficient while raising substantial revenue. The Congressional Budget 

Office estimates that such a proposal would raise $493 billion over 10 years.12 

In addition to deductions and exemptions that disproportionately benefit the well off, there are 

some tax preferences that flow almost entirely to the wealthy, and tax loopholes that can only 

be taken advantage of by particularly sophisticated tax avoiders. 

For example, the different treatment of income from investments and income from work is the 

largest reason that many wealthy households pay lower taxes than the middle class. Under the 
287 

current code, long-term capital gains and qualified dividends are taxed at a maximum rate of 20 

percent, well below the top statutory rate on labor income. The Tax Policy Center has 

estimated that in 2013, 96 percent of the benefit from low rates on capital gains and dividends 

went to households in the top quintile, with nearly three-quarters going to the top 1 percent of 

income earners and nearly half going to the top 0.1 percent. 13 

These preferential rates are even taken advantage of by highly compensated non investors: The 

carried interest loophole allows people who manage investment funds-such as private equity 

funds and hedge funds-to convert their income into lower-taxed capital gains, driving down 

their tax bills and costing the federal government $21 billion in revenue over 10 years.'" A 

similar loophole exists for derivatives traders, allowing them to convert the margins from their 

daily trades into "long-term" capital gains for purposes of the preferential rates. 

Another loophole allows certain well-off professionals-most famously former Sen. John 

Edwards (D_NCj15 and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich16 during their private-sector 

careers-to avoid paying Medicare taxes on their income by turning themselves into S 

corporations and taking their salaries as dividends. The U.S. Treasury's inspector general for tax 

enforcement has called the loophole a "multibillion dollar employment tax shelter.,,17 

Even some "middle-class" deductions have high-income loopholes built in. For example, 

taxpayers can claim the home mortgage interest deduction not only on their primary 

residences, but on second homes and even yachts; but only if they are big enough to live on. 

Any serious effort to strengthen the middle class and address our long-term fiscal challenges 

must start by asking the country's most privileged people to pay their fair share. The alternative 

is to raise taxes on the middle class and abandon crucial investments in our future-clearly 

something we should seek to avoid. 
288 

Tax reform should make the code simpler for the middle class 

A core goal of comprehensive tax reform is to make the tax code simpler. But when we discuss 

simplification, it is crucial that we are clear about what the real drivers of complexity are. It's 

not the rate structure: Whether you are looking up your tax liability in a paper table or letting 

software calculate it for you, it's the same single step whether we have one rate or 20. What 

drives the ever-increasing complexity of the tax code is the proliferation of special deductions, 

exclusions, and tax breaks for particular activities. 

Simplicity for the middle class means reforming tax expenditures and limiting 

opportunities and incentives for complicated tax-avoidance schemes 

Some tax expenditures are worth the complexity they create, because they support the middle 

class, further important policy goals, and prevent millions of families from falling into poverty 

and extreme hardship. But some of the expenditures that most radically increase the need for 

regulation, tax planning, and litigation, are the very same tax breaks that allow the wealthy to 

avoid paying their fair share. 

Tax expenditures and loopholes add extra calculations and documentation requirements. More 

importantly, they create incentives for individuals and businesses to engage in complicated 

schemes to reclassify income and reorient economic activity so as to take advantage of 

specialized tax breaks. As more taxpayers game the system, ever more regulations are required 

to curb abuses. 

These are the real drivers of increased complexity and compliance costs, and tax Simplification 

should focus on reducing the incentives and opportunities for wealthy, sophisticated taxpayers 

to push money around in ever more complicated ways to avoid paying taxes. 

A perfect example of this dynamic at play is the complexity created by the preferential rates 

currently in effect for long-term capital gains and dividends. These special rates are a huge 

giveaway to the very wealthiest Americans, and they are also an enormous driver of 

complexity: One tax expert has estimated that fully one-third of the Internal Revenue Code and 

accompanying regulations would be unnecessary if income from labor and capital were taxed at 

the same rate.18 This is because the differential creates enormous incentives to classify as much 

income as possible as tax-preferred capital gains or dividends-this incentive drives an arms 

race between tax lawyers and Congress/IRS that necessitates ballooning regulations, evermore-creative accounting and record keeping, and extensive litigation. 

This effect can be seen across the income tax code, as each special tax break introduced by 

Congress spawns more creative accounting requiring more detailed regulations. legislation is 
289 

then frequently needed to clamp down on the worst inequities and abuses created by special 

preferences-creating even more complexity. The current alternative minimum tax, legislation 

to close the carried interest loophole, and enactment of the Buffett Rule, which would assure 

that millionaires pay an effective tax rate above that of ordinary Americans, would be 

unnecessary if tax fairness were assured in the regular tax code. 

These problems are even more pronounced on the business side, where the stakes are high and 

armies of lawyers and accountants stand at the ready to take advantage of any special breaks. 

One prominent example is "deferral": U.S. multinationals that do business overseas are allowed 

to put off paying taxes on their overseas profits indefinitely, until they "repatriate" these profits 

to the United States. This creates an incentive to move real economic activity-jobs and 

assets-overseas, but it also creates an enormous incentive to play accounting games that 

move book profits offshore. By designating profits as "overseas income," corporations can put 

off paying U.S. taxes indefinitely or until another "one-time only" repatriation holiday. Without 

the big tax preference for foreign profits created by deferral, there would be no reason for 

American corporations to set up shell subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and contort their 

business and accounting practices to move money through those subsidiaries. Our business tax 

rules are full of special-interest breaks that increase complexity and compliance costs while 

allowing America's largest and most profitable corporations to avoid paying taxes. 

Simplicity means 

ami students 

tax credit compliance easier for working families 

Some beneficial tax credits for the poor and middle class are needlessly complicated and 

difficult to comply with. For example, Congress could make tax filing easier for families with 

children by simplifying and standardizing definitions used in child-related tax exemptions and 

credits. Currently, the child tax credit, earned income tax credit, and the head of household 

filing status have different definitions for a child, with different requirements for both qualified 

ages and levels of support.19 By using a single definition, these provisions of the tax code can be 

administered in a more cost efficient manner. The earned income tax credit has additional 

complexity, with the Internal Revenue Service noting, "[tJhe eligibility requirements and 

computations are complex, yet EITC recipients are relatively less able to understand complex 

rules and less likely to speak English as their primary language, creating a recipe for 

confusion.,,2o 

Middle-class taxpayers also face a variety of complex tax rules in the higher-education arena. 

With multiple tax programs to incentivize saving for college, reimburse costs while attending 

college, and provide support for loan repayment/ 1 navigating the tax rules associated with 

college can become an exhausting task. Furthermore, the American Opportunity Tax Credit 
290 

continues to be authorized on only a temporary basis and expires after 2017. Congress should 

make college incentives in the tax code easier to understand by streamlining all of these 

benefits into one vehicle, a permanent American Opportunity Tax Credit. 

Congress should be w'ary of regressive policy masquerading as simplification 

Regressive policies that would shift the tax burden from the rich to those below them on the 

income scale are of course very unpopular. And so they are often presented as something they 

are not: measures to simplify tax filing. 

The budget outline released by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-W/) is a case 

in point. The House budget bemoans the complexity of the tax code at length. But the actual 

policies proposed have little to do with making the tax code simpler and everything to do with 

making it less progressive, The talk of simplicity is a distraction from the budget's real-world 

effects, namely shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle class. 22 In fact, this approach 

would keep or expand features of the tax code that add complexity and encourage gaming the 

system, while dramatically reducing the progressive rate structure in the name of "simplicity," 

Simplification is a laudable goal, but Congress should focus on the kind of simplification that 

matters for middle-class families, while balancing the goal of simplification against 

distributional goals, revenue needs, and other important policy concerns. 
291 

Tax reform should raise revenue for investments in the middle 

class 

We have a revenue problem. Repeated tax cuts played an outsized role in creating the budget 

deficits of the last decade, and setting the stage for the current drive for austerity that is 

holding back the recovery and damaging the middle class. 

As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society." They pay for the 

foundational public investments that are critical to a modern prosperous society, such as 

infrastructure, education, and basic scientific research. They pay for services that only the 

government can effectively perform, such as national defense and ensuring clean food, safe 

consumer products, and clean water. Taxes make it possible for us to meet our societal 

obligation to care for our veterans, our aged, and our impoverished. And taxation allows us to 

overcome national challenges and achieve extraordinary feats. Apollo 11, the Hoover Dam, and 

the Internet were all financed with tax revenues. 

Current federal revenue levels are at their lowest levels since the 1950s, a time before 

Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid to education, and a host of other federal programs that are 

now viewed as core responsibilities of the federal government. Some of this is driven by the 

recession, but even once incomes begin to rebound, our federal tax code will not raise enough 

revenue to meet the challenges America will face in the coming decades. 

In the long run, the lax code must raise adequate revenue to meet om' nation's 

needs 

According to Congressional Budget Office projections, maintaining today's tax code will result in 

revenues averaging about 18.5 percent of gross domestic product over the next decade. 23 From 

1998 to 2001-the last years in which we had balanced budgets-revenues averaged about 20 

percent of GDP. And in the intervening years, our population has aged, baby boomers have 

started to retire, health care costs have risen, and our national security needs have changed 

dramatically. Clearly, generating additional revenue is a necessary component of any practical 

plan to address our budget challenges. 

In "Reforming Our Tax System, Reducing Our Deficit," the Center for American Progress 

proposed a plan to overhaul the federal income tax code that will raise increased revenues 

progressively While making the tax system more efficient, simple, fair, and comprehensible.24 

Under our plan, by the middle to the end of this decade federal revenues will match those 

revenue levels recommended by the bipartisan "Simpson-Bowles" plan. These revenue levels 

have been agreed to by Democrats and Republicans, and are sufficient to put the budget on a 
292 

sustainable path while dealing with sequestration and investing in the recovery. But it is likely 

that more revenues will be necessary over the long term if America is gOing to adequately 

invest in education, infrastructure, science and technology, energy, and the other investments 

in the middle class that will determine future growth and prosperity. 

All of the bipartisan plans, including Simpson-Bowles, have proposed raising revenue levels 

above that of the historical average. And there are many good reasons to be skeptical that 

averages from the last 60 years are appropriate benchmarks for the next 60. First and foremost, 

these averages are highly misleading-they obscure a clear rise in tax revenues, decade by 

decade, as the federal government took on more responsibility for the health care of senior 

citizens and as health care costs rose more generally. 

More importantly, it's simply wrong to try and budget for the future by looking backwards and 

trying to shoehorn future needs into whatever the past levels have been. Instead, we should be 

trying to determine broadly how much public investment will be required as we move deeper 

into the 21st century, and then how do we pay for those investments in the most efficient way 

possible. Why should we even consider the average from the past 60 years as an appropriate 

constraint unti12070? Certainly everyone agrees that times and circumstances have changed, 

and that the federal government should, presumably, change with them. 

The United States raises far less in tax revenue, at all levels of government, than other first 

world countries. In 2010 only two DECD countries, Mexico and Chile, had lower government 

revenues as a share of GDP than the United States. 2S Revenue as a share of GDP in the United 

States was more than 25 percent lower than the DECD average.26 That difference amounted to 

nearly $1.3 trillion in revenue in that year alone.27 The United States has historically been a lowtax country, and can remain a low-tax country even while substantially increasing federal 

revenues to provide needed services to the middle class. 

Because U.S. taxes are so much lower than the DECD average, many services provided to the 

middle class in other developed countries are not available in the United States. In Denmark, 

the DECD country with the highest tax revenue as a percentage of GDP,28 the government pays 

for higher education, universal health care, and care for the sick and elderly,29-costs that many 

middle-class American families struggle to payout of their own pockets. Similarly, other 

countries, including Mexico, are able to invest vastly more in preschool than the United States, 

increasing student achievement and allowing middle-class families to participate in the 

workforce without worrying about what to do with their preschoolers while they work. 3D When 

low taxes on the rich translate to reduced services and increased costs for the middle class, the 

American economy suffers. 
293 

Even the most progressive revenue proposals currently on the table are largely geared toward 

stabilizing U.s. debt as a share of GOP, replacing the misguided and damaging spending cuts 

required by "sequestration," and paying for some relatively small investments to help speed 

the recovery. These are important short-term revenue goals that should not be held up by a 

longer tax-reform process; ensuring that the government takes in enough revenue to meet 

current basic funding needs, and raises that revenue in a progressive way, should be seen as a 

crucial prerequisite to any broader tax reform. But in the context of comprehensive reform, 

Congress should ensure that the tax code reflects the revenue needs of a growing economy 

with a vibrant middle class. The coming decades will present challenges and opportunities that 

we have not yet imagined, and we need a tax code capable of raising the revenue we will need 

to confront these changing circumstances efficiently and progressively. 
294 

Endnotes 

1 Heather Boushey and Adam Hersh, "Middle Class Series: The American Middle Class, Income 

Inequality, and the Strength of Our Economy" (Washington: Center for American Progress, 

2012), available at 

http://www.america n progress.org/issues/economy(report(2012/05/17 /11628/the-america nmiddle-class-income-inequality-and-the-strength-of-our-economy/. 

2 Michael Linden, "Middle Class Series: 'rhe Federal Tax Code and Income Inequality" 

(Washington: Center for American Progress, 2012), available at 

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues!tax-reform/report/2012/04/19/11404/the-federaltax-code-and-income-inequality/. 

3 Emmanuel Saez, "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States" 

(Berkley: University of California, Department of Economics, 2013), available at 

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/-saez(saez-UStopincomes-2011. pdf. 

4 Tax Policy Center, "Baseline Distribution of Cash Income and Federal Taxes; by Cash Income 

Percentile, 2004-2022," available at 

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab .cfm ?Docid =3 792&DocType I D=2 (last 

accessed May 2013). 

5 Saez, "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States." 

6 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, "Growing Unequal? Income 

Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries" (2008), available at 

http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/social-issues-migrationhealth/growing-unequal 9789264044197-en. This same OECD report has been used, 

misleadingly, to claim that America has the most progressive tax system in the world. This claim 

comes from the misuse of a single table that reports statistics based on the share of income 

taxes paid by different income classes. These statistics look only at the most progressive part of 

the tax system and largely reflect extreme inequality in the underlYing income distribution, not 

fair, progressive tax policies. For further explanation, see Sarah Ayres and Michael Linden, "Rich 

Americans Are Not Overtaxed," Center for American Progress, March 6, 2012, available at 

http://www.amerleanprogress.org(issu es/tax-reform/ news!2012/03/06!11218/rich-a m erica nsare-not -overtaxed!. 

7 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, "Growing Unequal?" 

8 KPMG, "KPMG's Individual Income Tax and Social Security Rate Survey 2012" (2012), available 

at 

http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/lssuesAndlnsights/ArticiesPublications/Documents/individua 

I-income-tax-rate-surveV-2012.pdf. 

9 Seth Hanlon, "Why We Need a Buffett Rule," Center for American Progress, February 29, 

2012, available at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/taxreform/news/2012/02/29/11090!why-we-need-a-buffett-rule/. 

10 Tax Policy Center, "Baseline Distribution of Tax Units with No Income Tax Liability by Cash 

Income Level; Current Law, 2011," available at 

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org(numbers/displayatab.cfm?DoclD=3056 (last accessed May 

2013). 
295 

11 Roger Altman and others, "Reforming Our Tax System, Reducing Our Deficit" (Washington: 

Center for American Progress, 2012), available at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/taxreform/report/2012/12/04/46689/reforming-aur-tax-system-reducing-aur-deficit/. 

12 Congressional Budget Office, "An Analysis of the President's 2014 Budget" (2013), available at 

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44173. 

13 Tax Policy Center, "Taxes on Long-Term Capital Gains and Qualified Dividends; Baseline: 

Current Policy; Distribution by Cash Income Percentile, 2013," available at 

http://www . taxpol icycenter .org/n u m bers/ d isplayatab .cfm ?Docl D=3182&topic2ID=60&topic31 D 

=62&DocTypeID= (last accessed May 2013). 

14 Seth Hanlon and Gadi Dechter, "Congress Should Close the Carried Interest Loophole," Center 

for American Progress, December 18, 2012, available at 

http:// www .a mer ica n prog res s. 0 rg/i ss u e s/ta x -refa rm / news/20 12/12/ 18/48469 / co ngre s sshould-close-the-carried-interest-Ioophole/. 

15 Michael Moss and Kate Zernike, "Campaign Releases Edwards's Earnings," The New York 

Times, July 10, 2004, available at 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/politics/campaign/10edwards.html?pagewanted-all. 

16 Andrea Coombes, "Gingrich avoided $69,000 in Medicare tax in 2010: source," Market 

Watch, January 23, 2012, available at 

http://blags.marketwatch.com/election/2012/01/23/gingrich-avoided-69000-in-medicare-taxin-2010-source/. 

17 Pamela J. Gardiner, Actions Are Needed to Eliminate Inequities in the Employment Tax 

Liabilities of Sole Proprietorships and Single-Shareholder S Corporations (Washington: U.S. 

Department ofTreasury, 2005), available at 

http :Uwww.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2005reports/200530080fr.html. 

18 James Edward Maule, "Tax Complexity of the Dividend Kind," MauledAgain blog, January 6, 

2012, available at 

http://mauledagain.blogspot.com/20120101archive.html#4768594585796099130. 

19 Elaine Maag, "Tax Simplification: Clarifying Work, Child, and Education Incentives" (Falls 

Church, VA: Tax Analysts, 2011), available at http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/1001525-TaxSimplification.pdf. 

20 Taxpayer Advocate Service, "2008 Annual Report to Congress - Volume One" (Washington: 

Internal Revenue Service, 2008), available at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irsutl/08 tas arc msp l.pdf. 

21 James R. White, "Improved Tax Information Could Help Pay for College," Testimony before 

the Senate Finance Committee, "Education Tax Incentives and Tax Reform," July 25, 2012, 

available at http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/White%20Testimony.pdf. 

22 Seth Hanlon, "Ryan's Secret Plan to Shift the Tax Burden Onto the Middle Class," Center for 

American Progress, March 20, 2012, available at http://www.americanprogress.org!issues/taxreform/news/2012/03/20/11304!ryans-secret-plan-to-shift-the-tax-burden-onto-the-middleclass/. 

23 Congressional Budget Office, "Deficits Projected in CBO's Baseline and Under an Alternative 

Fiscal Scenario," available at http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44194 (last accessed May 2013). 

24 Altman and others, "Reforming Our Tax System, Reducing Our Deficit." 
296 

25 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, "Revenue Statistics - Comparative 

tables," available at http://stats.oecd.org/lndex.aspx?Queryld=21699 (last accessed May 2013). 

26 Ibid. 

27 $1.3 trillion is 9 percent of 2010 GOP of the United States according to the OECD. See 

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, "Gross domestic product," available 

at http://stats.oecd.org/lndex.aspx?DatasetCode=SNA TABLEI (last accessed May 2013). 

28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, "Revenue Statistics - Comparative 

tables." 

29 George Blecher, "The Danish Welfare State Works," The New York Times, May 6, 2013, 

available at http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/05/denmarks-work-lifeba!ance/denmarks-we!fare-state-works. 

30 Juliana Herman, Sasha Post, and Scott O'Halloran, "Interactive Map: The United States Is 

Getting Beat on Preschool," Center for American Progress, May 2, 2013, available at 

http://www.americanprogress .org/issues/ed ucation/news/2013/05/02/6204 7!inte ractivemap-the-united-states-is-getting-beat-on-preschool!. 
297 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Looney, we will turn to you. 

STATEMENT OF ADAM LOONEY, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, 

ECONOMIC STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 

Mr. LOONEY. Thank you very much. Chairman Murray, Ranking 

Member Sessions, and members of the Committee, thank you for 

inviting me here to share my views on the role of tax reform in 

supporting broad-based economic growth and fiscal responsibility. 

The United States faces a daunting outlook for budget deficits, 

an increasingly challenging global economy for many American 

workers and businesses, and rising income inequality. 

Improvements in tax policy could help address these challenges 

by making our tax system more fiscally sustainable, more efficient, 

and more fair. Indeed, any tax reform will ultimately be evaluated 

based on how it affects each of those three criteria. 

But improving on all three dimensions simultaneously is increasingly difficult because of tradeoffs between competing goals of efficiency, revenues, and equity. 

Today’s long-term budget outlook means that we are likely to 

need higher tax revenues in the future. And rising inequality 

means that changes in policy are going to be increasingly scrutinized for how they affect the progressivity of the tax schedule. But 

a tax reform that devotes revenues to deficit reduction and retains 

our progressive system would have much more difficulty achieving 

other goals, such as lowering tax rates. 

In my testimony today, I want to describe some of these tradeoffs 

and some potential paths forward. 

Much of the energy surrounding tax reform focuses on the model 

of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In that reform, tax rates were lowered substantially, and the lost revenue was restored by cutting tax 

breaks, tax deductions, and other so-called tax expenditures. In the 

27 years since then, however, the economic context has changed, 

making such a reform much harder to achieve. 

First, we face a much more challenging long-run budget outlook. 

Most believe that putting the budget on a sustainable path is going 

to require contributions both from spending cuts and from revenue 

increases. Many hope that tax reform can help produce those revenues. 

That makes tax reform just a lot more difficult to achieve because revenues allocated to deficit reduction are revenues that cannot be used to lower rates, and vice versa. 

Moreover, raising revenues and cutting rates at the same time 

is a really tall order. At first glance, the list of tax expenditures 

is projected to add up to $1.4 trillion in 2015. But that figure dramatically overstates the likely revenues that are available from 

cutting tax expenditures. 

Most of these tax expenditures serve substantive goals. They remain on the books because they were too difficult to eliminate in 

1986. And as you know, they are backed by very popular constituencies. Because of these and other considerations, the Congressional Research Service warns that ‘‘it may prove difficult to gain 

more than $100 billion to $150 billion’’ a year from reducing tax 

expenditures. 
298 

And just to put that number in perspective, in order to be revenue neutral, the tax plan included in House Budget Committee 

Chairman Ryan’s budget would require eliminating roughly $450 

billion a year just to balance out on the individual side. And the 

plans initially developed by Domenici-Rivlin and Simpson-Bowles 

likely require reductions in tax expenditures of a similar or even 

larger magnitude. 

And so that gap between the reductions in tax expenditures that 

are required in these plans and those that could be likely agreed 

upon just illustrates the challenge of formulating a plan that simultaneously achieves both goals of lower rates and higher revenues. 

And, of course, a second consideration is the issue of rising income inequality and its relationship to the Tax Code. Income inequality has increased dramatically, particularly at the top, and 

changes in the tax system have tended to exacerbate these inequalities. The very people who have received the biggest income gains 

in the past three decades have also seen the largest tax cuts. 

Concerns about income inequality were much less salient the last 

time we did tax reform in 1986. Back then, the phenomenon of rising inequality had yet to be fully understood or discovered. The 

technical expertise to measure how the tax system affects inequality had yet to really be developed. 

Today not only are such concerns about how progressive the tax 

schedule is, you know, those concerns are much more heightened 

today, but so is our ability to measure how taxes affect those different income groups, and that raises the level of scrutiny directed 

to tax reform but also illustrates a substantive tradeoff: Not only 

must any changes in tax rates and tax expenditures balance out to 

yield whatever revenues are required, but they have to balance out 

within income groups in order to retain a progressive tax structure. 

In a series of papers, colleagues at the Tax Policy Center and I 

have analyzed some of these tradeoffs by examining a hypothetical 

tax reform with the stated goals of maintaining revenues, lowering 

marginal tax rates, and ensuring a progressive tax system. We estimated revenue losses due to lower rates and then tried to pay for 

those revenues losses by eliminating tax expenditures. Overall, the 

available tax breaks were enough to offset revenue losses from 

lower rates. But the resulting tax schedule was less progressive. 

Even when we tried to implement the most progressive possible 

way of reducing the tax breaks, there was simply not enough revenue from the breaks in the top brackets to offset the revenue 

losses from lowering marginal rates. This was true even when we 

incorporated revenue feedback, not just according to the standard 

dynamic effects, but also have incorporating additional feedback effects from potential economic growth. 

And so the implication is that such a tax reform must give up 

on at least one of its stated goals: either higher-income taxpayers 

would receive a tax cut and middle- and lower-income taxpayers a 

tax increase; the deficit would have to go up; preferences for savings and investment would have to be reduced; or marginal tax 

rates would need to be higher. 

Of course, these considerations do not rule out tax reform; indeed, many experts have put forward plans that provide more in-
299 

cremental reforms that simultaneously achieve efficiency gains, 

higher revenues, and a more progressive system. But such plans 

require substantial compromises. 

For instance, certain plans achieve their distributional goals by 

eliminating preferential rates for capital gains and dividends or 

curtailing other savings and investment-related tax breaks. 

Other incremental reforms propose improving the efficiency by 

cutting inefficient tax expenditures. A common thread is that all of 

these proposals enhance economic efficiency, raise revenues, and do 

so in a progressive way. 

That concludes my prepared remarks, and I look forward to your 

questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Looney follows:] 
300 

Embargoed Until 5/22/2003 at 2:30 p.m. ET 

Testimony Prepared for the Hearing: 

"Supporting Broad-Based Economic Growth and Fiscal Responsibility through Tax Reform" 

Senate Committee on the Budget 

May 22, 2013 

By Adam Looney 

Senior Fellow 

The Brookings Institution 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and Members of the Committee: Thank you for 

inviting me to share my views on the role of tax reform in supporting broad-based economic 

growth and fiscal responsibility. 

The United States faces a daunting outlook for budget deficits, an increasingly challenging 

global economy for many American workers and businesses, and rising income inequality. 

Improvements in tax policy could help address these challenges by making our tax system more 

fiscally sustainable, more efficient, and more fair. Indeed, any tax reform will be evaluated based 

on how it affects each of those three criteria. 

But improving on all three dimcnsions simultaneously is increasingly difficult because of 

tradeoffs between competing goals of efficiency, revenues, and equity. 

Today's long-term budget outlook means that we're likely to need higher tax revenues in the 

future. And rising inequality means that changes in policy will be increasingly scrutinized for 

how they affect the progressivity of the tax schedule. But a tax reform that devotes revenues to 

deficit reduction and retains our progressive system would have much more difficulty achieving 

other goals-such as lowering tax rates. 

In my testimony today, I want to describe some of these tradeoffs and some potential paths 

forward. 

Tax Reform and the Budget 

Much of the energy surrounding tax reform focuses on the model of the Tax Reform Act of 

1986. In that reform, tax rates were lowered substantially and the lost revenue was restored by 

cutting tax breaks, deductions, exclusions, and other so-called tax expenditures. That reform 

enhanced economic efficiency without increasing the deficit. In the 27 years since then, however, 

the economic context has changed, making such a reform harder to achieve. I 

I For a further discussion see: Greenstone, Michael, Dmitri Koustas, Karen Li, Adam Looney, and Leslie B. 

Samuels. "A Dozen Economic Facts About Tax Refonn," The Hamilton Project (May 2012). 
301 

Embargoed Until5!22!2003 at 2:30 p.m. ET 

First, we face a dire long-run budget outlook; most believe that putting the budget on a 

sustainable path will require contributions from both spending cuts and revenue increases. Many 

hope that tax reform can help produce those revenues. 

This makes tax reform more difficult because revenues allocated to deficit reduction are 

revenues that cannot be used to reduce rates, and vice versa. 

Moreover, raising revenues and cutting rates at the same time is a tall order. At first glance, the 

list of tax expenditures is projected to add up to $1.4 trillion in 2015.2 But that figure 

dramatically overstates the revenue gains that are available from cutting expenditures. 

Some expenditures, including obscure items like imputed rent, would be difficult to eliminate for 

practical or administrative reasons; others, like credits and deductions for working families with 

children are integral to combating poverty and encouraging employment. These categories 

account for roughly one quarter of all tax expenditures.3 An additional one-third of the tax 

expenditures arise from the preferential treatment of savings and investment. And the largest 

non-savings-related expenditures include those for health insurance, mortgage interest, state and 

local taxes, and charitable contributions. These, and many others, tend to serve substantive goals, 

remain on the books because they were too difficult to eliminate in 1986, and, as you well know, 

are backed by popular constituencies. 

In addition to political difficulties, there are basic practical issues to consider. Certain tax 

expenditures exist for the purposes of simplifying the tax system, to reduce record keeping, or to 

minimize the filing burden on taxpayers. Eliminating those provisions or scaling back others 

could make the system more complicated and onerous. 

Because of such considerations, the Congressional Research Service warns that "it may prove 

difficult to gain more than $100 billion to $150 billion" each year from reducing tax 

expenditures.4 And those estimates are based on a 35 percent top rate; if marginal tax rates were 

reduced, eliminating a dollar's worth of deductions would raise proportionately less revenue. In 

other words, if eliminating a dollar of mortgage interest today raised 39 cents, under a top rate of 

25 percent, it would raise only 25 eents-37 percent less. 

To put these numbers in perspective, in order to be revenue-neutral, the tax plan included in 

House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan's budget would require eliminating roughly 

$450 billion worth of tax expenditures each year just to balance out the individual income tax 

rate cuts targeted in his plan.5 The plans initially developed by the Domenici-Rivlin Task Force 

2 Marron, Donald B. "How Large are Tax Expenditures? A 2012 Update," Tax Notes (April 9, 2012): 235. 

3 For a description of these expenditures, see Nguyen, Hang, James Nunns, Eric Toder, and Roberton Williams. 

"How Hard Is It to Cut Tax Preferences to Pay for Lower Tax Rates?" Tax Policy Center (July 10,2012): Table l. 

, Gravelle, Jane G. and Thomas L. Hungerford. "The Challenge of Individual Income Tax Reform: An Economic 

Analysis of Tax !lase !lroadening," Congressional Research Service (March 22, 2012): 3. 

'Tax Policy Center Table Tl3-0110 
302 

Embargoed Until 5/22/2003 at 2:30 p.m. ET 

and the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which reduce rates and contribute to deficit reduction, 

likely require reductions in tax expenditures of a similar or larger magnitude. 

The gap between the reductions in tax expenditures required by such plans and those that could 

be agreed upon illustrates the challenge of formulating a plan that achieves both lower rates and 

higher revenues. 

Tax Reform in a Progressive System 

A second consideration is the issue ofrising income inequality and its relationship to the tax 

code. Earnings have risen dramatically at the top-by more than 250 percent over the past 30 

years for households in the top one percent of the income distribution. At the same time, many 

households at the middle and bottom have experienced stagnating or even declining earnings. 

Changes in the tax system over the past 30 years have exacerbated these problems; the very 

people who have received the biggest income gains in the past three decades have also seen the 

largest tax cuts. A progressive tax code is perhaps the most significant and powerful tool 

available to counteract income inequality. Indeed, there are increasing calls for policymakers to 

use the tax code for that purpose. 

Such concerns were much less salient the last time we did tax reform. In 1986, the phenomenon 

of rising inequality had yet to be fully discovered or understood, and the technical expertise to 

measure how the tax system affected inequality had yet to be developed. 

Today not only are concerns about the progressivity of the tax schedule heighted, but so is our 

ability to measure how tax changes affect different groups. That raises the level of scrutiny 

directed to reform and also reveals a substantive tradeoff: that any changes in rates and tax 

expenditures must balance out within income groups in order to retain a progressive tax 

structure. 

In a series of papers, colleagues at the Tax Policy Center and I analyzed these tradeoffs by 

examining a hypothetical reform with the stated goals of maintaining tax revenues, lowering 

marginal tax rates, while at the same time ensuring a progressive tax system.6 We took as an 

example a plan that lowered the top rate from 35 to 28 percent and continued the low rates that 

apply to savings and investment. These rate reductions are roughly the same levels specified in 

earlier plans from Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin, but are substantially smaller than 

those specified in Chairman Ryan's plan. We asked what it would take to achieve other goals of 

revenue and progressivity. 

6 Brown, Samuel, William Gale, and Adam Looney. "On the Distributional Effects of Base-Broadening Income Tax 

Refonn," Tax Policy Center (August 1,2012); Brown, Samuel, William Gale, and Adam Looney. "TPC's Analysis 

of Governor Romney's Tax Proposals: A Follow-Up Discussion," Tax Policy Center (November 7, 2012); Marron, 

Donald. "Understanding TPC's Analysis of Governor Romney's Tax Plan," Tax Vox (August 8, 2012); and Nguyen 

et al. (2012). 
303 

Embargoed Until5!22!2003 at 2:30 p.m. ET 

In that analysis, we estimated the revenue losses due to lower rates, and then tried to pay for 

those revenue losses by eliminating tax expenditures. We assumed that certain tax expenditures 

were off the table because of the administrative difficulty of closing certain breaks; others were 

offthe table because they provided preferential treatment for savings and investment. 

Overall, the available tax breaks were enough to offset revenue losses from lower rates. But this 

resulting tax schedule, we found, was less progressive. Even when we implemented the most 

progressive way of reducing the remaining tax breaks, there was simply not enough revenue 

from these breaks in the top brackets to offset the revenue losses from lower marginal tax rates. 

This result-that this sort of base-broadening reform led to a less progressive tax system-was 

true even when we incorporated revenue feedback, not just according to the standard dynamic 

effects used by Tax Policy Center, Treasury, and the loint Committee on Taxation, but also 

additional feedback effects from optimistic estimates of potential economic growth, drawn from 

theoretical models. 

The implication is that such a tax reform must give up on at least one of its stated goals: either 

higher-income taxpayers would receive a tax cut and middle- and lower-income taxpayers a tax 

increase; the deficit would go up; preferences for savings and investment would have to be 

reduced; or marginal tax rates would need to be higher. 

Prospects for Reform 

Of course, these considerations don't rule out tax reform; indeed, many experts have put forward 

plans that provide more incremental reforms that simultaneously achieve efficiency gains, higher 

revenues, and a more progressive tax system. But such plans require substantial compromises. 

For instance, certain plans proposed by the Domenici-Rivlin Task Force and the BowlesSimpson Commission achieve their distributional goals by eliminating preferential rates for 

capital gains and dividends and curtailing other savings and investment-related tax breaks. 

A host of other incremental reforms propose improving the efficiency of the tax system not by 

reducing rates but by reducing inefficient or wasteful tax expenditures. For example, deductions 

and exemptions-like for mortgage interest, that currently provide tax savings of up to 

39.6 percent-could be replaced with flat credits of, say, 15 percent, providing continued support 

for homeowners but in a less-costly and more progressive way. 7 An overall limit on the value of 

tax expenditures at 2 percent of income would provide an across-the-board reduction in costly 

tax expenditures.s The President's Budget includes a provision to limit the amount that certain 

tax deductions and preferences can reduce tax liability by to 28 percent. And at a meeting 

7 Batchelder, Lily L., Fred T. Goldberg, Jr., and Peter R. Orszag. "Reforming Tax Incentives into Uniform 

Refundable Tax Credits," The Brookings Institution Policy Brief 156 ('August 2006). 

8 Feldstein, Martin, Daniel Feenberg, and Maya MacGuineas. "Capping Individual Tax Expenditure Benefits," 

NBER Working Paper 16921 (April 2011) 
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convened by the Hamilton Project last February, a bipartisan group of tax experts presented 

proposals to reduce benefits from the mortgage interest deduction, subsidies for fossil fuels, 

preferences for retirement savings, and the overall value of deductions.9 A common thread is that 

all ofthese proposals enhance economic efficiency, raise revenues, and increase progressivity. 

Beyond economic appeal, proponents of this approach hope for political appeaL To paraphrase 

Harvard Professor Martin Feldstein: if Republicans want to reduce the deficit by cutting 

spending and Democrats want to increase revenues, by focusing on tax expenditures we should 

find a middle ground. JO 

9 See Alan Viard, "Replacing the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction," Joseph E. Aldy, "Eliminating Fossil Fuel 

Subsidies," Karen Dynan, "Better Ways to Promote Saving through the Tax System," and Diane Lim "Limiting 

Individual Income Tax Expenditures" in 15 Wak" to Rethink the Federal Budget, The Hamilton Project (February 

2013). 

10 Feldstein, Martin. "A Simple Route to Major Deficit Reduction," The Wall Street 10umal (February 20, 2013), 
305 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. de Rugy? 

STATEMENT OF VERONIQUE DE RUGY, PH.D., SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON 

UNIVERSITY 

Ms. de Rugy. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and 

members of the Committee, it is an honor to appear before you 

today to talk about fiscal responsibility and economic growth. My 

name is Veronique de Rugy. I am a senior research fellow at the 

Mercatus Center at George Mason University where I study tax 

and budget issues. 

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released numbers 

showing that the U.S. short-term fiscal situation has improved over 

the last few months. While this is a welcome development, it also 

shows that our long-term budget outlook is still extremely worrisome. 

As the CBO noted in its report, not only are high and sustained 

levels of debt an impediment to economic growth in the long term, 

but it also makes it very hard for the Federal Government to prevent and respond to future financial crises. And one of the reasons 

the CBO adds is that it makes the use of monetary and fiscal stimulus extremely difficult. In other words, the long-term improvement in our deficit outlook should not distract Congress from addressing our long-term debt problem. 

However, in the pursuit of debt reduction, Congress ought to be 

very careful. While most of the recent discussions about debt reduction have focused on size, what researchers show is that actually 

it is more what the debt reduction packages are made of that matters. So debt reduction can be achieved by cutting taxes—by cutting spending, sorry, by increasing taxes, or by doing a mix of both. 

However, each of these policies has a very, very different outcome 

on level of debt and economic growth. 

So today I will show, based on the research I have done and looking at the way other countries have addressed their debt problems, 

I want to show that spending cuts are more likely to reduce debt 

levels than tax increases; and, two, that spending cuts are less likely than tax increases to produce recession and more likely to 

produce economic growth in the short term and in the long term. 

So let us start. When thinking about debt reduction, one of the 

important questions is to ask: What kind of debt reduction packages is the most effective at cutting the debt? The general consensus among academics working on this issue, including ones from 

the IMF and the OECD, is that fiscal adjustment packages based 

mostly on spending cuts are far more likely to lead to lasting debt 

reduction than those based on tax increases. These findings hold 

true no matter how fiscal adjustments are measured. 

The second question is this: Which is more likely to harm economic growth in the short term—spending cuts or tax increases? 

And just as there is a lot of debate about the short-term economic 

impact of spending increases on economic growth, economists do 

not have a definitive answer on the short-term impact of spending 

cuts on the economy. However, through this debate a few lessons 

have emerged. 
306 

The first one is that tax increases hurt the economy more than 

spending cuts. Extensive research by Harvard University economist 

Alberto Alesina as well as by economists at the IMF has shown 

that fiscal adjustments achieved through spending cuts are less recessionary than those achieved through tax increases. I think the 

case of Europe is a powerful example of this. 

Contrary to the common perception, European governments have 

seldom cut spending, and when they have, these cuts have been 

overwhelmed by large tax increases. As a result, these countries 

have mostly failed to reduce their debt, and many of them are sliding back into recession. 

Second, while expansionary fiscal adjustments based on spending 

cuts are possible, they are more likely to occur when they are accompanied by growth-oriented policies such as structural labor 

market reforms and/or monetary easing. 

Third, while cutting spending may not always result in a shortterm economic boost, there are long-term fiscal reasons for pursuing them since they will help prevent future debt crises. 

Finally, I would be remiss if in a hearing about economic growth 

and tax reform I did not mention that most economists believe that 

lower taxes are associated with higher economic growth. Keynesian 

models, for instance, emphasize the short-run benefits of tax cuts, 

stressing that they put money in the pockets of consumers and in 

the accounts of businesses, which then boost aggregate demand. On 

the other end of the spectrum, the real business cycle school of 

thought focuses on the longer run and emphasizes that lower marginal tax rates tend to increase people’s incentive to work and save, 

increasing aggregate output. 

Real-world experience validates the academic case for low taxation. Macroeconomists Christina and David Romer, for instance, 

examined 60 years of U.S. data, and they found that a tax cut of 

1 percent of GDP increases real GDP by about 3 percent over the 

short term and by about 1.8 percent over the medium run. But 

while Romer and Romer focused on the short and medium term, 

there are a lot of other studies that have focused on the long-term 

impact of low taxes. For instance, Nobel Prize winner Ed Prescott 

has actually looked at the change in habit, in work habit in different countries, in particular between Europe and the U.S., and 

one of the things that he has found is that this change in work 

habit can mostly be attributed to the difference in tax rates in 

those countries. 

So, for instance, one of the things that he found is that when the 

U.S. had higher marginal tax rates than Europe in the 1970s, 

Americans worked much less than Europeans back then. And when 

this has been the reversed, the impact on work habits have 

changed. 

This is even more pronounced in countries where the welfare 

state is more beneficial. So, I mean, there is a lot of work on the 

impact and the benefit of a low level of taxes on the economy. 

On this I will end, and I am looking forward to your questions. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. de Rugy follows:] 
307 

.~. MERCATUS CENTER 

.~. George Mason University 

Bridging the gap between academic idea5 and rcal-world problems 

TESTIMONY 

THE EFFECT OF TAX INCREASES AND SPENDING CUTS ON 

ECONOMIC GROWTH 

BY VERONIQUE DE RUGY 

Senior Research rcil(lw 

Testimony before the Senate Budget Committee 

May 22, 2013 

Good morning, Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and members of the committee. Thank you 

for the chance to discuss the effect of tax increases and spending cuts on economic growth. I appreciate 

the opportunity to testify today. 

Last week the Congressional Budget Office released a revision of its budget outlook forFY 2013.' According to CBO, our short-term outlook seems to be improving, at least on a superficial level, with this year's 

deficit now expected to be $642 billion, That is $200 billion lower than projected in February, which 

would make it the smallest deficit since 2008. 

There are many reasons for continued pessimism, however. At 76 percent, the debt-to-GDP ratio is still 

much higher than the 2008 level of 36 percent. Unfortunately, even under the new projections the debtto-GDP ratio will still be around 74 percent atthe end of the decade. And that's assuming Congress doesn't 

overturn sequestration and all of CBO's assumptions hold true, In CBO's alternative scenario, debt will be 

above 83 percent of GDP by the end of the decade. 

The explosion of spending from programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will trigger 

even higher levels of debt in the years outside the lO-year budget window. Unfortunately, high debt levels 

are problematic. As CBO explains, 

Such high and rising debt later in the corning decade would have serious negative consequences: When interest rates return to higher (more typical) levels, federal spending 

on interest payments would increase substantially, Moreover, because federal borrowing reduces national saving, over time the capital stock would be smaller and total wages would be lower than they would be if the debt was reduced. In addition, lawmakers 

1. Congressional Budget Office, "Updated Budget Projections: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023," May 201 3, http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files 

Icbofiles/attachments/44172-Baseline2.pdf 

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308 

would have less flexibility than they would have if debt levels were lower to use tax and 

spending policy to respond to unexpected challenges. Finally, a large debt increases the 

risk of a fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose so much confidence in the government's ability to manage its budget that the government would be unable to borrow 

at affordable rates. 

In other words, a brief dip in the deficit is no reason to be complacent. The federal government should 

continue to work on addressing its long-term debt problem. However, in the pursuit of debt reduction, 

it is important to remember that the type of fiscal adjustment that we implement is more important than 

its size. 

In theory, debt reduction can be achieved by cutting spending or by raising taxes, or by adopting a mix of 

spending cuts and tax increases. 

When anti-austerity policymakers or critics talk about austerity without even alluding to this distinction 

in how deficit reduction is achieved, they do a disservice to the clarity of the issues at hand, since different types of austerity measures produce very different results.' 

This testimony is based on a paper I wrote with Harvard University economist Alberto Alesina, called 

"Austerity: The Relative Effects of Tax Increases versus Spending Cuts." As we explain in detail in that 

paper, the consensus in the academic literature is that the composition of fiscal adjustment is a key factor 

in achieving successful and lasting reductions in the debt-to-GDP ratio. The general consensus is that 

fiscal adjustment packages comprising mostly spending cuts are more likely to lead to lasting debt reduction than those composed of tax increases. 

There is still significant debate about the short-term economic impact of fiscal adjustments, but some 

important lessons have emerged. First, fiscal adjustments and economic growth are not incompatible. 

Second, while fiscal adjustments may not always trigger immediate economic growth, spending-based 

adjustments are much less costly in terms of output than tax-based ones. In fact, when governments try 

to reduce their debt by raising taxes, the policy is more likely to result in deep and pronounced recessions, 

possibly making the fiscal adjustment counterproductive. Finally, there is some evidence that expansionary fiscal adjustments are more likely to occur when they are accompanied by growth-oriented policies, 

such as policies liberalizing both labor regulations and markets for goods and services, in addition to a 

monetary policy that keeps interest rates low. 

These findings are key to designing proper policies for the United States. They also suggest that the budget plans proposed by both President Obama and Chairman Murray are unlikely to reduce the country's 

debt and may also slow economic growth if implemented as proposed. 

1. HOW TO REDUCE DEBT-TO-GDP RATIOS 

The United States is not the first nation to struggle with a worrisomely high debt-to-GDP ratio. The evidence suggests that the types of fiscal adjustment packages that are most likely to reduce debt are those 

that are heavily weighted toward spending reductions, not tax increases' 

2. Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, "The Design of Fiscal Adjustments" (NBER Working Paper 18423, National Bureau of Economic Re· 

search, September 2012), http://www.nber,org!papers/wl8423.pdf (subscription only). 

3. Matt Mitchel! of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has reviewed the academic literature on this issue, finding that. of the 

22 papers published that looked at this question, all of them find that the most promismg way to shrink the debt IS to not increase taxes and 

to restrain spending so that it shrinks relative to economic output. See Matt Mitchel!, "Does UK Double-Dip Prove That Austerity Doesn't 

Work?" Neighborhood Effects (blDg), Mercatus Center at George Mason University, April 26, 2012, http://neighborhoodeffects.mercatus 

.org/2012/04/26/does~uk·double·dip·prove·that-austerity~doesnt-work/. See also Alesina and Ardagna, "Design of Fiscal Adjustments"; 

MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 
309 

One of the difficulties of studying the impact oflarge fiscal adjustments on both debt and economic growth 

involves the definition and identification of successful and expansionary episodes. For a long time, the 

identification criteria were based on observed outcomes: a large fiscal adjustment was one where the 

cyclically adjusted primary-deficit-over-GDP ratio fell by a certain amount (normally at least 1.5 percent 

of GDP). Following the approach pioneered by University of California, Berkeley, economists Christina 

Romer and David Romer,' IMF economists suggested a different way to identify large exogenous fiscal 

adjustments: a large fiscal adjustment is an explicit attempt by the government to reduce the debt aggressively and it is unrelated to the economic cycle.' This new approach was meant to guarantee the "exogeneity" of the fiscal adjustments. 

The authors also suggest that a difference in the way fiscal adjustments are measured would change the 

overall results. However, the difference in the way fiscal adjustments are defined does not change the 

overall result. A 2012 study by Alberto Alesina and Goldman Sachs's economist Silvia Ardagna shows that 

spending-based adjustments are more likely to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, regardless of whether fiscal 

adjustments are defined in terms of improvements in the cyclically adjusted primary budget deficit or in 

terms of premeditated policy changes designed to improve a country's fiscal outlook. 6 Similar results with 

more advanced technical tools using the IMF episodes are also reached by Alberto Alesina and Bocconi 

University economists Carlo A. Favero and Francesco Giavazzi.' 

Other research has found that fiscal adjustments based mostly on the spending side are less likely to be 

reversed and, consequently, have led to more long-lasting reductions in debt-to-GDP ratios.' Beyond 

showi ng whether spending-based adjustments or revenue-based ones are more effective at reducingdebt, 

the literature has also looked at which components of expenditures and revenue are more important. The 

results on these points are not as clear-cut, partly due to the wide differences in countries' tax and spending systems. With that caveat in mind, successful fiscal adjustments are often rooted in reform of social 

programs and reductions to the size and pay of the government workforce rather than in other types of 

spending cuts.' Results about which type of revenue increases contribute to successful fiscal adjustment 

are much less c1ear.'o 

Also, while successfully reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio is possible, a majority of historical fiscal adjustment episodes fail to do so. Data from studies by Alesina and Ardagna and by Andrew Biggs and his 

and Alberto F. Alesina, Carlo A. Favero, and Francesco Giavaz21, ~The Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations" (NBER WorKing Paper 18336, 

National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2012), http:// ................ nber.org/papers/w18336 (subscription only). 

4. Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal 

Shocks," American Economic Review 100, no, 3 (2010): 763-801, 

5. Peter Devries et aL, "A New Action-Based Data'5et of Fiscal Consolidation" (Working Paper 11/128, lMF, June 2011), http://W'NW.imf.org 

/ external/pubs/ft/wpI2011 /wp11128. pdf. 

6. Alesina and Ardagna, "Design of Fiscal Adjustments," 

7. Alesina, Favero, and Glavani, "Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations." 

8. Alesina and Ardagna, ~Design of Fiscal Adjustments." 

9. Andrew Biggs, Kevin Hassett, and Matthew Jensen, "A Guide for Deficit Reduction in the United States Based on Historical Consolidations 

That Worked" (AEI Economic Policy Working Paper, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, 2010). See also Alberto Alesina and 

Roberto Perotti, "Fiscal Expansions and Fiscal Adjus1ments in OECD Countries" (NBER Working Paper 5214, National Bureau of Economic Research. August 1995), http://W'NIN.nber.org/papers/w5214;AlbertoAlesinaand Roberto Perotti, "Fiscal Adjustments in DECO 

Countries: Composition and Macroeconomic Effects" (Working Paper 96/70, IMF, June 1997), http://W'NW.imf.org/external/pubs/cat 

Ilongres.cfm?sk=2037.0; Philip R. Lane and Roberto Perotti, "The Importance of Composition of Fiscal Policy" (Working Paper 200111, 

Trinity College Dublin, October 2001); Stephanie Guichard et al., "What Promotes Fiscal Consolidation: OECD Country Ex.periences" 

(Working Paper 553. OrganisatIon for Economic Cowoperatlon and Development. May 2007), http://search.oecd.org/offioaldocuments 

Idisp!aydocumentpdf/?dodanguage=en&cote=eco/wkp(2007)13, 

10. Biggs, Hassett, and Jensen, "GuIde for Deficit Reduction." 

MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 
310 

colleagues show that roughly 80 percent of the adjustments studied were failures. 1I One explanation is that 

even (or especially) in a time of crisis, lawmakers are driven more by politics than by good public policy. 

Countries in fiscal trouble generally get there through years of catering to pro-spending constituencies, 

be they senior citizens or members of the military industrial complex, and their fiscal adjustments tend 

to make too many of the same mistakes. As a result, failed fiscal consolidations are more the rule than the 

exception. 

2. FISCAL ADJUSTMENTS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 

While there is little debate over the fact that sound fiscal balance and restraints in government spending 

have a positive impact on GDP in the long run, the question of whether, in the short term, budget cuts 

shrink or expand GDP is far from settled.!' This is an especially important question for countries where 

government spending as a share of GDP is close to or above 50 percent. A few uncontroversial points have 

emerged, however, despite the differences in approaches and in the definitions of successful or expansionary episodes." 

First, expansionary fiscal adjustments are not impossible. There is now a long trail of academic papers 

that have studied and documented the impact of fiscal adjustments on economic growth. The first in the 

series was by Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano in 1990.14 It was followed by a large literature, which 

was reviewed in depth by Alesina and Ardagna in 2010.15 However, today the question is not whether 

expansionary fiscal adjustments are possible, but whether in the current circumstances it is possible to 

design fiscal adjustments with as little cost as possible to the economy, given that monetary conditions 

will provide little additional help. It is perfectly possible that fiscal adjustment today might be on average 

more costly than in the past, but this does not mean that the medicine is not necessary. 

Second, while not all fiscal adjustments lead to economic expansion, spending-based adjustments are less 

recessionary than those achieved through tax increases." Moreover, when successful spending-based 

adjustments were not expansionary, they were associated with mild and short-lived recessions, while tax 

11, A!esina and Ardagna find that about 84 percent of fiscal reforms fail to substantially reduce a nation's debHo~GDP level. Alberto Alesina 

and Silvia Ardagna, "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes versus Spending~ (NBER Workiflg Paper 15438. National Bureau of Economic 

Research, October 2009), http)/WlNlNnber.org/papers/w15438. Biggs and his colleagues find an 80 percent failure rate. Biggs, Hassett, 

artd Jensen, "Guide for Deficit Reduction." 

12. On the long-fun ben~f1t~ of modest government spending, see Matt Mitchel. "Why This Isn't a Time to Worry That the Government Is 

Spending Too little," Neighborhood Effects (blDg), June 30, 2010, http://neighborhoodeffect5.mercatus.org/2010/06/30/why~thiS·isnt·a 

-time-to-worry-that-governmenHs-spending-too-little/. See also Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson, ~Government Size and Growth: 

A Survey and Interpretation of the Evidence" (lFN Working Paper 858, Institutet fOr Naringslivsforskning, April 2011). 

13. Alesina and Ardagna's 2012 paper gives a detailed look at recent controversies by performing a host of sensitivity tests, changing defimtions, and exploring alternative approaches. They try to darifythe differences between the methodologies and empirical results. Their 

paper brings other variables that sometimes accompany nscal adjustments into the discussion, expandmg the analysis to include the effects 

of a vast set of poliCies that constitute the "package" accompanying the fiscal cuts By considering many alternative definitions of fiscal 

adjustments, they are able to do robustness checks on their previous results. Alesina and Ardagna, "Design of Fiscal Adjustments." 

14. Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano, "Can Severe Fiscal Contractions Be Expansionary? Tales of Two Small European Countries," NBER 

Macroeconomics Annual (MIT Press, 1990): 95-122, http://www.nber.org/papers/w3372. 

15. Aleslna and Ardagna, ~Large Changes in Fisca! Policy." 

16, For another good summary of the IMF findings on this issue, see Garett Jones, "Which Hurts More in the Long Run, Tax Hikes or Spending 

Cuts?," Econlog (blog), November 14, 2012, http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/11 /which_hurts_mor.html. 

MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 
311 

increases were unsuccessful at reducing the debt and associated with large recessions. l7 These findings 

hold even when using the IMF definitions of fiscal adjustments.!' 

In fact, these findings are consistent with IMF studies themselves.!' For instance, IMF economists Jaime 

Guajardo, Daniel Leigh, and Andrea Pescatori study 173 fiscal consolidations in rich countries and find 

that "nations that mostly raised taxes suffered about twice as much as nations that mostly cut spending."'o 

Third, successful and expansionary fiscal adjustments were those based mostly on spending cuts rather 

than tax increases.'! Also, these adjustments lasted slightly longer and were associated with higher growth 

during the adjustment. Using data from 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 

countries from 1970 to 2010, Alesina and Ardagna find that successful fiscal adjustments on average 

reduced the debt-to-GDP ratio by 0.19 percentage points of GDP in a given year. GDP grew by 3.47 percentage points in total, which is 0.58 percentage points higher than the average growth of G7 countries. 

Successful adjustments lasted for three years on average." 

Table 1 The 10 Largest Episodes. of Successful Fiscal Adjustments 

COUNTRY PERCENT CHANGE IN PERIOD DURATION 

DEFICIT iGDP RATIO (YEARS) 

Denmark -15_1 1983-1986 4 

Sweden -14.1 1993-1998 6 

UK -111 1994-2000 7 

Germany -10.7 1984-1990 7 

Belgium -10.6 1996-2000 S 

Netherlands -8.6 1993-1997 5 

Canada -8.1 1993-1997 5 

Japan -81 1979-1987 9 

Ireland -7.6 1986-1989 4 

Norway -7.4 1999-2000 1 

Source_ Authors' calculations based on Alberto AJesma and 5ilvia Ardagna, "The Design of Fiscal Adju5tmen!5~ 

(NBER Worhng P.iJper No. 18423, NatIOnal Bureau of EconomiC Research, Washmg!on, DC, 5eptember 2012), 

hrcp.//wwvKnber.orglpapers/w18423.pdf (subSCription only) 

17. Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi, "Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations: 

lB. Alesina and Ardagna, ·'Design of Fiscal Adjustments"; Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi, "Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations." 

19. Pete Devries et al., "An Action-Based AnalYSIS of Fiscal Consolidation in OECD Countries" (Working Paper 11/128, IMF, June 2011), 

http://www.imf.org/ external/pubs! cat/longres.aspx ?sk=24892.0. 

20. Jaime Guajardo, Daniel Leigh, and Andrea Pescatori, "Expansionary Austerity New International Evidence" (Working Paper No. 11/158, 

IMF, Washington, DC, July 2011). 

21. Alesina, Favero, and Giavazli, "Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations"; Alesrna and Ardagna, "Design of Fiscal Adjustments." 

22. Alesina and Ardagna's data indicate that successful fiscal adjustment episodes comprised 72 percent in spending cuts and 28 percent in tax 

increases, resulting in an average spending reduction of 4.18 percentage points of GOP and a 1.64 percentage point tax increase. However, even using the IMF definItion, the authors find that successful fiscal adjustment comprised 67 percent in spending cuts and 33 percent 

in tax increases, resulting in an average spending reduction of 3.89 percentage points of GDP and a 1.6 percentage point tax increase. 

Alesina and Ardagna, "Design of Fiscal Adjustments.· 

MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 
312 

Figure 1. The 10 Largest Episodes of Fiscal Adjustments 

C 

Il. 

c -6.0 CI 

~ -8.0 " " .5 

& -10.0 c 

m 

"" U -12.0 

-14.0 

-16.0 

-7.4 

Duration of improved deficit-reduction (year.) 

50urce. Afesina and Ardilgna, RDesign of Fisca! Adjustments" 

How can we explain the fact that spending-based adjustments can result in lower output costs for the 

economy than tax-based ones, or in no output costs at all? IMF economists Prakash Kannan, Alasdair 

Scott, and Marco Terrones argue that this difference in outcomes is not a result of the composition of the 

fiscal adjustment packages, but rather a result of the business cycle having picked up because of other 

forms of government interventions, such as expansionary monetary policy." However, Alesina, Favero, and 

Giavazzi's work shows that taking the business cycle and monetary policy into account does not change 

the main finding." 

If the difference between tax-based and spending-based fiscal adjusnnents is not the result of the business 

cycle or of monetary policy, what explains it? The standard explanation is that lower spending reduces the 

expectation of higher taxes in the future, with positive effects on consumers and investors. In particular, 

there might be a boost in the confidence of the latter-as Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi have shown. But 

there is more. As is often the case, the devil is in the details. Studies by Alesina and Ardagna and by Roberto 

Perotti have noted that fiscal adjustments are multiyear rich policy packages." Austerity measures are 

often undertaken at the same time that other growth-enhancing policy changes are made, and, as such, 

there is much to learn by looking into the details of each successful episode. 

23. Prakash Kannan, Alasdair Scott, and Marco E. Terrones, "From Recession to Recovery: How Soon and How Strong" (!MF, 2012), http:// 

WoMN. imf. erg! extern all n pi se m inarsl eng/2 012/fi ncrises/ pdf I ch8. pdf. 

24. See Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi, "Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations," See also Alesina and Ardagna, "Design of Fiscal Adjustments"; 

and Alberto A!esina and Francesco Giavazzi, eds., Fiscal Po/icy after the Financia' Crisis, National Bureau of Economic Research conference 

report (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 

25. Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, "Tales of Fiscal Adjustments," EconDmic Policy 27 (October 1998): 487-546; Roberto Perotti, ~The 

'Auster~ty Myth': Gain Without Pain?" (NBER Working Paper 17571, National Bureau of Economic Research, Washington, DC, November 

2011), http://papers.nber.org/tmp/29877,w17571.pdf. 

MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 
313 

One important lesson is that several accompanying policies can moderate the contractionary effects of 

fiscal adjustments on the economy and enhance their chances of success." For instance, spending-based 

fiscal adjustment accompanied by supply-side reforms, such as liberalization of markets for labor, goods, 

and services; readjustments of public sector size and pay; public pension reform; and other structural 

changes tend to be less recessionary or even to have positive economic growth." 

Such reforms signal a credible commitment to more market-friendly policies: less taxation, fewer impediments to trade, fewer barriers to entry, less labor market and business regulation. And, of course, with 

enhanced economic freedom, unit labor costs fall and productivity improves, making an expansionary 

fiscal adjustment more likely than a contractionary one. 

Germany's fiscal adjustment of2004-2007 provides a good example." First, the country implemented a 

stimulus by reducing income tax rates. This reduction was part of a series of supply-side-oriented reforms 

implemented between 1999 and 2005, including a wide-ranging overhaul of the income tax system that 

was meant to boost potential growth but that did not have much effect until 2004. In addition, significant 

structural reforms to tackle rigidityin the labor market were put in place, as well as changes to the pension 

system to relieve demographic pressures. These reforms included "an increase in the statutory retirement 

age, the elimination of early retirement clauses, and tighter rules for calculating imputed pension contributions."" Finally, Germany adopted large expenditure cuts to the fringe benefits in public administration 

(such as ending Christmas-related extra payments) and also serious reductions in subsidies for specific 

industries, including residential construction, coal mining, and agriculture.'o 

Sweden provides another example of successful adjustment. The data show that after the recession Sweden's finance minister, Anders Borg, not only successfully implemented reduction in welfare spending 

but also pursued economic stimulus through a permanent reduction in the country's taxes, including a 

20-point reduction to the top marginal income tax rate. At the same time, Sweden benefited from a very 

aggressive monetary policy followed by strong export revenues and firm domestic demand. The country's 

economy is now the fastest-growing in Europe, with real GDP growth of 5.6 percent, which has helped 

the country to rapidly shrink its debt as a percentage of GDP over the past decade." 

26. Perotti, "Austerity Myth." 

27. See Alesina and Ardagna, ~Design of Fiscal Adjustments"; the case studies by Alesina and Ardagna, ~Tales of Fiscal Adjustments W

; and 

PerottI, "Austerity Myth." For speCIfic statist1CS on average changes to goods regulation, barners to entry, public ownership, employment 

protection, union densrry, etc., see tables 17, 18, and 7b in Alesina and Ardagna, "Design of Fiscal Adjustments." 

28. Christina Breuer, jan Gottschalk, and Anna Ivanova, "Germany: Fiscal Adjustment Attempts with and without Reforms, ft in Chipping Away 

at Public Debt: Sources of Failure and Keys to Success jn Fiscal Adjustment, ed. Paolo Mauro (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 

85-115. 

29. Ibid". 107. 

30. The German consolidation also responded quickly to unanticipated challenges ari-sing from the reforms. For instance, the government 

responded to the higheHhan-expected cost of labor-market reforms by raising the Value Added Tax (VAT) rate, with part of the VAT collection going toward financing a reduction in the overall tax burden through a cut In unemployment contribution rates. 

31. IMF's Fiscal Monitor, "Lessons from Sweden," Taking Stock: A Progress Report on Fiscal Adjustment (Washington, DC IMF, October 

2012). htlp:/ /www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fm/2012/02/pdf/fm1202"pdf. The data mentioned come from the Organis.Von for 

Economic Co-operation and Development Stat Extracts, October 2012, http://stats.oecd.org/. See also Veronique de Rugy, "GDP Growth 

Rates: The Swedish Approach," Mercatus Center at George Mason Universiry, May 16, 2012, http://mercatus.org/publication/gdp 

-growth -rates-swedish-approach 

MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNtVERSIlY 
314 

The Swedish example raises the question of the appropriate role of monetary policy in successful fiscal 

adjustments. For instance, there is some evidence that at times exchange rate devaluation (induced by 

an accommodating monetary policy) can help to boost a country's exports as the country becomes more 

competitive and, as a result, can compensate for a previous slowdown in domestic demand." 

Economist Scott Sumner has made the case that the best way to get austerity and growth simultaneously 

is to increase "[nominal] GDP and budget surpluses-the Swedish way!'" To be sure, monetary policy in 

Europe-or in the United States, for that matter-could increase the effectiveness of spending cuts and 

structural reforms (a little like the water you drink to help the medicine to go down). But it is a mistake 

to oversell it, and it certainly will not achieve our long-term goals without serious reductions in government spending. In particular, the devaluation of a country's currency is neither a necessary nor sufficient 

condition for success, as shown by Alesina and Ardagna.34 

There is growing evidence, however, that private investment tends to react more positively to spendingbased adjustments. The data from Alesina and Ardagna, and Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi, for instance, 

show that private-sector capital accumulation increases after governments cut spending, which compensates for the reduction in aggregate demand due to the fiscal adjustments." 

The good news is that it is possible to design a fiscal adjustment that could both reduce the deficit and 

have a minimal or even, in some cases, positive impact on the economy. It requires austerity based mostly 

on spending cuts. This can be accomplished without hurting the least advantaged in society. As Alesina 

wrote in November 2012, 

But if we cut spending, do we necessarily hurt the poor? Not in such countries as Greece, Portugal, 

Spain, and Italy, whose public sectors are so inefficient and wasteful that they can certainly spend 

less without affecting basic services. Even in countries with better-functioning public sectorssuch as France, where public spending is nearly 60 percent of GDP-there's a lot of room to economize without hurting the poorest and most vulnerable. And even in America, public spending is 

about 43 percent of GDP, a level common in Europe not long ago, and up from 34 percent in 2000." 

In other words, Western governments can save money and avoid infiictinginjury on lower-income earners 

or the poor by improving the way welfare programs are targeted; scaling back programs such as Medicare 

that use taxes raised in part from the middle class to give public services right back to the middle class; 

and gradually raising the retirement age to 70. The same holds true for Social Security. What is more, lots 

of savings could be achieved by cutting subsidies going to businesses-which are often large, well-established, and politically connected firms, such as gas and oil companies, farms, automobile manufacturers, 

and banks." 

32. Alesina and Ardagna, "DeSign of Fiscal Adjustments, ~ Also, the current devaluation debate surrounding the G20 ~currency war" has been 

a prime example, See Jan Strupczewski, ~G20 Currency Promises Unlikely to End Devaluation Debate, * Financial Post, February 18, 2013, 

http'/ /busines5 financialpost com!201 3/02/181 g20-currency-war-promises-unHke!y-to-end-devaluation-debate/. 

33. Scott Sumner, "Austerity and Stimulus in Northern Europe," The Money Illusion, May 17,2012, http://..........vw.themoneyillusion 

.com/?p=14381. 

34. Alesina and Ardagna, "Design of Fisca! Adjustments." 

35. Ibid. 

36. Alberto Alesina, ~The Kindest Cuts," City Jouma/, Autumn 2012, http://www.dty-journal.org/2012/22_4_spending-cuts.html. 

37. Matthew Mitchell, 'The Pathology of Privilege: The Economic Consequences of Government Favoritism," (Mercatus Research, Mercatus 

Center at George Mason University, Arlington, VA, July 8, 2012), http://mercatus.org/pub!ication/pathology-privilege-economi c-conse~ 

quences-government-favoritism. 

MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 
315 

CONCLUSION 

Economists disagree a lot when it comes to fiscal policy. For instance, there is no consensus about the size 

of the spending multiplier or where on the Laffer curve most countries are situated. However, a consensus 

seems to have emerged recently that spending-based fiscal adjustments are not only more likely to reduce 

the debt-to-GDP ratio than tax-based ones but also less likely to trigger a recession. In fact, if accompanied 

by the right type of policies (especially changes to public employees' pay and public pension reforms), 

spending-based adjustments can actually be associated with economic growth. 

Fortunately, successful fiscal adjustments are possible when based mostly on spending cuts and accompanied by policies that increase competiveness, as we have seen in the case of Germany, Finland, and other 

more recent examples, such as Estonia and Sweden. However, it is important to refrain from oversimplifying these results since fiscal adjustment packages are often complex and multiyear affairs. Also, many 

of the successful (i.e., expansionary and debt-to-GDP-reducing) fiscal adjustments in this literature are 

ones where the growth is export-led during times when the rest of the global economy is healthy or even 

booming. While there has been some recovery in the midst of the recession, we should recognize that it 

may be much harder today to achieve export-led growth when many countries are struggling. 

The cost of well-designed adjustments plans will not be zero, but will be relatively low. Besides, it is not 

clear that the alternative to reducing spending is more economic growth. In fact, the alternative for certain countries could be a very messy debt crisis. 

ABOUT THE MERCATUS CENTER AT 

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 

n-e Mefcatus Center at George Mason University 

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MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 
316 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Chairmen Camp and Ryan in the House have made rate reduction their number one priority in tax reform. They have set a goal 

of reducing the top individual and corporate tax rates by about onethird to 25 percent. Along with that rate reduction goal, they also 

are saying they are going to repeal the alternative minimum tax 

and the Affordable Care Act. All together, those policies would reduce tax revenues by more than $5.7 trillion. 

Now, experts have told us that in order to keep this tax reform 

plan from increasing deficits, the tax base would have to be broadened to such an extent that the plan on net would actually cut 

taxes on millionaires and raise taxes on filers making less than 

$200,000. In other words, the wealthiest Americans would receive 

the lion’s share of the benefits of lower tax rates while experiencing 

a proportionally smaller reduction in the current tax breaks, and 

the opposite would be true for our middle-class families. 

Clearly, there is a tension between lowering tax rates, maintaining revenues, and pursuing the current levels of progressivity in 

the tax system. That is, of course, why the Senate budget was very 

clear that before we set out to lower tax rates, we would first make 

sure that tax reform generates the revenue that we need to reduce 

the deficit and invest in our economic future and maintains or increases the progressivity of the Tax Code. 

So, Dr. Looney, let me start with you. You talked a little bit 

about this, but could you talk about the tension between lower tax 

rates, revenues, and progressivity? 

Mr. LOONEY. Sure. Thank you very much. Thank you for that 

great question. It is a central question to evaluate and understand 

in these tax reform plans. And just to give you some context, we 

took a look at a tax reform plan that proposed cutting the top rate 

from 35 percent to 28 percent, retaining preferences for capital 

gains and dividends and other savings-related tax incentives. And 

we asked whether it is possible to achieve all the goals of tax reform, keeping a progressive tax system, maintaining tax revenues 

at a then historical level, and also cutting rates. 

And what we found is that if we wanted to achieve the goals of 

revenues and lower rates and protecting preferences for savings 

and investment, then we would have to give up on another goal, 

for instance, having to enact a net tax cut on high-income taxpayers financed by tax increases on lower- and middle-income taxpayers. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. Last week, the CBO released projections, and it showed that, absent any changes in law, revenues will 

average about 18.9 percent of GDP over the next 10 years. Our Republican colleagues have pointed to those estimates which show 

revenues rising above their 40- year average of about 18 percent 

of GDP to support the contention that additional revenue is now 

off the table. But this argument really ignores several key factors. 

First of all, spending has not been below 18 percent of GDP since 

1966, and, in fact, over the course of the last three Republican administrations, spending has averaged more than 21 percent of 

GDP. So if we are going to be realistic with ourselves, I think it 

is very clear that revenue levels must rise considerably above their 

historical average if we are ever going to balance the budget. And, 
317 

also, the last five times we have had a balanced budget, revenues 

have ranged between 19.5 percent and 20.6 percent of GDP. That 

is significantly higher than CBO’s recent projections. And I think, 

Mr. Linden, you mentioned the challenges we face today that are 

drastically different than 20, 30, 40 years ago with the baby-boom 

generation, and that is going to have a significant impact on our 

budgets here as well. 

So, Mr. Linden, let me start with you. Do you agree with the 

Senate budget—and, actually, I think every bipartisan group that 

has examined the budget situation— that we cannot spend responsibly, address our long-term fiscal challenges with spending cuts 

alone? 

Mr. LINDEN. Yes. Simply put, yes, I agree very much. One of the 

things that citing the historical average for revenues often misses 

is that for most of those years we ran deficits. So if we want to run 

smaller deficits or we want to even balance the budget, we cannot 

look at the historical average because we ran deficits during most 

of those years. And, in fact, if you look closely at those numbers, 

you will find that in the years when there were lower deficits or 

balanced budgets, as you pointed out, Chairman, we had higherthan-average revenues. So if we want fiscal sustainability to be a 

goal, the very data, the very historical data that opponents often 

point to, to say we cannot have more revenues, actually supports 

the contention that we will need higher revenues to have fiscal sustainability, because that is what we needed in the past. And as you 

pointed out, that was before the retirement of the baby-boom generation, and that was before health care costs have risen as much 

as they have. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. Thank you very much, and I have run 

out of time. I want to make sure all of our Committee members 

have an opportunity to ask questions, so, Senator Sessions, I will 

turn to you. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. It is hard to figure all of that, but 

as revenues and the economy grows and people are making more 

money, they pay in at higher rates and in higher brackets than the 

percentage of GDP would tend to grow, it seems to me. It is hard 

to figure all these numbers. 

Mr. Linden, I think you and others seem to believe that the income gap that is out there that is troubling is to be closed by just 

taking more money from those who are already paying higher taxes 

and just redistribute that to people who are not doing as well. And 

I believe the right approach is to figure out why it is that we are 

not having enough growth in the economy, create more growth, and 

allow the middle-class workers and others to find jobs at higher 

pay which be my fundamental analysis of how to get this economy 

going in the right direction. 

Ms. de Rugy, critics have suggested that austerity in Europe has 

not worked. We hear that a lot. Their argument is that economies 

have cut spending and they have had slow growth. But it does 

seem to me, based on your testimony, we have a little bit of a different situation. You are saying that their spending cuts have been 

exaggerated in the media in the minds of most of us in public life 

in the United States and their tax increases have been underesti-
318 

mated and underappreciated. Would you tell us a little more about 

that? 

Ms. de Rugy. Sure. Thank you, Senator, for this question. It has 

been one of the many frustrating things about the debate over austerity in Europe, is this misconception. Very often when people talk 

about austerity that took place in Europe, it is assumed that what 

took place is savage spending cuts. In fact, I mean, I use these 

words because these words have been used. But when you actually 

look at what many of the countries we talk about, even England, 

which has been talked about a lot, France, Italy, Spain, what you 

realize is that many of these—most of these countries have not certainly savagely cut spending. Some of them have not even cut 

spending. What has been often overlooked is the dramatic increase 

in taxes that all of these countries have implemented. 

I have a list here for you, if you are interested—and I am happy 

to send it over—of many of these countries’ tax increases. I guess 

one of the common denominators, Europe has seen a really large 

increase in the value-added tax, sometimes by 2 or 3 points. This 

is probably the main culprit of the problems in Europe. But there 

has been also a lot of increase in income tax in the form of higher 

marginal rates, taxes on capital, and this is often overlooked. 

And what is happening in Europe actually is extremely consistent with what we have seen, what the academic research 

shows, and that is that first 80 percent of the studied attempt by 

countries to reduce their debt-to-GDP ratio are made mostly of tax 

increases, and these packages tend to fail not only at reducing the 

debt-to-GDP ratio but also at boosting growth. 

Senator SESSIONS. So you say that 80 percent of their attempts 

at reducing deficit amounts to the tax increases and only 20 percent to spending cuts? 

Ms. de Rugy. Yes, and so the successful—this is where the data 

comes from, looking at what are the countries who have successfully reduced their debt-to-GDP ratio have done. And when you 

look at the kind of things they have done, you realize that they 

have adopted packages that are mostly made of spending cuts. And 

the ones that have failed have actually mostly adopted debt reduction packages that are made of tax increases. 

Senator SESSIONS. Can you give us an example of— 

Ms. de Rugy. Well, I guess we do not have to look very far or 

very—back in time. We can actually look at Canada. In the 1990s, 

the Canadian Government was facing a debt-to-GDP ratio that was 

very close to ours. It was 69 percent. And in the course of the last 

10 years, it adopted a large amount of spending cuts, not cuts to 

the growth of spending but actual reduction in spending, meaning 

that their government was spending less tomorrow than they spent 

the year before, and adopted the type of fundamental tax reform 

that we are talking here, closing loopholes and—and what has happened is a dramatic reduction in debt-to-GDP ratio from 69 percent 

to 29 percent, and without slowing down of their rate of growth 

and without increasing unemployment. That is one of the models 

that I can think about. We can look at Germany in the 2000s and 

Sweden— 

Senator SESSIONS. Please explain. 
319 

Ms. de Rugy. Germany implemented large reform of their structural transfers and large reform of their labor market. They cut 

spending. And I think economists mostly agree that these reforms 

that were implemented in 2004 and 2005—and, by the way, they 

also reduced marginal tax rates—were responsible for the way actually that Germany sustained itself economically and with much 

lower unemployment rates than other European countries during 

the financial crisis. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, and 

obviously you suggest the choice of reducing deficit between cutting 

spending and raising taxes, the better choice is to reduce spending. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator Kaine? 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good to be together 

with you. I will try to be quick. I would like each of your opinion 

on whether widening income inequality hurts economic growth. 

Can I just go in order? 

Mr. LINDEN. I guess that puts me first. I think it does. I think 

not in every case and not in every situation, but that the levels 

that we have seen in the United States over the last 30 years, 

there are reasons to be concerned. More and more of the academic 

research has been showing that income inequality can be a drag on 

growth for a number of reasons, including it reduces trust in public 

institutions; it hurts human capital development. And, of course, as 

I mentioned in my testimony, the middle class is the very important source of stable demand for goods and services. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. Looney? 

Mr. LOONEY. Thank you. So I think that you are right to be concerned about that issue. Another perspective on that is just that if 

you look at the forces behind widening income inequality, they 

arise from things like globalization, technological change, you 

know, the fact that the United States participates in a very vigorous form of capitalism. And I think the Tax Code is a way that 

protects our citizens from the downsides of that, ensures that in 

some sense we are all in it together, and allows for those who are 

not as fortunate in the turmoil of the economy to still participate 

and to get ahead. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. de Rugy? 

Ms. de Rugy. Senator, this is not my area of expertise, but one 

of the things that I think we should focus on is more income mobility. I think income mobility is what makes this country great. This 

is living the American Dream. 

The good news is actually research by one of your colleagues, 

Scott Winship at the Brookings Institution, has shown that income 

mobility is doing better than we think. But there is some work to 

be done for lower-income men in America, and this is something we 

should focus on. 

Senator KAINE. I completely agree on the income mobility, but do 

you not have an opinion about whether widening— 

Ms. de Rugy. You know, this is really not my area of expertise. 

Senator KAINE. —income inequality inhibits growth? 

Ms. de Rugy. I could not— 

Senator KAINE. Next question. Dr. de Rugy’s testimony I think 

lays it out pretty plainly. Debt reduction can be achieved by cutting 
320 

spending or by raising taxes or by adopting a mix of spending cuts 

and tax increases. To each of the three, cut spending, raise taxes, 

or a mixture? And I would love it if you could just answer in a sentence. 

Mr. LINDEN. I will answer in a word. Mixture is the right way. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. Looney? 

Mr. LOONEY. I would say a mixture as well. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. de Rugy? 

Ms. de Rugy. Well, I think the mixture usually does not work because one of the forces that are at play is— 

Senator KAINE. So, I mean, but you—so you think no mixture, 

just cut taxes? 

Ms. de Rugy. No, I think that what the data shows is roughly 

85 percent—and obviously it is not an exact game, but what they 

show is that successful fiscal adjustment ended up being roughly 

85 percent of spending cuts and the rest in tax revenue, not necessarily—the tax revenue could have been the product of increasing 

growth. For instance, take Canada— 

Senator KAINE. But can I just— 

Ms. de Rugy. Canada implemented a package— 

Senator KAINE. Do you have an opinion, just on the three answers—cut spending, raise taxes, a mixture? If you could just answer one of those three, what is your preferred approach to reducing the deficit? 

Ms. de Rugy. Cutting spending. 

Senator KAINE. Okay. You have an example—you mentioned 

Germany and Sweden. Do you know what their top marginal tax 

rates are? 

Ms. de Rugy. They are much higher than ours. 

Senator KAINE. 47 percent in Germany and 56 percent in Sweden, and those are the examples that you used. 

The last thing I will ask is this: With respect to tax policy— 

Ms. de Rugy. Europeans are very regressive taxes overall compared to the U.S. in spite of their high marginal tax rates. 

Senator KAINE. Indeed, and they are held as an example. And 

the last one, on the effective tax policy, does it make a difference 

if you are trying to get additional revenue whether you raise rates 

or reduce tax expenditures? 

Ms. de Rugy. Yes, it does make a difference. 

Senator KAINE. And what is the preferred way to do it? 

Ms. de Rugy. The better way is to close loopholes. 

Senator KAINE. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Grassley? 

Senator GRASSLEY. Dr. de Rugy, during the budget hearings in 

March on tax expenditures, I asked the Democrat witness, Professor Edward Kleinbard, about tax reform. I asked if corporate 

rates should be reduced if we eliminate corporate tax expenditures. 

He replied that revenue from closing business tax expenditures and 

loopholes should be used to pay down the corporate rate. 

Do you agree with Professor Kleinbard that increased revenue 

from corporate tax rates should be used to lower corporate tax 

rates? And, second, what do you think the economic impact would 

be of eliminating tax expenditures to support more Government 

spending? 
321 

Ms. de Rugy. So the corporate income tax in the U.S. is extremely punishing. The U.S. is one of the highest corporate income 

tax rates in the OECD countries, but also has a worldwide tax system, which means that companies competing with foreign companies abroad, they are subjected to a much more punishing system. 

So any reform that would lower the rates of the corporate income 

tax would be a welcome move for the U.S. 

I would welcome making the Tax Code fairer and simpler and 

having a more unified base, but certainly not if the revenues is 

meant to go to pay for more spending. If we are talking about reducing the debt, that would be something, except that history tells 

us that this is rarely the way additional revenues are used. 

Senator GRASSLEY. Again to you, under current law CBO projects 

that tax revenue will exceed the 40-year average of 17.9 percent of 

GDP in 2014 and remain near 19 percent of GDP through 2023. 

At the same time, spending is expected to grow, reaching 22.6 percent of GDP in 2023, well above the historical average of 21 percent. 

This may seem like a simple question, but don’t these CBO projections indicate that spending is the problem and will become an 

even bigger problem at the end of the 10-year window? Further, if 

we increase taxes by $975 billion, as the Senate budget would do 

through tax reform to support this level of spending, how will that 

affect economic and job growth? 

Ms. de Rugy. Well, I think you are totally right that we have a 

spending problem, and we have an even bigger spending problem 

going forward if you look at CBO projection, and the driver of 

spending and, hence, of our future debt are program like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. 

As to the question of whether we could be raising much more 

revenue, it is hard to tell because we have not actually done in a 

sustained way raised much more significant—we have not raised 

21 percent of taxes, tax revenue as a share of GDP in a sustained 

way. We have not done it under the current tax regime. 

I would argue that it is probably because when marginal rates 

are increased, people find ways around it, but also in important 

ways because Congress has a tendency when it raises taxes to also 

carve the tax base. I mean, I think we have seen it in the fiscal 

tax deal where Congress proceeded to increase marginal tax rates 

but also to give a lot of—to extend a lot of the tax extenders to corporate businesses. So I think that is a problem. 

And as I have said, I think the academic literature is very clear. 

There is a strong support for evidence that shows that lower level 

of taxes are associated with higher level of growth, and the reverse 

is true. 

Senator GRASSLEY. Okay. Now, let us go back to Europe. You 

spoke about that. I want to zero in on a couple countries. You have 

done a lot of work studying the impact of taxes there and economic 

growth there. Many of my colleagues use the economic turmoil in 

Greece and Spain as a reason to support increased spending and 

tax hikes to address our own sluggish economic growth and our 

growing debt. The austerity measures enacted by Greece and Spain 

differ greatly from the measures enacted by Germany and Estonia 

and have had much different results. 
322 

So, to you, what can we learn from comparing the fiscal plans of 

Estonia and Germany with those of Greece, Spain, and Italy? 

Ms. de Rugy. Well, I think these two sets of countries are very 

representative of what the overall literature shows. In the case of 

Greece and Spain, both of which have implemented some small 

level of government spending reductions, they have also implemented really large and often overlooked—I mean, one of the 

things that really surprises me, Keynesian economists in this country should be screaming loud and be very displeased with what 

these countries are doing by raising taxes because it actually goes 

against Keynesian policy. They have increased taxes tremendously, 

and, hence, we should not be surprised that their economy are not 

growing. 

On the other hand, Estonia, and Germany before it, Estonians 

have actually cut spending. They have also implemented some fundamental tax reforms. They have refrained, and so has Sweden, in 

using spending as a form— as a tool to stimulate the economy. And 

so I think they should be our model rather than Spain and— 

Senator GRASSLEY. Thank you. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator King? 

Senator KING. Dr. de Rugy, this is your lucky day because Senator Sanders is not here. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. So I may channel him a bit. You mentioned that 

Germany lowered their taxes. From what to what? 

Ms. de Rugy. I cannot remember now, but I would be happy to 

send you the data. 

Senator KING. But it was somewhere in the 50s to the high 40s? 

Ms. de Rugy. Yes. 

Senator KING. Okay. And our top rate is now at least 10 points 

below that. Is that correct? 

Ms. de Rugy. Yes. 

Senator KING. Okay. You also mentioned that Canada had an 

overall budget package. What did that consist of, roughly, in terms 

of cuts versus— 

Ms. de Rugy. $8 in spending cuts for $1 in revenue increases. 

Senator KING. Okay. So that was the overall package that they— 

Ms. de Rugy. Over time. 

Senator KING. You mentioned that we have a spending problem, 

and it was interesting, in the next phrase you mentioned Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I would argue we do not have a 

spending problem; we have a health care problem. We have a 

health care cost problem, because all of the growth in the Federal 

budget over the next 20 years that is based on all the projections 

I have seen is based on growth in health care costs. And the Federal Government is a big consumer of health care and, therefore, 

it affects the budget. 

I am afraid that this whole discussion is—we are talking about 

growth in Federal spending, and we are hitting the wrong target, 

because the growth in Federal spending is not Pell grants or National Park guides or even food stamps. It is health care costs. And 

if we cut all those other areas and do not do something about the 

overall health care expenditure, we are never going to solve this 

problem. 
323 

Would you agree in general with that proposition? 

Ms. de Rugy. Yes, you have no debate with me. I think it is important to put this country on a sustainable fiscal path that we address the explosion in spending, in particular in Medicare spending. 

Senator KING. Would it surprise you to know that non-defense 

discretionary spending is now at the lowest percentage of GDP in 

50 years? 

Ms. de Rugy. No, and it probably as a share of the budget is 

going to go down because of our increased interest payment and 

the increased spending on mandatory programs is going to lead to 

a smaller share of these programs. 

Senator KING. It seems to me that a way to discuss this is to try 

to identify what is the sweet spot in terms of percentage of GDP 

for both revenues and expenditures. Is it 17.5 percent, 18, 19? In 

terms of the economic effect, is there any data that shows that, for 

example, 19 percent is better than 18 percent? Because here is the 

problem: We are facing a demographic explosion, aging, it is just 

going to happen, plus the cost of health care. Those two things, it 

seems to me, make it very hard to say we should maintain ourselves at 17 or 18 percent if, in fact, everything else is flat, those 

two things are going up, and we have no choice but to either cope 

with them or cut everything else essentially almost to zero. 

Ms. de Rugy. I mean, I think what you are saying is correct. I 

think we should not be starting with a certain percentage that we 

are trying to achieve. One of the things that we need to do is to 

address the cause of the explosion of spending, which will drive our 

future debt. But, I mean, it is very hard to pinpoint first the moment where the country has gone too far and there is very little 

we can do. And in the same way, it is very hard for me, or I suspect any other economist, to tell you what is the exact level of equilibrium that you should be reaching. For instance, there may be instances where actually deficits are fine at a certain level. But I am 

not the—I cannot tell you this. There are so many factors that I 

cannot be the one telling you which level is exactly the appropriate 

one. 

Senator KING. Well, I would agree with you that the real thing— 

we should be focusing on what is causing the deficit problem, which 

is health care. Demographics we cannot do much about. Health 

care we can do something about. My concern is that by using this 

explosion of Federal expenditures based on health care to cut 

things like defense and nondefense discretionary spending is like 

attacking Brazil after Pearl Harbor. We are going at the wrong target. 

Ms. de Rugy. Well, one of the things that is interesting, actually, 

looking at the successful fiscal adjustment packages and looking at 

what they have actually cut, one of the things that you find is that 

these countries have engaged in more structural reforms. They 

have reformed their transfer payments. That is, in the American 

context, entitlement. And this is the thing I agree with you we 

should be focusing on. And one of the reasons is because if we do 

not, for those of you who care about the lowest-income people in 

America, they are the one who are going to be the most penalized 

when the crisis hit. 
324 

Senator KING. I realize I am almost out of time, but my only disagreement with that would be if we only focus on the entitlement 

Medicare, then all we are going to do is shift the growing health 

care cost to somebody else, either seniors or States or somebody 

else. We really have to be talking about health care generally so 

it goes down for everyone—corporations, individuals, Medicare or 

Medicaid. Because if we only focus on, you know, we are going to 

send Medicaid back to the States, block grant it, all you are really 

doing there is saying, okay, the excessive cost of health care growth 

is going to be picked up by the States. 

It has to be a broad conversation about the whole subject, it 

seems to me. 

Ms. de Rugy. You are right that we should be addressing not 

only Medicare but Medicaid and Social Security, and everything 

ought to be on the table, including defense spending. 

Senator KING. No, no, no. You are missing my point. We should 

be talking about health care spending generally for everybody, not 

just those programs you mentioned. 

Ms. de Rugy. I think what the Government can only concern 

itself with is the part of its budget that it spends on health—that 

itself spends. 

Senator KING. Well, that is another discussion. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Portman? 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I would say to my colleague from Maine that, at the risk of getting him in trouble, it sounded like he was channeling Tom Coburn 

more than Bernie Sanders. 

Senator KING. I will accept that. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator PORTMAN. Focusing on health care. I think you made a 

really good point that if we do not get our health care costs under 

control, it is unlikely that our fiscal condition can be saved. And 

it is because of the Federal connection, of course, with Medicare 

and Medicaid, but those reflect, if you look at the data, broadly 

speaking, the increasing costs in health care being the biggest 

payer. 

This is a hearing on tax reform, and I appreciate the testimony 

from all of you about the fact that we need tax reform. I think that 

should be stipulated. Each of you said that, and I think all of you 

think we should broaden the base. Some of you think we should 

lower the rate more. Some of you think we should not. But since 

we are talking about percent of GDP and, you know, what ought 

to be the right level of revenue and what ought to be the right level 

of spending, and it was just talked about in terms of is it 18 or 19 

percent, let me ask a question, if I could, of you, Dr. Looney, to give 

Dr. de Rugy a little break, and that is with regard to really the 

question that Senator King raised, you know, what is the right 

level. 

Here is where we are now. We have a projection from the Congressional Budget Office, as you know, showing that our revenue 

as a percent of GDP is up above the historic levels. Within a couple 

years, they say by 2015, we will be at about 19 percent. The historic average, closer to 18 percent; 18.3 I think since World War 
325 

II is the average. So revenue as a percent of the economy is going 

up, relatively low now, relatively high in a couple years. And if the 

economy picks up more quickly, it will go up higher. 

It is the spending that is obviously unsustainable, and I say that 

because they say that over the next three decades our spending 

goes from the 22-, 23-percent level up to 25, 30, 35, and in the 

third decade it gets to 39 percent. And that is where they sort of 

stop and say, you know, this is not sustainable, so we are just 

going to stop there. 

So let us say 39 percent. So when you talk about a balanced approach with more revenue and more spending, what are you talking about? Are you talking about in a few decades from now a 

spending level based on current projections—which, by the way, 

has certain projections on health care I think that are even conservative compared to what we have seen over the last decade. But 

let us say 39 percent. You have revenue at 19 percent. Do you split 

the difference? Is that what balance means? Is it 29 percent? Or 

if you assume that there will be savings on interest on the debt because you have this higher revenue, maybe it is not 29 percent, 

maybe it is 27 percent, and if so, where do you find the revenue 

for that? Certainly our current income Tax Code could not provide 

it. We would have to look back historically, and there is no record 

of ever having raised these kind of taxes. We have to double your 

income tax rates, at least, probably triple them to get there, according to CBO. 

So what does balance mean? And when people like me say we 

have to deal with the spending side and specifically the health care 

side, that is what we are looking at. So what is the right balance? 

Mr. LOONEY. Well, thank you, Senator, a very interesting set of 

issues. When I was a grad student, I used to live large on $15,000 

a year. Now that I have a wife and two kids and a mortgage, that 

just does not pay the bills and, you know, things change. And I 

think that in our budget, the thing that has changed is that we 

have an aging population and we have rising health care costs. And 

I think that that makes that historical comparison, which includes 

periods when we did not even have the Medicare program, where 

we had not enacted the Disability Insurance program. It is just not 

a perfect comparison to what we are facing in the future. 

How much does that mean we should target for revenues versus 

spending? I think that is a broader and more challenging question, 

and I think there are tradeoffs involved there. I think it is probably 

true that we could support a higher level of revenues. At the same 

time, it is clear that the level of spending and the costs of health 

care are going to rise well beyond what we could sustain in the Tax 

Code or through the deficit. And so that has obviously got to be 

reined in as well. 

Senator PORTMAN. Dr. Linden or Mr. Linden, any response? 

Mr. LINDEN. I broadly agree with Dr. Looney. You know, I think 

the discussion has turned a little bit toward health care, which I 

think is appropriate, but there is some really good news on that 

front. Over the last two CBO projections, the costs of health care— 

the amount of money the Federal Government is projected to spend 

on Medicare and Medicaid has been reduced in the last two CBO 

outlooks by a combined $550 billion. To put that into perspective, 
326 

that is more than twice as much as what you would get by raising 

the Medicare retirement age. And if that continues, a lot of the 

problems that we are talking about here will be much easier to 

solve. And I think that is an important trend that we should keep 

a close eye on. Obviously we do not know exactly how much of the 

recent slowdown in health care costs is because of the economy and 

how much is structural, although there have been some recent 

studies that suggest at least a substantial portion of it, if not all 

of it, is structural. So that is really good news. And I think that 

if we are talking about reducing spending, which we should be, as 

well as raising revenues, that is where we should be focusing on. 

What are we doing right in health care that is bringing down the 

growth in health care costs? And how can we improve on that? I 

think that is the place where we should be focusing in addition to 

raising a little bit more revenue. 

Senator PORTMAN. My time has expired, but you are right, we 

have seen some reduction in the projections. We are still above inflation, of course, and we still are, based on all the projections, at 

an unsustainable level. And I appreciate both your responding to 

it honestly saying that we need to reduce that spending level. But 

you believe we can sustain higher taxes, and I would just suggest 

that the statement that spending is the problem is an objective 

statement if you look at it as a percent of GDP. If you assume that 

we need to spend more because you think health care costs cannot 

be contained, then I guess you have a different answer. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator Whitehouse? 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Chairman, and I am delighted 

that this discussion has turned to the health care issue, and the 

one thing I would add to that before I turn to my questions is that 

there is plenty of objective evidence that there really are enormous 

savings that can come out of our health care system if we treat our 

health care cost problem as a health care system problem and not 

just look at the Medicare or Medicaid portions and starve those. All 

that means is that businesses and seniors have to pick up the 

slack. We have not solved the problem. We have just squeezed the 

balloon and forced the problem elsewhere. And when we are spending 18 percent of GDP on health care and the least efficient other 

industrialized country in the world is only spending 12 percent and 

getting better health care results for it, that is a pretty strong signal that this is an area where we should be able to work together 

in a bipartisan fashion to make health care better and less expensive across the board, for businesses, for seniors, for people on Medicaid, for everyone. So I am delighted that we have turned this 

way. 

But let me ask a different question because we are here on tax 

reform, and I think most of us are on board with the general notion, that our individual and corporate Tax Codes are riddled with 

nonsense; that people who have clout in Washington have been 

able to manipulate the Tax Codes to their advantage against the 

ordinary people; and that there is room to bring down the nominal 

top corporate rate of 35 percent, which virtually nobody pays because of all the loopholes—it is a Swiss cheese system. 
327 

But here is my question: Let us say that we want to bring the 

corporate tax rate down from 35 percent to 25 or 28 percent. And 

let us also say that there are wonderful companies like CVS in 

Rhode Island, headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, great 

national company, pays near the full 35 percent, like most big retail companies do. Then you have companies like Carnival Cruise 

Lines, which pays 0.8 percent tax rate, last time I checked. We just 

had a hearing on Apple, hiding immense revenues offshore, paying 

0 percent on those revenues. GE famously on all of its earning has 

as a profit center its tax department and paid negative tax rates 

during very profitable years. 

So should we also be looking at trying to get rid of these folks 

who are gaming the system and paying no tax whatsoever, or virtually no tax whatsoever, and try to, as we are bringing the top 

rate down, also try to improve—there is a nominal corporate AMT 

that raises virtually nothing. How do you bring the corporate tax 

rate up at the bottom so the true tax cheats, scofflaws, whatever 

you want to call them, who are paying nothing—not because they 

had a bad year but because they were playing games with the Tax 

Code. What is the best way to try to make sure that there is, I do 

not know, a 2-percent, 3-percent, 5-percent, 8-percent, some minimum that people are actually paying when they are truly profitable? 

Mr. LOONEY. I will try to take a stab at that, Senator. Thank 

you. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Do you, first of all, agree that that is a 

problem that is worth addressing, that if there are gimmicks in the 

Tax Code that are keeping entities from paying taxes, we should 

try to solve that and not just bring down the top rate? 

Mr. LOONEY. I agree. I think that is one of the biggest sources 

of inefficiency in the corporate code, the fact that there are some 

companies—you mentioned CVS, but it is clear that there is a distribution of tax rates that apply to different companies, domestic 

retailers that cannot benefit from things like international provisions offshore and cannot benefit from things like accelerated depreciation because they are not a capital-intensive business, cannot 

benefit from other things. They get a raw deal, in effect, in comparison with industries that can take advantage of them. And that 

is not just unfair in some sense. That is bad economic policy because it distorts the way the economy grows, and it suggests that— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. There is no economic rationale to having 

CVS, a prominent drug store chain, pay a 50 times higher tax rate 

than Carnival Cruise lines, correct? 

Mr. LOONEY. Yes. And more than that, it basically says to businesses that we should have more Carnival Cruise Lines and fewer 

CVSes, and it is not really clear that the Government should be in 

the business of— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. And it also says to the businesses, you 

should put more of your money not into productive activity but into 

more accountants and more lawyers to play games with the system 

and to restructure yourself through corporate mechanisms rather 

than engage in productive work, because there is a huge reward for 

that. Correct? 
328 

Mr. LOONEY. There is a huge reward right now for engaging in 

a lot of these avoidance schemes. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Johnson? 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I will answer both your questions. The way we start controlling 

health care costs is we reconnect the consumer of the product with 

the payment of the product. If you take a look at history, what 

really happened in terms of rising health care costs— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Good luck with the unconscious consumer. 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, what really happened in terms of rising 

health care costs is the third-party payer system, whether it is 

through rising insurance, first-dollar coverage as opposed to highdeductible plans, and then, of course, the Government involvement 

in it. 

So you are right, Mr. Linden, that the—I believe what is restraining health care costs is the structural changes, and that was 

occurring prior to the passage of the health care law as the evolving of growth of HSAs did reconnect the consumer of the product 

with the payment of the product. And as a result, companies like 

CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart responded to the marketplace, and 

they opened up walk-in clinics where you could get, for example, 

a child’s ear infection checked out by a nurse practitioner for $35 

rather than an emergency room for a couple hundred bucks. So the 

marketplace is a marvel that actually works. 

In terms of, you know, how do we capture corporate income, I 

would suggest—I am glad that Senator Wyden is here—the way to 

do that is treat all corporate income as pass-through income. In 

other words, tax corporate income at the shareholder level. It 

works great for LLCs, Subchapter S’s. We would not have to—I 

was part of that Apple hearing. You have real problems in terms 

of allocating a profit between different tax jurisdictions, so the way 

to do it just tax the income at the shareholder level like passthrough income, and I would love to work with Senator Wyden on 

that tax idea. 

Mr. Linden, you mentioned 2007, an interesting year, because 

that was really the record in terms of the top 1 percent paying 40.4 

percent of the income tax. That same year, the bottom 95 percent 

of taxpayers paid 39.6 percent. So a unique year, a record year. 

The top 1 percent’s income was around 20 percent of total income. 

They paid double that in terms of the share of the income tax. 

At what point do you actually start considering the top 1 percent 

as paying their fair share? 

Mr. LINDEN. 2007 was a banner year for income inequality, 

which is why you saw such a huge share of the taxes being paid 

by the top 1 percent. They were making a huge share of the income. So when you allocate taxes based on income—we do not do 

a per head tax; we do it based on income, broadly speaking, with 

the income tax—you end up with those who have the most income 

paying the most in income taxes. 

It is worth also pointing out— 

Senator JOHNSON. So, again, you think it is fair for the top 1 percent—by the way, the top 1 percent is always going to have the 

larger share, no matter what it is, and there is some mobility. Do 
329 

you think it is not fair that if they are making 20 percent of the 

income and they are paying 40 percent of the income tax, that is 

not fair enough yet for you? 

Mr. LINDEN. I think it is interesting that you are ignoring payroll 

taxes and State and local taxes— 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, we can take a look at that, too, but that 

also— 

Mr. LINDEN. But if you put that all together, if the put the entire 

tax system together, the top 1 percent is actually—was not paying, 

is currently not paying much more a share of the taxes than the 

share of their income. It is actually pretty much in line. And, in 

fact, if you look at the very, very high, the very, very top, the system—you know, our overall system is actually progressive, you are 

right. It does take more from people— 

Senator JOHNSON. Let me ask the question I generally ask people 

in this situation. What do you think is the top—what should be the 

top marginal tax rate? 

Mr. LINDEN. Current top marginal rate is 39.6— 

Senator JOHNSON. No. What do you think it should be? 

Mr. LINDEN. —and I think that is a reasonable place for it to be. 

It certainly does not need to be any lower. I do not think it needs 

to go very much higher. I think the place where we should be looking for more revenue is in reducing these tax expenditures that do 

generally primarily benefit those at the top. 

Senator JOHNSON. You know, Mr. Looney or Professor Looney, 

are you aware of the fact that in 63 years, regardless of the top 

marginal tax rate, regardless of how much we are trying to punish 

success, we have only raised revenue that exceeded 19 percent of 

GDP 13 times? Are you aware of that statistic? 

Mr. LOONEY. I am. 

Senator JOHNSON. What gives anybody any confidence that no 

matter what we try and do, try and extract more than, let us say, 

19 percent out of the economy that we would have any success 

doing it? 

Mr. LOONEY. I think we have had experiences where we have 

raised that much. I think if you look at the combination of Federal, 

State, and local, we have raised much more than—closer to 30 percent of GDP, and then, of course, an international comparison, we 

are actually very low. So I am not saying that those are comparisons that we necessarily want to make, but I do not think that 

there is— I think that those historical levels reflect political decisions and the democratic process rather than some real hard economic law. 

Senator JOHNSON. Mr. Linden, you made an interesting comment 

when you were talking about why economic—or income disparity is 

so harmful to economic growth. You said one of the reasons is because it reduces trust in public institutions. I just have to ask you, 

why would increased trust in public institutions increase economic 

growth? 

Mr. LINDEN. Well, public institutions I think have an important 

role to play, certainly not the only ones. I mean, the private sector 

obviously needs to be the ones who are driving economic growth. 

But certainly investment in public goods, things that most economists would tell you the public sector has the role to play—trans-
330 

portation, education, basic scientific research. These are things that 

before a few years ago were pretty commonly understood to be the 

role of the public sector. Now, we can debate the level that that 

should be played, but no matter what, we do expect the public sector to play some role in the economy, and we would like to trust 

the Government is doing so in a way that is not unfairly benefitting those at the very top. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. Thank you. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. All right. Thank you. 

The last questions go to Senator Wyden. 

Senator WYDEN. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to commend 

Senator Whitehouse on this point with respect to efficiency in the 

health care system. This is clearly an area where I think Democrats and Republicans can work together. You look, for example, at 

chronic care, which is responsible for 70 percent of the Medicare 

bill in this country, and it is so fragmented and so poorly coordinated. This ought to be an area where we can work together, and 

I want to work with the Senator. And I think the Senator from 

Wisconsin knows I am also interested in this idea of involving the 

consumer. Let us just make sure we do not put at risk the vulnerable and the low-income, and we will talk about that. 

I want to ask about this issue of revenue, and Senator Murray 

is absolutely right on this point, that with $1 trillion of tax expenditures—and that is really the only way to describe them—they are 

spending. This is a place where clearly we ought to make some 

changes, and that will be beneficial to our country and to, I think, 

a more rationale set of priorities. 

I want to ask about something else in the Tax Code, though, with 

respect to generating revenue, and you at Brookings and at CAP 

have helped me a lot on tax reform essentially all of the last decade. I think if you go back through your history, Rahm Emanuel 

and I introduced a bill where we could not even get a Republican 

on the bill. You all stayed with us, and others, and finally the 

former Ranking Member, Senator Gregg, worked with us for several years, and we were able to get that bill in. 

One of the key features we picked up along the way is that central to reform and generating more revenue in a consumer-driven 

economy is the role of the middle class and the middle-class person, 

because that middle-class person, who right now is hard-pressed in 

terms of getting by, is the person who goes into the economy, 

makes a decision, for example, about remodeling their place, buys 

goods and services—it is the old Henry Ford argument. He wanted 

to do well, but for him to do well, his people had to be able to buy 

his cars, and those kinds of purchases helped our economy and 

helped us create a middle-class way of life in our country and 

helped Government and generated revenue and allowed us to fund 

our priorities. 

In that regard, we have been able to get bipartisan support—bipartisan support—for the idea of tripling the standard deduction, 

which means in effect if you are making $60,000 in the economy 

today, we are putting off limits $30,000. Essentially we are putting 

$3,000, somewhere in that vicinity, of permanent tax relief into the 

pockets of the middle-class person. 
331 

Both of your organizations—and, ma’am, I have not had a chance 

to work with you in the past. I do not want you to feel that I am 

ignoring you just for any other reason. We have worked with these 

two organizations in the past. Talk a little bit about how expanding 

opportunities for middle-class people in an economy where the consumer is driving about 50 percent plus of economic activity can 

help us create jobs and generate the additional revenue, which our 

Chair, Senator Murray, has correctly identified as something we 

ought to focus on doing. 

So either of you gentlemen, in particular, and I would be happy 

to have you add a thought as well, but your organizations, since 

you assisted us in the past, we will try to get your thoughts this 

afternoon. 

Mr. LINDEN. Thank you, Senator. That is an excellent question, 

and I think it hits it right on the head, that if we want to see 

broader economic growth, we want to see faster economic growth, 

which will then generate more revenue, we have to focus on the 

middle class. That really is where the drivers for economic growth 

come from. And I mentioned in my testimony all the different ways 

the middle class is really integral to economic growth. 

So when we consider tax reform, we should really think about 

ways in which we can make the code more efficient for the middle 

class and also for those who aspire to get into the middle class, people who are working to get into the middle class. How do we build 

those ladders up into the middle class and improve on economic 

mobility? Because I agree very much with my colleague that economic mobility is a very important factor here. 

So the Center for American Progress, for example, put out a tax 

reform plan in December— 

Senator WYDEN. A very good one. 

Mr. LINDEN. Well, thank you very much. We had some impressive co-authors, including Bob Rubin and Larry Summers and John 

Podesta and Neera Tanden. And so that proposal included something similar. We proposed a very large standard credit— 

Senator WYDEN. Right. 

Mr. LINDEN. —to do something similar, which is remove a whole 

portion of income from people—from taxation. We prefer the credit 

system rather than the deduction system because deductions are by 

their nature upside down. They benefit those at the top more than 

people in the middle. 

So things like that that move the system to consider middle-class 

needs I think is where we should go. 

Senator WYDEN. Well said. 

Mr. Looney? 

Mr. LOONEY. Thank you, Senator. So you started your question 

with a discussion of tax expenditures, and I think that is a great 

place to start as well. That is an issue where, to paraphrase Martin 

Feldstein, if Republicans want to cut spending and Democrats want 

to include a mix of revenues and spending cuts, then tax expenditures are a great place to start. They are spending that occur 

through the Tax Code. There is a lot of them. There is opportunity 

to rein them in. And there are probably opportunities to do it in 

a way that simplifies the Tax Code, gets people off the—from filing 

complicated returns, just as raising the standard deduction would. 
332 

And so I think it is a very promising approach, and I hope we 

would pursue it. 

Senator WYDEN. Very good. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you, and I want to thank all of our 

colleagues who participated today. I especially want to thank all of 

our witnesses for your excellent testimony today. And as I said at 

the outset of this hearing, there is much to improve in our very 

complicated and inefficient Tax Code, and I believe that our Senate 

budget does lay out a vision for tax reform that can reduce our deficits and strengthen the middle class and grow our economy in a 

broad-based and sustainable way. 

I think today’s hearing was a great step forward in furthering 

that discussion, so I really thank everybody for participating. 

As a reminder to all of our colleagues, additional statements and 

questions for our witnesses from today’s hearing are due in by noon 

tomorrow. 

And with that I will call this hearing to a close. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
333 

Michael Linden's Responses to Questions for the Record 

Question #1: We discussed to same length the experience of European countries that have recently 

implemented fiscal adjustments. Could you elaborate an the composition of those adjustments? To what 

extent did the governments rely an spending cuts and tax increases? How has the economy responded? 

The deep recessions and high unemployment many European countries have experienced over the past 

few years should have led policymakers to combine smart reforms with temporary stimulus. Instead, 

European policymakers chose damaging austerity, implementing fiscal-consolidation packages that 

paired draconian spending cuts with smaller increases in regressive taxes. These policies have not solved 

Europe's fiscal problems, but they have magnified Europe's economic troubles, harmed vulnerable 

populations, and slashed investments in future economic growth. 

Now that European austerity has been proven a failure, some advocates are claiming that Europe hasn't 

really cut spending; rather, tax increases are the true source of Europe's woes, and real spending cuts 

would be good medicine. This is absolutely false. 

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has found that the average fiscal 

consolidation of its member countries from 2009 to 2015 has consisted of approximately two-thirds 

spending cuts to one-third tax increases.' Three of the largest fiscal adjustments that took place in 

Europe since the recent recession involved Portugal, Ireland, and Greece.' Each of these countries, as 

well as the United Kingdom, has slashed government spending. What has followed is continued or 

worsening unemployment and stagnant economic growth. 

In Greece, where the dire economic conditions have been the most pronounced, the initial fiscaladjustment package was comprised of a nearly 2-1 spending-cut-to-tax-increase ratio.3 The spending 

reductions focused on cuts to government wages, pensions, and investments in infrastructure, 

education, and public health.' Cuts to government programs were so deep that by 2012, real 

government spending per person in Greece had fallen by more than 22 percent since 2009. 

Even given these draconian cuts, government spending measured as a share of gross domestic product 

was actually higher in Greece in 2012 than it was in 2009. How could that be? How does a country cut 

real spending per capita by about 22 percent in four years and still end up with higher spending as a 

share of the total economy? It can happen if all those spending cuts send the economy into a tailspin. 

And that is preCisely the trap that Greece finds itself in today. From 2009 to 2012 Greek GDP declined by 

more than 17 percent in real terms. Since the passage of the austerity package in 2010, the 

unemployment rate in Greece has nearly doubled, from 12.6 percent in 2010 to 24.3 percent in 2012.5 

Ireland followed a similar path, with an austerity package composed of spending cuts and tax increases 

in a roughly 2-1 ratio; Ireland's original (15 billion fiscal adjustment called for (10 billion in reduced 

spending and is billion in tax increases.' €3 billion of the spending reduction called for came from 

decreased investments in infrastructure, with the other reductions coming from reduced pensions and 

welfare spending.' Ireland's economy continues to suffer, with unemployment rising from 13.9 percent 

to 14.7 percent from 2010 to 2012.' The story is the same in Portugal, where policymakers enacted large 
334 

deficit-reduction packages consisting of more than (2 in spending cuts for every (1 of increased revenue 

from 2011 to 2013.' Unemployment in Portugal has risen from 12 percent in 2010 to 15.9 percent in 

201210 

The United Kingdom's damaging austerity package was even more tilted toward spending reductions, 

with 77 percent of the planned consolidation from 2010 to 2016 delivered through spending cuts." 

Since the enactment of their austerity measures, the United Kingdom has been plunged back into 

recession, and seen its unemployment rate rise." 

It is worth noting that, while Europe's spending cuts have been particularly harmful, the specific tax 

increases enacted by European governments during this round of austerity were also misguided. Deficit 

reduction in general is a bad idea during an economic crisis, and European authorities compounded their 

mistake by focusing on large, damaging spending cuts while targeting what tax increases they passed at 

those citizens least able to pay. Greece increased its value-added tax, along with excise taxes on alcohol, 

tobacco, and gaming." The United Kingdom and Ireland also used increases in the value-added tax to 

raise revenue in their fiscal consolidations." These are taxes that fall heavily on the middle class and the 

poor, and directly constrain the spending power of those consumers whose demand for goods and 

services is the crucial driver of economic recovery. 

We would not defend the revenue portion of European austerity packages; there should have been no 

austerity packages, let alone massive spending cuts coupled with regressive tax hikes. But any claim that 

Europe's problems are tax driven, or that the European experience somehow counsels against longterm, progressive tax reform in the United States, is disingenuous at best. 
335 

Question #2: Dr. de Rugy cited academic studies supporting deep spending cuts as a means to address 

the budget challenges we face. How does the fact that so many of the advanced economies are cutting 

back more or less at the same time impact the benefits anticipated by these academic studies? Can you 

further comment on the strengths and weaknesses of these studies? There was a suggestion that a 

consensus among academics exist. Do you ogree? 

The United States is still recovering from a deep recession. Cutting government spending when demand 

from the private sector cannot pick up the slack will result in lower growth and higher unemployment 

than would otherwise be the case. Both the claim that fiscal adjustments in a depressed economy will 

result in economic growth, and the claim that spending cuts are more economically advantageous than 

tax increases, have been completely disproved in the economic literature and in the real-world 

experience of the past five years. Dr. de Rugy's alleged "academic consensus" is nothing of the sort; it is 

an ideological conclusion drawn from a small set of deeply flawed and thoroughly debunked studies that 

are no longer taken seriously by most economists. 

It has long been clear that an economic slump is not the time to balance budgets, and that 

contractionary fiscal policy results in lower economic growth following a recession.'s At the beginning of 

the current crisis, Alberto Alesina and his co-authors began releasing studies that seemed to indicate 

otherwise. This man-bites-dog angle on fiscal austerity made a splash, and sadly became the basisalong with now-discredited work by Reinhart and Rogoff on the link between debt and growth-for 

Europe's misguided and deeply damaging austerity policies. 

Alesina et al.'s work on "expansionary contraction" was quickly debunked. Independent analysts have 

torn apart the methodology and conclusions of these papers, demonstrating that Alesina's own data 

counsels against fiscal contraction during an economic slump.'· 

International Monetary Fund economists found that Alesina et al.'s work did not identify periods of 

fiscal contraction correctly, and correcting for those mistakes found that austerity led to lower growth 

and higher unemployment.17 They found that "[a] fiscal consolidation equal to 1 percent of GDP typically 

reduces GDP by about O.S percent within two years and raises the unemployment rate by about 0.3 

percentage point. Domestic demand-consumption and investment-falls by about 1 percent."" The 

IMF study further cautioned that the current environment is worse than usual for fiscal consolidation. 

Two factors that generally mitigate austerity's impact on economic growth, currency depreciation and 

lower policy-interest rates, are currently unavailable to the United States, where we are facing a global 

slump and near-zero interest rates." 

Furthermore, experts from the Roosevelt Institute found that the vast majority of the fiscal contractions 

that Alesina et al. point to as "successful" were undertaken during economic booms. In the 26 episodes 

of fiscal consolidation analyzed by Alesina et aI., the countries attempting deficit reduction had an 

average growth rate of 4.1 percent of GDP in the year before their deficit-reduction packages were 

implemented.'o Of the small handful of countries that substantially reduced their deficits as a share of 

GDP while their economies were struggling, most saw growth decline following their budget cutting. 

Again, the study that purported to show that austerity can help a struggling economy shows exactly the 
336 

opposite: The boom and not the slump is the time for balancing budgets, and austerity during a 

downturn is associated with slower growth. 

Once their initial claims had been disproved, austerity advocates changed their argument to specify that 

keeping taxes low while slashing spending is the key to economic growth; that it's not just any kind of 

austerity, it's spending-cut-driven austerity that matters. These claims too have been disproved in both 

the academic literature and the real world. In fact, economists have found that the negative cumulative 

fiscal multipliers are much larger for spending cuts than for tax increases, especially in the United 

States." Austerity during a slump reduces growth, and spending cuts are substantially worse than tax 

increases. 

Unfortunately, the fiscal consolidations undertaken by various European countries have provided a realworld experiment for U.S. policymakers to observe. The fiscal consolidation in Europe was primarily 

spending based, and has resulted in crippling unemployment. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and the United 

Kingdom have all cut spending over the past few years, but unemployment has increased in each 

country. While the United States' fiscal policy has not expanded enough to spur rapid job growth, we 

have avoided the worst contractionary policy mistakes of Europe, and unemployment has slowly 

decreased from its recession peak. 

The academic argument is settled-fiscal contraction, especially in the form of spending cuts, is 

incredibly damaging to weak economies-yet these misguided and misleading calls for austerity 

continue to surface. Each time, the claims are slightly different, or accompanied by more qualifiers, or 

based on a new set of questionable methodologies and data. Each time, they fall apart under closer 

scrutiny. 

There are those who believe that the solution to every problem, at every time, is tax cuts for the 

wealthy and spending cuts for everyone else. That philosophy has failed time and again, in country after 

country. In reality, economic growth does not trickle down from the wealthy few-it comes from the 

middle out. In the near term, policymakers should focus on ending the current economic crisis. In the 

longer term, comprehensive tax reform can increase growth and shared prosperity if it makes the tax 

code fairer for the middle class, simpler for the middle class, and more able to raise the revenue needed 

to invest in the middle class. 

1 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, "Chapter 1. Fiscal consolidation targets, plans and 

measures in OECD countries," Restoring Public Finances, 2012 Update (OECD Publishing, 2012), p. 41, available at 

http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management!oecd/governance/restoring-public-finances-2012-

update/ chapter-1-fisca I-con solid ation-ta rgets-pla ns-a nd-measu res-in-oecd-cou ntries 9789264179455-5-en. 

2 International Monetary Fund, "World Economic Outlook: Growth Resuming, Dangers Remain" (2012), available at 

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/pdf/tbJpartb.pdf. 

3 The fiscal-adjustment package consisted of a 7 percent of GOP reduction in spending cuts, with a 4 percent of 

GOP increase in tax revenue. See European Commission, "The Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece" 

(2010), available at 

http://ec.europa.eu/economy finance/publications/occasional paper/201O/pdf/ocp61 en.pdf. 

'Ibid. 
337 

5 Eurostat, IIUnemployment rate, 2001-2012/' available at 

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics explained/index.php?title=File:Unemployment rate, 2001-

2012 (%25).png&filetimestamp=20130417141135 (last accessed June 2013), 

6 European Commission, "The Economic Adjustment Programme for Ireland" (2011), available at 

http://ec.europa.eu/economy finance/publications/occasional paper/2011/pdf/ocp76 en.pdf. 

'Ibid, 

, Eurostat, "Unemployment rate, 2001-2012." 

9 European Commission, "The Economic Adjustment Programme for Portugal" (2011), available at 

http://ec,europa.eu/economy finance/publications/occasional paper/2011/pdf/ocp79 en. pdf, 

10 Eurostat, "Unemployment rate, 2001-2012," 

11 Her Majesty's Treasury, "Budget 2010" (2010), available at http://cdn.hmtreasury,gov,uk/iunebudget complete,pdf, 

12 Eurostat, "Unemployment rate, 2001-2012," 

" European Commission, "The Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece." 

14 Her Majesty's Treasury, "Budget 2010"; European Commission, "The Economic Adjustment Programme for 

Ireland," 

15 J. M, Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" (London: Macmillan, 1936); John Hicks, 

"Mr, Keynes and the 'Classics,'" Econometrica 5 (1937): 147-159; Milton Friedman, "A Monetary and Fiscal 

Framework for Economic Stability," The American Economic Review 38 (1948): 245-264. 

16 Anja Baum, Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro, and Anke Weber, "Fiscal Multipliers and the State of the Economy." 

Working Paper 12 (International Monetary Fund, 2012), available at 

http://www,imf,org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12286,pdf; Arjun Jayadev and Mike Konczal, "The Boom Not 

The Slump: The Right Time For Austerity" (New York: The Roosevelt Institute, 2010), available at 

http://www.rooseveltinstitute,org/sites/all/files/not the time for austerity.pdf; Nicolas Carnot, "The 

composition of fiscal adjustments: some principles" (European Commission, 2013), available at 

http://ec.europa,eu/economy finance/publications/economic briefs/2013/pdf/eb23 en,pdf, 

17 International Monetary Fund, "Will It Hurt? Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal Consolidation" (2010), available at 

http://www,imf,org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/02/pdf/c3,pdf, 

"Ibid, 

"Ibid, 

20 Jayadev and Konczal, "The Boom Not The Slump: The Right Time For Austerity." 

21 Baum, Poplawski-Ribeiro, and Weber, "Fiscal Multipliers and the State of the Economy." 
338 

BROOKINGS 1775 MassaC1usattS AYlffil.le, NW 

Washington. DC 20036 

te~03pM~Q 202797.6000 

Chairman Patty Murray 

United States Senate 

broolltngs,edli 

Economic Studies 

Re: Question for the record, "Supporting Broad-Based Economic Growth and 

Fiscal Responsibility through Tax Reform 

Dear Chairman Murray, 

Thank you for your very important questions regarding the budget challenges we face 

and whether there is a consensus among academics how best to address them. 

If there is an area of consensus among economists about how best to address our longrun deficit problem it is about when to reduce the deficil: enact credible deficit reduction 

now but implement those budget cuts in the future when the economy has returned to 

full employment and interest rates have returned to more normal levels. According to the 

Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the deficit reduction policies taking effect this year 

will slow the pace of economic growth by roughly 1-1/2 percentage paints this yearstowing the economic recovery and swelling the ranks of the unemployed. Deferring 

these deficit reduction policies a year or two into the future would provide for a more 

rapid improvement in the job market while still achieving roughly the same budget goals. 

An additional area of consensus is that, despite the deficit reduction enacted in the near 

term, much more needs to be done to address the nation's longer-term fiscal imbalances. 

According to the CBO, in a few years the federal deficit will begin rising sharply again, 

largely as a result of the aging of the population and rising health care costs. Addressing 

these longer-term pressures will require not just reductions in the growth of healthcare 

spending, but also additional revenues if services for current retirees and Americans 

nearing retirement are to be maintained. 

Finally, regarding how best to achieve lasting deficit reduction, there is not a consensus 

that deep spending cuts are the appropriate means to address our budget challenges. In 

particular, the American record suggests that most lasting deficit-reducing deals included 

a balanced approach, including reductions in spending and increases in revenues. 

Salient examples include the 1983 Social Security Amendments, which both improved 

protections for the most disadvantaged retirees and their families and improved the 

program's long-term solvency, or OBRA 1990 and 1993, which helped set the country on 

a path to budget surplus by the end of the 1990s. Each of these changes involved a mix 

of spending cuts and revenue increases and prOduced long-lasting deficit reduction. 

Thank you for your interest. I would be pleased to discuss these matters further. 

Sincerely, ·-t-

(..,r~:L,Ji:·C~"l Adam Looney 
(339) 

THE FISCAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF 

AUSTERITY 

TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:32 a.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, chairman of the committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Wyden, Nelson, Whitehouse, Baldwin, 

King, Sessions, Grassley, and Johnson. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and 

Marcus Peacock, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. This hearing will come to order. 

But before we begin, I just want to take a moment to remember 

Senator Frank Lautenberg. He was a very passionate public servant who was not afraid to fight and vote for what he believed in, 

and I think it is important to note this morning that he was Ranking Member of this committee from 1997 to 2000 and helped negotiate the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which produced the first 

balanced budget in decades. Frank made tax relief and support for 

middle-class families a priority constantly, and he promoted a responsible approach to our deficit and budget challenges. 

Frank was somebody who gave everything he had to public service, and those who served with him know that that is what gave 

him satisfaction constantly. He will be missed by all of us, all of 

us on this committee in particular, and I think I join with all of 

my colleagues in letting his family know he is in our thoughts and 

prayers. 

Senator SESSIONS. Madam Chairman, thank you for making reference to our friend, Frank Lautenberg. He was a great Senator, 

a good friend. I really liked him. He understood, of course, as a 

highly accomplished businessman, he understood the economy and 

how the system worked in an extraordinary way. 

And a lot of people might not know that he landed on D- Day. 

I used to say that he would correct it every time because he landed 

about three weeks after the Normandy invasion and he did not 

want to claim that he was there at the beginning, but he was 

there, and the last, I guess, surviving World War II veteran that 

we had. 

So a real patriot, a man of great accomplishment, and thank you 

for making reference to his fine service. 
340 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

With that, let me thank my ranking member, Senator Sessions, 

all of our colleagues who are joining us here today, and all the 

members of the public who are here and watching online. 

I want to begin by thanking our witnesses, Larry Summers, 

former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton and NEC Director under President Obama, and now Charles W. Eliot Professor 

at Harvard University. 

We also have Simon Johnson, Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management and a Senior 

Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 

And we have Salim Furth, who is a Senior Policy Analyst for 

Macroeconomics at the Heritage Foundation. 

I really appreciate all of you coming today and sharing your expertise. 

The topic of today’s hearing is ‘‘The Fiscal and Economic Effects 

of Austerity.’’ This is a subject that has received a lot of attention 

recently, and it is important for those of us here on the Budget 

Committee to understand it as we work with our colleagues across 

the Senate to negotiate a budget deal between the House and Senate, replace sequestration, write and pass spending bills for the 

next year, and make sure we are making the investments we need 

in jobs and long-term economic growth. 

I have long believed that the case for austerity during times of 

economic weakness has been fundamentally flawed. When demand 

falls off in the private sector and millions of workers are losing 

their jobs, I think the last thing government should do is make 

things worse by slashing spending and causing aggregate demand 

to drop even further. When the economy is struggling, government 

should act to make things better for the middle class and most 

families by investing in jobs and economic growth that not only 

boost demand in the short term, but also lays down a strong foundation for long-term and broad-based growth for years to come. 

That was the theory behind the Senate budget we passed that 

put jobs and the economy first. It is one shared by the vast majority of economists across the political spectrum. and it is one of the 

many reasons I believe the House budget is wrong for our country 

and our economy. 

In recent weeks, however, it has been made clearer than ever 

that the case for short-term austerity is not just the wrong way to 

go, it is flat out wrong. A very specific claim in an academic paper 

cited frequently by many of my Republican colleagues on this committee to make the case for short-term austerity was found to be 

flawed, and recent changes in deficit projections have made it clear 

that despite the claims of some of my colleagues, there is no shortterm debt or deficit crisis. 

We have serious long-term deficit and debt challenges that we 

need to tackle. We certainly do not want to leave our children and 

grandchildren with an unmanageable pile of our bills. But we have 

made significant progress recently when it comes to our short- and 

medium-term deficits. And now the focus should be on creating 

jobs, preserving our fragile recovery, long-term deficit reduction, 

and setting the conditions for economic growth built from the middle out. 
341 

Since the Simpson-Bowles Commission’s report in 2010, we have worked to reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion, disproportionately 

through spending cuts, and to be clear, that $2.4 trillion is the 

amount of deficit reduction before counting the $1.2 trillion in savings that will come from either sequestration or, as proposed and 

passed by this committee and the Senate in March, an alternative 

approach that replaces the damaging automatic cuts with a responsible and balanced mix of spending cuts and new revenue. 

A few weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office released its 

latest baseline, which gave us an updated view on our debt and 

deficits. These revisions show we have made more progress on reducing our short- and medium-term deficits than we had thought. 

CBO now estimates that the deficit for 2013 will be over $200 billion less than its February projection. This means that in the two 

years from 2011 to 2013, CBO expects the deficit will have been 

cut in half. 

That is welcome news. And again, it makes clearer than ever 

that now we need to focus, above all else, on our fragile economic 

recovery and that the case for austerity in a time of economic 

weakness is simply wrong. 

History has shown us that austerity is not the right way to boost 

economic growth in the short term, especially during times when 

the economy is still recovering, as it is right now. Our experience 

as a country following the Great Depression in the 1930s showed 

us how turning to austerity too quickly can have serious consequences for economic recovery after a time of crisis, and Europe’s 

recent adoption of austerity policies has yielded similarly negative 

results. Countries across Europe have experienced economic 

downturns that have exacerbated or been prolonged by austerity 

policies. 

Right now, we are seeing how the indiscriminate and irresponsible cuts from sequestration are hurting our economy. When I was 

back home in my home State of Washington last week, I heard 

story after story after story about the impact they are having on 

families and communities. 

I met with a man named Elliot Gregg in Kitsap County in my 

State who runs the Kitsap Credit Union. Elliot’s credit union has 

been part of that community for decades, and it has grown with the 

thousands of Navy families who call Kitsap home. Even though sequestration has been just in effect for a few months, he is seeing 

dramatic impacts. Families hoping to buy their first home or purchase a car are telling him, with furloughs and layoffs looming, 

they cannot take out loans they might not be able to pay back. 

They do not understand why Congress would continue along the 

path of deep and indiscriminate cuts, and frankly, I do not, either. 

During this time when our economic recovery is real but remains 

fragile, experts agree we should be instead investing in job creation 

and economic growth and continuing on the path to austerity right 

now would weaken our economy and do serious damage to job creation and growth. 

Not only is austerity bad for short-term economic growth, but it 

also hurts our ability to lay down a foundation for long-term broadbased growth and prosperity. As a country, we have to continue to 

invest in the programs we need to compete globally in the 21st cen-
342 

tury economy, the kinds of investments that make our country 

stronger. 

In fact, the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission highlighted 

the importance of, and I quote, ‘‘investing in education, infrastructure, and high-value research and development to help our economy grow, keep us globally competitive, and make it easier for 

businesses to create jobs.’’ Investing in infrastructure, like roads 

and bridges, creates jobs today, but it also makes our families safer 

and lays down a strong foundation for long-term economic growth. 

I, in fact, saw this firsthand at home in my home State, where 

on Friday a week ago, I saw the devastation that was caused by 

an entire section of Interstate 5 which collapsed into the Skagit 

River. This is the kind of disaster that we can expect when our 

roads and bridges have outdated designs or fall into disrepair and 

it should certainly be a wake-up call that we need to invest in repairing our crumbling roads, bridges, and highways. And, by the 

way, that is not just having an effect on the highways. It is having 

an effect on every business surrounding there, where they have 

seen a tremendous loss of business because of the collapse of this 

bridge. 

Thankfully, by the way, no one was seriously injured. We are beginning work on a temporary and a long-term repair, but our families have been seriously disrupted by this and it is really a wakeup call to all of us about what we need to be focusing on. 

By strengthening our transportation systems, we are helping to 

connect people across town and across the country, and this will 

create a more productive environment for American businesses to 

grow over the long term. 

Now, the same is true for our investments in people and schools. 

Investment in education through programs like Pell Grants and 

worker training are some of the smartest the Federal Government 

can make to boost our economy in the long term. If our businesses 

are going to be creating 21st century jobs, we need our students 

and workers to have 21st century skills. And in order to maintain 

our edge in innovation, we need to keep investing in research and 

development. These types of investments have led to private sector 

growth and they have led to new industries and new drugs and 

new inventions and new jobs. 

If we fail to maintain these important investments, we could lose 

our position as a global leader in research and technology. But taking the path of austerity would cut these national investments in 

infrastructure and education and research that help make sure we 

leave our children a stronger country than the one we received. 

And it would weaken our economy in the short and long term. 

Now, this debate can sometimes seem academic, but it has very 

real implications on policy decisions that we make here in Congress. I am extremely frustrated that some Republicans here in the 

Senate are blocking us from moving to a bipartisan budget conference where we could work together to move away from the constant lurching from crisis to crisis and get back to regular order my 

Republican colleagues have claimed they wanted. But even though 

we do not yet have a budget agreement, over the next few weeks, 

our Appropriations Committees are now beginning to make some 

key decisions about our discretionary spending for fiscal year 2014 
343 

and they are going to face this choice between a path of austerity 

or an approach that maintains critical investments in our families 

and communities. 

Senate Democrats believe the path of austerity that long-term 

cuts from sequestration lead toward is not the right direction for 

our country. That is why we are going to continue to work to replace sequestration with a balanced mix of responsible spending 

cuts and revenue from those who can afford it the most, and that 

is why the Senate Appropriations Committee, led by Chairwoman 

Mikulski, will maintain a $1.058 trillion cap during this process, 

the amount of discretionary spending that we agreed upon in the 

bipartisan Budget Control Act. 

House Republicans, on the other hand, will be writing their 

spending bills at the overall level that assumes sequestration will 

continue, $967 billion. And to be clear, House Republicans are not 

keeping to the bipartisan Budget Control Act. They are violating it 

by shifting funds from non-defense programs in order to keep defense spending at pre-sequestration levels. 

We all know sequestration was never intended to be implemented, so we should be focused on replacing it, not trying to make 

an unworkable policy just a bit less bad. The difference between 

$1.058 trillion and $967 billion may seem abstract, but we are 

going to continue to see the very real impact that spending cuts 

and sequestration are having on our veterans, our students, our 

seniors, and our families, not just today, not just tomorrow, but for 

years and years to come. 

Already, House Republicans are recognizing the impact this approach has on our ability to maintain important national investments. Their own budget places severe restrictions on spending levels for critical programs like our national defense, education, and 

health care spending, and so they are taking funding from some 

parts of the budget to pay for others. Robbing Peter to pay Paul 

is not the right way to set our priorities as a nation. It is a gimmick, and as we will see over the next few weeks, the House Appropriations Committee is going to be highlighting the fact that 

even they know their budget levels, which are worse than sequestration, are not practical and not sustainable. My colleague, the Republican Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said, and 

I quote, ‘‘This is clearly an austere budget year,’’ and he did not 

mean that in a good way. 

As we continue in this appropriations process, I hope we can all 

keep in mind a clear vision for what will create economic success 

and broad-based prosperity in the short term and over the long 

term. So I am very glad that we are having this very timely discussion today. We owe it to the American people to come together 

around a responsible vision for building a foundation for growth 

and restoring the promise of American opportunity, and I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today about this important subject in just a few minutes. 

With that, I would like to turn it over to my Ranking Member, 

Senator Sessions, for his opening statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 
344 

This is a good panel and it is dealing with a critically important 

issue, and that is how to get our economy growing and how to get 

out of the debt situation that we are in that every expert has told 

us is unsustainable. We cannot continue on this path. We can have 

some short-term, and hopefully will have some short- term improvements in our deficits, but with the entitlement programs the 

way they are today and the way they are projected to be, we are 

going to be in a situation of unsustainable debt again in the years 

to come. 

So, I believe it is important beyond words that we deal with this 

rhetoric about Europe and the recession and the difficulties there 

and that they made this classical colossal mistake of austerity, and 

that they cut spending and that this has made Europe so poor and 

broke and just the wrong thing to do. 

But we are going to hear from Dr. Salim Furth. He is going to 

talk to us about what happened in Europe, and what basically happened is the austerity we talk about is raising taxes. That is what 

they did right off the bat. The U.K. had a big tax increase right 

at the time of the recession and it did not help circumstances. And 

the data and studies show that the way to get a country who is out 

of control with its debt under control is better done with reducing 

spending than increasing taxes. It just is. 

And we are not, you should all know, going to come away from 

the Budget Control Act spending limitations that we passed, Congress passed, the President signed, and went into law. That is not 

going to be eliminated. You can just forget that. It is $2 trillion in 

reduction of the growth of spending over ten years. We raised the 

debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. We reduce the growth of spending by $2.1 

trillion over ten years. We have already hit the debt limit again. 

We have spent and added almost $2.1 trillion to the debt now. And 

so are we going to walk away from those modest spending reductions? 

For example, how much was that? If we kept spending at the 

current rate when we passed the Budget Control Act, we would 

have spent $37 trillion over ten years. But on the CBO baseline, 

we were projected to increase spending to $47 trillion over ten 

years, and the BCA would make that $45 trillion over ten years, 

a substantial increase. 

And the House budget does not cut spending. The House budget 

increases spending three percent a year and still balances the 

budget within ten years. We do not have to cut spending to balance 

the budget. We can allow spending to increase. 

And what do we have from the President and what do we have 

from the Democratic Senate budget? Raise taxes a trillion dollars. 

Raise spending a trillion dollars. The taxes are not used to pay 

down the debt. The taxes are used to fund new spending above the 

current baseline. That is not the way to get our country in the 

right circumstances, in my opinion. 

This is a good panel. Dr. Summers, we are delighted to have you. 

We respect you. You have wrestled with these issues for a long 

time. It is an honor to have you here. 

Dr. Johnson, it is good to have you again and I appreciate some 

of your willingness to ask some tough questions about financial 

maneuverings in our country. 
345 

And, Dr. Furth, thank you for being here. I know you have done 

original research. You have looked hard at the European situation. 

You can give us some information, I think, that will help us form 

our judgment. 

And what is the big dispute that we are in today? What is it that 

we want? My Democratic colleagues want to tax more and spend 

more. They are not using the tax increases to reduce the deficit. 

They are using tax increases to fund new spending, and we need 

to ask if that is the right thing to do, and can we not reduce spending more? We can in certain areas, that is for sure. 

The reduction in spending in the Budget Control Act was a good 

number, a reasonable number. It is not a dramatic reduction in 

spending overall, but it did impact fairly dramatically the military, 

and I think they can, as one- sixth of the budget, they take half 

of the cuts. 

So I believe that it is right for us, Madam Chairman, to ask, can 

we spread out some of those cuts to areas that had zero reductions 

in spending? Huge chunks of our government got zero reductions 

in spending. Can we not spread that out and maintain the commitment that we made to the American people? We told them, we are 

going to reduce the growth of spending by $2.1 trillion over ten 

years and we would raise the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. We need 

to honor that commitment. 

I would just note that this issue continues to be hot and a matter 

of big discussion. At the ministerial meeting on May 29 of this 

year, the Organization for European Cooperation and Development 

adopted a surprisingly upbeat tone for Europe. The Secretary General of OECD, Angel Gurria, concluded, quote, ‘‘The fiscal adjustment of the last few years is beginning to pay off. Several countries 

are close to stabilizing their government debt-to-GDP ratios and 

ensuring a gradual decline in indebtedness over the long run.’’ 

‘‘Stay the course,’’ the Secretary General said. ‘‘You are almost 

there.’’ 

Earlier in the week, Bundestag Bank President Jens Weidmann 

argued for a continued commitment to fiscal consolidation, spending constraint, and a rejection of the demands by some, including 

our own Secretary of Treasury, Jack Lew, who presided over the 

largest deficits in the history of the United States and claimed his 

budget would end deficit spending when it certainly did not, he 

claimed that they should stop these programs. So those are the 

kind of things that are going on. 

We are in a big debate about how to handle this financial situation. It is clear to me—and Dr. Summers, you have discussed it— 

I believe that one thing we should be able to agree on is that with 

the unsustainable growth of our entitlement programs, that proper 

constraint in that growth path could do something we could agree 

on on a bipartisan basis. It would reduce spending more as the 

years go by than immediately today and put our country on a longterm financial path, and I look forward to discussing these issues 

with you today. 

Chairman MURRAY. With that, we will turn to our panelists, and 

Dr. Summers, we will begin with you. And again, thank you to all 

three of you for being here. 
346 

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS, PRESIDENT EMERITUS AND CHARLES W. ELIOT UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. SUMMERS. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, 

members of the committee, it is an honor to have the opportunity 

to testify before you. 

I, like you, Senator Murray, had the great privilege of working 

with Frank Lautenberg. He was an extraordinary public servant, 

extraordinary in his dedication to using budgets to make lives better for people. He saw them not as financial abstractions, but as 

vehicles of positive change, and I hope that spirit can infuse all of 

us, whatever our particular views as debates on budgets go forward. 

I would like to do three things in my testimony this morning: 

First, indicate why I have become relatively optimistic about the 

U.S. economic outlook; second, speak about your central subject 

today, the economic impacts of austere budget policies and distinguish sharply between their impacts in good times and in difficult 

times like the present; and third, offer some observations on what 

I regard as most productive paths going forward. 

I am as optimistic, probably more optimistic about the future of 

the U.S. economy than I have been at any time in the last 15 

years. Fifteen years ago, we faced rising bubbles in the Internet 

and stocks. Those bubbles collapsed, leading to recession, leading 

to deflationary threats. Before long, bubbles arose. Those bubbles 

were a matter of concern. And then, of course, in 2007, the current 

financial crisis and economic downturn began. 

Recovery, inevitably, perhaps, has been relatively slow, if real 

and sustained. And there is now, I believe, a basis for hope that 

recovery will accelerate. That comes from the substantial turn in 

housing. It comes from the substantial investments that appear to 

lie ahead in the energy sector. It comes from improvement in consumer balance sheets. And it comes, very importantly, from the 

fact that unless further steps are taken, the adverse impact of austerity measures on economic growth will have largely played out by 

the end of 2013, reducing a headwind and, therefore, leading to the 

possibility of acceleration in economic growth going forward. 

There are, of course, risks to the forecast from the global economy, other risks, as well. And, certainly, the productive potential 

of the economy has been diminished by what has happened. But I 

think there is a real prospect of accelerating growth as we move 

to the end of this year and into 2014 and 2015. 

What about the underlying economic principles for budget policy? 

As Treasury Secretary in 1999 and 2000, I was proud to have the 

opportunity to preside over the Federal Government’s intervening 

in the debt market to recover, redeem, and repay outstanding Federal debt as a consequence of the surpluses that we were able to 

run at that time. Those surpluses reflected strong economic growth 

and they reflected a bipartisan commitment in a balanced way to 

reduced budget deficits through both measures to contain spending 

and to enhance revenue collections. They were, in my judgment, 

very salutary at that time. Indeed, we were able to set off a kind 

of virtuous circle in which reduced budget deficits led to increased 
347 

confidence, which led to more growth, which led to reduced budget 

deficits, and the cycle moved on. 

Ultimately, our goal has to be to restore such economic performance. In the short run, however, circumstances in the United 

States today are very different than they were at that time. Very 

substantial numbers of people remain unemployed. Interest rates 

are at zero and cannot be further reduced. And the global economy 

is weak. 

In such circumstances, measures that maintain and increase demand are essential. Measures which operate to cut demand back 

further are counterproductive with respect to economic growth and 

may even be counterproductive in terms of reducing debt burdens 

because slower economic growth leads both to larger budget deficits 

and to a lower level of GDP and, therefore, a higher debt-to-GDP 

ratio. 

This is not the time for austerity or further cutbacks. It is the 

time to make plans for the medium and longer term. For the medium and longer term, we do absolutely need to recognize and take 

long-run steps, many of which would be desirable even in the absence of budget problems, such as containing the growth of health 

care costs, reforming the tax code where tax subsidies distort economic activity and reduce the economic efficiency of our economy, 

as well as costing the government revenue. 

It is also an appropriate moment for us to look at crucial expenditures which the country will have to undertake at some point and 

undertake them now at a moment when the cost of borrowing will 

be uniquely low, at a moment when their productivity and employing people will be uniquely high because of high unemployment. 

Particularly important in that regard is the need to maintain and 

upgrade our country’s infrastructure, an investment need we will 

face at some point, and we will reduce burdens on our children by 

meeting that obligation today rather than bequeathing it to them. 

A balanced approach that focuses appropriately on supporting 

demand in the short run while containing long-run budgetary pressures in a balanced way for the medium and long term will best 

promote growth, best increase confidence, and best offer us the 

prospect that again, as in the 1990s, we can be in a position to 

start paying down the Federal debt. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Summers follows:] 
348 

Opening Remarks to Senate Budget Committee 

Hearing on "The Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity" 

June 4th, 2013 

Lawrence H. Summers 

Charles W. Eliot University Professor 

Harvard University 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak before this committee. You have chosen to 

address issues relating to austerity at an opportune time as both our economic and our 

budget situations are in considerable flux and as a broad rethinking of reflexively austere 

policies is underway worldwide. In my testimony today I want to do three things: 

First, 1 will characterize the economic and fiscal outlook. Second, I will reflect on the 

economics of austerity, arguing that too little of the policy debate in recent years has 

focused on the imperative of increasing economic growth which, in the short and medium 

term, goes back to issues relating to demand. Third, 1 will comment on some of what I 

see as policy priorities for the years ahead. 

The Economic and Fiscal Outlook 

I am increasingly optimistic about our economic recovery. Indeed, I believe our 

economic prospects now look as sound as at any time in the last 15 years. The late 1990s 

saw the emergence of a major stock market bubble which was followed by recession in 

2001 and slow recovery giving rise to fears of deflation. Soon enough bubbles recurred, 

this time credit and housing markets, leading me to observe in 2006 and 2007 that again, 

"The main thing we have to fear is lack of fear itself." In August of 2007, the financial 

crisis began with profound distress overtaking the economy in late 2008. Recovery since 

that time has been real if inadequately paced. 

I think it is now reasonable to expect the pace of recovery to accelerate if sound policies 

are pursued. 1 base this judgment on a number of considerations. 

• It appears that housing has decisively turned with home prices up at double digit 

rates nationwide over the last year and construction rising sharply. Given that the 

shortfall in housing construction during the post 2007 bust substantially exceeded 

the excess inventory created during the bubble period, robust housing demand 

should be with us for years to come. Strength in housing should also propel 

recovery through improvements in consumer balance sheets and increased 

demand for durable goods. 

• The United States has the potential to benefit from a substantial renaissance in 

domestic energy production associated with shale oil, so called "tight oil" more 

generally and natural gas. It is very plausible that North America will be a net 

energy exporter by the end of the decade. Increased domestic energy production 
349 

will involve investment on a substantial scale approaching $100 billion, and 

significant job creation, including in hard hit sectors, like construction, and in 

struggling areas of the country, like Western Pennsylvania. Lower oil and natural 

gas prices willlikeJy lead to increased consumer spending and to some re-shoring 

of manufacturing. 

• There has been substantial improvement in household, corporate and financial 

institution balance sheets setting the stage for increased spending. Indeed it has 

been several decades since household wealth rose as rapidly as it has recently, 

with both the stock and housing markets providing support. 

• While fiscal contraction at an excessive pace has been an important economic 

headwind since the Recovery Act began phasing out in 20 II, most of this blow 

will have been absorbed by the end of this year, setting the stage for some 

acceleration in growth unless further policies that immediately reduce demand are 

enacted. By 2014, it is likely that government will not be a retardant on economic 

activity for the first time in 4 years. 

These favorable aspects of the current situation are real. But optimism needs to be 

tempered by two unfortunate features of the current situation: 

First, the economy has suffered long term damage from the financial crisis and recession 

of the last several years. Long term, unemployed workers have withdrawn, quite likely 

permanently, from the workforce. Young workers coming out of school have had much 

greater difficulty than usual getting on career ladders. Capital investment in new capacity 

has been held back, as has corporate investment in research and development and the 

establishment of new brands and product categories. Infrastructure investments on some 

measures have not kept up with deterioration and obsolescence. It is sobering to 

contemplate that the CBO estimate ofthe economy's potential capacity after full cyclical 

recovery in 2017 is now fully 7.2 percent or $1.2 trillion below the CBO's 2007 estimate. 

Second, there remain real risks to the recovery. The rest of the world, especially Europe, 

faces major growth challenges. Increasing inequality acts to hold back spending. There 

are some signs of froth reappearing in credit markets. Measures of confidence, while 

improved, remain somewhat depressed and the possibility of geopolitical shocks can 

hardly be discounted. Everything we know about the aftermath of financial crises from 

the United States' 1930s depression to Japan's experience since 1989, suggests that 

achieving a return to sustained real growth is very difficult and that premature 

declarations of victory can be very costly. 

Fortunately, relatively good economic news in recent months has been matched by even 

better budget news. A combination of factors has led to substantial downward revisions 

in projected budget deficits, to the point where the debt-GOP ratio is now expected to 

decline through 2020. These factors include a stronger economy, a striking slowdown in 

the growth rate of health care costs and enhanced revenue collections beyond what might 

immediately be expected given economic performance. While there are no certainties, 
350 

experience suggests that favorable revisions in the budget outlook tend to be followed by 

further favorable revisions and vice-versa. It is therefore reasonable to judge that while 

the nation continues to face a serious long run fiscal challenge, the budget outlook is 

today far less grim than it appeared several years ago. 

This experience should be a useful caution to all of us involved in policy debates. While 

it is important to address long run issues, our visibility is limited. For example, the CBO 

publishes reports that analyze their five-year real GOP growth forecasts versus actual 

realized growth. Historically, the forecast error is 1.2% per year. To put that number in 

perspective, it implies that there is about a I in 4 chance of that our current estimates of 

real GOP in 2018 are off by more than a trillion dollars (7.4% of GOP). The error in 10-

year projections would be significantly greater. 

The Economics of Austerity 

Both in the United States and abroad there have, in recent years, been fierce debates 

about budget policies and ideas around austerity and deficit reduction. These debates 

which are often framed in universal terms have often shed more heat than light. A 

prudent government must over time seek to balance spending and revenue collection in a 

way that assures the sustainability of debts. To do otherwise, leads to instability and 

needlessly slow growth, and courts default and economic catastrophe. Equally however, 

responsible fiscal policy requires recognizing that when economies are weak and 

movements in interest rates are constrained, as has been the case in much of the industrial 

world in recent years, changes in fiscal policy will have large impacts on economic 

activity that in tum will affect revenue collections and social support expenditures. In 

such circumstances, aggressive efforts to rapidly reduce budget deficits may actually 

backfire as a contracting economy offsets their direct benefits. 

It is a truism that deficit finance of government activity is not an alternative to tax finance 

or to supporting one form of spending by cutting back on another. It is only a means of 

deferring payment for government spending and, of course, because of interest expenses 

increasing the burden on taxpayers. Just as a household or business cannot indefinitely 

increase its debt relative to its income without becoming insolvent, a government cannot 

either. There is no viable permanent option of spending without raising commensurate 

revenue. The meaningful choices involve the size of public activity and the timing of 

government spending and taxation. 

It follows that in normal times there is no advantage to deficit policies. Public borrowing 

does not reduce ultimate tax burdens. It tends to crowd out private borrowing to finance 

growth and job creating investment and tends to foster international borrowing, which 

means an excess of imports over exports. Or the expectation of future tax increases may 

discourage private spending. While government spending, or tax cutting financed by 

borrowing, creates increased demand in the economy, the Federal Reserve can in normal 

times achieve this objective by adjusting base interest rates. 
351 

It was essentially this logic that drove the measures taken in the late 1980s and in the 

1990s, usually on a bipartisan basis, to balance the budget. As a consequence of policy 

steps taken in 1990, 1993 and 1997, it was possible by the year 2000 for the Treasury to 

use surplus revenues to retire Federal debt. There is no question in my view that deficit 

reduction, and the associated reduction in capital costs and increase in investment, was an 

important contributor to the nation's very strong economic performance during the 1990s 

when productivity growth soared and unemployment fell below 4 percent. Essentially, 

we enjoyed a virtuous circle in which reduced deficits led to lower capital costs and 

increased confidence, which led to more rapid growth, which further reduced deficits 

reinforcing the cycle. 

As a Treasury official in the 1 990s, I was proud to support and help implement these 

measures. The time will come again when deficit reduction should be the immediate first 

priority of budget policy. 

But, in recent years, circumstances have been anything but normal in the United States 

and most of the industrial world. High levels of unemployment, low levels of job 

vacancies and deflationary pressures all indicate that the level of output is not constrained 

by what the economy is capable of producing, but by the level of demand. Moreover, 

with base interest rates at or close to zero, the efficacy of monetary policy is 

circumscribed. In the United States, GDP has been as much as a trillion dollars a year or 

more than $10,000 per family below its potential. 

Under these circumstances, there is every reason to expect that changes in deficit policies 

will have a direct impact on levels of employment and output in a way that is not 

normally the case. Borrowing to support spending, either by the government or the 

private sector, raises demand and therefore increases output and employment above the 

level they otherwise would have reached. Unlike in normal times, these gains will not be 

offset by reduced private spending because there is substantial excess capacity in the 

economy, and cannot easily be achieved via monetary policies because base interest rates 

have already been reduced to zero. Multiplier effects operate far more strongly during 

financial crisis economic downturns than in other times. 

Two further considerations magnify these effects. As I noted earlier, sustained poor 

economic performance, in addition to reducing output and employment, adversely affects 

future economic performance. So, measures that support demand raise future, as well as 

present, output. Also, support for demand helps to stimulate the economy by offsetting 

contractionary, deflationary pressures. 

In a study published last year in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, that I ask be 

included in the hearing record, Brad Delong and I made estimates suggesting that the 

effect of expansionary fiscal policies might well be to reduce, rather than increase, future 

debt burdens because of their positive economic impacts. These estimates remain the 

subject of substantial debate among economists and I would never want to suggest that 

policy should be driven by the results of a single study. Yet, [ do think it is a fair 
352 

conclusion that once account is taken of the direct impact of budget policies on economic 

performance, their impact on debt burdens is greatly attenuated. 

To illustrate: Consider the effect of the sequester in 2013. The sequester will impact the 

last 10 months of calendar year 2013. The CBO estimates thatthe sequester will, over 

this 10 month interval, reduce spending by $64 billion. With no other change, this would 

result in a reduction of $64 billion in the Federal debt, which is equivalent to reducing the 

debt/GOP ratio by 0.39 percent. 

However, we must also consider the sequester's effect on GOP growth. The CBO 

estimates that the sequester will reduce the GOP growth rate in 2013 by 0.6 percentage 

points. This stifling of growth actually increases the debt/GOP ratio through two effects: 

First, by reducing the GOP growth rate, the sequester reduces the denominator of the 

debt/GOP ratio. Second, lower GOP during 2013 means lower tax revenue, which 

increases the deficit. 

We cannot ignore these spillover effects of the sequester onto the economy and onto tax 

revenue. When we account for these spillover effects, the CBO estimates imply that, the 

sequester will have a negligible effect on our debt/GOP ratio, at the end of the day. 

These observations have strong implications for recent debates over austerity-debates 

that have reached a crescendo with recent controversies over the work of my Harvard 

colleagues Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff. I have attached a commentary reflecting 

my views on their work. 

More important than arguments over their data and statistical procedures is the simple 

observation that the impact of debts and deficits will vary with economic circumstances 

and the further point that while high levels of debt can retard economic growth, increases 

in borrowing can enhance economic growth by mitigating downturns. This has the 

additional impact as I have already noted of raising future potential output. 

International comparisons tend to confirm the view that excessively rapid fiscal 

consolidation has adverse impacts on economic performance. 

In Figure I, we see that countries that pursued harsher austerity policies in recent years 

also had lower real GOP growth. In Figure 2, we see the difference in unemployment in 

the US and Eurozone. In 2009, the US and Eurozone had almost the same unemployment 

rates. In the interim, the Eurozone pursued far harsher austerity policies. Today, the gap 

in the unemployment rates between the US and Eurozone is 4.6 percentage points. 

Naturally, I would be remiss if I did not caution that correlation is not the same as 

causation. And there are many different ways of processing these data. However, in the 

face of these data it is difficult to credit claims that more rapid fiscal consoli dation is 

likely to accelerate economic growth. 
353 

Figure I: Growth vs Austerity 

4 

Caption: Austerity = Average Change in (Cye Adj Primary Balanee)/(Potential GOP) 

Figure I (alternate version): Growth vs Austerity 
354 

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Caption: Austerity = Average Change in (Cye Adj Primary Balanee)/(Potential GOP) 

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355 

Policy Going Forward 

The foregoing analysis suggests several important principles regarding US fiscal policy 

in the years ahead. 

First, it would not be desirable to undertake further measures to rapidly reduce deficits in 

the short run. Excessively rapid fiscal consolidation in an economy that is stiIJ 

constrained by lack of demand, and where space for monetary policy action is limited, 

risks slowing economic expansion at best and halting recovery at worst. Indeed, there is 

no compelling macroeconomic case for the deficit reduction now being achieved through 

sequestration, as the adverse impacts of spending cuts on GDP more or less offset their 

direct impacts in reducing debt. An ultimate judgment on sequestration should therefore 

depend on a view about the merits of the expenditures being cut back in providing public 

benefit. I think it is unlikely that aside from the macroeconomic argument, which is 

dubious, that policymakers would adopt the sequestration cuts simply on grounds of 

efficient public expenditure though this is not at root an economic judgment. 

Second, while uncertainties are great and progress has been made, the United States does 

face an unsound long run imbalance between forecast expenditures and revenue 

collections. Spurring growth is the best way to reduce this imbalance. Indeed a 1 percent 

increase in the growth rate ofGDP maintained for 10 years would reduce cumulative 

deficits by more than $3 trillion. Accelerating growth should be a central aspect of 

budget debates going forward. 

Third, the highest priority in terms of structural reforms to reduce future deficits should 

be attached to measures that would be desirable even in the absence of prospective 

deficits. Candidates here include steps to control the growth of health care costs and tax 

reform. Careful international studies suggest that the excess of US health care costs over 

foreign costs are more related to a given procedure costing more in the US than to more 

procedures being performed in the US. This suggests an emphasis on improving 

approaches to purchasing care rather than on curbing consumer demand for medical 

assistance. There are a number of features of the tax code that both cost the government 

revenue and make the economy less efficient. These include corporate tax provisions that 

support the shifting of economic activity and accounting income to tax havens, subsides 

that favor particular industries over others, and measures that create an economic bias 

towards risky financial transactions. Sound loophole-closing tax reform offers the 

prospect of increased revenues, increased incentives for productive economic activity 

through lower rates, and increased government revenues. 

Fourth, attention should be devoted to measures that reduce future deficits by pulling 

expenditures forward to the present when they have the additional benefit of increasing 

demand. It is important to recognize that just as increasing debt burdens future 

generations, so also does a failure to repair decaying infrastructure, or to invest 

adequately in funding pensions, or in educating the next generation burdens future 

generations. Wherever it is possible to reduce future public obligations by spending 

money today, we should take advantage of this opportunity especially given the very low 
356 

level of interest rates. In particular, a major effort to upgrade the nation's infrastructure 

has the potential to spur economic growth, raise future productive capacity and reduce 

future deficits. It should be a high priority. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today. I look forward to 

your questions. 
357 

Financial Times Column 

The buck does not stop with Reinhart and Rogoff 

May 6, 2013 

The economics commentariat - and no small part of the political debate - has been consumed in the past few 

weeks with controversy surrounding a piece of research by my Harvard colleagues (and friends) Cannen 

Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. The article, published in 2010, had been widely interpreted as showing that 

economic growth is likely to stagnate in a given country once the ratio of its government debt to gross 

domestic product exceeded a threshold of90 per cent. But scholars at the University of Massachusetts have 

demonstrated - and the duo have acknowledged - that the two professors accidentally omitted some relevant 

datajn forming their results, thanks to a coding error. Questions have also raised with respect to how they 

weighted observations and which data they used. 

Many have asserted that the debate undermines the claims of austerity advocates around the world that deficits 

should be reduced quickly. Some have gone so far as to blame Profs Reinhart and Rogoff for the 

unemployment of millions, asserting that they were crucial intellectual ammunition for austerity policies. 

Others believe that, even after review, the data support the view that deficit and debt burden reduction is 

important in most of the industrialised world. Still others say the controversy has called into question the 

usefulness of statistical research on economic policy questions. 

Where should these debates settle? First, the whole experience should change the way we approach economic 

and statistical research. Profs Rogoff and Reinhart are rightly regarded as careful, honest scholars. Anyone 

close to the process of economic research or financial markets will recognise that data errors such as the ones 

they made are distressingly common. 

Indeed, an internal investigation by JPMorgan into the $6bn loss it made last year on the "London whale" trade 

found mistakes not unlike those made by Profs Reinhart and Rogoff. Simple errors in a model meant that the 

bank dramatically underestimated the risks that it was running. In future, authors, academic journals and 

commentators need to devote more effort to replicating significant research results before broadcasting them 

widely. 

More generally, no important policy conclusion should ever be based solely on a single statistical result. Policy 

judgments should be based on the accumulation of evidence from multiple studies done with differing 

approaches. Even then, there should be a reluctance to accept conclusions from "models" without an intuitive 

understanding of what is driving them. It is right and understandable that scholars want their findings to inform 

the policy debate. But they have an obligation to discourage and, on occasion, contradict those who would 

oversimpliry and exaggerate their conclusions. 

Second, all participants in policy debates should retain a healthy scepticism about retrospective statistical 

analysis. Trillions of dollars have been lost and millions have been unemployed because the lesson was learnt 

from 60 years of experience between 1945 and 2005 that "American house prices in aggregate always go up". 

This was not a data problem or misanalysis. It was a data regularity - right up until it wasn't. 
358 

The extrapolation from past experience to future outlook is always deeply problematic and needs to be done 

with great care. In retrospect, it was folly to believe that with data on about 30 countries it was possible to 

estimate a threshold beyond which debt became dangerous. 

Even if such a threshold existed, why should it be the same in countries with and without their own currency, 

with very different financial systems, cultutes, degrees of openness and growth experiences? And there is the 

old chestnut that correlation does not establish causation. Any tendency for high debt and low growth to go 

together might reflect the way that debts can rapidly accumulate as a consequence of slow growth. 

Third, while Reinhart and Rogoffs work, even before the recent replication efforts, did not support the claims 

made by prominent figures on the right in the US and UK regarding the urgency of deficit reduction efforts, 

the joy taken by some on the left from their embarrassment is inappropriate. 

It is absurd to blame Reinhart and Rogoff for austerity policies. The political leaders advancing austerity 

measures made their choice of policy first, and then cast about for intellectual buttresses. While there may be 

no threshold beyond which debt becomes catastrophic, and while the British and US experiences both suggest 

that fiscal contraction in a slack economy where interest rates are near zero is inimical to growth, it is a grave 

mistake to suppose that debt can or should be accumulated with abandon. 

On all but the most optimistic forecasts, further actions will be necessary almost everywhere in the industrial 

world to assure that debt levels are sustainable after economies recover. 

This is not the time for austerity, but we forget at our peril that debt- financed spending is not an alternative to 

cutting other spending or raising taxes. It is only a way of deferring those painful acts. 

The writer is Charles W. Eliot university professor at Harvard and a former US Treasury secretary 
359 

J. BRADFORD DELONG 

University of California, Berkeley 

LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 

Harvard University 

Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy 

ABSTRACT In a depressed economy, with short-term nominal interest rates 

at their zero lower bound, ample cyclical unemployment, and excess capacity, increased government purchases would be neither offset by the monetary 

authority raising interest rates nor neutralized by supply-side bottlenecks. 

Then even a small amount of hysteresis-even a small shadow cast on future 

potential output by the cyclical downturn-means, by simple arithmetic, that 

expansionary fiscal policy is likely to be self-financing. Even if it is not, it is 

highly likely to pass the sensible benefit-cost test of raising the present value 

of future potential output. Thus, at the zero bound, where the central bank 

cannot or will not but in any event does not perfonn its full role in stabilization policy, fiscal policy has the stabilization policy mission that others have 

convincingly argued it lacks in nonnal times. Whereas many economists 

have assumed that the path of potential output is invariant to even a deep 

and prolonged downturn, the available evidence raises a strong fear that 

hysteresis is indeed a factor. Although nothing in our analysis calls into question the importance of sustainable fiscal policies, it strongly suggests the need 

for caution regarding the pace of fiscal consolidation. 

ThiS paper examines fiscal policy in the context of an economy suffer- I ing, like the United States today, from protracted high unemployment 

and output short of potential. We argue that although the conventional wisdom articulated by John Taylor (2000) rejecting discretionary fiscal policy 

is appropriate in normal times, such policy has a major role to play in a 

severe downturn in the aftermath of a financial crisis that carries interest 

rates down to the zero nominal lower bound. 

Our analysis reaches five conclusions about fiscal policy as a stabilization tool in a depressed as opposed to a normal economy: 

-The absence of supply constraints in the short term, together with 

a binding zero lower bound on interest rates, means that the Keynesian 

Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

Copyright 2012, The Brookings Institution 

233 
360 

234 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2011 

multiplier is likely to be substantially greater than the relatively small 

value it is thought to have in normal times. This multiplier may well be 

further magnified by an additional zero-bound effect: the impact of economic expansion on expected inflation and hence on real interest rates. 

-At current and expected future real interest rates on government 

borrowing, even a very modest amount of "hysteresis," through which 

cyclical output shortfalls affect the economy's future potential, has a substantial effect on estimates of the impact of expansionary fiscal policy on 

the future debt burden. Although the data are far from conclusive, a number of fragments of evidence suggest that additional government spending 

that mitigates protracted output losses raises potential future output, even 

if the spending policies are not directly productive in themselves. I 

-Policies of austerity may well be counterproductive even by the yardstick of reducing the burden of financing the national debt in the future. 

Austerity in a depressed economy can erode the long-run fiscal balance. 

Stimulus can improve it.2 

-Arguments that expansionary fiscal policy at the zero bound is not 

self-financing and does not pass a benefit-cost test by raising the present 

value of future potential output hinge on establishing one of three conditions: that monetary policy offsets the demand effects of fiscal policy 

even at the zero bound sufficiently that the multiplier is near zero, or that 

future potential output is invariant to the size and length of the downturn, 

or that interest rates are at or above the range seen historically, at least in 

the United States. 

-Only when a government must pay a substantial premium over the 

social rate of time discount in order to borrow is the economy unlikely to 

benefit from expansionary fiscal policy at the zero bound. 

The paper is organized as follows. Section I presents a highly stylized 

example making our basic point regarding self-financing fiscal policy. It 

then lays out an analytical framework for assessing the likelihood that 

expansionary fiscal policy will actually be expansionary, and it identifies 

the parameters that are most important in evaluating the impact of fiscal 

policy changes. 

I. Of course, this case is strengthened and the long-term benefits of debt-financed government purchases at the zero bound are amplified if the government purchases themselves 

are directly productive and so boost the economy's stock of public capital or private human 

capital. 

2. This point was made a generation ago by Blanchard and Summers (1987). As Erceg 

and Linde (2010) recenlly put it, there could then be a "fiscal free lunch." 
361 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 235 

Two further sections examine evidence on the central parameters in our 

framework: the fiscal multiplier and the extent of hysteresis. Both must be 

greater than zero for our central point to hold, yet both are subject to considerable uncertainty. Other key parameters are subject to less uncertainty: 

estimates of the expected future growth rate of potential output are tightly 

clustered; the financial market's estimate of real Treasury borrowing rates 

far into the future is public information. 

Section II argues that the multiplier is context-dependent, depending in 

particular on the reaction function of monetary policy. It concludes that at 

moments like the present-when interest rates are constrained by the zero 

bound. the output gap is large, and cyclical unemployment is high-fiscal 

policy is likely to be more potent than standard estimates suggest. This 

conclusion boosts the benefits of expansionary fiscal policy in a depressed 

economy substantially, but, importantly, it does not depend on the policyrelevant multiplier being higher than standard estimates of the fiscal policy 

multiplier. 

Section III examines the available evidence on the extent of hysteresis. Financial crises and demand-induced recessions appear to have an 

impact on potential output even after normal conditions are restored. 

This makes it plausible that measures that mitigate their effects would 

have long-run benefits. We find corroboration both in the behavior of 

economic forecasters and in a number of fragments of evidence on the 

effects of recessions. 

Finally, section IV takes up issues relating to interest rates and monetary policy. It argues that available evidence on central bank behavior 

suggests that it is unlikely that, in a severely depressed economy, expansionary fiscal policy will lead to an offsetting monetary policy response. 

The section concludes with a discussion of policy implications of the 

analysis for the United States and the world. An appendix uses the framework laid out in section I to consider the conditions under which expansionary policy is not self-financing but nonetheless passes the benefit-cost 

test of raising the present value of output-what we call the "extra-output 

benefit-cost test." 

I. Self-Financing Fiscal Policy 

Assume an economy in which output is well below its potential. cyclical 

unemployment is elevated, supply constraints on short-run demand are 

absent, conventional monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower 

bound, and the central bank is either unable or unwilling to. but in any 
362 

236 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

case does not, provide additional stimulus through quantitative easing 

or other means (an assumption we discuss further in section IV).J A 

simple calculation then conveys the main message of this paper: under 

these circumstances, a combination of real government borrowing rates 

in the historical range, modestly positive fiscal multiplier effects, and 

small hysteresis effects are together sufficient to render fiscal expansion 

self-financing. 

Imagine, for example, that in this demand-constrained economy the fiscal multiplier is 1.5, the real annual interest rate on long-term government 

debt is I percent, a $1 increase in GOP increases the net tax-and-transfer 

fiscal balance by $0.33, and a $1 shortfall of GOP below potential this year 

permanently reduces future potential GOP by $O.Ol-that is, a hysteresis 

"shadow" on future potential output of only 1 percent. Assume further that 

the government has the power to undertake a transitory increase in spending and then reverse it without any impact on the risk premium that it pays 

on its borrowing. 

Under these assumptions, the effect of an incremental $1 of government spending is to increase current GOP by $1.50 and to raise the debt 

by $0.50. The annual real debt service on this additional debt is $0.005. 

The $1.50 increase in this year's GOP increases future potential output 

by $0.015, which in tum augments future-period tax revenue by $0.005, 

on the assumption that actual output averages to potential output over 

the relevant future periods. Hence the fiscal expansion is self-financing. 

In such a scenario, worries about the adverse impact of fiscal stimulus 

on the government's long-run budget are unwarranted, for there is no 

adverse impact. 

This central point is made substantially stronger if one allows for: 

-underlying growth in the economy. so that the relevant fiscal balance requirement is one of a stable debt-to-GOP ratio rather than a stable 

real debt; 

-increases in the future price level, as a result of the fiscal expansion. 

that further reduce the real interest rate on accumulated and newly issued 

debt; and 

3. Most estimates of Federal Reserve reaction functions suggest that, if it were possible 

to have negative shon-term safe nominal interest rates, such rates would have been chosen 

in recent years. This fact indicates the relevance of our analysis. See Rudebusch (2009) and 

Taylor (201 0). 
363 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 237 

-the possibility that the additional government spending raises future 

productivity, and thus future output, by increasing the productive stocks of 

public infrastructure capital and private human capital.4 

This central point is a matter of arithmetic. It depends only on the existence of a fiscal multiplier fJ that is not near zero, the existence of a plausible hysteresis shadow on future potential output, low and unchanged 

government borrowing costs, and the assumption that a temporary boost to 

government purchases is possible. If these four assumptions are granted, 

the conclusion follows. 

This section presents a reduced-form framework for assessing under 

what conditions fiscal expansion is self-financing; the appendix discusses 

the conditions under which, if fiscal expansion is not self-financing, it 

nonetheless passes an extra-output benefit-cost test. Our conclusions will 

apply to any underlying model that generates such a reduced form. 

A temporary boost to government purchases AG boosts aggregate 

demand through the short-term fiscal multiplier. More formally, an increase 

in government spending for the present period only of AG percentage-poi ntof-potential-GDP-years is amplified by the economy's short-term policyrelevant multiplier coefficient J..I, reducing the output gap in the present 

period Yn ("n" for "now") by an amount AYn, also measured in percentagepoint-years: 

(I) AY, = J..IAG. 

We discuss in section II the value of J..I in normal times and make the crucial 

point that there is a strong likelihood that J..I is now above that value. 

Financing this expansion of government purchases requires increasing 

the national debt by an amount AD, also measured in percentage-pointof-potential-GDP-years. Given J..I as before and assuming a baseline marginal tax-and-transfer rate 't, the required increase in the national debt 

is then 

(2) AD = (I - /l't)AG, 

4. It is worth stressing that with current real Treasury interest rates near zero (some estimates are provided later in this section), even if additional spending had no impact on current 

GOP. every government investment project that promises a positive real rate of return of any 

magnitude would boost the present value of future real GOP. 
364 

238 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

which is less than in the absence of the multiplier because higher current 

output brings with it higher tax collections and thus an immediate partial 

recapture of some of the costs of the fiscal expansion. 

lfthe economy's long-run growth rate is g and the real government borrowing rate is r,5 this additional debt !lD imposes on the government an 

annual financing burden in percentage points of a year's potential GDP of 

(3) (r - g)!lD = (r - g)(l -1l't)I1G, 

if it is to maintain a stable long-run debt-to-GDP ratio. In order to maintain a stable debt-to-GDP ratio, the government must increase its primary 

surplus by the difference between the growth rates of the debt and of GDP 

times the increment to the debt. That is the left-hand side of equation 3. 

And the increment to the debt is simply (I - f.I't)I1G. 

A depressed economy is one in which many workers are without employment for an extended period. As a consequence, many see their skills, the 

networks they use to match themselves with vacancies in the labor market, and their morale all decay. A depressed economy is also one in which 

investment is low, the capital stock is growing slowly if at all, and entrepreneurial exploration is low, and it is certainly possible that this deficit 

is not made up quickly. These factors may well have an impact on future 

potential output. 

Assume that in future periods production is detennined by supply and 

that there is no gap between real aggregate demand and potential output. 

Then, in a typical future period, potential and actual output ~ (where ''I'' 

stands for "future") will be reduced by a hysteresis parameter T\ times the 

depth by which the economy is depressed in the present: 

(4) 

The units of 11 are inverse years: 11 is the percent reduction in the Row of 

future potential output per percentage-point-year of the present-period output gap. We discuss the mechanisms detennining T\ in section Ill. 

A fiscal expansion undertaken to prevent hysteresis thus creates a fiscal 

dividend: it raises future tax collections by an amount 

(5) tl1Yr = '"Cf\f.Il1G. 

5. In the main text of this paper. r refers to both the social rate of time discount and the 

government's borrowing rate. The appendix considers the case when these two need to be 

distinguished. 
365 

1. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 139 

Equations 3 and 5 together imply that if 

(6) (r - g)(l -I-l'r) - '1!lT S 0, 

then at the margin, transitory expansionary fiscal policy is self-financing. 

The boost to future potential output, and thus to future net tax revenue, 

provided by shortening and lessening the current downturn creates more 

public financial resources in the future than are consumed by amortizing 

the additional debt incurred to finance the transitory expansion. There is no 

cost to count against this benefit from future fiscal expansion. This is the 

most important conclusion of this paper. 

Rearranging equation 6, we can show that this net future fiscal dividend 

from the present-period fiscal expansion tJ.G arises as long as r satisfies 

(7) TlIl't 

rs g +( ). I - Il't 

As long as there is a short-term fiscal multiplier J.l, a hysteresis shadow TI, 

a tax-and-transfer share 't, a real government borrowing rate 1; and a debt 

amortization equation incorporating a trend growth rate g such that expression 7 holds, fiscal expansion now improves the government's budget balance later.6 In this case, arguments that a depressed economy cannot afford 

fiscal expansion now because the government dare not raise its debt have 

little purchase.7 And arguments that governments in such circumstances 

need to demonstrate the credibility of their long-run fiscal strategy by 

curbing spending today lack coherence, because cutting spending does not 

improve but rather worsens the long-run fiscal picture. 

For what values in the parameter space does expression 7 hold, if we take 

the marginal tax rate 't and the expected rate of long-run GDP growth g 

to be their consensus values? For the marginal net tax-and-transfer share 't, 

we assume the baseline value to be 0.333. For g, the long-term growth rate 

of real potential GDP, we take the Congressional Budget Office's current 

estimate of 2.5 percent per year. This leaves J.l and TI-the fiscal multiplier 

and the hysteresis coefficient that captures the shadow cast by the downturn 

on the long run-as variable parameters. We take the plausible range for J.l 

6. For a somewhat different argument that austerity worsens the government's budget 

balance. see Denes, Eggertsson, and Gilbukh (2012). 

7. This point is by no means new: see Lerner (1943). Wray (2002) argues that Milton 

Friedman's post-World War II proposal for stabilization policy achieved through a money 

supply provided by countercyclical deficit financing and 100 percent reserve banking is in 

its essence the same idea. 
366 

240 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

Table 1. Parameter Values for the Base Case 

Parameter 

J.l 

r 

g 

t 

~ 

Interpretation 

Present-period government spending multiplier 

Real government borrowing rate and social rate of time 

discount, per year 

Trend growth rate of potential GOP, per year 

Marginal tax-and-transfer rate 

Disincentive effect: reduction in potential output from 

raising additional tax revenue 

Hysteresis effect: proportional reduction in potential 

output from a temporary downturn 

Assumed value 

0--2.5 

0.Q25-? 

0.Q25 

0.333 

0.25-0.5 

0--0.2 

in a severely depressed economy at the zero lower bound to be between zero 

and 2.5, and the plausible range for" to be between zero and 0.2. Table I 

summarizes the framework parameters and their base-case values. 

When calibrating ", it is probably best to consider it as a "permanent 

equivalent" concept. Short-term Keynesian effects die out in less than 

5 years; permanent effects are forever. In a growing economy, permanent 

effects are thus capitalized at a multiple of lI(r - g), which for plausible 

borrowing rates and social rates of time discount r, and plausible growth 

rates g. can be a very large factor. However, many plausible channels 

through which a deep and prolonged downturn casts a shadow on future 

potential output produce not permanent but rather persistent effects: they 

last for one generation, but not for three. 

We therefore consider" to be the size of the persistent effects of a 

downturn on potential output in a permanent-equivalent metric: that is, 

we correct for the fact that these effects are long-run but not truly permanent, and hence should be capitalized not at a factor It(r - g) but rather at 

[I - (I - r+ g)1]1(r- g), where Tcaptures the length of the persistent but not 

truly permanent effects. 

Table 2 reports critical Treasury borrowing rates below which expansionary fiscal policy is self-financing (expression 7 holds) for various values of " and 1.1. For example, for a multiplier 1.1 of 1.5 and a hysteresis 

parameter 11 of 0.10, the second term on the right-hand side of expression 7 is 10 percent per year. This means that if the spread between the 

real Treasury borrowing rate r and the real growth rate of GDP g is less 

than 10 percentage points per year, fiscal expansion today improves rather 

than degrades the long-term budget balance of the government. Given our 

assumption that g = 2.5 percent. that implies a real Treasury borrowing rate 

of 17.5 percent per year or less. 
367 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 

Table 2. Critical Values of the Real Treasury Rate for Fiscal Expansion 

to Be Self-Financing 

Critical real Treasury interest rate for indicated value 

of multiplier J.L (percent per year}' 

Hysteresis 11 J.L=O J.L=O.S J.L = 1.0 J.L= I.S 

0 2.50 2.50 2.50 2.50 

0.025 2.50 2.99 3.73 4.95 

O.OSO 2.50 3.49 4.96 7.40 

0.100 2.50 4.48 7.43 12.30 

0.200 2.50 6.45 12.35 22.10 

Source: Authors' calculations. 

241 

J.L =2.S 

2.50 

14.29 

26.07 

49.64 

96.97 

a. The critical rate is the highest rate that satisfies expression 7 in the text. Other parameters take the 

values assumed in table I. 

For ~ of 1.0 and 11 of 0.1. the second term on the right-hand side of 

expression 7 is about 5 percent per year. In this case, if the spread between r 

and g is less than about 5 percentage points, fiscal expansion today improves 

rather than degrades the long-term budget balance of the government. That 

implies a real Treasury borrowing rate of about 7.5 percent per year or less. 

For ~ of 0.5 and 11 of 0.05, the second term on the right in expression 7 

is about 1 percent per year. In this case. if the spread between rand g is less 

than about I percentage point, fiscal expansion today improves rather than 

degrades the long-term budget balance of the government. That implies a 

real Treasury borrowing rate of about 3.5 percent per year or less. 

How credible is the claim that the Treasury's borrowing rates will stay 

below the relevant value in table 2, and thus that expansionary fiscal policy 

would be self-financing? Since January 1997 the interest rates on Treasury 

inflation-protected securities (TIPS) provide a direct, market-based measure 

of the real rate at which the Treasury can borrow. For earlier periods, subtracting a measure of the inflation rate from nominal interest rates provides 

a proxy. Figure 1 plots, in addition to the yield on lO-year TIPS, two such 

proxies: the yield on 100year nominal Treasuries minus expected inflation 

from the University of Michigan Survey, and the same lO-year nominal yield 

minus the previous year's core inflation rate. These two measures do not 

markedly or persistently diverge from the TIPS rate over the period for which 

the latter is available. The expectations-based measure shows a somewhat 

higher mean value and more variability, but since the Volcker disinflation 

of the early 1 980s it has tracked or undershot the current value of inflation. 

The multiplier ~ has to be low and the hysteresis parameter 11 almost 

negligible for the critical interest rate r to lie above the range of real interest 
368 

242 Brookings PapeTI on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

Figure 1. Proxies for Real Ten·YearTreasury Interest Rates, 198~2012 

Percent per year 

Nominal rate minus inflation eJ.pectations' 

10 

8 

6 

4 

2 

o 

-2 

Nominal rate minus last year's core inflation rate 

-4 

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 

Sources: FRED database. Federal Reserve Bank ofSt. Louis; University of Michigan; Bureau of Labor 

Statistics. 

a.Inflation expectations are measured as the median expecled percent change in prices over the next 12 

months from the Thomson Reu[ersJUniversity of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. 

rates on Treasury debt seen in the historical record. At a real interest rate of 

5 percent per year, expansionary fiscal policy is self-financing for f.1 = 2.5 

as long as" > 0.005; it is self-financing for f.1 = 1.5 as long as " > 0.025; it 

is self-financing for f.1 = 1.0 as long as 1'\ > 0.050; and it is self-financing for 

f.1 = 0.5 as long as 1'\ > 0.125. The case for expansionary U.S. fiscal policy 

imposing any significant budgetary cost thus appears to rest on a claim that 

f.1 is significantly less than 1.0, or that" is significantly less than 0.05. 

Moreover, current and expected future interest rates today are much 

lower than in the historical post-World War II experience, and today's longterm Treasury rates indicate that r is expected to stay extraordinarily low 

for a generation. As of June 1,2012, the 10- and 30-year nominal Treasury 

rates were 1.47 and 2.53 percent per year, respectively; the 10- and 30-year 

TIPS rates were -0.59 and +0.36 percent per year, respectively-and many 

market observers see TIPS rates as elevated today because of perceived 
369 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 243 

lack of liquidity. If there is no expected tenn premium-if the expectations theory of the term structure holds-then financial markets currently 

anticipate that the short-tenn nominal Treasury rate will average less than 

1.47 percent per year over the next 10 years, and less than 2.53 percent 

per year over the next 30 years. These are extraordinarily low rates. AL an 

expected annual inflation raLe of 2.0 percent and an expected real annual 

GOP growth rate of 2.5 percent, I percent of GOP worth of debt borrowed 

now and funded for 30 years with no nominal amortization raises the debtto-GOP ratio a generation hence by only 0.55 percentage point. Assuming 

log utility and a zero rate of pure time preference, public spending that has 

a current-dollar benefit-cost ratio of only 0.55 is worth undertaking today 

as long as it can be funded with 30-year Treasuries. 

Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that the expectations theory of the 

tenn structure holds without any tenn premium driving a wedge between 

expected future short-tenn rates and the current 30-year Treasury bond rate. 

If the past generation's detailed investigations into financial markets have 

taught us anything, it is that a great many risks that do not have a clear correlation with the marginal utility of aggregate consumption are nevertheless 

priced, indeed priced substantially. The risk that the value of one's longtenn bonds will be eroded by inflation has been priced in the past through 

a considerable tenn premium relative to the expectations hypothesis of the 

term structure. It is hard to see any reason for this historical correlation 

to fail to hold in the future. This means that the arithmetic of government 

spending now is even more favorable. for markets do not anticipate a return 

of interest rates to their postwar nonn for at least a generation. 

At this point a very natural question arises: if interest rates on Treasury 

debt are usually (except in the early 1980s) sufficiently low to allow the 

government to borrow, spend, and end up with no net increase in its debL 

burden, why not do so always? The principal reason is that it cannot 

do so in normal times. A multiplier I-' of even I is, as we discuss in section II, likely to be unusual. It is likely to prevail only when the zero lower 

bound on short-term interest rates is binding and cyclical unemployment is 

substantial. At other. nonnal times, I-' is likely to be much smaller than 1. 

When interest rates are away from their zero bound. when the output gap is 

small, or when high unemployment is not cyclical but structural. then either 

bottlenecks or monetary policy offset make it unlikely that fiscal expansion 

will impart any significant boost to real GOP. When that is so, there is no 

stabilization policy case for expansionary fiscal policy. 

Note that the arithmetic of table 2 does not hinge on the economy being 

close to the edge of or in the range of dynamic inefficiency. The key interest 
370 

244 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

rate in table 2 is r, and here it matters that r is the real interest rate on government borrowing and not the private marginal product of capital, the real 

social rate of time discount, or the rate of return on public capitaLS 

The conclusion that fiscal expansion may be self-financing is at least 

partiaJly a point about the attractiveness of Treasury debt to investors (see 

Krishnamurthy and Vissing-Jorgensen 2012). If government debt is sufficiently attractive as a safe savings vehicle, and if there are at least minor 

counterhysteresis benefits from expansionary fiscal policy, then there need 

be no net financing burden of extra government purchases on taxpayers. 

Thus, the government can borrow, spend to boost the economy, use the 

extra taxes from a more prosperous economy to amortize part of its debt, 

refinance the debt and so push out the time horizon at which it is to be 

retired, and, as that horizon is extended, watch the debt-to-GOP ratio falJ 

indefinitely. This would not be possible if Treasury debt were unattractive, 

because this would drive a wedge between the rate at which the Treasury 

can borrow and the rate of time discount. 

The idea that, for some range of plausible parameter values, expansionary fiscal policy is self-financing means that for a wider range of parameter 

values, expansionary fiscal policy passes sensible benefit-cost tests. The 

benefits from such policy are, as before, the current-period boost to production and income from higher demand, and future-period boosts to potential 

output from the smaller shadow cast on future growth by a shorter and 

shallower downturn. The costs are the drag on future output produced by 

the higher taxes needed to amortize the debt incurred to finance the fiscal 

expansion. If fiscal expansion is self-financing, there are no costs, only 

benefits. And if fiscal expansion is nearly self-financing, then the increase 

in taxes needed to amortize the debt will be small, and so wiJl the costs. 

The appendix details the arithmetic of such an extra-output benefit-cost 

calculation. 

II. The Value of the Multiplier 

Valerie Ramey (20 II) surveys estimates of the fiscal multiplier and classifies them into four groups: estimates from structural models, estimates 

8. How is it that a government can borrow at less than the social rate of time discount? 

Perhaps because government debt has unique collateralization properties that make it in 

some sense "money-like" (see Krislmamurthy and Vissing-lorgensen 2012). In this case the 

wedge between the government borrowing rate and the social rate of time discount captures 

a real service flow provided to the economy by the provision of extra government debt. To 

the extent that the government can borrow unusually cheaply because investors are making 

mistakes. the welfare economics becomes complex. 
371 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 245 

from exogenous aggregate shocks (relying largely on increases in military 

spending associated with wars), estimates from structural vector autoregression models (VARs), and "local multiplier" estimates.9 She concludes 

(pp. 680-81) that 

the range of plausible estimates for the multiplier in the case of a temporary 

increase in government spending that is deficit financed is probably 0.8 to 1.5 .... 

If the increase is undertaken during a severe recession, the estimates are likely to 

be at the upper bound of this range. It should be understood, however, that there 

is significant uncertainty involved in these estimates. Reasonable people could 

argue that the multiplier is 0.5 or 2.0 .... 

Christina Romer (2011) also surveys multiplier estimates. She summarizes the evidence as suggesting a somewhat higher central tendency for 

estimates of the government purchases multiplier slightly above 1.5. She 

slresses a strong presumption that econometric estimates are likely to 

be lower than the constant-monetary-and-financial-conditions multiplier, 

which as we argue below is itself a lower bound to the current policyrelevant multiplier. As Romer (p. 11) slates, concurring with Emi Nakamura 

and 16n Steinsson (2011): "In the situation like the one we are facing now, 

where monetary policy is constrained by the fact that interest rates are 

already close to zero, the aggregate impact of an increase in government 

spending may be quite a bit larger than the cross-sectional effect." 

The International Monetary Fund (lMF 2009) finds a government purchases multiplier in a broad range of post-World War II experiences similar to Romer's central estimate. Alan Auerbach and Yurii Gorodnichenko 

(forthcoming) attempt lo distinguish the multiplier in normal times from 

that which prevails when the economy suffers from slack aggregate demand. 

They estimate a multiplier of around 0.5 for normal times and around 

2.5 when the economy is depressed. 10 IMF (2010) concludes that the multiplier at the zero lower bound is more than twice what it is in normal times. 

9. See. among many, many others. Ramey and Shapiro (1998). Blanchard and Perotti 

(2002), Gordon and Krenn (201O), Suarez Serrato and Wingender (201O). Clemens and 

Miran (2010), Barro and Redlick (2011), Nakamura and Steinsson (2011), Chodorow-Reich 

and others (2011). Romer (2011). Mendel (2012), and Ramey (2012). Moretti (2010) estimates a local multiplier that is explicitly a supply-side economic-geography concept rather 

than a demand-side macroeconomic concept. The relationship between economic-geography 

local multipliers and macroeconomic local multipliers is not clear to us. 

10. See Parker (20 II) on the imponance of nonlinearities and on the difficulty of picking out the depressed-economy multiplier of interest here. Hall (fonhcoming), however. 

cautions that Auerbach and Gorodnichenko's finding "has little to do with the current 

thought that the multiplier is much higher when the interest rate is at its lower bound of 

zero ... [for their1 ... sample surely includes only a few years when any country apm from 

Japan was near the lower bound." 
372 

246 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

To summarize: the range of current multiplier estimates extends from 

Ramey's lowest for which "reasonable people could argue," 0.5, up to 

Auerbach and Gorodnichenko's estimate of 2.5, which applies when GOP 

is below potential such that increases in nominal spending are highly likely 

to show up primarily as increases in real GDP. However, it is far from clear 

that these estimates or the methodologies that generate them shed sufficient 

light on the fiscal multiplier concept relevant for our framework in section I. At present in the United States, not only is GOP below potential, 

but the zero lower bound constrains interest rates, and substantial frictions 

interfere with the functioning of credit markets. These features were seldom 

present during the periods and in the countries for which these multipliers 

were estimated. 

We can use Ramey's categorization to rehearse some of the potential 

problems with applying these multiplier estimates from the literature to a 

depressed economy. First, structural model estimates are only as good as the 

identification of the structural model. Second, estimates based on changes in 

military spending will underestimate the impact of fiscal policy in a context 

like the present, to the extent that spending increases are associated with tax 

increases and Ricardian equivalence does not hold in full, or to the extent 

that supply constraints associated either with the rapid shift of production, 

heedless of efficiency, from civilian to military uses found in an emergency 

military mobilization. or with a high rate of resource utilization, slow output growth. Third, the identification of exogenous fiscal shocks using timeseries techniques seems to us problematic: it is often difficult to identify 

historical events in the narrative or contemporary notes that expectations 

have shifted in those quarters in which time-series techniques identify 

"shocks" orthogonal to an information set consisting of a few lagged values. 

Most promising are the estimates of "local multipliers" made by 

Nakamura and Steinsson (2011) and an increasing number of others. They 

examine differences in government spending across regions and identify a 

multiplier holding monetary and financial conditions constant. This literature appears to be coalescing around an estimate for such a multiplier of 1.5, 

although with substantial imprecision. tl 

II. There remains some uneasiness about the interpretation of local multiplier estimates. 

The presence of demand spillovers across regions tends to bias such estimates down. as does 

the possibility that higher expected inflation rates. in the manner of Christiano. Eichenbaum. 

and Rebelo (2011) and Eggensson and Krugman (2011). are a channel of transmission. 

Moreover. consider a permanent increase in government purchases in one region financed 

by taxes on all regions. Under a full Ricardian regime, such a permanent increase in spending would have no effect at all on demand and output. Yet a local mUltiplier study would 

show a considerable multiplier in both the short and the long run-an economic-geography 
373 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 247 

The principal issue in linking these estimated multipliers to the reducedform fiscal multiplier relevant for the framework of section I is whether and 

to what extent the monetary policy reaction function in nonnal times differs 

from that in a depressed economy. Indeed, our suspicion is that much of the 

substantial variation over the past 80 years in the judgments of American 

economists, at least, about discretionary fiscal policy reflects changes in the 

nature of this function, and thus in the monetary-and-financial-conditions 

curve that underlies their analyses. As views of the likely slope of this 

function (depicted as the MP curve in figures 2 through 4 below) have 

changed, views of the efficacy of fiscal expansion in a depression have 

changed as well. 

From the time of Keynes' General Theory to the 1960s, the default 

assumption was that interest rates would remain constant as fiscal policy 

changed, because the central bank and the fiscal authority would cooperate to support aggregate demand: fiscal expansion would be accompanied 

by monetary policy accommodation that produced not crowding out but 

crowding in. With the changes in macroeconomic thinking and the inflationary experience of the 1970s, the natural assumption in the United States 

came to be that the Federal Reserve was managing aggregate demand. Thus, 

changes in fiscal policy, just like changes in private investment demand, 

would be offset as the Federal Reserve pursued the appropriate balance 

between inflation and investment. Today, however, at least until the economy exits from the zero lower bound or cyclical unemployment drops 

substantially, the economy is once again in a regime in which real interest 

rate movements amplify rather than offset the effects of fiscal stimulus. 

Consider a central bank that includes both inflation and output in 

its objective function, in an economy that is well modeled by the neoHicksian framework of Romer (2000). In such an economy, output Yand 

the real interest rate charged to firms rl are jointly detennined by an IS 

saving-investment condition and an MP monetary policy reaction function. Assume that real aggregate demand is a function of the fiscal policy 

impetus t:J.G~ the constant-monetary-and-financial-conditions multiplier /l, 

and rl. An increase in government purchases in the current period from 

parameter: the inverse of I minus the share of regional demand spent on locally produced 

commodities. As Mendel (2012) points out, local multiplier studies not only hold monetary 

and financial conditions constant; they also hold constant future fiscal conditions in the fonn 

of expectations of future broad-based taxes. To the extent that the argument against the effectiveness of expansionary fiscal policy relies on present-day reductions in spending stemming 

from anticipated future tax burdens, local multiplier studies will overstate the policy-relevant 

concept. 
374 

248 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

baseline, I!.G, would then, all else equal, raise current-period output relative 

to baseline according to the IS condition: 

(8) 

However, if the monetary authority responds to this expansionary fiscal 

policy by raising rf or allowing it to rise, according to the following MP 

function, 

(9) /!"rf = (l/y) I!.Y, 

then the reduced-form relationship between the fiscal expansion and the 

resulting difference in output from baseline is 

(10) - y I!.Y - ( ) IlI!.G. Y+(1. 

Thus, an estimate of the multiplier over a period during which the 

monetary policy reaction function is characterized by a particular y will 

give not the constant-monetary-and-financial-conditions multiplier J.1, 

but rather 

(II) , Y 

J.l = (y + (1.) J.l. 

What value of y will an optimizing central bank pick for its reaction 

function if, like the Federal Reserve from the end of the I 970s to the mid2000s, it is focused on its price stability mission? The central bank will 

have a view about what level of Y is best suited to advance that mission 

over the long term. That level of Y will not be much altered by the stance of 

fiscal policy. The implication then is that the central bank will pick a value 

of y very close to zero, and the MP curve will be nearly vertical. Whatever 

shocks shift the IS curve, whether fiscal policy or other factors, will then 

affect interest rates but will affect the level of output little if at all. Thus, 

in normal times the policy-relevant reduced-form multiplier J.1' is likely to 

be small. Figure 2 illustrates this monetary offset of the fiscal expansion in 

normal times. 

The situation is different when the economy is at the zero bound, precisely because the fiscal expansion I!.G then extends the set of economic 

outcomes n attainable through monetary policy in a manner that provides 

access to superior outcomes previously unreachable. At the zero bound, 

the central bank is setting the short-term safe nominal interest rate i that it 
375 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 249 

Figure 2. IS-MP Analysis of a Fiscal Expansion in Normal Times' 

Long-term risky real interest rate r 

Monetary offset 

MP curve in nomml times 

RealGDP Y 

Source: Authors' model described in the text. 

a. [n normal times, when the economy is at or near full employment and short-term interest rates are 

away from their zero nominal lower bound, any attempt to increase real GDP through fiscal expansion is 

virtually fully offset by a rise in real interest rates. 

controls at zero. It would not respond to fiscal policy that boosts output by 

raising the short~term nominal interest rate to offset its effects, for that level 

of output is a previously unreachable superior outcome. 

If the long~term rate to firms rl were at a constant premium to the 

short-term safe nominal interest rate i, then at the zero bound the monetary policy reaction function would set a constant real rate. The MP 

curve would be fiat, and the parameter (( in equation 8 would be zero. 

And as in figure 3, the policy~relevant reduced-form mUltiplier would 

equal the constant-monetary-and-financial-conditions multiplier: fl' = fl. 

In reality, however, there is slippage between i and rl. The relationship 

between them is 

(12) rf = i - 1t + cr. 

In words, the relevant real interest rate is equal to the short-term safe 

rate, minus inflation, plus a spread cr-which itself has duration, risk, and 

default components. The inflation rate will be increasing in output: more 
376 

150 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

Figure 3. Fiscal Expansion at the Zero Lower Bound with a Constant Real Interest Rate' 

Long-tenn risky real interest rate r 

Fiscal expansion 

Source: Authors' model described in the text. 

MP curve at zero bound 

with constant r 

RealGDP Y 

a. In a depressed economy where shon-term interest rates are at the zero bound, a constant spread 

between shon-term safe and long-term risky rates means the MP curve is flat. Thus, real long-term 

interest rates do not rise to attenuate the impact of fiscal expansion on real GOP, but neither do they fall 

to amplify it 

demand both raises the chances that producers will increase prices and 

increases how much they will raise them.12 The interest rate spread (J, in 

contrast, may well be a decreasing function of output: a more prosperous 

economy is one with fewer defaults, and the price of bearing risk is lower 

because there is less risk in the economy. I) 

12. Christiano and others (2011), Eggertsson and Krugman (2012). and others point out 

that the impact of upward price pressure expected from expanded aggregate demand on 

real interest rates at the zero bound could have substantial quantitative significance. Earlier 

the same point had been phrased in reverse. as a fear of the potentially catastrophic consequences of deflation. See Fisher (1933). 

13. The effects on duration premiums are less clear. One potential channel is that, in a 

depressed economy, with short-term safe nominal interest rates at their zero lower bound, if 

monetary authorities are willing to commit to keeping them there for a considerable period, 

the framework-relevant reduced-form multiplier is likely to be even larger to the extent that 

inflation is inertial: higher inflation in the short run due to fiscal expansion will raise expected 

inflation and thus lower the real interest rates expected for future periods as well. With a 

product-market equilibrium condition IS slope a of -0.6 as in Hall (2012). an expected duration 

of the zero lower bound of 3 years could double the policy-relevant reduced-form multiplier 

relative to the constant-monetary-and-financial-conditions multiplier. 
377 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 251 

Figure 4. Fiscal Expansion at the Zero Lower Bound with a Declining Real Interest Rate' 

Long-term risky real interest rate r 

Real GDP Y 

Source: Authors' model described in the tex!. 

a. If the spread a between short-term safe and long-tenn risky rates is not constant but narrows as output 

rises, because an economy closer to full employment presents less risk to investors. then given short-term 

rates at the zero bound. the MP curve is not flat but downward sloping. and the increase in real GOP from 

a fiscal expansion is amplified. 

Thus, instead of an MP curve in which increases in GDP are associated 

with increases in rl, and instead of a flat MP curve, a depressed economy at 

the zero bound is likely to see the following relationship between interest 

rates and the state of the economy: 

(13) /lrf = -MY. 

The multiplier estimated in that case, and the one relevant for the reducedfonn framework of sections I and II, will be neither the (relatively small) 

nonnal-times reduced-fonn mUltiplier 11' nor the constant-monetary-andfinancial-conditions multiplier 11, but rather 

(14) )1* - )1 

- (1 - ao)' 

and the ratio of this policy-relevant multiplier at the zero bound to the 

nonnal-times multiplier will be Il*M = [1 + (a/y)]/(l - ali). 

Figure 4 illustrates this difference between the (small) multiplier likely 

to be seen in nonnal times and the multiplier relevant at the zero bound. 
378 

252 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

Whereas the MP curve in nonnal times is steeply sloped upward, causing 

virtually all of any increase in output through fiscal expansion to be offset 

by a rise in rI , the MP curve relevant for a depressed economy at the zero 

bound slopes downward: the stronger the economy, the lower is the real 

cost of capital to finns seeking to borrow. 

A situation in which fiscal expansion is accompanied not by higher but 

rather by lower real interest rates for finns fits a scenario often mentioned 

by observers but rarely modeled: that of "pump priming," a tenn popularized by Jacob Viner and Lauchlin Currie during the New Deal of the 1930s 

(Jones 1978). The claim is that private spending will flood into the marketplace and boost demand, once initial government purchases have restored 

the nonnal channels of enterprise. 

Note that the presence of an exceptionally accommodative monetary reaction function at the zero bound raises the possibility that an 

increase in government purchases might under some circumstances be 

self-financing even without any hysteresis at all. At a marginal tax-andtransfer share 't of 1/3, a depressed-economy policy-relevant Keynesian 

multiplier ~* of 1.5 would mean that the rise in the national debt W 

is only half as large as the spending from an expansionary fiscal boost 

I1G. A ~* of 3 would mean that fiscal policy becomes self-financing 

through demand channels without resort to supply-side hysteresis. Back 

in 1977, Walter Heller, who had served as chainnan of the Council of 

Economic Advisers during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, 

testified before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that reduced 

real interest rates brought about by monetary accommodation had raised 

the policy-relevant multiplier applicable to the 1964 Kennedy-Johnson 

tax cut enough to put it on the edge of self-financing. As Bruce Bartlett 

(2003, p. 5) quotes Heller: 

What happened to the tax cut in 1965 is difficult to pin down. but insofar as we 

are able to isolate it, it did seem to have a tremendously stimulative effect, a 

multiplied effect on the economy. It was the major factor that led to our running a 

$3 billion surplus by the middle of 1965, before escalation in Vietnam struck us. 

It was a $12 billion tax cut, which would be about $33 or $34 billion in today's 

terms. And within I year the revenues into the Federal Treasury were already 

above what they had been before the tax cut .... Did it pay for itself in increased 

revenues? I think the evidence is very strong that it did .... 

From early in the Kennedy administration through the end of 1964, the 

proxy for the real annual rate on I O-year Treasuries calculated by subtracting 

the subsequent year's inflation from the nominal rate was around 3 percent; 
379 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 253 

thereafter it dropped rapidly to around 1.5 percent. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was more cautious than Heller, concluding that between 

"25% and 75%" (Bartlett 2005, p. 5) of the static 2-year debt increase from 

the tax cut had been offset by the boost to output and thus to tax revenue 

that it had delivered. 

The argument that normal-times policy-relevant fiscal multipliers 

should be presumed to be very small can be made more general. Optimizing central banks will be expected to offset shifts in discretionary 

fiscal policy-and thus lead to multiplier estimates near zero-under 

relatively unrestrictive conditions. Consider a government choosing 

monetary policy so as to achieve the best economic outcome from the 

set of outcomes attainable by policy n. A change in fiscal policy from 

baseline would change the relationship between monetary policy and 

the economic outcome. But unless the change in fiscal policy opens up 

access to an outcome not in the set n that is superior, or eliminates 

access to the best economic outcome in n, the government will shift its 

monetary policy so that it still picks the same economic outcome. It will 

thus engage in full monetary offset. 

Note that for this point to hold, the choice of monetary policy m and the 

choice of fiscal policy g cannot themselves be part of the outcome the government values. A central bank that values a smooth path for interest rates 

(as did the pre-1979 Federal Reserve) or has preferences about the size of 

its balance sheet (as did the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker) will not 

engage in full monetary offset. Monetary and fiscal policy must enter into 

the central bank's objective only through their effects on economic outcomes for full monetary offset to hold. 

For these reasons it is difficult, for us at least, to consider the empirical 

evidence on multipliers without reaching the conclusion that the base-case 

multiplier of 1.0 of section I is likely to be an underestimate, and perhaps 

a substantial underestimate, of the policy-relevant multiplier in excesscapacity economies at the zero bound like the United States today. 

III. Hysteresis 

As Edmund Phelps (1972) was the first to point out, there are reasons 

for believing that recessions impose costs even after they end, and that 

a "high-pressure economy" (Arthur Okun's term for one continuously 

operating at potential) has continuing benefits. It is not easy to quantify these "hysteresis effects," in part because the factors that cause a 
380 

254 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

downturn may continue to have an impact once the downturn has ended, 

which is difficult to disentangle from the hysteresis effect. In this section we survey some of the evidence in an effort to come to a plausible 

view about our reduced-form framework parameter 11. the impact of a 

I-percentage-point shortfall of GDP below potential for I year on the 

subsequent path of potential output. 

It would indeed be surprising if downturns did not cast a shadow over 

future economic activity. A host of mechanisms have been suggested. 

including reduced labor force attachment on the part of the long-term 

unemployed, scarring effects on young workers who have trouble beginning their careers. reductions in government physical and human capital 

investments as social insurance expenditures make prior claims on limited public financial resources. reduced investment in both in research 

and development and in physical capital. reduced experimentation with 

business models and informational spillovers. and changes in managerial attitudes. 

Bottom-up evidence on hysteresis is provided by Kim Clark and Summers (1982), who documented substantial persistence in individuals' 

labor supply decisions and found that past work experience was a key 

determinant of current employment status. They concluded that this persistence of labor supply decisions meant that the hypothesis of a "natural" or non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), as a 

medium-run proposition, was false. Steven Davis and Till von Wachter 

(2011) find that workers who lose their jobs when unemployment is high 

lose an extra amount. relative to when unemployment is low. equal to 

the present value of an extra 1.5 years of earnings in their subsequent 

careers-a 7.5 percent reduction in permanent earnings. At a typical 

average unemployment duration of 17 weeks, the aggregate demand 

shock associated with such a loss of employment amounts to a third of a 

year's earnings. This suggests a contribution to the 11 parameter of 0.225 

(0.075 + 0.333) from the labor side alone. and that only if the average 

duration of unemployment rapidly returns to normal levels. 14 

In addition to these effects on the labor side, the past several years 

have seen substantial shortfalls in both public and private investment. 

14. Such calibration efforts are hazardous. The potential for selection effects to confound 

estimates is large. There is little warrant for believing that the difference between income 

losses following layoffs in low- and those in high-unemployment periods in the past cor· 

responds 10 the effects of a shock outside the previous range like the one the U.S. economy 

is now experiencing. 
381 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and lAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 255 

Government nondefense capital formation in the United States is already 

0.4 percentage point below its early-2008 peak as a share of potential 

GDP. and cuts continue. Private gross investment is still 3.5 percentage 

points of potential GDP below its precrisis level and has been depressed 

for 4 years. 

The natural way to calibrate these effects on the investment side to the 

current downturn is to say that a 20-percentage-point-year cumulative shortfall from potential GDP has carried with it a relative decline in the capital 

stock equal to 14 percentage points (3.5 percentage points x 4 years) of 

annual potential GDP. At a marginal product of capital of 10 percent per 

year, that implies a 1.3 percent reduction in potential output and an investment-side contribution to 11 of 0.13; at a marginal product of capital of 

5 percent per year, it implies a 0.65 percent reduction in potential output 

and an investment-side contribution to Ti of 0.065. 

In the standard Solow growth model. the shortfall in private investment 

generated by the financial crisis and the recession will eventually be made 

up as the economy reconverges to its steady-state capital-to-output ratio. 

Long-term-unemployed workers who become discouraged and drop out 

of the labor force will reach retirement age within several decades. The 

long-run effects of a long, deep downturn on potential output are thus much 

more plausibly viewed as persistent than as truly permanent. The lie time 

of convergence to the steady-state capital-to-output ratio is on the order of 

33 years. The average time to retirement of labor force dropouts is likely to 

be somewhat less. Thus. permanent-equivalent measures of the persistent 

effects of downturns on future potential output will be somewhat smaller. 

Even so. the bottom-up evidence of persistent effects of downturns on 

potential output indicates a value for Ti that is at or above the top of the 

range considered in section I. 

Top-down evidence for hysteresis in Europe was provided by Olivier 

Blanchard and Summers (1986). Reacting to increases in the unemployment rate in Western Europe from the 1970s to the mid-l 980s, they argued 

that hysteresis links between the short-run cycle and the long-run trend 

were key: that increases in unemployment from recessions "have a direct 

impact on the 'natural' rate of unemployment" around which an economy would oscillate. Others had argued that Western Europe's persistently 

high unemployment was primarily due to rigidities in labor markets (high 

minimum wages, high firing costs, and the like). Laurence Ball (1997). 

however, suggested that the link between labor market rigidities and the 

transformation of cyclical into structural unemployment in Western Europe 

in the 1980s had been overdrawn. In his estimation, "countries with larger 
382 

256 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

decreases in inflation and longer disinflationary periods have larger rises 

in the NAIRU. [Measured] imperfections in the labor market [had] little 

direct relation to change in the NAIRU,"IS with the possible exception of an 

interaction between the generosity of the unemployment insurance system 

and the depth of the downturn. 

Ball's (1997) attribution of cross-national variation in changes in the 

NAIRU in the 1980s and 1990s to inadequate stabilization policy in some 

countries that allowed cyclical unemployment to tum structural has striking implications. He finds that in countries that pursue long. slow rather 

than short, sharp disinflations-with an active pursuit of disinflation on 

the order of 4 years---effectively all of the cyclical decline in employment 

becomes a pennanent decline. Four percentage-poi nt-years of a negative 

shock thus produces a 1 percent fall in potential output, for an 11 of 0.25. 

Findings similar to those of Ball (1997) are reported in IMF (2009), 

which examines the effects of demand shocks produced by financial crises 

at a 7-year horizon. In that study of the aftennath of 88 financial crises in 

the past two generations, each output decline of I percent of GDP in the 

short-run response to a financial crisis is associated on average with a 

I percent shortfall of GDP from its precrisis trend. If the "short run" during 

which output is depressed because of inadequate demand is 3 years, this 

result is consistent with an 11 of 0.33. 16 

A second fonn of top-down evidence is provided by professional economic forecasters. As a group, they do not appear to hold to the position 

that the current economic downturn will have no or small effects on the 

growth path of U.S. potential output. Instead, their recent revisions of their 

projections for the next decade implicitly incorporate very substantial hysteresis effects. To take one prominent example: between January 2007 and 

January 2009, as the economy slid into its deep, financial crisis-driven 

recession. the CBO marked down its estimate of potential GDP for the 

end of 2017 by 4.2 percent (figure 5). The CBO took some heart from the 

end of the recession in late 2009, and in its January 2010 forecast revision 

15. Ball (1997, p. 168). See. in addition. Stockhammer and Sturn (2012). who also conclude 

that the degree of labor-side hysteresis is likely to have only weak connections with labor market institutions but a rather strong association with the persistence of high unemployment and 

the failure of activist stabilization policies to quickly fill the output gaps created by downturns. 

In their results. hysteresis has "strong [associations with] monetary policy. and ... [pemaps] 

the change in the tenns of trade, but weak (if any) effects of labour market institutions during 

recession periods. Those countries which more aggressively reduced their real interest rates in 

the vulnerable period of a recession experienced a much smaller increase in the NAIRU .... " 

16. Also consistent is Romer (1989), who argues that the output effects of demand 

shocks are very long lasting. 
383 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 

Figure 5. Recent (BO Forecasts of Potential GOP 

Trillions of 2005 chained dollars 

18 

17 

16 

Forecast vintage: 

2007 

2008 

2009 

2010 

2011 

2012 

2008 2010 2012 

Source: Congressional Budget Office. 

2014 2016 

Forecast year 

257 

2018 

2018 2020 2022 

it raised its estimate of end-of-2017 potential GOP by 0.4 percent. Then, 

over the next 2 years to January 2012, the CBO-in near lockstep with 

private forecasters-lowered its forecast of end-of-2017 potential GOP by 

an additional 3 percent. Thus, as of the beginning of 2012, the CBO had 

marked down its estimate of potential GOP 5 years hence by a cumulative 

6.8 percentage points. Were that markdown to be interpreted as the result 

simply of the 20-percentage-point-year output gap to the present, it would 

correspond to an 1'\ of 0.34. Even if that markdown were based on a belief 

that the economy has so far experienced only half of the cumulative gap 

relative to potential output that will ultimately result from this episode, that 

would correspond to an 1'\ of 0.17. 

It is possible that these revisions reflect not a belief in hysteresis 

but merely the recognition that previous forecasts of potential output 

were too high. However, an elementary signal extraction point rebuts 

this interpretation. When observing a noisy series that has a permanent 
384 

258 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

component, an observation lower than the current estimate of the permanent component leads a rational forecaster to reduce his or her estimate of 

that permanent component. However, one should not reduce one's estimate 

of potential output if lower-than-previously-expected levels of production are associated with lower-than-previously-expected levels of inflation. Estimates of potential output are conceptually based not on quantities 

alone, but on quantities and prices. Typically, the bad news that leads to a 

marking down of potential output is not news that output is lower than, but 

rather news that output and inflation together are above, their anticipated 

co-movement line. Such news is not in evidence. 

Blanchard and Summers's (1986) line of thought was that significant 

hysteresis was a uniquely European phenomenon. Their model carried the 

implication that the United States was likely to be largely immune from permanent labor-side effects of what was originally transitory cyclical unemploymentY They stressed the "insider-outsider" wage-bargaining theory of 

hysteresis: workers who lose their jobs no longer vote in union elections, and 

so union leaders no longer take their interests into account in negotiations, 

focusing instead on higher wages and better working conditions for those 

still employed. Since union strength and legal obligations on employers to 

bargain were much weaker in the United States than in Europe, insideroutsider dynamics generated by formal labor market institutions seemed to 

give the United States little to fear. 

However, the labor market dynamics of the past two and a half years 

raise the possibility that the United States is not so immune after all from 

the considerations raised by Blanchard and Summers (1986). Rather, a 

transformation of cyclical into structural unemployment may be under way 

in the United States today, as the pace of real GDP growth during the current recovery is no greater than the precrisis trend growth rate of potential 

output, so that the output gap remains large. 

Here it is worth noting the divergence between the behavior of the measured U.S. unemployment rate and the behavior of the measured U.S. adult 

employment-to-population ratio over the past two and a half years. From 

the late-2009 peak in the unemployment rate until April 2012, the civilian 

employment-to-population ratio fell by only 0.1 percentage point, the civilian adult labor force participation rate by a more substantial 1.4 percentage 

points, and the unemployment rate by an even larger 1.9 percentage points, 

from 10.0 percent to 8.1 percent (figure 6). 

17. An alternative also put forward by Blanchard and Summers (1986) focuses on how 

the long-tenn unemployed become detached from the labor market. See Granovetter (1973) 

and especially Layard, Nickell, and Jackman (2005). 
385 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 

Figure 6. Labor Force Participation Rate, Employment-to-Population Ratio, 

and Unemployment Rate, 1995-2012 

Percent 

68 

62 

Employment-to-population ratio 

60 

259 

1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 

Source: Current Population Survey, 

Such a divergence between the unemployment rate and the employmentto-population ratio is unprecedented in the United States. The years iIrunediately following the 1970, 1975, and 1982 unemployment rate peaks saw 

strong recovery in the labor force participation rate. and the 1992 and 2003 

unemployment rate peaks were followed by effectively flat labor force 

participation rates and very slow eventual recoveries. Only after the 2009 

unemployment rate peak has the civilian labor force participation rate continued to decline, and indeed to decline by enough to offset the effects of 

the falling unemployment rate, leaving the employment-to-population ratio 

virtually unchanged from the low point reached at the end of the recession 

(figure 7), 

Since the late 1990s, the retirement of many members of the baby-boom 

generation has led to lower employment-to-population ratios for a given 

unemployment rate. But this is a slow-moving generational trend, amounting to a fall in labor force participation on the order of 0.05 percentage 
386 

260 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

Figure 7. Changes in Unemployment and Labor Force Participation Rates 

after Cyclical Peaks' 

Change in labor force participation rate (percentage points) 

1.5 May 1975 

1.0 

December 1970 

December ]982 

0.5 

JUlie 1992 

o ------------ .. --

-0.5 

-1.0 

-1.5 

-4 -3.5 -3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 

Change in unemployment rate (percentage points) 

Source: Authors' calculations from Current Population Survey data. 

o 

a. Each line plots the month-to-month changes in the two measures for a single recession, beginning 

with the month (labeled) in which the unemployment rate peaked. 

point per year. The total reduction in labor force participation since the 

end of the recession is thus an order of magnitude too large to be attributed 

to this phenomenon alone. IS Moreover, there are counteracting pressures 

stemming from the financial crisis that should tend to raise labor force participation: one would expect many middle-aged Americans whose wealth 

(housing or financial, or both) has been reduced by the crisis to delay retirement. Indeed, there are signs of such a wealth effect at work in the increasing employment of those past retirement age since 2007. 

18. See Daly, Hobijn, and Valetta (2011). There is a potential argument for an interaction 

effect, however: perhaps Ihe older labor force of today is more likely to be induced into early 

retirement by Ihe experience of unemployment. 
387 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 261 

Consider a counterfactual in which the unemployment rate had followed 

its actual trend but the labor force participation rate had remained at its same 

level between October 2009 and April 2012, rather than falling by 1A percentage points in those 30 months as it did. The supply of workers in America today is 2.2 percent lower than in that counterfactual baseline. Under 

the assumption that potential output scales one for one with the labor force, 

such a reduction in labor supply implies a 2.2 percent reduction in potential 

output. Assuming instead a potential-output production function with a labor 

share of 0.65, the reduction in potential output would be'IA percent. 

From the start of 2008 through the end of 2011, the cumulative shortfall of real GDP from the Congressional Budget Office's potential GDP 

series amounted to 20.5-percentage-point-years. Under the assumption that 

potential output scales one for one with the labor force, dividing 2.2 percent 

by 20.5-percentage-point-years yields an Tl of 0.107; assuming instead that 

potential output scales with a labor share of 0.65 gives an " of 0.07. Moreover, this calculation assumes that the NAIRU has remained unchanged 

over the past 5 years. Christina Romer (2012) documents, however, that 

the NAIRU estimates of the CBO, the Federal Open Market Committee, 

and the Survey of Professional Forecasters have been raised since 2007 

by 0.8, 0,7, and 1.2 percentage points, respectively.19 A counterfactual in 

which the NAIRU had remained at its 2007 rate would produce a potential 

labor force at full employment 3.0 percent larger than the current situation, 

which would imply correspondingly higher values of Tl. 

The U.S. economy in the aftermath of the 2008-09 crisis thus appears 

not to be repeating the exceptional rapid rebound that used to distinguish 

it from the sclerotic Western Europe analyzed by Blanchard and Summers 

(1986). Instead it seems to be following much more closely the typical postfinancial crisis pattern found by IMF (2009). In their sample, 7 years after 

the crisis, real GDP on average was some 10 percent below its precrisis 

trend.2o Both the capital stock and employment were substantially depressed 

below their precrisis trends, with shortfalls relative to previous trends in 

total factor productivity as well. In particular, IMF (2009, pp. 4-5) found: 

-There was, on average, no recovery to trend from the level relative to trend of the short-run output decline: "the path of output tends to 

19. The CBO's estimates are found in its Budget and Economic OU/look. various issues; 

those of the Federal Open Market Committee in its Summary of Economic Projections, various issues; and those of the Survey of Professional Forecasters in Federal Reserve Bank of 

Philadelphia (201 I). 

20. The IMF is relatively strident on this point. It writes of "sobering implications" of 

the analysis and praises "forceful macroeconomic policy response[s] ... in the form of substantial fiscal and monetary stimulus." 
388 

262 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

be depressed substantially and persistently ... with no rebound on average 

to the precrisis trend." 

~rises that did not generate large output declines in the short run 

tended not to generate large shortfalls relative to trend at the 7-year horizon: "what happens to short-run output is also a good predictor of the 

medium-term outcome." 

-The economies that did approach their precrisis trend growth path 

in recovery tended to be those that had applied substantial macroeconomic stimulus immediately after the crisis: "although post-crisis output 

dynamics are hard to predict, the evidence suggests that economies that 

apply counter-cyclical fiscal and monetary stimulus in the short run after 

the crisis tend to have smaller output losses" relative to trend at the 

7-year horizon. 

The historical evidence on the existence of hysteresis is thinner than one 

would wish, as is inevitable when one is attempting to generalize from a 

few previous episodes. Thus, any conclusions must be weak and tentative. 

The question of how large a shadow is cast on future potential output by 

a deep cyclical downturn rests on a few historical cases: the experience of 

the United States and Western Europe in the Great Depression, the long 

Western European downturn of the late 1970s and the 1980s (comparing both Europe with the United States and the European countries with 

each other), and Japan's "lost decades" starting in the 1990s. In the United 

States, moreover, the Great Depression was followed by the great boom of 

total mobilization for World War II, so that if the Great Depression did cast 

a shadow, it was erased by the war. 

Perhaps the recent departure of the unemployment rate and the labor 

force participation rate from their earlier historical pattern of co-movement 

will tum out to be a transitory cyclical anomaly. Perhaps in the next few 

years the economy will quickly rebound to its pre-2008 path of potential 

output growth. But our reading of the remaining cases-the experience 

of Western Europe since the late 1970s and Japan during the 1990s and 

after-provide strong reason to presume that hysteresis effects on the 

order of those in table 2 are more likely than not to be a reality. In that 

case the standard call for further research in this area becomes urgent. 

IV. Conclusion 

Real interest rates on Treasury securities have fluctuated within a relatively narrow range throughout their history, except for the few years of 

the Volcker disinflation of the early 1980s. Rates in this historical range, in 
389 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 263 

a depressed economy at the zero lower bound, with even a modest shortrun government purchases multiplier Il and a small hysteresis parameter 

n, generate as a matter of arithmetic the conclusion that expansionary 

fiscal policy does not impose a future fiscal burden. Moreover, as the 

appendix shows, even when expansionary fiscal policy fails to be selffinancing in these circumstances, it is still likely to pass a sensible extraoutput benefit-cost test, at least as long as there is no substantial wedge 

between the government's real borrowing cost and the real social rate of 

time discount. 

Sections II and III made the case that the short-run reduced-form policyrelevant fiscal multiplier Il is likely to be substantial enough in a depressed 

economy, and that hysteresis effects 1'\ are likely to be present. And there is 

today no sign of a large wedge between the government's real borrowing 

cost and the real social rate of time discount. 

It is important to stress that our argument does not justify unsustainable fiscal policies, nor does it justify delaying the passage of legislation to 

make unsustainable fiscal policies sustainable. If committed spending and 

committed revenue plans are inconsistent, adjustments will be necessary. 

Nothing in our analysis cans into question the widely held proposition that 

it is desirable for those adjustments to be committed to sooner rather than 

later. Indeed, the sooner that is done, the less likely is the emergence of 

the wedge between government borrowing costs and the social discount 

rate that would make expansionary fiscal policy unwise even in a depressed 

economy. Expansionary fiscal policy is more likely to be self-financing 

when there is confidence in long-run fiscal balance than otherwise. 

Three crucial questions confront any attempt to draw policy implications: 

-Doesn't the argument prove too much? Can it be the case that most 

governments at most times can take on increased debt, relying on the 

benefits of induced growth to pay it back? 

-Is the kind of temporary fiscal stimulus envisioned in our model feasible in the world, or does it inevitably, in reality or perception, become 

at least quasi-permanent, thus amplifying debt-servicing costs without 

amplifying the output benefits? 

-Third, whatever the merits of fiscal stimulus, should not monetary 

policy be relied on as an alternative and superior instrument? 

We briefly consider each of these questions in turn. 

On the first question, it surely cannot be the case that more expansion 

is desirable most of the time. We have stressed our belief that, outside of 

extraordinary downturns where the zero lower bound constrains interest 

rates, the right assumption is that the fiscal mUltiplier is likely to be small. 
390 

164 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

Increases in demand run up against supply constraints,21 even when they 

are not offset by monetary policy. And in the normal-times case of a small 

policy-relevant multiplier, judgments about fiscal policies should be made 

on allocative rather than stabilization policy grounds. As a corollary, even 

in depressed economies, expansionary fiscal policy surely should not be 

pursued without limit. 

With regard to the second question, the premise of our analysis is that 

expansionary fiscal policy can be both timely and temporary. Thus, it makes 

a case only for as much fiscal stimulus as can be delivered in a timely and 

temporary way. If, because of political frictions, stimulus will not in fact be 

temporary, or if there are substantial lags in its implementation, the calculus of costs and benefits is altered. Is temporary stimulus inconsistent with 

belief in long-run consolidation? It is possible that short-run fiscal expansion undercuts the credibility of long-run fiscal consolidation. It is also 

possible that, in a world with limited political energy and substantial procedural blockages, any effort toward one objective compromises the other. 

Our reading of the recent U.S. experience is encouraging as to the feasibility of significant timely and temporary stimulus---contrary to Taylor 

(201 I), Juan Carlos Suarez Serrato and Philippe Wingender (2010), and 

others who suggest that a substantial fraction of the fiscal stimulus enacted 

in the 2009 recovery act translated rapidly into increased spending and 

was not offset by triggered changes in state and local fiscal policy. There 

is also experience with phased-in long-run deficit reductions (for example, 

the 1983 bipartisan agreement on the Social Security recommendations of 

the Greenspan Commission). The recent U.S. experience also suggests that 

fiscal stimulus can be reversed: certainly whatever stimulus was provided 

by the 2009 act already has been. 

But even if it is granted that stimulus can be timely and temporary. the 

question of how large it can be while preserving these attributes remains 

for future research.22 And as Carlo Cottarelli (2012) warns, countries that 

21. Note that Gordon and Krenn (201 0) find a multiplier of 1.88 for the pre-Pearl Harbor 

mobilization for World War II at the zero nominal bound when they end their sample in the 

still demand-constrained first half of 194 I, but of only 0.88 when they end their sample at the 

end of 1941, when supply constraints begin to bite. This feature does not make it into modem 

models. As Hall (forthcoming) comments, ''The simple idea that output and employment are 

constrained at full employment is not reflected in any modem model that r know of. The cutting edge of general-equilibrium modeling-seen primarily in the DSGE models popular at 

central banks around the world-incorporates price and wage stickiness that makes supply 

quite elastic both above and below full employment." 

22. See Erceg and Linde (20 I 0) on the nonlinearity of responses to fiscal expansion at 

the zero bound. 
391 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 165 

commit to short-term deficit reduction as a down payment on a move to 

long-term sustain ability may find that 

growth slows more than expected ... [they are) inclined to preserve their shortterm plans through additional tightening, even if it hurts growth more ... my 

bottom line: unless you have to, you shouldn't ... interest rates could actually 

rise [even] as the deficit falls ... [if] growth falls enough as a result of a fiscal 

tightening. 

On the third question, our analysis has taken it as given that at the zero 

bound, monetary policy does not change when fiscal policy is altered. Central banks, however, do have room for maneuver, both in their ability to 

operate directly on a wider range of financial instruments than they use in 

normal times, and in their ability to precommit policy. As a matter of logic, 

it is possible that increased fiscal actions will call forth a contractionary 

monetary policy response by causing central banks to use these tools less 

expansively. Perhaps, then, as Gregory Mankiw and Matthew Weinzierl 

(20 11) assert, arguments for fiscal expansion in a depressed economy are 

even better arguments for monetary expansion. 

On the other hand, in the United States the Federal Reserve has sought 

to encourage short-run fiscal expansion. There appear to be limits to the 

efficacy of nonstandard monetary measures and to the willingness of central banks to expand their balance sheets in order to engage in them. And 

expansionary fiscal policies may well both support and call forth a more 

expansionary monetary policy response by, for example, raising the credibility of commitments to monetary expansion after the economy has recovered, or increasing the extent of debt monetization. 

It seems to us that, especially if fiscal policy is self-financing, it will 

be appropriate to include it in the instrument mix, for several reasons. 

First, given model and parameter uncertainty, diversification among policy 

instruments is appropriate, as William Brainard (1967) suggested long ago. 

Second, nonstandard monetary policies at the zero bound are perceived 

by central banks as carrying substantial costs or risks if engaged in on 

a large scale-hence central banks' hesitancy at undertaking them. Third, 

expansionary monetary policies carry costs not represented in standard 

models, including distortions in the composition of investment, impacts on 

the health of the financial sector, and impacts on the distribution of income. 

And fourth, history suggests a tendency for low-interest-rate environments 

to give rise to asset market bubbles, which economists and policymakers 

today fear more than they did even half a decade ago. Together these considerations indicate that monetary policy cannot bear all the burden. There 

is thus a strong case for expansionary fiscal policy in a depressed economy. 
392 

166 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

APPENDIX 

An Extra-Output Benefit-Cost Test 

If expression 7 in the text does not hold and the government borrowing 

rate exceeds or will exceed the critical value, then determining the desirability of expansionary fiscal policy calIs for a benefit-cost calculation. It 

is appropriate to weigh present benefits from expansionary fiscal policy 

against future costs. A natural quantity to examine for such a benefit-cost 

calculation is the present value of the change in future output: the summed, 

discounted effects on present and future GDP of contemporary transitory 

fiscal expansionY 

Call these effects !i V. Then, in terms of the framework of section I, 

where !iY. is the impact of the transitory fiscal expansion !iG on presentperiod output and !iYf is the impact on potential output in a representative 

future period, 

CA.I) 

!iY !i V = !iY + __ f 2. . ' r-g 

where r is in this case the real social rate of time discount, which we 

identify here with the real government borrowing rate. 

Assume that the appropriate long-run measure of r is or will rapidly normalize to a value larger than the growth rate of the tax base g. The economy 

is thus dynamically efficient. If the economy is not dynamically efficient, 

then there is no benefit-cost calculation to perform: expansionary fiscal 

policy is worthwhile. 

Fiscal expansion has benefits in terms of higher GDP in the short run 

through the multiplier. It has benefits in terms of higher future potential output 

in the long run through the avoidance of hysteresis. These benefits are counterbalanced by the supply-side drag on future potential output from higher 

tax rates needed to raise the revenue to amortize the higher debt burden. 

Equation A. 1 assumes that the long-term effects of fiscal expansion, 

both through avoiding hysteresis and through debt amortization, are truly 

23. The change in the present value of output can, of course. be questioned as a welfare 

measw-e. In contexts like the present, however. we suspect that the social value of the leisure of 

the currently unemployed is low. and that society anaches a high value to the extra output gained 

in the future by. for example. avoiding cutbacks to innovation spending or by avoiding labor 

force withdrawal by those who after a long spell of unemployment retire or apply for disability. See Krueger and Mueller (2011), Gordon (1973). Granovetter (1973). and Gordon (2011). 

24. In this equation and throughout the appendix we suppress a "length-of-short-run" 

parameter in order to make the notation less cumbersome. 
393 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 267 

permanent and scale with economic growth. Thus, ~ V is calculated by discounting ~YJ at the rate r - g. If the effects are long-lasting but not truly 

permanent, the appropriate discount factor in the analogue of equation A.I 

would be higher, but the basic logic of the argument would remain the 

same: there are short-term benefits and both short- and long-term costs, 

with the long-term costs attenuated to the extent that the wedge between 

the borrowing costs and the growth rate of the tax base is relatively low. 

The impact ~Yn of the transitory contemporary fiscal expansion ~G on 

current-period output is as given by equation 1 in the text. The full impact 

~~ on potential output in a representative future period is more complex. 

It has two components. The first is the positive impact 11~Yp = 11IlAG from 

the lessened shadow cast by the downturn on future potential output. The 

second is the burden imposed on future GDP by the cost of amortizing the 

debt incurred to finance the fiscal expansion. This second supply-side cost 

component depends on two factors: (i) the additional debt tlD that must 

be amortized, multiplied by (ii) the disincentive effect on potential output 

from the higher future taxes needed to fund each dollar of amortization; we 

model this second factor with the parameter ~, which represents the reduction in future potential output from raising an additional dollar of revenue. 

However, these costs are themselves partially offset by another supplyside effect: by avoiding or reducing hysteresis, higher current-period GDP 

allows the burden of amortizing the preexisting costs of government to be 

spread over a larger tax base, and so allows for lower tax rates and thus 

further raises future potential omput. 

If raising an additional dollar of net tax revenue in the representative 

future period has disincentive effects that reduce future-period GDP by ~, 

then the effect on future-period re~1 GDP is 

We assume the normal-case value of ~ to be 0.25 and the extreme-case 

value to be 0.5. 

Discounting equation A.2 back to the present and adding it to equation I 

then produces the net effect of contemporary transitory expansionary fiscal 

policy on the present value of real GDP: 

(A.3) ~V = {Il + ...2l!::... + -~-[ 11111: - (r - g )(1 -11'1: )]}~G. r-g r-g 

The first term within the braces on the right-hand side of equation A.3, f.I, 

is the multiplier term. The second, 11f.!/(r - g), is the hysteresis term: the 
394 

168 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012 

smaller long-tenn shadow cast by a smaller downturn. The third term is the 

impact on future potential output of the net burden of additional debt. It is 

equal to the net impact on government cash flow, from the left-hand side 

of equation 6, multiplied by ~, which captures the supply-side benefits to 

output from lower tax rates, expressed as a present value through division 

by r - g. This third tenn is composed of two subtenns: ~TIlIJI'(r - g) and 

-~( I - ,.ft). The first subtenn is the Blanchard and Summers (1987) term: 

the effect on potential output from lower tax rates made possible by the 

counterhysteresis effects of the fiscal expansion !:!G on potential output. The 

second subtenn is the burden of amortizing the extra debt needed to finance 

the fiscal expansion !:!G. Even if this third tenn is negative and fiscal policy 

is not self-financing, expansion still passes the extra-output benefit-cost 

test if the first two tenns are large enough to more than counterbalance it. 

We draw five significant lessons from equation A.3: 

-A fiscal expansion's effects are as much long-run as short-run. 

-In a nondepressed economy, fiscal policy is highly likely to fail its 

benefit-cost test (equation A.3) because the multiplier Jl is likely to be 

near zero. 

-Even in the absence of hysteresis, fiscal policy may pass its benefitcost test. 

-Failure of the benefit-cost test in a depressed economy seems to 

require a high disincentive coefficient~. 

-If interest rates substantially exceed the social rate of time discount, 

fiscal policy will fail its benefit-cost test. 

The first lesson follows from observing that in equation A.3 only the 

initial tenn Jl is a short-run tenn. Even outside of the consequences for cash 

flows, long-run benefits are a factor "/(r.- g) greater than short-term benefits. For the central case of table 2, with" = 0.05 and Jl = 1.0, this ratio of 

short- to long-tenn benefits is 1.7 at the critical real interest rate of r = 5.77 

percent per year. Expansionary fiscal policy thus should not be analyzed as 

if pursuing it removes political-economic focus from the long run. 

As with all present-value calculations at interest rates not too much larger 

than growth rates, a large proportion of the value comes from the distant 

future. lfwe impose the condition that our forecasting horizon ends 25 years 

into the future, on the grounds that the world more than a generation hence 

is likely to be different from the world of today in an "unknown unknowns" 

fashion, the ratio of long-run to short-run benefits falls to 1.14. But it is not 

just the long-run benefits of current expansionary policy from the counterhysteresis effect that are subject to exhaustion when a truly new deal is dealt; 

a truly new deal might well alter government financing burdens as well. 
395 

J. BRADFORD DElONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 269 

Our second lesson is that in a nondepressed economy, the policyrelevant reduced-form multiplier is likely to be small, and thus fiscal 

policy is highly likely to fail the benefit-cost test. The positive terms in 

equation A.3 are all linear in ~ and thus shrink with ~. But the negative 

term ~(1 - ~'t) is not linear in ~ and does not become small. The multiplier ~ relevant for equation A.3 is a reduced-form multiplier inclusive of 

monetary offset. It is not the multiplier holding real or nominal interest 

rates constant. It is not even the multiplier holding the monetary base 

or the money stock constant. It is the multiplier taking into account whatever the typical monetary policy reaction function to macroeconomic 

news is. 

In normal times that inclusive-of-monetary-offset multiplier is small. 

The central bank will almost invariably have strong views about what 

course of real aggregate demand is appropriate given its long-run price 

stability objectives. The central bank will be uninterested in having real 

demand pushed off what it regards as the appropriate path by the actions of 

any other agencies of government. It will thus attempt to offset whatever 

effects expansionary fiscal policy has on aggregate demand. And because 

central banks can work inside the discretionary fiscal policy decision loop 

of legislatures and executives, they will do so. 

In a depressed economy, things are different. With interest rates at 

the zero bound, the central bank may lack the power to manage aggregate 

demand by itself without pushing nonstandard monetary policy beyond the 

limits it regards as plausible. And even if the central bank believes that it 

has the power, it may lack the will-and may well lack the formal legal 

authority-to undertake nonstandard policy measures that might be better 

classified as quasi-fiscal policies. 

If, in a depressed economy, a central bank possesses both the power 

and the will to target real aggregate demand and offset any effects of fiscal 

expansion, then the policy-relevant multiplier ~ in equation A.3 will be sufficiently small that expansionary fiscal policy fails to pass its benefit-cost 

test. But jf the central bank lacks either the power or the will to do so, our 

argument applies. The fact that expansionary discretionary fiscal policy fails 

the benefit-cost test of equation A.3 in nonnal times carries no implications 

for the test in a depressed economy. 

Our third lesson is that even in the absence of hysteresis effects, discretionary expansionary fiscal policy may well pass its benefit-cost test. In the 

absence of hysteresis effects, when 11 = 0, equation A.3 becomes 

(A.4) .1V = [J..L - ~(1 - J..L't)].1G. 
396 

270 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

This expression is positive when 

(AS) ~ !l> -jo-' ) + I.:;t 

For a tax-and-transfer share 't of II3, a multiplier J.I of 0.5 produces a positive extra-output benefit-cost test for any ~ less than 0.6: 

-A J.I of 1.5 produces a positive benefit-cost test for any ~ less than 3: a 

~ of 3 would mean that the economy is so far to the right on the Laffer curve 

that the marginal dollar raised from taxes reduces potential output by $3. 

-A J.I of I produces a positive benefit-cost test for any ~ less than 1.5. 

-Even a J.I of 0.5 would require a ~ of 0.6, which seems unlikely: 

other North Atlantic countries have significantly higher values of't with 

no clearly visible signs of such severe effects of taxes on potential output. 

Our fourth lesson is that adding in hysteresis effects through a positive 

value of Tl makes the arithmetic of the benefit-cost test of equation A.3 

even more compelling. The analogue of expression A5 then becomes: 

(A.6) 

For temporary expansionary fiscal policy to fail its benefit-cost test with 

even very moderate multiplier and hysteresis effects, the requirements are 

stringent. For 't of II3, g of 2.5 percent per year, J.I of 0.5, Tl of 0.05, and r 

of 6 percent per year, temporary fiscal expansion fails its benefit-cost test 

only if ~ is greater than 10. 

This leads to the fifth and last lesson: Only a small value of J.I is typically needed in expression A6 for expansionary fiscal policy to pass the 

benefit-cost test, because the critical value of J.I is reduced by the hysteresis 

term in the denominator, and because the presence of r - g can make this 

term large. Any set of parameter values in which "/(r - g) is nonnegligible 

makes the critical value of 11 small. Thus, the benefit-cost test is likely 

to be passed unless r - g is relatively large-and in this case r is not the 

real social rate of time discount but instead the real Treasury borrowing 

rate. It follows that discretionary fiscal policy in a depressed economy is 

most likely to fail its benefit-cost test if there is a wedge between the real 

Treasury borrowing rate (which determines the burden of the debt) and the 

social rate of time discount (which determines the mUltiple at which future 

benefits and costs are capitalized). For a wedge p between the real social 

rate of time discount r and the government's real borrowing cost r + p, the 

benefit-cost calculation in equation A3 becomes 
397 

J. BRADFORD DELONG and LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS 271 

(A.7) [ 

llJl ~llJl't (r+p-g)(l-Jl't)] ~V = Jl+--+--- l!.G. 

r-g r-g r-g 

The costs in the final term on the right-hand side are then amplified by the 

factor (r + p - g)/(r - g), while the benefits in the first three terms stay 

the same as they were in equation A.3. A government that must borrow at 

the terms of a present-day Greece or Spain--or that fears that even marginal 

additional borrowing will produce a market reaction that will force it to borrow on ~uch terms-will find the arithmetic of expansionary fiscal policy 

unpleasant indeed. But there is no such wedge for the United States today. 

Nor are there any visible signs in asset values that the future emergence of 

such a wedge is priced into today's markets, at any detectable probability. 

A C K NOW lED G MEN TS We would like to thank the Coleman Fung Center for Risk Management at the University of California, Berkeley, and the 

Berkeley Freshman Seminar Program for financial support. We would like to 

thank Simon Galle and Charles Smith for excellent research assistance. And we 

would like to thank Alan Auerbach, Robert Barsky, Gregory Clark, Raj Chetty, 

Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Giancarlo Corsetti, Jan Eberly, Barry Eichen~reen, 

Martin Feldstein, Justin Fox, Paul Krugman, James K. Galbraith, Yurii 

Gorodnichenko, Bob Hall, Jan Hatzius, Bart Hobijn, Greg Ip, Daniel Lee, 

Miles Kimball, Brock Mendel. John Mondragon, Peter Orszag, Adam Posen, 

Jonathan Portes, Valerie Ramey, Jesse Rothstein, Matthew Shapiro, Mark 

Thoma, Robert Waldmann, Johannes Wieland. Jim Wilcox, Michael Woodford, 

and others, especially Laurence Ball and Christina Romer, and the editors, for 

helpful comments and discussions. 
398 

272 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Spring 2012 

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Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. JOHNSON. 

STATEMENT OF SIMON JOHNSON, RONALD A. KURTZ PROFESSOR OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP, SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 

AND SENIOR FELLOW, PETERSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Senator, for the opportunity to be here today, and members of the committee. 

I share Professor Summers’ optimism on the U.S. economy, and 

I hope that he is right on these points. I would, though, like to emphasize the risks that we still face from the global economy. I 

would then like to speak briefly about the effects of the uncertainty 

generated by our current fiscal policy and come back to some of the 

longer-term budget issues that Senator Sessions has already 

touched on. 

The European economy remains very unsettled. There is a serious problem within the Eurozone currency area. There are associated sovereign debt problems, and their financial sector is, frankly, 

in very bad shape. All of these pose risks to our outlook and we 

need to be careful. It does give us this ironic advantage in the 

sense that we are seen as a stronger safe haven relative to other 

investments because the Europeans have made so many mistakes 

in recent years. But we must be aware that the international environment can turn against us quite suddenly and we should plan accordingly. 

Now, the interesting contrast between European fiscal policy, in 

fact, fiscal policy in most other industrialized countries and what 

we do in the United States, is that we have relatively weak socalled automatic stabilizers and relatively more importance for discretion in fiscal policy. So instead of it being the case that when 

you hit a major financial crisis in a large recession, in most other 

countries, most of the fiscal countercyclical effect is done by automatic falls in tax revenue, automatic increases, for example, in unemployment benefits. You on Capitol Hill, in our situation, have to 

make a lot of decisions. 

And I testified to this committee for the first time in November 

2008, and I testified again at the beginning of 2009—I think Senator Sessions was in those hearings—and I was really struck and 

impressed by the bipartisan spirit of those hearings, and there was 

the agreement, not perhaps on all the priorities, but the agreement 

that this was a major crisis. It was unprecedented in our lifetimes 

and it required a fiscal response of some kind, with different opinion between how much you want to put on tax breaks versus 

spending increases. I also went back and looked at the testimony 

from the Heritage Foundation in those months and years and it 

was running very much along these lines. 

Now, of course, we have reached the difficult phase, which is exactly as you laid it out, Senator Murray. Where do we make the 

choices going forward regarding spending and taxes? And I am 

rather on your side in terms of the Senate Democratic budget, in 

terms of where you put that weighting. And, obviously, we are 
402 

going to disagree about that today, but, I think, more than anything, I would stress the unfortunate effects of uncertainty. 

And I would recommend to you again—I think I have spoken to 

this committee before, also—about the work of Nick Bloom at Stanford University and his colleagues, who have studied the effects of 

all the different kinds of uncertainty that we have had at the 

macro level in recent years. And the one thing that stands out in 

their work as having made people more uncertain and then, presumably, less willing to invest—and I am talking about the private 

sector—it was that debt ceiling fight in the summer of 2011. And 

it was also, just to some degree, what began to happen at the beginning of this year, but fortunately, there was a backing away 

from another confrontation over the debt ceiling. 

So I would really echo and reinforce your point, Senator Murray, 

that we should move away from the sequester. Putting in place 

that kind of automatic cut is not a good way to deal with the fiscal 

issues. You emphasized education and infrastructure. I would second that and I would add public health. The Head Start program, 

for example, which is a combination of public health and education, 

is being cut, and the last data I have seen suggests that 70,000 

children will not participate in Head Start this year because of the 

sequester. Those children are gone. They are only in that critical, 

vulnerable age group once and then they are lost. Then we have 

lost the human capital. We have lost the productive ability. And we 

know that these early childhood education and health interventions 

are very effective. 

So the sequester is not a good way to proceed. The debt ceiling 

confrontations, other confrontations, when they generate more uncertainty unfortunately, have a big negative effect on the private 

sector. And as a Professor of Entrepreneurship, I spend a lot of 

time with private sector people who believe in the United States, 

who actually look around the world at opportunities and say the 

United States is a good place to invest, exactly as Professor Summers was saying. But when there are big fights about fiscal policy, 

that is a disincentive. 

My third and final point is about the long-term budget issues. I 

think we agree completely, Senator Sessions, that looking out 20, 

30, 50 years, there are important issues that need to be confronted 

and I think there has to be a conversation about Social Security. 

That is part of, I think, what you were flagging for us, and I agree 

with that wholeheartedly. And I wrote a book, White House Burning, that deals, in part, with this topic. 

But I would also stress the importance and centrality of health 

care spending in that discussion. But it is not just about Medicare 

and other government-funded parts of the health care system. It is 

also about health care spending and our, to date, limited ability— 

perhaps the latest information is a bit more encouraging—but over 

the last couple of decades, we have demonstrated a very limited 

ability to control health care spending. 

If you take that health care spending from the public sector and 

say, all right, government is out of this business. It is now all a 

private responsibility through insurance, self-insurance, or insurance you are going to buy, according to the Congressional Budget 

Office, that will push up our health care costs as a percent of GDP. 
403 

You have less buying power as individuals and as small groups 

than the government has when the government buys health care 

for roughly 100 million Americans, as it does today. 

So I think we should have exactly that conversation, Senator 

Sessions, talk about the aging of the population, talk about the social insurance programs that we want and that we do not want in 

that context. 

I testified to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress recently 

alongside Senator Judd Gregg and I was very struck by his 

thoughtful statements along these lines and his inclination, actually, to allow taxes, tax revenue at the Federal Government level, 

to rise over the medium term, reflecting the costs of social insurance and, I think, presumably, reflecting the reforms that he would 

want in how those programs are operated. But he was talking 

about taxes relative to GDP rising above 20 percent—perhaps 21 

percent, perhaps 22 percent—we should let him speak for himself 

on that—but I thought that that reflected exactly the kind of compromise and seeking of the middle ground that we need if we are 

going to put the longer-term budget issues on a sustainable footing 

at the same time as maintaining our essential investments, particularly in more vulnerable lower-income Americans today. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:] 
404 

Testimony submitted to Senate Budget Committee, hearing on "The Fiscal and Economic 

Effects of Austerity", Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 10:30am. (Embargoed until hearing starts.) 

Submitted by Simon Johnson, Ronald Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan 

School of Management; Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics; cofounder ofhttp://BaselineScenario.com; member ofthe CBO's Panel of Economic 

Advisers; member ofthe FDIC's Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee; and member of 

the Systemic Risk Council.! 

A. Main Points 

I) The U.S. and global economy continues the process of slow and difficult recovery from the 

financial crisis of 2008. Financial markets can easily become unsettled. A serious sovereign 

debt crisis remains unresolved in Europe's euro area. There are potential risks on the horizon 

for countries such as Japan, China, and Brazil. 

2) In this context, continuing uncertainty around the U.S. federal budget in general and the debt 

ceiling in particular is not helpful- and may prove destabilizing both at home and around the 

world. Another round of confrontation over the debt ceiling, for example in the early fall of 

2013, would not be helpful to growth or employment. 

3) At the same time, a sudden move towards further tightening fiscal policy in the U.S. would 

undermine our economic recovery and has the potential to destabilize financial markets. We 

are currently moving in a precipitate manner towards an excessive and inappropriate degree 

of immediate austerity. 

4) There is no meaningful evidence that we "need" to cut federal deficits dramatically this year 

or next year or even over the next five years. There is no threshold for our federal debt, 

either gross or net, that would necessarily trigger slower growth or higher bond yields or any 

other economic problem. 

5) It is far more important to get the economy back onto a sustainable growth path - and this 

includes not disrupting the private sector with damaging or disruptive public spending cuts. 

As the economy recovers, this will strengthen tax revenues and help put the budget back on 

to a more sustainable footing - and there are early indications in 2013 that this is exactly 

what is happening. 

6) The ongoing sequester is a perfect example of how not to manage fiscal policy, particularly 

as this tends to undermine all forms ofinvestrnent in and by the public sector. Combined 

with repeated confrontations over the debt ceiling and the possibility of a government 

shutdown, arbitrary and across the board spending cuts are hardly likely to help boost growth 

either in the short-term or the longer-term. Nor do they help boost confidence in the private 

sector. 

1 This testimony draws on White House Burning: The Founding Fathers. Our National Debt. and Why It 

Matters to You (pantheon, 2012), co-authored with James Kwak. Underlined text indicates links to 

supplementary material; if necessary, please access an electronic version of this document, e.g., at 

http://BaselineScenario.com. The Systemic Risk Council is a private group founded and chaired by Sheila 

Bair. All views expressed here are personal; additional disclosures are available at 

http://baselinescenario.com/aboutl. 
405 

7) Now is a good time to discuss longer-tenn issues that will drive budget outcomes in future 

decades, particularly the paramount importance of the likely rising cost of health care 

(meaning all healthcare costs, not just those paid by the government). But this potentially 

sensible debate about healthcare has become very confused and shows no signs of 

improvement 

8) Significantly cutting federal discretionary domestic spending below current projected levels 

will weaken our education system, undennine our future human capital, and further fray our 

physical infrastructure - i.e., actually reduce attainable growth rates in the United States. 

This is not a good time to squeeze the provision of essential public goods. 

9) More broadly, the rhetoric around supposedly "excessive" government spending has itself 

become excessive. The long-standing project to shrink the federal government - sometimes 

known as a strategy of "starve the beast" - has reached a new and very dangerous phase.2 

10) There is a danger that we will inflict upon ourselves an unnecessary and damaging degree of 

austerity. We should instead be building an economy within which federal revenue can be 

robust and public spending growth can be contained over the next decade. 

II) A separate, but very important, issue is how to limit total health care spending - not just the 

government component of healthcare spending - as a percent of GDP over the next 20-50 

years. 

B. Do We Face a "Fiscal Crisis"? 

Standard solvency analysis - including, for example, the tools used by the International 

Monetary Fund - confmns there is no prospect of an immediate fiscal crisis in the United States. 

We currently have "fiscal space", in the sense here is strong global demand for Treasury 

obligations in the foreseeable future.3 

Long-tenn interest rates are low and remarkably stable. Partly this is due to actions by the Fed 

through various fonns of "quantitative easing", but U.S. government securities are also seen as a 

safe haven for international investors. However, this safe haven status will be jeopardized if 

markets perceive a significant probability that we will not pay our debts as contracted - or if we 

create the perception that our economy will be thrown into repeated tunnoil through regular 

showdowns over the debt ceiling or through dramatic cuts in government spending. 

Over the CBO's 10-year forecast window, with the partial expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, 

there is no insurmountable budget problem.4 There is no fiscal emergency over this time 

horizon. 

Our most important budget problems come after the ten-year horizon, because Medicare 

spending accelerates due to an aging population and increasing health care costs. The real issue 

2 For more historical background and relevant details on the development of this strategy since the 1970s, 

see Chapter 3 in White House Burninl:. 

3 Comparative cross-country estimates are provided in Jonathan D. Ostry, Atish R. Ghosh, Jun r. Kim, 

Mahvash S. Quereshi, "Fiscal Space," IMF Staff Position Note, September 1,2010, SPN/IO!11. 

4 See James Kwak, "The Weirdness oflD-Year Deficit Reduction," 

http://baselinescenario.coml20 II 107/21 Ithe-weirdness-of-I O-year-deficit -reduction!. 
406 

here is containing healthcare costs - i.e., schemes that cut Medicare in such a way as to shift 

healthcare costs onto families do not offer an appealing solution, particularly as this would likely 

raise healthcare spending as a percent ofGDP. 

We should aim to find a way to limit healthcare costs as soon as possible - every year of high 

healthcare cost inflation makes the problem worse. Our competitors are controlling healthcare 

costs much more effectively than we are; with the set of advanced countries, the US stands out as 

having the worst (highest) projections for rising healthcare costs through 2030 or 2050.6 

The United States is in the midst of a significant demographic transition, in the sense that our 

population is ageing. We need to invest in education and ensure access to affordable healthcare 

to everyone if we are to increase productivity as the proportion of older Americans increases. 

Ultimately, higher productivity is necessary - although not sufficient - to ensure that older, 

retired workers can receive a sustainable level of reasonable benefits (including pensions and 

healthcare) . 

In this context and over the coming decades, the United States needs to make a longer-term fiscal 

adjustment. An important part of that should include additional tax revenues? The Bush-era tax 

cuts reduced revenue to an excessive degree, given the ageing of society. We are still struggling 

to recover from that flawed way of thinking about our public finances. 

It is striking the extent to which income inequality has increased dramatically since the last tax 

reform in 1986, primarily due to the impact of information technology and globalization on 

incomes - helping top earners and squeezing people in the middle of the income and skill 

distribution. 8 According to the latest available data, from 1993 to 2011, average real income for 

the bottom 99 percent of the population (by income) rose by 5.8 percent, while the top 1 % 

experienced real income growth of 57.5%. The top 1 percent captured 62 percent of all income 

growth over this period.9 

The returns to higher education have greatly increased in recent decades and, on average, there 

are not good income prospects for anyone with only a high school education (or less). If 

anything, the tax system should lean towards becoming more progressive - and investing the 

proceeds in public goods that are not sufficiently provided by the private sector, like early 

childhood education and the kind of preventive healthcare that helps prevent disruption to 

education (e.g., due to childhood asthma). 

At the same time, we must not lose sight of the very large fiscal risks posed by the nature and 

structure of our financial system. Our worsening budget picture since 2000 is due to a' 

combination of factors - including large tax cuts, two foreign wars, and the introduction of 

5 For more detail, see the CBO assessment of the budget proposal put forward by Congressman Paul 

Ryan: http://cbo.gov/sites/defaultlfiles/cbofiles/ftpdocS/121 xxldoc 12128/04-05-ryan letter.pdf. 

6 See the IMF's Fiscal Monitor <October 2012), Statistical Table 1230 columns 3 and 4. 

7 For more details on the viable options, see White House Burning. particularly Chapter 7. Reducing tax 

expenditures is part ofthe sensible route to follow. These reductions can be phased in gradually. 

• For more details and discussion of what accounts for the increase in inequality, see David Autor and 

Daron Acemoglu, "Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings," 

http://econ-www .mit.edulfi les/5 571. 

9 This is from data on Emmanuel Saez's website, http://elsaberkeley.edul-saez/, downloaded on March 

12,2013. See the first item under "Income and Wealth Inequality"; the link to his spreadsheet is called 

"(Tables and Figures Updated to 2011 in Excel format, January 2013)". 
407 

Medicare Part O. The recent increase in government spending as a percent of GOP is due almost 

entirely to the way the fmancial sector imploded and damaged the rest of the private sector in 

2007-08. 10 

To see the fiscal impact of the last finance-induced recession, look at changes in the CBO's 

baseline projections over time. In January 2008, the CBO projected that total government debt in 

private hands--the best measure of what the government owes-would fall to $5.1 trillion by 

2018 (23% of GOP). As of Januarv 201 0, the CBO projected that over the next eight years debt 

will rise to $13.7 trillion (over 65% ofGOP~ difference of $8.6 trillion. 

Most of this fiscal impact is not due to the Troubled Assets Relief Program - and definitely not 

due to the part of that program which injected capital into failing banks. Of the change in CBO 

baseline, 57% is due to decreased tax revenues resulting from the financial crisis and recession; 

17% is due to increases in discretionary spending, some of it the stimulus package necessitated 

by the financial crisis (and because the "automatic stabilizers" in the United States are relatively 

weak); and another 14% is due to increased interest payments on the debt - because we now 

have more debt. II 

We should be attempting to strengthen the safeguards in the Dodd-Frank financial refonn 

legislation. Repealing or rolling back that legislation poses a major fiscal risk. 12 The fact that 

this is not currently scored by the Congressional Budget Office does not reduce this risk or make 

it any smaller. 

In effect, a fmancial system with dangerously low capital levels - hence prone to major collapses 

- creates a nontransparent contingent liability for the federal budget in the United States.13 This 

can only lead to further instability, deep recessions, and damage to our fiscal balance sheet, in a 

version of what senior officials at the Bank of England refer to as a "doom loop". 

The remainder of this testimony reviews in more detail: why spending cuts - either from a 

government shutdown or from some other fonn of immediate austerity - will be contractionary 

in the current US context; and how to think about our debt levels in a cross-country perspective. 

10 Over the past decade, foreign wars also contributed to increased government spending. But the 

negative fiscal effect of the financial crisis was much larger than the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars 

combined. 

11 See also the May 2010 edition of the IMF's cross-country fiscal monitor for comparable data from 

other industrialized countries, http://www.imf.orglextemalJpubslftlfml2010/frnI001.pdf. The box on debt 

dynamics shows that mostly these are due to the recession; fiscal stimulus only accounts for Ifl0lh of the 

increase in debt in advanced G20 countries. Table 4 in that report compares support by the government 

for the financial sector across leading countries; the US provided more capital injection (as a percent of 

GOP) but lower guarantees relative to Europe. 

12 See Simon Johnson and James Kwak, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial 

Meltdown, Pantheon, 2010. 

13 See Anat Admati, Peter DeMarzo, Martin Hellwig, and Paul pfleiderer, "Fallacies, Irrelevant Facts, and 

Myths in the Discussion of Capital Regulation: Why Bank Equity is Not Expensive," Stanford University, 

March 2011 (revised), https://gsbapps.stanford.eduiresearchpapersilibrarylRP2065RI&86.pdf. For a 

comprehensive assessment of banking and why capital requirements should be significantly higher, see 

Ana! Admati and Martin Hellwig, The Banker's New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to 

Do about it. Princeton University Press, 2013. 
408 

C. Spending Cuts Would Be Contractionary 

Immediate spending cuts would, by themselves, likely slow the economy. The IMF's 

comprehensive recent review of cross-country evidence concludes: "A budget cut equal to I 

percent of GDP typically reduces domestic demand by about I percent and raises the 

unemployment rate by 0.3 percentage point.,,14 

The contractionary effects of spending cuts can sometimes be offset by other changes in 

economic policy or conditions, but these are unlikely to apply in the United States today 

If there is high perceived sovereign default risk, fiscal contraction can potentially lower longterm interest rates. But the US is currently perceived as one of the lowest risk countries in the 

world - hence the widespread use of the US dollar as a reserve asset. To the extent there is 

pressure on long-term interest rates in the US today due to fiscal concerns, these are mostly 

about the longer-term issues involving healthcare spending; if this spending were to be credibly 

constrained (e.g., in plausible projections for 2030 or 2050), long rates should fall. In contrast, 

cutting discretionary spending would have little impact on the market assessment of our longerterm fiscal stability. 

It is also highly unlikely that short·term spending cuts would directly boost confidence among 

households or firms in the current US situation, particularly with employment still around 2 

percent below its pre-crisis level. The US still has a significant "output gap" between actual and 

potential GDP, so unemployment is significantly above the achievable rate. Fiscal contractions 

rarely inspire confidence in such a situation. 

If monetary policy becomes more expansionary while fiscal policy contracts, this can offset to 

some degree the negative short-run effects of spending cuts on the economy. But in the US 

today, short-term interest rates are as low as they can be and the Federal Reserve has already 

engaged in a substantial amount of "quantitative easing" to bring down interest rates on longerterm debt. It is unclear that much more monetary policy expansion would be advisable or 

possible in the view of the Fed, even if unemployment increases again - for example because 

fiscal contraction involves laying off government workers. 

Tighter fiscal policy and easier monetary policy can, in small open economies with flexible 

exchange rates, push down (depreciate) the relative value of the currency - thus increasing 

exports and making it easier for domestic producers to compete against imports. But this is 

unlikely to happen in the United States, in part because other industrialized countries are also 

undertaking fiscal policy consolidation. Also, the preeminent reserve currency status of the 

dollar means that it rises and falls in response to world events outside our control- and at present 

political and economic instabilities elsewhere seem likely to keep the dollar relatively strong. 

14 World Economic Outlook, October 2010, Chapter 3, "Will It Hurt? Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal 

Consolidation," p.113. This study has important methodological advantages, in particular because it 

focuses on policy intentions and attempts to implement spending cuts and revenue increases. For more on 

the IMP's thinking on fiscal policy - and how it has been unable to provide sufficient support to the 

economic recovery - see the recent work of Prakash Lougani, including 

http://www.prakashloungani.coml2013/05/taclding-unemployment-return-of-two.html and the links 

provided in that blog post. 
409 

The available evidence, including international experience, suggests it is very unlikely that the 

United States could experience an "expansionary fiscal contraction" as a result of short-term cuts 

in discretionary federal government spending. Recent experience with austerity in the United 

Kingdom should also not inspire us to head rapidly in the same direction. 

D. Fiscal Crises in Comparative Perspective 

The advisable debt limit, relative to GOP, for the United States is subject to considerable debate 

and is not knowable with a high degree of precision. For a country like the United Statesissuing debt in its own currency and with its assets widely regarded as a safe haven -- there is no 

precise debt-to-GOP level at which a crisis is necessarily triggered. Higher debt levels, however, 

do constitute a source of vulnerability, particularly when foreign investors are holding a 

substantial proportion of the debt outstanding.1s 

If any shock throws the economy into recession, fiscal policy in most industrialized countries 

will to some degree automatically counteract the effect - as spending increases (on 

unemployment benefits and other forms of social support) and taxation declines (as GOP falls). 

Such automatic stabilizers are generally helpful as they prevent the recession from becoming 

more serious - or even some form of prolonged collapse, which was the pre-I 945 experience of 

many countries. 

It is important not to overs imply fiscal concerns into precise cut-offs for "dangerous" debt levels. 

Recent European experience provides ample illustration that countries can run into trouble 

refinancing their debts at a wide range of debt-to-GOP values. 

Greece ran into trouble in 2010 with gross debt relative to GOP of 147.9 percent; its debt levels 

in 2006 and 2007 were around 107 percent.16 This is a classic case of too much debt by any 

measure although the full extent of the debt and underlying deficits were not completely clear 

until market perceptions shifted against Greece. In addition, an important part of the problems in 

Greece is structural- both in terms of how the eurozone functions as a monetary area, and in 

terms of the longer-run failure of productivity to converge towards levels in northern, higher 

income European countries. 

Portugal faced a fiscal crisis with gross debt at 108.0 percent of GOP in 2011, but its gross debt 

was only 68.3 percent of GOP in 2007. The issue for Portugal is low achieved and expected 

growth relative to fiscal deficits - the markets have become unwilling to support debt that 

continues to increase as a percent of GOP. 

Ireland, another eurozone country that currently has an IMF program, is a different kind of fiscal 

disaster. In this case, the on-balance sheet government debt was low (25.0 percent of GOP in 

2007 for general government gross debt) but there was a big build up in off-balance sheet 

IS Statistical Table 12a in the IMPs Fiscal Monitor, April 2013, reports "nonresident holding of 

marketable central government debt" for the third quarter of2012. For the United States this is 55.1 

p,ercent. 

6 These data are from the latest available Fiscal Monitor, published by the IMF in April 2013 

Gm.p://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ftlfrnl20 13/0 IIpdf/fm 130 I.pdf); see Statistical Table 4. International 

comparisons of fiscal accounts are difficult; we recommend using the gross general government debt 

numbers from the IMPs Fiscal Monitor. 
410 

obligations - in the fonn of implicit support available to a banking system that was taking on 

large risks. Bailing out the banks in fall 2008 and losing tax revenue due to severe recession 

pushed up gross debt to 106.5 percent of GOP in 2011 and debt levels will reach over 120 

percent of GOP (in the official IMF estimates) before stabilizing. 

In the UK, gross debt was 43.0 percent of GOP in 2006, which was low relative to other 

industrialized countries at that time. Gross general government debt reached 79.4 percent of 

GOP in 2010, when the new Conservative government decided to adopt relatively austere budget 

policies. However, growth since that time has been lackluster and debt continues on an upward 

path, reaching 90.3 percent of GOP in 2012 and expected to reach 93.6 percent in 2013. In the 

latest IMF projections, it will peak at 100.7 percent of GOP in 2016. Given that Britain does not 

belong to the eurozone and still has its own central bank, the wisdom of its current fiscal policy 

stance has increasingly been called into question. 

Compared with other industrialized countries, Japan stands out as an extreme. Government debtrelative to GOP is expected to reach 245.4 percent in 2013 (on a gross basis) and stay above 240 

percent of GOP for the foreseeable future. On a net basis - taking out government debt held by 

other parts of the public sector- debt is expected to be 146.7 percent of GOP in 2013 and to 

remain above 150 percent of GOP through at least 2018. But over 90 percent of Japanese 

government debt is held by residents - and, at least for the time being, Japanese household and 

business savings remain high.l? 

Countries with greater reliance on foreign savers, such as the US (where nonresidents held 32.1 

percent of general government debt and 55.1 percent of marketable central government debt in 

2012) and the UK (nonresidents held 31.9 percent of general government debt in 2012) need to 

be much more careful. Within the eurozone, as a result of greater financial integration combined 

with the mispricing of risk, foreigners typically hold 40-90 percent of all outstanding government 

debt (mostly held by other eurozone financial institutions). 

The increase in debt relative to GOP in industrialized countries was from 77.2 percent in 2006 to 

110.7 percent in 2012 (this is general government gross debt as a percent of GOP, calculated by 

the IMF as an unweighted average across countries).18 Most of this increase was due to 

automatic stabilizers, i.e., the increase in spending and fall in taxation that occurs whenever a 

country goes into recession. 

Seen in that context, the increase in the US general government gross debt - from 66.1 percent of 

GOP in 2006 to 98.2 percent at the end of2010 and 106.5 percent at the end of2012 -was very 

much in line with experience in other countries.19 

In tenns of net general government debt held by the private sector, at the end of2012, the US 

was around 89.0 percent of GOP - up from 48.4 in 2007. This number will rise to 87.6 percent 

in 2016 and 86.6 percent in 2018, according to the IMF. This is unlikely to cause any kind of 

serious fiscal crisis. 

17 In Table l2a of the IMF's Fiscal Monitor. April 2013, nonresident holding of general government debt 

in 2012 is 8.9 percent of all such debt. 

18 This series is from the IMF's Fiscal Monitor. October 2012; it is not available in the April 2013 version 

ofthis publication. 

I. These gross and net debt numbers are taken from the IMF's Fiscal Monitor. April 2013, Statistical 

Table 4. 
411 

In the Congressional Budget Office's longer-term projections, the future costs of healthcare 

cause a rise in debt to Japanese levels or beyond by 2030 or 2050. But the issue there is rising 

healthcare costs as a percent of GOP - not just the government component of those costs. 

The role of the US dollar as the world's preeminent reserve currency means there is a strong 

demand for our government securities in the foreseeable future. In 1948 and in 1968, world 

holdings of US dollar assets in the form of reserves were worth about 2 percent of GOP. Now 

world reserve holdings of dollar assets are worth at least 15 percent of GOP - and some would 

put this as high as 30 percent of GOP.20 

But it is not clear how far this will carry us - particularly as alternative reserve assets typically 

develop in a diverse world economy with competing national interests. It would be wise to 

undertake medium-term fiscal consolidation, i.e., over the next two decades. Rising healthcare 

costs, a weak tax base, and deteriorating public goods could well undermine our long-term 

potential growth - as well as our ability to ensure that all Americans can participate in economic 

prosperity. 

In addition, the United States continues to face very large potential fiscal liabilities in the form of 

implicit support available to the financial sector, both directly - if ''too big to fail" global banks 

get into trouble - and indirectly, in the form of automatic stabilizers that will always kick in 

when the economy declines sharply due to a banking crisis (e.g., through the decline in tax 

revenue when economic activity contracts). 

If a financial crisis due to the mispricing of risk causes a fiscal crisis, including immediate 

spending cuts and tax increases, this has major distributional consequences. The financial sector 

executives and traders who do well during a financial boom are highly paid; typically this is on a 

return-on-equity basis without appropriate adjustment for risk, so they take on too much debt. 

When the downside risks materialize, the costs of the crisis are borne by those who lose jobs and 

suffer other collateral damage. 

If sharp spending cuts foIlow that reduce essential public services (e.g., Head Start or other 

government-supported education programs), this effectively transfers the costs of dangerous 

compensation schemes for the financial elite onto the middle class and relatively poor people?1 

There is nothing pro-market or pro-private sector about an inefficient redistribution scheme that 

aIlows a few people to become richer due to implicit government subsidies for ''too big to fail" 

global financial institutions. Such firms are likely to damage themselves with some regularity -

their executives have little incentive to be sufficiently cautious. If the consequent crises 

undermine public goods, such as access to effective education and quality healthcare, this is 

likely to permanently lower growth rates through undermining the human capital of the US 

workforce. Unfortunately, this is the trajectory on wbich we currently find ourselves. 

20 For more details on the rise of the dollar as a reserve currency amidst the evolution of the international 

monetary system, see Chapter 2 in White House Burning. 

21 For some examples, see Simon Johnson, "Austerity's Children", Project Syndicate, March 25, 2013, 

http://www.project-svndicate.orglcommentarv/the-unfair-burden-of-fiscal-ac!justment-bv-simon-johnson. 
412 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. FURTH. 

STATEMENT OF SALIM FURTH, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST IN 

MACROECONOMICS, CENTER FOR DATA ANALYSIS, THE 

HERITAGE FOUNDATION 

Mr. FURTH. Thank you. My name is Salim Furth. I am a Senior 

Policy Analyst in Macroeconomics in the Center for Data Analysis 

at the Heritage Foundation. I thank Chairman Murray, Ranking 

Member Sessions, and the rest of the committee for the opportunity 

to testify on the impact of austerity. The views expressed in my 

testimony are my own and should not be construed as representing 

any official position of the Heritage Foundation. 

I heartily agree with the panelists that real sustained economic 

growth is the main point. But we need to put aside this term ‘‘austerity,’’ which is really too broad to be helpful. Distinguishing 

among the elements of austerity, we need to distinguish between 

tax increases, spending cuts, and structural reforms, all of which 

have been called austerity at different times in the past. 

So, today, I am going to talk about unbundling austerity in that 

way. I am going to revisit policies that have been pursued in the 

last five years, discuss the sequester for a moment, and then look 

forward to potential policies the U.S. can pursue. 

The most proven and fiscally sound and long-lasting policies 

under the austerity umbrella to help achieve growth are structural 

reforms. Structural reforms emphasize making markets more competitive. On the fiscal side, structural reform can be identified, as 

compared to merely cutting spending, by, I think, two criteria. In 

the first case, it should be a systematic and ongoing spending cut. 

And in the second, incentives for economic activity should be improved by the reform. 

So a simple example of structural reform might be to raise the 

Social Security early retirement age from 62 to 65. Another might 

be to cut subsidies for industrial farms or, with apologies to my fellow panelists, to cut subsidies to big ticket private universities. 

Lower government spending can bring debt under control and it 

can promote investment and subsequent growth. Empirical research by Giavazzi and Pagano; Alesina and Perotti; Von Hagen, 

Halite, and Starch; Lambertini and Tavares; Ardagna; and researchers at the OECD and the IMF, among others, has unanimously found that reducing deficits through spending cuts is more 

successful than doing so through tax increases. Higher tax rates 

slow the economy immediately and depress future growth. 

In addition, economic harm done by the tax increase automatically increases government spending on unemployment insurance 

and poverty programs. I expect this is why most tax-based attempts at deficit reduction have failed to shrink debt and have substantially increased the odds of a recession. 

The 2013 budget sequestration was poorly designed policy. However, its artlessness does not outweigh the fact that it is a step in 

the right direction on spending. Pier Carlo Padoan, Chief Economist of the OECD, emphasized in his speech last week that the 

U.S. should make the spending cuts of the sequester less harmful 
413 

by incorporating them into a credible, permanent fiscal consolidation. 

Since taking effect in March, sequestration has had no discernible impact on overall growth or employment numbers nor on financial markets. Where sequestration policies are particularly perverse, straightforward legislation can improve the content of policies while remaining revenue neutral. There are many places in 

the Federal budget where small savings can be found at little economic costs. In fixing sequestration, policy makers should restore 

government investment at the expense of the government wage bill 

and transfer payment growth. 

Going back to the experience of recent years, since 2007, few governments have pursued anything like a comprehensive austerity 

agenda. Most have spent more and some have taxed more. Spending cuts, on the other hand, have been rare outside Europe’s crisis 

countries. Only three of 28 OECD countries have policies that 

would lead to a budget surplus in a strong economy, let alone in 

the current stagnation. And 18 countries have instead expanded 

their deficits. 

Transfer payments, such as Social Security, Food Stamps, and 

unemployment insurance, have risen 16 percent in the typical 

OECD country and 14 percent in the U.S. That occurred despite a 

research consensus that transfers must be contained or cut in order 

to have successful deficit reduction. Now, I am not saying that we 

ought to be slashing transfers right now or that countries should 

have done so over the last five years. But the fact that they have 

been instead growing indicates that this narrative that there has 

been vicious austerity in Europe simply is at odds with the facts. 

In an economic downturn, one expects that the ratio of tax revenues to GDP, the revenue rate, will fall. That is what we expect. 

Instead, 13 OECD countries have raised their revenue rate since 

2007. In ten of those countries, higher taxes funded higher government spending. Only Greece, Italy, and Hungary have pursued 

both tax increases and spending cuts. 

So there has been a very wide variety—I go through this a little 

bit more in my written testimony—of specific fiscal policies that 

different countries have pursued. We can certainly talk about that 

variety. But throwing it all into a basket and calling that basket 

austerity is not helpful. 

My fellow panelist, Dr. Summers, coauthored a recent paper—he 

discussed it slightly here and more in his written testimony—which 

presents a novel and valuable idea. It is interesting and worthy of 

further study, how the effects of a recession can echo through into 

the long term. I agree wholeheartedly with DeLong and Summers 

that more consideration should be given to the long-term effects of 

short-term policies. 

However, I think that policy makers should put greater weight 

on concerns which are founded in more substantial and longer-run 

research agendas. We have more research showing that structural 

reform that contains entitlements and increases competition is a 

proven method of raising labor force participation and is more 

proven than borrowing and spending and other potential policies 

that have been mooted. 
414 

Coming back, there is no substitute for private sector economic 

growth. Although government can easily boost its own portion of 

GDP, it can only indirectly have a positive impact on private consumption and private investment, which are the cornerstones of 

material well-being, present and future. 

Concluding, Angel Gurria, Secretary-General of the OECD, last 

week laid out a mandate for structural change, saying, ′′moving to 

best practice across a number of policy areas would raise per capita 

incomes by some 20 percent in the median OECD country. This is 

huge. So our call continues to be, go structural.′′ 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Furth follows:] 
415 

214 Massachusetts Ave. N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002 (202) 546-4400 www.herilage.org 

Introduction 

CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY 

Statement of 

Salim Furth, Ph.D. 

Senior Policy Analyst in Macroeconomics 

Center for Data Analysis 

The Heritage Foundation 

Before the Committee on the Budget ofthe United States Senate 

Delivered June 4, 2013 

"The Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity" 

My name is Salim Furth. I am Senior Policy Analyst in Macroeconomics in the Center for Data Analysis at 

The Heritage Foundation. I thank Chairman Patty Murray, Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, and the rest of 

the committee for the opportunity to testify today on the fiscal and economic effects of austerity. The 

views I express in this testimony are my own and should not be construed as representing any official 

position of The Heritage Foundation. 

My testimony focuses on the following points: 

• Tax increases are harmful to the economy and the debt; 

• Spending cuts can improve both the budget and the economy; 

• Structural reforms can permanently improve economic performance; and 

• To date, "austerity" in Europe has consisted mainly oftax increases. 
416 

Three Distinct Approaches 

Austerity is an overly broad term of economic opprobrium; its effects depend on its contents. The U.S. 

should pursue targeted spending cuts and structural reform, but eschew further tax increases. 

Lower government spending has little immediate effect on the private economy, but can bring debt 

under control and promote investment and subsequent growth. Reductions in spending lower the odds 

of future tax increases and future inflation. Historically, successful fiscal consolidations are associated 

with spending cuts. 

Higher tax rates slow the economy immediately and depress future growth.' Revenue gains are 

mediocre, as lower investment, attenuated work effort, and inefficient tax-avoidance depress receipts. 

In addition, economic harm done by the tax increase automatically increases government expenditures 

on unemployment insurance and poverty programs. 

Structural reform of social transfer programs and regulatory regimes can substantially increase long-run 

growth. Among developed economies, which share the same technology and similar cultures and 

political systems, the extent of the government's intrusion into private lives is a primary candidate for 

explaining output differencesY In the U.S. for the next few decades, structural reform means balancing 

obligations to retiring baby boomers against competing claims on scarce productive workers. Without 

reforms that ease and reward productive activity, labor force participation will remain low and the fiscal 

burden will be staggering. 

The U.S. should enact wise and permanent structural reforms, including effective marginal tax rate cuts 

to the poor, sustainable reform to Social Security and Medicare, and curtailment of destructive 

government agencies. 

Has Austerity Occurred? 

"Austerity" is often a term of obfuscation. Estonia, for instance, is often considered a poster child for 

austerity despite its 14 percent rise in government consumption and 22 percent rise in transfer 

payments (items like Social Security and unemployment insurance) since 2007.4 Germany likewise grew 

government 11 percent over the crisis years. At the same time, both countries have raised taxes enough 

to keep their budgets close to balance. Meanwhile, Ireland allowed its tax revenue to fall and shifted 

government expenditure from government consumption (-7.S percent) to transfer payments (+20 

percent). Spain has a lower revenue rate, higher government consumption, and higher transfers than it 

1 Karel Mertens and Morton Ravn, "The Dynamic Effects of Personal and Corporate Income Tax Changes in the 

United States," American Economic Review, June 2013 (forthcoming). 

'Giuseppe Fiori, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Stefano Scarpetta and Fabio Schiantarelli, "Employment Effects of Product and 

Labour Market Reforms: Are There Synergies?" The Economic Joumal 122, February 2012. 

3 Edward C. Prescott, "Why Do Americans Work So Much More Than Europeans?" Federal Reserve Bank of 

Minneapolis Quarterly Review 28(1), July 2004. 

4 Author's calculations based on DECO Statistics and DECO Economic Outlook #93. 
417 

did in 2007. Yet all these countries are routinely lumped as "austere," with the emphasis usually placed 

on the rare spending cuts. 

Much less austerity has occurred globally than is commonly reported, and U.S. policies have expanded, 

not contracted, deficits in the past several years. We are a long way from austerity. 

Fiscal Consolidations and the Historical Record 

Fiscal consolidation denotes a policy change designed to shrink deficits - and it may include both 

spending cuts and tax increases. Twenty years of research have found that consolidation plans in which 

spending cuts preponderate are more effective and more conducive to growth than tax increases. In the 

Appendix, I present an extensive record of empirical academic research showing that spending cuts have 

great potential for good and tax increases great potential for harm. 

Investigating the optimal mix of spending cuts and tax increases, Biggs, Hassett, and Jensen find "strong 

evidence" that expenditure-based consolidations are more successful than tax-based expenditures.s 

They conclude that when fiscal consolidation is needed, it should be at least 85 percent spending cuts. 

They also find that composition matters: successful consolidations feature large cuts to transfer 

programs. This confirms the basic economic result that disincentives to work will reduce economic 

activity. 

Biggs, Hassett, and Jensen also emphasize the particular situation of the U.S.: with the coming 

retirement surge, the U.S. has a longer-term need for fiscal consolidation than most of the historical 

examples. Both historical experience and the exigencies of the present urge us to adopt structural 

reforms that diminish dependency on transfer payments. 

A famous series of papers during the 1990s identified the counterintuitive "expansionary fiscal 

consolidations."· Seven such episodes occurred during the 1980s, in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, 

Italy, Portugal, and Sweden: the cyclically adjusted deficit fell substantially, but private consumption and 

investment continued to grow.' Since then, several more episodes of "expansionary consolidation" have 

burnished the record of spending-based deficit reduction. 

5 Andrew G. Biggs, Kevin A. Hassett, and Matthew Jensen, "A Guide for Deficit Reduction in the United States 

Based on Historical Consolidations That Worked," American Enterprise Institute Economic Policy Working Paper 

2010-04, December 2010. 

6 Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano, "Can Severe Fiscal Adjustments Be Expansionary?" in NBER 

Macroeconomics Annual 1990, Olivier Blanchard and Stanley Fischer, eds., 1990. 

Alberto Alesina and Roberto Perotti, "Reducing Budget Deficits," Swedish Economic Policy Review, III, 1996. 

7 Roberto Perotti, "Fiscal Policy in Good Times and Bad," The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114, 1999. 
418 

Alesina and Perotti send "a rather dear message to the policy maker: any fiscal adjustment hoping to be 

successful, cannot avoid dealing with cuts in the welfare state and in government wages and 

employment.'" 

Although expansionary fiscal consolidations are the exception, they are not unthinkable. Success stories 

most often occurred in environments where debt had risen far and fast and future growth had become 

uncertain. While spending cuts and structural reform are no guarantee of expansion for the present 

U.S., such "austerity" would improve our chances of strong, sustained growth. 

The Developed World Since 2007 

With a plethora of evidence, all of it militating against tax increases as a means of fiscal consolidation, 

one might imagine that today's policymakers have avoided such means. But in fact the opposite has 

occurred: harmful, tax-based "austerity" has been adopted by at least half of Europe.9 Spending cuts 

have been rare outside Europe's crisis countries, and transfer payments have risen in every country I 

examined. 

As early as 2007, the DECO could state plainly that "[f]iscal consolidation is required in most DECO 

countries."'" While it is undoubtedly true that the boom years of the 2000s were a better time to initiate 

fiscal consolidation, those who did not take the opportunity had less flexibility to respond to the 2008 

financial crisis and ensuing depression.ll Those who protest that we should wait until the economy is 

strong to reform entitlements should recall that such opportunities came - and went - often in the last 

two decades. 

What Austerity? 

At present, only three DECO countries are running a cyclically adjusted budget surplus. That is, most 

current policies would lead to deficits during "normal times." 

• Alberto Alesina and Roberto Perotti, "Fiscal expansions and fiscal adjustments in OECD countries," NBER 

Discussion Paper Series No. 754, 1995. 

9 Revenue/GOP has risen in 13 of 23 European countries in my sample. Throughout the following discussion, 1 have 

a sample of 27 or 28 OECD countries, depending on data availability. I excluded Luxembourg as a special case, and 

Chile, Mexico, and Turkey as emerging markets. Canada, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, and the Slovak Republic 

lack data for certain metrics. All data are from OECO Statistics and OECD Economic Outlook, 2013 (1). 

10 Stephanie Guichard, Mike Kennedy, Eckhard Wurzel, and Christophe Andre, "What Promotes Fiscal 

Consolidation: OECD Country Experiences," OECD Economics Department Working Papers, 2007. 

11 Alesina and Ardagna record that the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland initiated successful consolidations 

around 2004, while Germany, Norway, and Portugal initiated unsuccessful consolidations. Alberto Alesina and 

Silvia Ardagna, "The design of fiscal adjustments," NBER Working Paper No. 18423, 2012. 
419 

CHARTl 

Few Governments Have Enacted Real Austerity 

CYClICAllY 

ADJUSTED SURPLUS 

OR OEFlClT AS 0/1.> GOP 

2006 and 2012 and 

2007 2013 Change 

Japan -2.30 -9.90 -7.60 

New Zealand 4.20 -2.55 -6.75 

Spain 0.55 -4.50 -5.05 

Finland 3.05 -1.35 -4.40 

Canada 0.80 -2.85 -3.65 

Australia 1.45 -2.15 -3.60 

Iceland 3.30 -0.20 -3.50 

Israel -2.30 -5.80 -3.50 

Denmark 2.60 -0.80 -3.40 

Ireland -1.70 -3.95 -2.25 

United Slates -3.65 -5.80 -2.15 

Netherlands -0.20 -2.00 -1.80 

Belgium -0.95 -2.60 -1.65 

United Kingdom -4.10 -5.70 -1.60 

Korea 3.85 2.60 -1.25 

Sweden 1.00 -0.10 -1.10 

Slovenia -2.80 -3.75 -0.95 

Poland -2.90 -3.60 -0.70 

Germany -1.05 -0.30 0.75 

Switzerland 0.35 1.10 0.75 

Austria -2.35 -1.55 0.80 

Czech Republic -3.40 -2.40 1.00 

France -3.95 -2.80 1.15 

Portugal -4.20 -2.85 1.35 

Estonia -0.85 0.65 1.50 

Italy -3.95 -0.15 3.80 

Hungary -9.40 -1.15 8.25 

Greece -9.60 -0.70 8.90 

Source:OECD. 

KEYNESIAN 

Change = Below -2.0 

Steady 

Change = -2.0102.0 

===::::.} ~~!!~~~ove2.0 

Just ten DECD countries have tightened their cyclically adjusted deficits since 2006-2007. Chart 1 

illustrates the paucity of fiscal tightening. Despite major crises, even Ireland, Iceland, and Spain have 

increased their cyclically adjusted deficits. Where recent tightening has been reported, such as in the 

U.K., it is largely due to winding down even larger defiCits created during the recession years. 

The U.S. is no exception. In 2006-2007, the U.S. was running a large cyclically adjusted deficit, almost 4 

percent of GDP. It has since broadened to almost 6 percent of GDP, not including the lower tax receipts 

and higher spending associated with the weak economy. Without policy action, deficits will remain 

unsustainably large indefinitely. 

Government consumption, reported in Table 1, rose in 20 DECD countries. Likewise, government 

consumption's share of GDP rose in 20 countries. The U.S., France, and Germany each increased 
420 

spending by at least 7 percent. The U.K. was the only country to cut government (by 1.3 percent) 

without being forced by a major crisis. But the U.K. counteracted the cut with a much larger increase in 

transfer payments. The rest of the countries on the left side of Chart 2 have decreased government 

consumption only because they are considered a default risk. 

TABLEl 

Changes in GOP, Government Spending, and Revenue, 2007-2012 

GROWTH IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING 

GOW!mment Change in Adual2012 

Consumption Transfers Revenue Rate Surplus or DeflC~ 

GOP Growth Growth Growth (share of GOP) (% of GOP) 

Eurozone 

Austria 3.0% 8.8% 11% 1.76% -2.51% 

Belgium 2.1% 14.5% 19% 3.33% -4.08% 

Czech Republic 1.4% 0.1% 10% -2.41% -4.15% 

Estonia -5.0% 13.9% 22% 4.48% -0.28% 

Finland -2.8% 11.9% 19% 1.31% -2.32% 

France 0.5% 7.2% 12% 2.06% -4.97% 

Germany 3.5% 10.9% 6% 0.83% 0.16% 

Greece -22.4% -20.6% 0% 4.55% -10.05% 

Ireland -6.2% -7.5% 20% -4.05% -7.38% 

Italy -7.1% -3.4% 7% 2.18% -3.06% 

Netherlands -0.3% 9.6% 14% -0.11% -3.99% 

Portugal -5.8% -14.4% 12% -0.36% -6.60% 

Slovak Republic 10.0% 9.8% 22% -0.06% -4.32% 

Slovenia -5.4% 7.7% 11% 0.60% -3.72% 

Spain -4.3% 1.8% 19% -6.31% -10.94% 

European Union, Non-Eurozone 

Denmark -4.4% 11.1% 16% 3.25% -4.51% 

Hungary -4.9% -4.7% 0% 4.26% -2.13% 

Iceland -5.3% -1.2% 21% -4.82% -3.21% 

Poland 16.7% 17.0% 18% -1.54% -4.00% 

Sweden 5.1% 8.2% 7% -4.48% -0.72% 

United Kingdom -2.0% -1.3% 12% -0.72% -5.90% 

Others 

Australia'" 13.0% 13.7% 17% -2.11% -4.16% 

Israel' 17.6% 9.0% 14% -5.47% -4.12% 

Japan· -0.8% 5.4% 16% -1.90% -8.53% 

Norway 3.2% 18.1% 17% 2.52% 15.60% 

Switzerland' 6.1% 13.7% 17% 3.02% 0.56% 

United States' 2.8% 7.2% 22% -3.02% -9.96% 

Median 0.0% 8.2% 16% -0.06% -4.08% 

• In<omplete OECD data for 2012.t tho time of writil1& so 2011 data was used where necessary. 

Note: GOP, G~nment Consumption, and Transfers Growth are calculated as log differences. 

Source: DECO. 
421 

Sacred Cows and Third Rails 

Transfer payments - government benefits like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, or 

food stamps - have not diminished anywhere. The median OECD country grew transfer payments by 16 

percent and devoted 2.9 percent more of GOP to transfers in 2012 than in 2007. Some of that growth is 

obviously the automatic stabilizers of recession, and some is due to aging. What is remarkable in the 

data is the absence of austerity. 

Even countries undergoing severe crises or "austerity" programs failed to control the growth of transfer 

programs. In Spain transfers are up 19 percent, in Ireland 20 percent, in the U.K. 12 percent, and in 

Estonia 22 percent. Table 1 shows that only five countries reported less than 10 percent transfer growth. 

The U.S. has grown transfer payments 22 percent, and transfers consume 2.9 percent more of GOP now 

than in 2007. This growth includes disincentives to work for those with low income, including food 

stamps and Social Security Disability Insurance expanded far beyond their original intent. Removing 

these economic disincentives would result in economic growth, higher tax receipts, lower government 

spending. 

Recall that the empirical evidence emphasizes the importance of cutting transfer payments to achieving 

expansionary fiscal consolidation. Instead, OECD countries are spending more on transfers and will 

require steeper, more painful fiscal adjustments in the future. 

Taxes Go Up 

Despite a Keynesian approach to spending, many governments have raised taxes to cut the deficits they 

built up with all the new spending. It's a textbook error." 

Writing in 2010, Broadbent and Daly noted disapprovingly that "none of the existing sets of fiscal plans 

in the major economies ... qualifies as 'expenditure-based' and 'significant' ... Where there are significant 

corrections planned [in the U.S. and the U.K.] these are driven not by cuts in current spending but 

(predominantly) by lower investment or higher taxes.,,13 

In measuring tax increases, I use a very tight definition: has a country increased its tax receipts as a 

share of GOP? This "revenue rate" will normally fall in recessions and rise in booms, so one expects to 

see revenue rates down somewhat across the board in the absence of policy changes. 

Instead, thirteen OECD countries have increased their revenue rates. Of these, only Greece, Italy, and 

Hungary faced crises severe enough that they raised taxes and cut government consumption - classic 

12 Recall Alesina and Perotti, "Fiscal expansions and fiscal adjustments in OECD countries." 

13 Ben Broadbent and Kevin Dalv, "Limiting the Fall-Out from Fiscal Adjustment," Goldman Sachs Global Economics 

Paper No. 195, April 2010, p.5. 
422 

austerity, in the upper left corner of Chart 2.14 The other ten have raised taxes along with government 

consumption and transfers. Instead of funding deficit reduction, the new taxes fund larger government. 

CHART 2 

Most Governments Have Increased Spending Since 2007 

_ ------- Lessconsumption 

Source: DECO, 

CONS! ;1\,IP r ~ON, 

)(}); Mort."conSJJmption ------_ 

Higher revenlJe, higher spending 

Eston1a lI10 

Italy. France '" 

'" * Germany 

• Japan 

• U.S • 

• Sweden 

• Spain 

Outside of Europe, Keynesian policies are more common. The U.s., Japan, Israel, and Australia" have 

lowered revenue rates while increasing government spending. The U.S. and Japan are running 

unsustainably large deficits and have very high debt-to-GOP ratios. 

14 Not coincidentally, these three also experienced some of the lowest increases in transfer payments, clearly 

reflecting reforms to the transfer systems. 

15 The only four non-European countries in the relevant sample. 
423 

How Will the Economy Go Forward? 

Meanwhile, there is pressure in the U.S. to raise taxes while preserving the temporary spending surge 

associated with the recession and stimulus. As decades of evidence indicate, raising taxes without 

cutting spending has a poor record of containing debt and a worse record of returning the economy to 

growth. 

A better path is to accept that short-term stimulus has been tried - on a spectacular scale - and failed, 

and move on to preparing the country for stability and growth through the retirement boom of the 

2020s by cutting spending and controlling the growth of transfers. 

Sequestered? 

The 2013 budget sequestration was poorly designed policy. However, its artlessness does not outweigh 

the fact that it is a step in the right direction. Pier Carlo Padoan, Chief Economist of the DECO, 

emphasized in a speech last week that the U.S. should make the spending cuts of the sequester less 

harmful by incorporating them into a credible, permanent fiscal consolidation." 

Since taking effect in March, sequestration has had no discernible impact on growth or employment 

numbers, nor on financial markets. Where sequestration policies are particularly perverse, 

straightforward legislation can improve the content of policies while remaining revenue neutral. There 

are many places in the federal budget where small savings can be found at little cost."In fixing 

sequestration, policymakers should restore government investment at the expense of the wage bill and 

transfer payment growth. 

Stimulated? 

Temporary deficit spending - optimistically called stimulus - is designed to move economic activity from 

the future to the present. It can effectively do so when there is slack labor and capital, but the question 

remains whether there is a large welfare benefit to shifting forward tomorrows GOP. By running large 

deficits each of the last five years, the U.S. has engaged in an enormous stimulus program. 

Some have argued that the $640 billion of stimulus from the federal deficit in 2013 is not enough, and 

the amount should be increased. Delong and Summers show that when the negative effects of a 

recession have permanent drag on the economy (i.e., unit root hysteresis), deficit spending can be selffinancing under certain conditions and assumptions.18 Their paper is valuable in that it reminds the 

" Pier Carlo Padoan, 'Presentatlon of the May 2013 OECD Economic Outlook,' May 29, 2013, 

http://www.oecd.orgfabouVsecretarv-general/presentation-of-the-may-2013-oecd-economic-outlook.htm 

(accessed May 30, 2013). 

17 See, for example, Patrick louis Knudsen, "$150 Billion In Spending Cuts to Offset Defense Sequestration," 

Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2744, November 15, 2012, 

http://www.herltage.org/research/reports/2012/1111S0-bllllon-in-spendlng-cuts-to-offset-defense-seguestratlon. 

18 For example, see J. Bradford Delong and lawrence H. Summers, "Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy," 

Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012. 
424 

economics profession of how little is known about the existence or size of hysteresis, and how much 

long-run gains or losses can outweigh short-run considerations. 

But Delong and Summers' model could easily be rewritten to instead feature coefficients from the 

literature on debt drag, which would show that under certain conditions, spending cuts are selffinancing.'" Better yet, Delong and Summers' model could incorporate the permanent productivity gains 

from structural reforms, such as the labor market reforms championed by the OECD.'o There is 

substantially more empirical evidence that debt drag is a problem and structural reform is a solution 

than there is about hysteresis, although more research may ultimately shed light on the latter. 

A more likely scenario is that money spent today will not pay for itself, and will have to be cut from 

government spending tomorrow. Deficit spending for hopeful stimulus today could easily mean cuts to 

Social Security and Medicare in the 2020s, or a lack of public and private investment as interest 

payments crowd out valuable government functions and raise hurdle rates over the next few decades. 

Structural Reform 

There is no substitute for private sector economic growth. Although government can easily boost its 

own portion of GOP, it can only indirectly and imprecisely have a positive impact on private 

consumption and private investment, which are the cornerstones of material well-being present and 

future. The most proven, fiscally sound, and long-lasting policy changes to help achieve growth are 

structural reforms." 

Angel Gurrfa, Secretary-General of the OECD, laid out a mandate for structural change:" 

We have done the number crunching: we have simulated the effects of structural reforms on 

potential output across the OECD area through 2060. Our analysis shows that moving to best 

practice across a number of policy areas - product and labour market regulations, and 

education, just to name a few - would raise per capita incomes by some 20% in the median 

19 For a summary of the debt drag literature, see Salim Furth, "High Debt Is a Real Drag," Heritage Foundation Issue 

Brie/No. 3859, February 22, 2013, http:Uwww.heritage.org/research/reports/2013!02!how-a-high-national-debtimpacts-the-economy. 

'0 Pier Carlo Padoan, "Presentation of the May 2013 DECO Economic Outlook: 

>l See, among many, Alan Krueger and Jom-Steffan Pischke, "Observations and Conjectures on the U.S. 

Employment Miracle," NBER Working Paper No. 6146, 1997; Clifford Winston, "Economic Deregulation: Days of 

Reckoning for Microeconomists," Journal 0/ Economic Literature 31(3), 1993; Edward P. Lazear, "Job Security 

Provisions and Employment," Quarterly Journal 0/ Economics 105(3), 1990; Andrea Bassanini and Romain Duval, 

"The determinants of unemployment across DECO countries: Reassessing the role of policies and institutions," 

DEeD Economic Studies 42(1),2006; John Williamson, ·What Washington Means by Policy Reform," in Latin 

American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? John Williamson, ed., 1990; 

"Angel Gurria, "Presentation of the May 2013 DECO Economic Outlook", prepared remarks, May 29, 2013, 

http://www.oecd.orgfabout/secretary-general/presentation-of-the-may-2013-oecd-economic-outlook.htm 

(accessed May 30, 2013). 
425 

DECD country. This is huge! And those gains would be even higher for those countries that are 

now furthest from best practice. So our call continues to be: "go structural". It is good for 

growth and prosperity, and it is good for the public finances. 

The U.S. is better situated in terms of product and labor market regulations than the crisis countries of 

Southern Europe, but improvements could raise U.S. labor participation substantially. 

Fiscal structural reforms can be distinguished from merely cutting spending by two criteria: 

(1) A systematic or ongoing form of spending is cut, and 

(2) Incentives for economic activity are improved by the reform. 

Structural reform in the U.S. could lower the effective marginal tax rates" facing low-income workers by 

cutting some of the benefits which eviscerate the reward to work. Structural reform could shut down 

subsidies to farmers, favored energy companies, and big-ticket colleges. Structural reform could undo 

Social Security Disability Insurance's growth into a catch-all welfare program. 24 Structural reform could 

shrink government agencies primarily involved in economically destructive activities, such as the 

Commerce Department and the EPA. Structural reform could include an end to favorable tax treatment 

for mortgage interest and employer perks from health insurance to parking. 

Structural reform shifts the government's role in society away from replacing private economic activity 

and toward protecting individual liberty. 

This testimony makes no pretense of evaluating or recommending a specific set of structural reforms. 

But in the context of the difficult choices of "austerity" or debt drag, cutting deficits and promoting 

growth through structural reform offers the best way forward. 

23 Elaine Maag, C. Eugene Steuerle, Ritadhi Chakravarti, and Caleb Quakenbush, "How Marginal Tax Rates Affect 

Families at Various Levels of Poverty," National Tax Journal 65(4), December 2012. 

24 David H. Autor and Mark G. Duggan. "The Growth In The Social Security Disability Rolls: A Fiscal Crisis Unfolding," 

Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, 2006. 

Stefan 5taubli, "The impact of stricter criteria for disability insurance on labor force participation: Journal of Public 

Economics 95(9-10), October 2011. 
426 

APPENDIX: Empirical Evidence that Spending Cuts Are Better than Tax Increases. 

The discovery of expansionary fiscal consolidations led researchers to study the variety of fiscal 

consolidations and their average effects. Alesina's extensive research program has anchored this 

literature for twenty years, but he is by no means alone in his investigations. 

Alesina and Perotti showed that when deficits expand, it is usually due to spending increases, and when 

deficits shrink, it is usually due to tax increases. Spending cuts are the exception, but they are the only 

way that countries have closed budget deficits without harm to the economy. They argue that "fiscal 

adjustment cannot have long-lasting effects unless it tackles two expenditures - government 

employment and social programs - often regarded as untouchable by policymakers and their 

advisors." 2s 

DECO economists found that spending-based deficit reduction was more effective at lowering the debtto-GOP ratio. The spending cuts were most effective when they were based on rules, enforced over 

time, and maintained transparency." An DECO model of fiscal adjustment found that cutting spending 

at the margin can yield "surprisingly large income gains compared with the alternative of raising 

taxes.,,27 

Ardagna looked Simultaneously at the growth and debt consequences of fiscal consolidation/8 and 

found that the composition of the adjustment determines whether economic growth follows. Fiscal 

adjustments featuring cuts to the government wage bill led to higher subsequent growth." 

Alesina, Perotti, and Tavares document 23 years with successful consolidations in which dE!ficit 

reduction came 66 percent from spending cuts. On the other side, there were 49 years of unsuccessful 

deficit reduction, with just 27 percent from spending cuts. The spending cuts in unsuccessful 

consolidations occurred mostly to government investment and left government wages and transfer 

payments untouched.30 

IMF economists noted that "consolidation is more painful when it relies primarily on tax (increases]", is 

more painful for Euro members, and is more painful if the central bank does not or cannot 

2S Alesina and Perotti, IIFiscal expansions and fiscal adjustments in DECO countries." 

25 Guichard, Kennedy, Wurzel, and Andre, "What Promotes Fiscal Consolidation: DECO Country Experiences" 553, 

2007. 

27 Boris Cournede and Frederic Gonand, "Restoring Fiscal Sustainability in the Euro Area: Raise Taxes or Curb 

Spending?" DECO Economics Department Working Papers 520, 2006. 

28 This is an important distinction. Papers that track the evolution of (debt/GOP) may conflate differing effects. 

"Silvia Ardagna, "Fiscal Stabllizations: When Do They Work and Why," European Economic Review 48(5), 2004. 

30 Alberto Alesina, Roberto Perotti, Jose Tavares, "The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments," in Brookings 

Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 1998(1), Maurice Dbstfeld and Barry Eichengreen eds., 1998. 
427 

accommodate the budget cut." Lambertini and Tavares found that spending cuts contributed more to 

the effectiveness of fiscal consolidations than tax increases." 

Von Hagen, Halite, and Starch looked at the factors that determine the length and success of fiscal 

consolidations. They found that consistency in approach is valuable, and that consolidations based on 

cuts to "politically sensitive items ... such as transfers, subsidies, and government wages" are more likely 

to persist long enough to be effective." There is a payoff to political courage. 

Alesina and Ardagna advanced and extended the previous literature with recent data. They confirmed 

the previous findings: tax-based fiscal consolidations usually fail, and lead - on average - to a recession. 

Using two datasets, their model estimates that a 1 percentage point drop in government spending has 

mild positive effects on growth or no effect on growth, and that a 1 point increase in taxes has either 

mild or severe negative effects on growth." 

McDermott and Wescott of the IMF confirmed Alesina and Perotti's key findings: cutting transfers and 

government wages is the key to successful and expansionary fiscal consolidation. They detail one case of 

expansionary austerity: New Zealand slashed government spending in the teeth of a 1991 recession and 

emerged with high growth, low unemployment, and a slim debt-to-GDP ratio." Recent data yielded 

more examples of "expansionary fiscal consolidation," including Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the U.K. 

in the 1990s and Denmark, the Netherlands, and SWitzerland in the 2oo0S.'6 

Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi37 have responded to the political debate of the last few years by 

formaliZing their definitions and working with new data made available by Devries, Guajardo, Leigh, and 

Pescatori.38 Focusing on multi-year plans and treating planned and surprise fiscal changes differently, 

Alesina et al. again confirmed that tax-based consolidations are more costly in terms of output losses. 

" Daniel Leigh, Pete Devries, Charles Freedman, Jaime Guajardo, Douglas Laxton, and Andrea Pescatori, "Will It 

Hurt? Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal Consolidation," International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook: 

Recovery, Risk and Rebalancing, 2010. 

32 Luisa Lambertini and Jose A. Tavares, "Exchange Rates and Fiscal Adjustments; Evidence from the OECD and 

Implications for the EMU," Contributions to Macroeconomics 5(1), 2005. 

" Juergen von Hagen, Hughes Halite, and Rolf Starch, "Budgetary Consolidation in Europe; Quality, Economic 

Conditions, and Persistence," Journal of Japanese and International Economics 16, 2002, p. 35. 

34 Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, "The design of fiscal adjustments," NBER Working Poper No. 18423, 2012. 

3S C. John McDermott and Robert F. Wescott, "An Empirical Analysis of Fiscal Adjustments," IMF Working Paper 

96/59, 1996. 

,. Alesina and Ardagna, "The design of fiscal adjustments," Tables 2a and 2c. 

37 Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero and Francesco Giavazzi, "The Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations," Harvard 

University working paper, May 2013. 

38 Pete Devries, Jaime Guajardo, Daniel Leigh, and Andrea Pescatori, "A New Action-based Dataset of Fiscal 

Consolidation," IMF Working Paper 11/128, June 2011. 
428 

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Heritage Foundation's books are audited annually by the national accounting firm of McGladrey & 

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Foundation or its board of trustees. 
429 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much to all three of you. We 

really appreciate it. 

And I wanted to start with the issue of sequestration. These 

across-the-board cuts were actually never supposed to go into effect. They were really imposed in order to push Democrats and Republicans to come together to compromise, and I think we all agree 

they are not the right way to achieve deficit reduction, particularly 

because they fall disproportionately on the discretionary accounts. 

So that means our investments that are so important to us that I 

talked about and some of you did are really being impacted by this. 

CBO has now estimated that sequestration will lower employment by 750,000 jobs this year alone, and that is not just a big 

number, it is a threat to the well-being and opportunity for families 

across our country and really is unacceptable when so many people 

are fighting so hard today to get back on their feet. 

As I mentioned, I was back home in Washington State last week, 

as all of our colleagues were in their home States, and I heard 

about this issue constantly and consistently, no matter where I 

was, from people who were experiencing the real and very devastating effects of sequestration. Many of the furloughs have just 

been announced. They are just taking effect. So families are trying 

to figure out how they are going to deal with as much as a ten percent pay cut over the next four months, let alone the sequestration 

that occurs for the next eight to nine years. 

Kids in Head Start that you talked about, Dr. Johnson, teachers 

are right now telling parents they are not taking any more kids in 

Head Start. We will start seeing the impacts of that, short and long 

term. Workers, again, facing furloughs and deep effects. 

So my first question to all of you, really, then, is on the broader 

fiscal and economic impacts of the sequestration. Lowering spending may reduce the deficit in the short term, but I want to ask how 

it affects prospects for future economic growth and fiscal sustainability and could it actually make it harder to solve our budget 

challenges in the longer term, and I would like to start with you, 

Dr. Summers. 

Mr. SUMMERS. I believe sequestration at current magnitudes is 

counterproductive at three levels. First, it reduces demand and 

growth in the economy, which impacts adversely the level of income in the short run and casts a shadow forward onto the economy’s future potential. Indeed, as I calculate in my testimony, the 

CBO estimates imply that the debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of this 

year will be no lower than it would have been if sequestration had 

not been adopted, that the fact that we will have a slower growing 

economy and, hence, a lower GDP at the end of the year just about 

offsets the direct benefits of sequestration. 

Second, sequestration reduces investments that are crucial for 

the economy’s future potential. We have stressed the example of 

Head Start, but there are others, as well—investments in basic research and development and the like—that have an adverse impact 

on our economy going forward. 

Third, in many cases, expenditures reduced by sequestration are 

only postponed and magnified. We will be paying more for prison 

because of the cutbacks in Head Start as a country. It is much 

cheaper—it would have been much cheaper to have fixed that 
430 

bridge in your State than it is to build a new one. And so the 

microeconomic consequence of sequestration cuts is often likely to 

be an increase rather than a reduction in future deficits. 

There certainly is a role for spending reduction in any comprehensive approach to our long-run budget issues, but the current 

sequestration program is not the right way to implement that role. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. JOHNSON. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I agree. I think that the one very bad and costly 

way to do fiscal adjustment is to not invest, to not repair bridges. 

And when you have a large, complex, relatively advanced country 

like the United States, there are many such cuts that you can 

make, and then your bridges will fall down, which is an absolute 

disaster. And, of course, as the political pressure is expressed, you 

get more pressure to keep the FAA running in terms of its current 

operations and to keep meat inspectors on the job and to do other 

things that are of relatively high profile, something else has to 

give. What is that? It is all of the investments. 

So you are really and completely undermining— obviously, not 

intentionally, it is not what you want to do, but the outcome is you 

undermine the country’s future. It is a real shame. And when you 

talk to people from around the world, they absolutely cannot believe that this is where U.S. public policy stands today. 

Chairman MURRAY. Dr. Furth. 

Mr. FURTH. I agree with the panelists that the cuts in government investment are probably the worst way that the policy could 

have been implemented. I think that the fiscal impact, the amount 

of spending cuts, is really necessary. 

To go to your original question, you asked whether these spending cuts would only help the deficit in the short run or if they 

would help in the long run more, and I do think they will help a 

little in the short run, but they will help more in the long run. The 

confidence that Dr. Summers talked about will return. Private sector economic growth over time tends to replace government spending that goes away as resources are moved to more efficient uses 

over time. 

So I think there are longer-term benefits to these spending cuts. 

I absolutely agree that the cuts should be moved away from the investments and towards the government wage bill and transfer payments, which are what the previous research has shown are the 

most efficient and growth inducing places to make cuts. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, thank you. My time is up, but I just 

want to mention that at some of my meetings in my State last 

week, it was police chiefs and sheriffs who were arguing most compelling to us to not cut Head Start because the vast majority of 

people in their jails—and I am talking local sheriffs and police— 

70 to 80 percent of the people in their jails were high school dropouts and they directly link that to our investments in early childhood education that we were losing out on. 

Senator SESSIONS. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Well, the sequester was part of 

the Budget Control Act. That is what we did. And the amount of 

reduction in spending over ten years, a rather modest reduction in 
431 

that growth, was agreed upon. It is in law and it has been signed 

by the President and it is not going to be changed. 

What is open and what definitely needs to be done and what the 

House has done is to look for ways to find other wasteful spending 

that does not add to our productivity and spread these cuts around 

in areas that were not touched, in my opinion. 

With regard to roads and bridges, I have to push back a bit on that. In the stimulus, the $850 billion stimulus bill, only about four 

percent of it went to roads and bridges although we were constantly told it was going to rebuild our infrastructure. And we 

spend now about one percent, one-and-a-half percent, of our total 

Federal revenues on roads and bridges. So the excuse for tax increases is not to use that money for our infrastructure. If I saw a 

proposal that would do that, I would be more interested in it. 

And, you know, Dr. Johnson, Judd Gregg is very thoughtful. We 

do have to confront our long-term entitlement spending programs 

and I think you could see some revenue increases occur as a part 

of a fix of that. But at this point in history, I think there is not 

support to raise spending—raise taxes for increasing general 

spending, and that is what the President’s budget does and that is 

what the Senate budget does. It raises taxes for more spending, not 

to reach our debt or stabilize our entitlements. 

Briefly, just, Dr. Summers, try to get on the same page here. 

Would you agree that tax increases are a form of austerity as well 

as spending cuts? 

Mr. SUMMERS. Certainly, they can be. It would depend on the 

precise form they took. If they took a form that was likely to depress spending substantially, then they certainly would be a form 

of austerity. If they took the form of broadening the tax base in 

ways that represented the kind of structural reform that Mr. 

Gurria from the OECD advocated and that increased economic efficiency, then I would be less likely to label those as austerity policies. 

But, yes, absolutely, the basic principle of you want to be increasing demand rather than reducing demand in a time of recession applies both on the spending policy side and on the tax policy side. 

I might say, also, if I could, that I think you pointed towards 

what would be a very productive way forward in one of the comments that you made. It seems to me that it would be desirable for 

the country to embark on a ten-year program of renewing the infrastructure, fixing the roads and bridges and the like, with the understanding that revenues to pay for it would kick in at such point 

as that was macroeconomically appropriate, when the overall national unemployment rate had fallen below some threshold, as long 

as if the inflation level became excessively severe, some set of macroeconomic triggers. 

But it seems to me we would be much better off approaching infrastructure in a long-run way and then using thresholds to determine how the timing of payments was managed to help support 

sustained economic growth. That, I think, was implicit in your suggestion and I think it is a very wise one. 

Senator SESSIONS. I think that bipartisan support for a serious 

plan to enhance our infrastructure, but the American people need 

to know how little of our actual revenue is going to that. 
432 

Dr. Furth, you studied the European situation. It seems to me 

that the U.K., for example, immediately raised taxes and has had 

not that much spending reductions. We were in Estonia and the 

cabinet people took 40 percent pay cuts. The doctors in the health 

care system took big pay cuts. One of the cabinet members said his 

wife was really unhappy. But it seems to me Estonia added almost 

nothing to their debt during that time and now has one of the highest growth rates in Europe. Would you share a little bit more about 

this fundamental question of austerity and how to get our debt and 

growth back on track. 

Mr. FURTH. Sure. Yes, I absolutely agree about the U.K. They 

raised their Value Added Tax from 17 or 17.5 percent to 20 percent. That is a tax on everything that is produced. And so what the 

U.K. has had is despite having more people enter the labor force, 

their economy is shrinking. They have been hard hit by some local 

factors, such as the decline in finance in London. That is a very big 

industry there. But they are having a very hard time even when 

they are successful in getting people back to work. They are taking 

so much out of the economy in taxation, and that form of austerity, 

that way of trying to close the budget deficit, is preventing a fulsome economic recovery in the U.K. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator King. 

Senator KING. I was reading the Budget Control Act. It is interesting to me how the discussion of the Budget Control Act and the 

sequester has evolved, because as I recall, and I went back and I 

was just reading the statute and read it back this winter, the sequester was designed to be stupid. It was designed to be unacceptable as an alternative, therefore forcing the Super Committee and 

the Congress to come to a more reasonable alternative. 

What I was just looking at was a provision of the Budget Control 

Act at the end that clearly contemplates that revenues could be 

part of the solution. The idea was to find another $1.5 trillion of 

savings, somewhere. And the statute clearly contemplated that revenues could be part of it. That did not happen, unfortunately. It is 

with a great sense of regret that I read those provisions, because 

that Super Committee had amazing powers and it is something 

that- -it was a missed opportunity. But, in any case, here we are. 

But to say that the sequester is now the baseline, it seems to me, 

is a misreading of the history of the Budget Control Act. 

I guess the question for you, Mr. Johnson, and you have talked 

about this, as I look at the overall fiscal situation of the Federal 

Government, the real drive is health care and everything else is 

flat. I mean, as you probably know, discretionary spending, non-defense discretionary spending right now is at the lowest percentage 

of GDP in about 45 years. Defense is relatively flat relative to 

GDP. 

So when we talk about controlling growth in spending, what we 

are really talking about, if we do not do anything about health 

care, is allowing health care to squeeze everything out, everything 

else out. My question to you is, what can the Federal Government 

do as a major consumer of health care to affect the overall growth 

of health care in the economy? I have some ideas no that, but I 

would like to hear yours. 
433 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, Senator, you are absolutely right, that if you 

look out 20, 30, 40 years, health care does not just eat the Federal 

Government budget, it eats the economy. Now, presumably, that is 

not going to happen. I do not think we will let that happen, but 

the question is, what are the policies that will turn it around? 

And if you look at the IMF’s tables on the back of the publication 

called the Fiscal Monitor—they put it out every six months—they 

have comparisons of projections of health care spending across 

countries. So this is very much looking at the data, looking at who 

has a better grip on these costs on a projected basis, and it is a 

hard thing to do, but all those economies that have better projections than ours have some form of single-payer system with something like universal coverage. Now, I am not saying that is what 

we are going to get in the United States. I am just saying, from 

a fiscal control point of view, from a budget deficit management 

over the medium term point of view, that is what strikes, I think, 

anyone who looks at the cross-country comparative available data. 

Senator KING. But would you agree that what we have to have 

is a conversation about health care costs generally, not just those 

as applied to the Federal Government? If Medicare says, we are 

going to have limits, all that does is shift the payments to the seniors or to the States, the same with Medicaid. Professor Summers. 

Mr. SUMMERS. I would agree very much with the thrust of your 

last remark, Senator. I have spent some time in the last month or 

two learning more about this subject than I did before, and what 

struck me as I read the literature and spoke with experts was that 

if you ask the question, U.S. health care costs are much higher 

than in most other countries. How much of that is because Americans are getting more colonoscopies, more treatments in the 

months before they die, more stuff, and how much of that is because a given procedure or a given type of hospitalization costs 

more in the United States? It is much more the latter than the 

former, which suggests that measures directed at reimbursement 

reform and purchase more efficiently should be put at a premium, 

and measures directed at getting people to seek less care should be 

given lower priority. 

Now, as your question suggests, I believe such measures need to 

be applied universally. It would be a tragedy if we turned Medicare 

into a program in which a large fraction of doctors withdrew, which 

would be the risk if we sought only to reduce payments for the public sector programs and engaged in no cooperation with the private 

sector around cost control. 

But I believe coalition of payer initiatives, such as have been 

raised in a number cities in the United States, that orient towards 

payment for results and involve cooperation among all those who 

pay our providers offer the best prospect for containing the growth 

of health care costs, and I think that very much will require taking 

a focus, as you suggest, on overall health care costs, not simply the 

costs coming from the public sector programs. 

Senator KING. Well, Mr. Johnson, I remember when I was Governor, health care was 12 percent of GDP and we said, oh, it cannot go much higher than that, and it is now approaching 20. So 

just saying it cannot happen does not mean it will not unless we 

do something affirmative. 
434 

My closing comment is that as I assess Federal spending, cutting 

spending generally without dealing with the health care cost is like 

invading Brazil after Pearl Harbor. It is a vigorous response, but 

it is the wrong target. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Johnson. 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

In terms of BCA, I remember the primary goal there is to reduce the deficit by about $2.1 trillion. We did, by the way, get a more 

than $600 billion tax increase, the fiscal cliff, so there is—I think 

we have got that balance that people talk about, not a balance I 

particularly agree with. 

We utilize the word ‘‘investment’’ a lot, I think pretty loosely. 

Coming from the private sector, I utilize the word ‘‘investment’’ as 

hard infrastructure spending, you know, things that are going to 

last a long period of time. Certainly, in the government, we have 

got bridges and roads. That is hard infrastructure. We have got 

other investment, I suppose you can make the argument, that will 

have long- term implications, things like education. And then you 

have just basic consumption. 

The question I have, and I do not want a real philosophical argument but just the basic percentage or number, does anybody know, 

out of a $3.6 trillion a year budget, what would you call investment 

out of there? Dr. Summers. 

Mr. SUMMERS. I would have to study it. It is certainly less than 

half. 

Senator JOHNSON. It is way less. I mean, do we not have basically two-thirds of our budget is mandatory spending and entitlement spending, which is basically consumption? So you have maybe 

got a trillion dollars of discretionary spending. How much of the 

trillion dollars would be investment? 

Mr. SUMMERS. That was really what—I was really addressing 

the—I misunderstood your question and I was addressing the discretionary spending. But I think it is— 

Senator JOHNSON. So to clarify, you agree two-thirds is already 

consumption. So pretty much all— 

Mr. SUMMERS. I do not know how to think about—I think of national defense as an investment in keeping the country secure. 

Senator JOHNSON. There again, that is the discretionary side. 

Mr. SUMMERS. But I could see how somebody could regard that 

as not investment in the same sense that a private business would. 

But I think it is—you are certainly right that most of the entitlement program spending, I do not think, would be prudently viewed 

as investment. Yes, I agree with that. 

Senator JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson, you have been thinking about 

this. Do you have a number in terms of—out of $3.6 trillion, how 

much is really investment? Let us start with the infrastructure. Do 

you have any idea about infrastructure, I mean, hard roads and 

bridges, what most Americans would really view as investment? 

Mr. JOHNSON. I think that is a great question, Senator. We are 

obviously spending some hundreds of billions on investment, including education, which is a critical part of it. But it is a small 

part of total Federal spending, without question. 

I would stress, though, that what you are running and you are 

calling consumption is part of social insurance programs. That is 
435 

not insurance that is readily—or was not readily available through 

the private sector. Private— 

Senator JOHNSON. By the way, would that not be an automatic 

stabilizer? You said we do not have very good automatic stabilizers 

in our economy, but yet two-thirds of the budget that is off-budget 

and on automatic pilot, would that not be an auto-stabilizer? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, to some degree, it is, but the point is, our 

Federal Government is—and our government— 

Senator JOHNSON. And that is $2.6 trillion worth. 

Mr. JOHNSON. It is smaller than other countries, Senator. That 

was the point I was making. 

Senator JOHNSON. Two-point-six trillion dollars? 

Mr. JOHNSON. So we have automatic stabilizers, but it is smaller 

relative to our economy than it is in other industrialized countries. 

Senator JOHNSON. We— 

Mr. FURTH. Senator— 

Senator JOHNSON. No, we just had a release of the Department 

of Energy in terms of their loan program, their green energy jobs 

programs, $26 billion of loan guarantees, about 2,300 jobs created, 

long-term jobs, at a cost of about $11.5 million per job. As economists, do you recognize any difference between the effectiveness of 

public spending, public investment, versus private sector investment? Dr. Summers. 

Mr. SUMMERS. Oh, I do not think there is any question that the 

private sector is a better venture capitalist than the government. 

That does not mean that there are not appropriate instances where 

government can be catalytic, and where the private sector will not 

step up, government should not take a role. But, in general, one 

would expect in spheres like venture capital that private investment would be much more effective. 

But if I could just come back on one thing, because I do think 

it is important to be fair here, investment, in my dictionary, refers 

to expenditure today for future benefit. A relative of mine is soon 

going to undergo heart surgery that offers the prospect of substantial life extension— 

Senator JOHNSON. Right— 

Mr. SUMMERS. —that Medicare is going to pay for. I do not think 

it would be—I understand why that is quite different from investment as a private sector business would use the term, but I also 

think it is quite different from consumption as that term is used, 

and it very much is an expenditure today for future benefit. So I 

think we have to be a bit careful as we use these categories of consumption and investment, and some of what government does does 

not fit naturally into the private sector concepts of either consumption or investment. 

Senator JOHNSON. But based on your earlier comment in terms 

of private sector investment being more effective and efficient than 

the public sector, you would basically agree with Dr. Furth, then, 

that we should really be looking at how do you incentivize the private sector and get more of the dollars flowing to the private sector 

for economic growth, which everyone agrees is the number one 

component of the solution here, correct? We need to juice the private sector, the productive sector— 
436 

Mr. SUMMERS. Private sector growth is enormously important, 

and where we can, at limited cost to the government, juice substantial private sector investment, we absolutely should. That is why, 

for example, I worked hard during my time at the NEC to include 

the provisions that provided for expensing of small business investment in the Economic Recovery Act. It included a number of provisions— 

Senator JOHNSON. But, of course— 

Mr. SUMMERS. —directed at spurring private investment, and 

even—and I recognize how controversial they are, and there certainly are legitimate questions that can be raised at them, but even 

the energy subsidies that you raise, Senator, if you look at those 

programs, the government money is catalytic and the amount of 

total money invested is very substantial—is a significant multiple 

of the amount of public money invested. So it is exactly juicing the 

private sector in the sense you suggest— 

Senator JOHNSON. But, of course— 

Mr. SUMMERS. You know, whether those programs are ideally designed, you can certainly—that is certainly a totally legitimate area 

for debate. 

Senator JOHNSON. But, of course, the $26 billion came from 

somewhere. It was taxed out of the private, the more productive 

sector, or borrowing, which creates all that level of uncertainty because of very bad fiscal policies. So it comes at a huge cost and a 

very ineffective use of money. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Baldwin. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you, Chairman Murray and Ranking 

Member Sessions, for convening us today. 

You know, in my view, our country faces twin challenges, stabilizing our debt and deficit without shortchanging our future and 

continuing to move our economic recovery forward, and I think that 

is something that all of us here can agree on, but there is real disagreement on how we tackle these twin challenges. In my view, I 

do not believe this can be an either/or proposition. We cannot have 

all stimulus or all austerity. We need to have a balanced approach. 

However, right now, we are seeing the effects of sequestration 

and I think that is anything but balanced. This year alone, the 

Congressional Budget Office estimates that sequestration will cost 

our economy about three- quarters of a million jobs and we fear 

that the consequences of sequestration will continue to compound 

over time. We are cutting away at things like education and scientific research and innovation, which have previously provided a 

strong foundation for our economic growth and global competitiveness. 

Indeed, over the past half-century, more than half the growth in 

our nation’s GDP has been rooted in scientific discoveries. This is 

the kind of fundamental mission-driven research that is done at 

places like the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, which I 

had the chance to visit last Friday. This center is a Department of 

Energy funded consortium of over 400 researchers and innovators 

researching advanced biofuel technologies that will help to support 

an economy that is built to last. 

In addition, I had the chance to sit down with and talk to researchers from across the University of Wisconsin- Madison cam-
437 

pus who rely on Federal investments, especially research grants 

from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science 

Foundation. This entire group talked about their worries, their 

worries that there will be an entire missing generation of scientists. They explained that diminishing grant opportunities and 

intense competition are putting the brakes on innovation at a time 

when we need to be stepping on the accelerator. 

The potential for future employment and economic growth opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics related fields is huge. In my travels around the State of Wisconsin, 

the question is, will we be able to educate enough young Americans 

to fill these positions? And, indeed, there is a consensus between 

business and educators on the need to increase STEM programs in 

our K through 12 education to meet this demand. At the same 

time, the Federal Government is pressing the pause button on research and innovation at the highest levels. 

Dr. Summers, in your testimony, you talk about the difficulty 

that recent college graduates have in getting onto career ladders. 

The researchers I met with at the University of Wisconsin-Madison 

shared a very similar perspective. From a competitive standpoint, 

can you speak a little bit about what happens when we begin narrowing the pipeline of young scientists and engineers who are 

working on basic and applied research. 

Mr. SUMMERS. If we—it is like prospecting. Some of the holes 

come up dry, but when you hit a good one, it is enormously valuable. If we less scientific research, we are doing less prospecting. 

It is less likely that the next semiconductor will be invented here. 

It is less likely that we will be the center of the action in biomedical research. 

There was a time when Oxford and Cambridge in England were 

the centers of global scientific research. Over time, as England 

struggled, there was less support, and while great universities, 

they lost some of what was special in terms of their capacity to 

support scientific research. That benefitted the United States very 

importantly during the 20th century. And the question that history 

will judge us on, I believe, is whether we allow a transition like 

that to happen with respect to U.S. scientific leadership or whether 

we do not. 

The 20th century was, in many ways, a century of physics, with 

the Manhattan Project, the semiconductor, the personal computer, 

ultimately, the Internet. And our leadership in it was central to our 

leadership in the world. 

I believe the 21st century is going to be a century of the life 

sciences, with revolutionary understandings that contribute to a 

cure with tremendous things happening in bioengineering. And it 

is going to be very important for the position of the United States 

in the world to what extent we are leaders of that. We are set up 

to be leaders because of the institutions that we have, but others 

know how important that is, as well, and the decisions we make 

about supporting scientific research will guide the choices of our 

most talented young people and that will have a profound effect on 

the future of the country. 

Senator BALDWIN. If the Chair will indulge a brief response, your 

painting the picture of the last century is very meaningful to me. 
438 

I was raised by my grandparents and my grandfather was U.S.- 

born but got his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge University, 

and at the onset of World War II returned to the U.S. and spent 

a year at Harvard, seven years at Columbia, and then the rest of 

his career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I remember 

when he used to be on grant panels listening to how many were 

putting in, and even as much as a decade ago, there would be 100 

new post docs applying for grants and 25 percent of them might 

have a chance of getting them. 

My research scientists that I talked with last Friday on campus 

said there were probably half the number putting in for grants and 

maybe five percent getting awards and that this is having—there 

will be a lost generation of U.S. scientists. 

Mr. SUMMERS. Just a very quick response, if you will indulge me. 

When Jim Watson did the work that identified the structure of 

DNA that set the basis for modern biology, he was 27. Today, on 

average, when you get your first NIH grant if you work in those 

fields, you are in your early 40s, and there have just got to be a 

lot of people who would be in that field if they thought they could 

get independent support at the ages when they were most likely to 

be brilliant and creative, and it is increasingly becoming more and 

more difficult for young investigators. And it is not because they 

do not have the talent. It is not because there are not important 

problems. And it is not because the problems are not solvable. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Nelson. 

Senator NELSON. A fascinating discussion about the life sciences. 

I want to return to the budget. In the opinion of this Senator, 

there is good news and bad news. The good news is that existing 

circumstances, the deficit will be reduced over a ten-year period to 

somewhere between $3.6 and $3.8 trillion, not too far off from the 

$4 trillion goal that we had back in the crisis of 2011. 

The bad news is, in the opinion of this Senator, that we are going 

to have a crisis again come this fall, just like we had in 2011, over 

the raising of the debt ceiling so that the government can pay its 

bills, and all the pressures that come in as a result thereof—passing a budget, passing appropriations, the tax revenue and spending 

questions, tax reform, entitlement reform. Everything is going to 

come crashing in, in my opinion, this fall, whenever we reach that 

limit of the debt ceiling. I would like to have the experts reflect 

upon that. 

Mr. SUMMERS. Let me first say, Senator, that I think a default, 

even for ten minutes, would be catastrophic and would have consequences that go forward for a long time. My son is here sitting 

behind me. We discuss from time to time his expenditures in college. If I am uncomfortable with his expenditures, one option is 

that he pays. Another option is that I pay. We do not as a family 

regard stiffing Visa as being a viable option for working out our difference of opinion. 

And in the same way, it seems to me that repudiating our debt 

should be off the table. And it seems to me that for a great nation 

to be debating the order in which it is going to pay its creditors 

or the order in which it is going to pay creditors and those counting 

on Social Security benefits or those counting on NIH grants is to 

be having a tragically misguided debate. 
439 

So it is absolutely right that there be a requirement of Congressional authorization and appropriation before debt is incurred, and 

that takes place with respect to every dollar that is obligated for 

spending by the Federal Government. But I do not believe that 

using the debt limit and the possibility of default as leverage for 

action, whether the particular action in question is an action I 

favor or an action I oppose, is an appropriate tool. It seems to me 

that if history teaches anything, it is that those who carry the view 

that their end justifies extreme means are usually on the wrong 

side of history, and that applies very much with respect to the 

threat of default. 

Senator NELSON. I agree with you, but I am afraid that is where 

we are headed. 

Dr. JOHNSON. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Senator, I also agree that may be where we are 

headed and it concerns me greatly. It does not actually matter so 

much what the economists and the experts think will happen. We 

should look at what the private sector thinks about these debt ceiling confrontations. And I mentioned before the research of Nick 

Bloom and his colleagues that shows clearly that of all the very difficult circumstances we have encountered in the past five or ten 

years in the United States, the one that really jumps out as having 

scared the private sector and discouraged investment by the private sector was the fight over the debt ceiling in the summer of 

2011. And the idea that we would repeat that or some version of 

that, I think, is really unappealing and makes no sense. It is purely defeating everything that all of you want to achieve, which is a 

stronger recovery based on a more vibrant, more confident private 

sector. 

Mr. FURTH. It is very clear that the U.S. needs to not default, 

and obviously, we do not want to get close to that. It is very good 

news that the budget situation is better than thought and that 

Congress has a few more months to work this out before we get 

close enough that markets start to really get worried. 

What we need, obviously, is a long-run plan that comes in gradually, that makes the kinds of entitlement cuts that do not slam into 

the economy in one year, that grow over time, that change things 

in 2050 much more than they change things in 2015. And, yes, we 

need that compromise. The research on other countries shows that 

plans that work in stabilizing economic growth and stabilizing debt 

are those that cut entitlements, do so gradually, transparently, 

with rules such that there is a very clear path that the plan is 

going to follow. What we do not want is to lurch from one unexpected sequester to another. It will really benefit the economy if 

the politics can be brought together in such a way that we have 

a clear plan to take us through the retirement of the Baby 

Boomers. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Nelson, there is a solution to this, 

to not get to your crisis, and that would be for our Republican 

counterparts to allow us to appoint conferees, for the House to appoint conferees, and to put us in a room and have us make a decision before we reach that crisis point. 

Senator NELSON. You are absolutely correct. 
440 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. But that would mean following the regular 

order and— 

Chairman MURRAY. It would, actually. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, the regular order calls for the bringing 

up of the House budget on the floor and 50 hours of debate. 

Chairman MURRAY. Which has never occurred before. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Which has—exactly. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, it may not have occurred before, but 

that is the regular order. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Yes. We are fighting regular order. 

Senator SESSIONS. You are correct fundamentally, Madam Chair. 

Thank you. 

Senator NELSON. As I said, I think we are going to have a problem this fall. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Whitehouse. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

What brings us to this hearing is some history. The history is 

that the Republican party fought through the fiscal meltdown for 

an austerity solution. Spending cuts, spending cuts, spending cuts. 

Europe actually tried the austerity solution. The results are in and 

the results in Europe are calamitously bad when you look at measures like unemployment and GDP growth compared to where we 

are. We may not love where we are, but I had some Rhode Island 

colleagues who are of Portuguese extraction in town last night and 

we had dinner with the Portuguese ambassador. Portugal has an 

18 percent unemployment rate, and they look good by comparison 

to Greece and Spain, which have 27 percent unemployment rates. 

Across the EU, economies are not growing slowly like ours. They 

are actually shrinking. Greece, down 6.4 percent. Portugal, down 

3.2 percent. It is a really bad tale, which creates a problem, which 

creates a problem. 

What is the solution? The solution is that the recent Republican 

witnesses have come in and suggested that the problem with European austerity is that they did not really do spending cuts. It was 

really about tax increases. And so the lesson that you are supposed 

to draw from the European disaster of following the austerity recommendation is avoid tax increases. And you look at some of the 

data and, frankly, it does not add up. 

Dr. Furth, I am very concerned about your testimony and I 

would like you to take some time when you have some time and 

write back to us and explain yourself, because when I look at the 

graph, for instance, on page eight, which you sourced to the OECD, 

if you actually look at what the OECD says about spending cuts 

versus tax increases, they have actually written what the numbers 

are, and here is what the numbers actually are according to the 

OECD. I will start at the top. 

Slovenia, 100 percent spending cuts, zero tax increases. That is 

hardly a solution that counted on tax increases. Iceland, 72 percent 

spending cuts, 28 percent tax increases. United Kingdom, 69 percent spending cuts, 31 percent tax increases. Spain, 67 percent 

spending cuts, 33 percent tax increases. Ireland, 66 percent spending cuts, 34 percent tax increases, and on and on until you actually 

get to the country that the Ranking Member mentioned, Estonia. 
441 

Estonia had the lowest spending cuts. It was 26 percent spending 

cuts, 74 percent tax increases, compared to the U.K., which was 

your comparison, which was 69 percent spending cuts, 31 percent 

tax increases. And these are OECD numbers. That is their percentage number. 

Dr. Furth, I am concerned that your testimony to this committee 

has been meretricious and I want an explanation. I want you to sit 

down and do it in writing so that we have plenty of time, that 

there is no question about any shortcut that you might have taken 

or there was not time for this discussion. And I want you to explain 

how this OECD data that shows that the majority, by OECD’s own 

terms, over and over again of their austerity plan was spending 

cuts turns out into the data on this graph. 

And, I mean, I want to know how you got to that data. I want 

the explanation. I do not want a lot more talk about economic theory. I am contesting whether you have given us fair and accurate 

information and I want you to have the opportunity to explain why 

you say, ‘‘Source: OECD’’ on the bottom of that graph. And I am 

going to run out of time, so let us not have this discussion now— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I think— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Write it down carefully, because I think 

this is— 

Senator SESSIONS. Give him a chance. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. He can answer— 

Senator SESSIONS. I think he— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. I will give him a chance to respond. But 

I do not want him to be in a situation where he did not feel he had 

enough time to respond. I want—I think it is very important that 

we in these committees get honest testimony here, and I can turn 

this every which way but up, but when you look at the actual balance between spending cuts and tax increases that the OECD uses 

itself to describe what took place in Europe, I cannot connect that 

to where you come out. 

The closest that I can get is the pretense in your testimony that 

there has been an increase in transfer payments. The best I can 

tell from what we have actually seen is that you say, in Spain, 

transfers are up 19 percent, in Ireland, 20 percent, in U.K., 12 percent, and in Estonia, 22 percent. As best I can tell, those programs 

were not increased at all. What happened is that the transfer payments went up because people lost their jobs. People went broke. 

They had to go onto relief. You are not improving the economy 

when you lose your job and go onto relief. So if that is the way you 

have maneuvered these numbers, I just do not think that is legitimate. I do not think that is honorable. I do not think that is fair. 

So, please respond, but I know that this is a contentious subject. 

But now twice in a row, we have had Republican witnesses say 

that austerity was really all about tax increases and if you just lay 

off on the tax increases, we will not go that way. And the OECD 

information is exactly the contrary. They have actually done the 

math. It is their own information. So when you cite to their information, I have a real problem with that and I think the committee 

is entitled to an explanation. 

Mr. FURTH. I would be happy to provide one. Very briefly, I can 

address one of your concerns here very simply. As I stated in my 
442 

oral testimony, we do expect transfer payments to go up in a recession. I did not claim that that was a change in policy. I said that 

the fact that they have all gone up indicates that there has not 

been brutal cutting. There have been some cuts in some places. The 

ones, for instance, in Greece, it has gone up not at all. And I mentioned in a footnote in my written testimony that that does include 

programmatic cuts. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. So if a government scientist gets laid off 

because of a spending cut and has to go onto a transfer payment, 

as far as you are concerned, that is not a harmful situation. 

Mr. FURTH. That is not what I said. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. I have gone beyond my time. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, if the witness would like more time, I 

think he should be given it. He simply said that the spending went 

up. It was not reduced. The spending went up by the government. 

But maybe—you have been very harsh and I think he deserves an 

opportunity to have a little time to respond to your long discussion. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. I am happy to have him have that time, 

but I do want to get this in writing and get this sorted out because 

I just— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, it is— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. —think it is very important that we be 

given proper, honest data, and I cannot for the life of me correlate 

the presentation that this witness has made with the data that the 

OECD itself has put out in very clear terms—69 percent, 67 percent, 53 percent, 44 percent— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, the time is up— 

Chairman MURRAY. Dr. Furth— 

Senator SESSIONS. —but I would just say this. You are raising— 

you have raised this point. It is a fundamental point, I acknowledge it. What do we do to create growth and get our debt under 

control? Is it just raise taxes or is it reduce spending? So this is 

a fundamental issue and it is important. 

Chairman MURRAY. Dr. Furth, I assume that you will respond to 

this committee in writing. 

Mr. FURTH. I would be happy to do so. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I would just—he had less than a minute 

against about eight minutes, so if he had any more to— 

Mr. FURTH. I do not think that the tenor here is conducive to 

having further productive discussion. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay, Dr. Furth. Then we will look forward 

to your response in writing. Thank you. 

With that, we have one final questioner, Senator Wyden. I do 

have to get to the floor. I am going to turn over the gavel to Senator Wyden for his final comment. At the close of his comment, this 

hearing will close, and I just want to remind all of our colleagues 

that additional statements from today’s hearing are due in by 6:00 

p.m. today. And I do truly want to thank all of our witnesses for 

coming, for your testimony. I think this has been a very productive 

session. Thank you very much, and Senator Wyden. 

Senator WYDEN. [Presiding.] Thank you, Senator Murray. 

Dr. Summers, as you know, the flip side of austerity is growth, 

and you have had a lot of important papers and comments over the 
443 

years with respect to consumer demand and particularly consumer 

demand in our economy. And as you know and have written, consumers are responsible for about 70 percent of the economic activity now in our country. 

You look at the numbers that we saw last month, which were, 

by and large, pretty encouraging, you know, housing starts, the employment numbers. But one that was a little troubling was that 

question of the consumer being, again, a little bit tentative in 

terms of their spending. 

One area where we made some bipartisan progress on has been 

in the tax reform area as part of the legislation that I have had 

over the years with Senator Gregg and Senator Coats, in particular. We have had bipartisan support for approaches that could 

really help us grow the economy by stimulating demand, particularly by tripling the standard deduction for middle class people, so 

that, in effect, if you had $60,000 in annual income, we would put 

$30,000 off limits from the taxation side and so middle class people 

would get some serious tax relief, and we have been able to offer 

that in a bipartisan way. 

Could you spend a minute or two outlining some of the other 

areas where you think it might be possible as we kind of compare 

austerity and the growth that you have talked about, which is a 

view I happen to share strongly, what are other possibilities that 

we ought to be looking at in order to particularly bring that middle 

class person back into the economy, buying the goods and services 

that, as we know in America, lift a lot of boats? 

Mr. SUMMERS. Senator Wyden, I think there is a legitimate question that does have to be faced, which is given the increased pressures that will come on the Federal budget, increased pressures 

that will come because of an aging society, increased pressures that 

will come because whatever the merits of any past debate, we have 

accumulated more debt, increased pressures that will come because 

the relative price of many of the things that government buys—I 

think, for example, of health care and higher education—has increased very substantially compared to the price of other things in 

the economy—I think of a television set or a personal computer— 

and so for all those reasons, we are going to face a substantial 

pressure on the scale of the Federal budget. And I am not sure that 

we can afford as a country large-scale tax cutting, whether it is oriented to the middle class or whether it is oriented to some other 

group. 

And so I very much believe that tax reform has substantial potential, but I believe that the best tax reform would be either revenue neutral or, ideally, would provide for some revenue increases. 

Senator WYDEN. The striking part about it, Dr. Summers, because we have had it scored, the initial bill has been scored as revenue neutral. What you do, though, is when you eliminate some of 

those special interest breaks and come back to target to the middle 

class people, the fact that we get them back into the economy, buying the goods and services— 

Mr. SUMMERS. I think if— 

Senator WYDEN. —remodel jobs and the like, that is what— 

Mr. SUMMERS. I think, if we are successful in identifying a range 

of special interest provisions and subsidies that should be scaled 
444 

back, then there is a question as to what to do, and I think that 

an attractive part of the strategy could be yours of supporting the 

middle class families through reductions in the standard deduction. 

Alternative approaches, which I think also have merit, would involve reducing marginal tax rates, which might also have incentive 

effects. 

But I very much share your view that part of propelling consumer demand here is going to be making sure that anything we 

do is fair and equitable in the sense of having its benefits concentrated on the middle class where the propensity to spend is likely to be greatest. 

Senator WYDEN. No, your point is very well taken, and obviously, 

in this kind of fiscal climate, you cannot just promise and promise 

some more and not have a revenue source, and that has been the 

point of what a number of conservative Republicans have worked 

on with me over the last five years. 

And I think what I would like to do, because you are writing and 

your recent work has been so helpful on this point, is why do we 

not hold the record open and I would like to get a sense, because 

I thought that tax reform was a possibility, well-targeted transportation initiatives—as you know, we had the Build America bonds 

program that came out of the Finance Committee, all worked with 

us on that for many, many months—I would just like to hold the 

record open— 

Mr. SUMMERS. I will submit something in writing with a longer 

list of growth-promoting programs. 

Senator WYDEN. Very good. 

As per Senator Murray, we are now adjourned, and— 

Senator SESSIONS. Could— 

Senator WYDEN. I think, Senator Sessions, I was not here for the 

previous discussions. Senator Murray indicated that we are adjourned. I am going to stick around and visit with you privately. 

Thank you. 

Senator SESSIONS. Very good. All right. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 12:11 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
445 

Budget Committee Hearing 

Opening Statement by Ranking Member Jeff Sessions 

The Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity 

June 4,2013 

I want to thank the Chairman for scheduling this hearing. There are few 

policy debates more worth having than this one. Either we find a path to a 

viable fiscal future that supports strong economic growth and addresses 

the fiscal threats ahead, or we don't. If we fail to find this path as 

Congresses have failed in the past, then ours will be a predictable legacy 

that none of us at this table are eager to own. 

I think we've made some good strides toward taming our spending. While 

the recently enacted spending reductions should have been implemented 

more intelligently, they represent a clear signal to taxpayers and investors 

that we understand we have a spending problem and are committed to 

doing something about it. Indeed, there's mounting evidence that a part of 

our current uptick in economic activity is due to this signal being clearly 

delivered to the business community. 

Unfortunately, some want us to retreat from deficit reduction commitments 

we've already made. Slower than expected growth in the U.S. and 

economic troubles in Europe, particularly increasing unemployment in 

several European countries, leads some to conclude that further efforts at 

deficit reduction need to be placed on hold until economic times improve. In 

fact, this view is shared by some Members of this Committee. 

However, this is certainly not the time to change course. The academic 

research clearly shows that lowering deficits with spending reductions more 

often leads to strong economic growth than cutting deficits with tax 

increases and only modest spending cuts. Indeed, employment gains have 

been particularly strong in successful deficit reduction plans that relied 

primarily on lower spending. (See chart on employment gains) 
446 

Angel Gurria, the Secretary-General of the DECO, agrees that we should 

keep commitment to lower spending and debt reduction. Mr. Gurria, 

speaking at the opening session of last week's DECO Ministerial Meeting, 

said, "the fiscal adjustment of the last few years is beginning to payoff. 

Several countries are close to stabilizing their government debt-to-GOP 

ratios and ensuring a gradual decline in indebtedness over the longer 

term ... Stay the course," the Secretary-General urged. "You're almost 

there." 

Earlier in the week, Bundesbank president Jens Wiedmann [Yens VYdman] argued for a continued commitment to fiscal consolidation and a 

rejection of the demands by some (including current Treasury Secretary 

Jack Lew) to end "austerity" and start a new round of economic stimulus. 

Indeed, you have to wonder what critics of deficit reduction are pointing to 

when they argue that austerity has failed in Europe. DECO data released 

last week show that only 10 of the 28 DECO countries have a smaller 

deficit today than in 2006/2007 time frame, once the effects of the business 

cycle are adjusted out. In fact, only three (Italy, Hungary, and Greece) have 

reduced their deficits by more than 5 percent. The United Kingdom actually 

increased its cyclically adjusted deficit from 4.1 percent of GOP to 5.7 

percent over this period. 

We should pay particular attention to the United Kingdom's recent fiscal 

challenges. Prime Minister David Cameron and his political partners chose 

a deficit reduction plan that was "balanced" in the same way the President 

and the Senate majority like to describe: tax increases alongside spending 

reductions. Unfortunately, the UK's tax increases preceded their spending 

cuts, and the tax hikes compounded the economic slowdown and caused a 

much slower escape from their recession. 

Even so, Britain limped out of recession earlier this year, cut its deficit in 

half (although it is still whopping 7 percent of GOP), but was left with a 

soaring ratio debt to GOP. Had the British government not increased taxes 

at exactly the wrong time in the process of fiscal consolidation, the United 
447 

Kingdom's economic and fiscal results would likely have been much 

stronger. 

It is crucial that we allow our policy making to be informed by this body of 

real data. The stakes for getting this right are enormous. 

As long as the United States and other major economies of the OECD fail 

to lighten the weight of government on the private sector, the costs of 

economic sluggishness will be borne by low- and medium-income 

households, while the benefits of high spending and cheap money will 

continue to flow to investors and large business owners. 

That is why there can be no more appropriate time than now to embrace 

deficit reduction policies that facilitate higher levels of economic growth. If 

the federal budget is to significantly improve in the near term, then the pace 

of economic activity must improve very soon. U.S. economic recovery 

remains the slowest since the end of World War II. 

This sluggishness comes with a huge human cost. There are still fewer 

jobs today than when the recession started: total non-farm employment in 

April 2013 was 2.3 million below the level in December 2007. The overall 

unemployment rate is 7.5 percent, also higher than it should be this far 

from the end of the recession; and key unemployment rates for some 

demographic segments are even higher: the rate for Hispanics stands at 

8.4 percent, for Blacks at 12.8 percent, and for teenagers at 24.1 percent. 

These high unemployment rates and the sluggish economy comes after 

we've had trillions in stimulus spending, ongoing infusions of new credit 

from the Federal Reserve, and relatively steady level of high federal 

spending. 

Conclusion 

Congress can choose the path of reduced spending without further tax 

increases or higher taxes and no additional spending controls. Evidence 

clearly shows that the former leads more often to stronger economic 

performance and lower unemployment than the latter. 
448 

Fiscal reforms based on tax increases can damage the economy, while 

those that rely mostly or entirely on spending reductions produce stronger 

recoveries. A study of every significant fiscal consolidation that took place 

in large economies over the last 40 years shows those countries that try to 

reduce the deficit be raising taxes experience slower growth. Policies 

based largely on spending restraint resulted in increases in average GDP 

growth while those that relied on higher taxes retarded growth. 
449 

Page 1 of 19 

Salim Furth 

Response to Questions for the Record submitted by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 

I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to Senator Whitehouse's extensive written and oral 

questions. In order to provide an overall summary of the data used and choices made in my testimony, I 

explain my sources, calculations, and choices in Appendix B. 

1. Regarding tax increases and spending cuts. 

(a) On page 8 of your testimony, you included a graph you say shows that 13 OECO countries 

have increased their "revenue rates." This evidence purports to back up you claim that "to 

date, 'austerity' in Europe has consisted mainly of tax increases." "Tax increases" 

customarily means changes to tax law designed to increase the amount of revenue 

generated by the tax code. Does your definition depart from this plain-English definition? 

When you define a "tax increase" as when "a country increase/sl its tax receipts as a share 

of GOP," does that not allow a GOP decline at a constant tax level to be a "tax increase"? 

Throughout my testimony, I chose to use a data-analysis approach rather than a 

narrative approach. That choice facilitates cross-country comparison. The revenue rate 

is one measure of the average tax rate paid by all agents in an economy. 

The revenue rate also has the advantage of being clear and transparent. 

The revenue rate is an imperfect but reasonable indicator of tax policy change. In an 

environment of low growth, the revenue rate will often decrease despite increases in 

tax rates. Thus, countries which have a falling revenue rate in my data may have raised 

taxes. 

In fact, the U.K. is an excellent example. It increased its broadly applied value-added tax 

(VAT) by 2.5 percentage points.' But the downward pressure of its shrinking economy 

led to a small net drop in the revenue rate. My method undercounts tax increases. 

It is extremely unlikely that a country with a shrinking or stagnant economy could have a 

significant increase in the revenue rate without a tax rate increase or the expiration of a 

temporary tax rate cut. 

As with any economic phenomenon, there are many valid indicators and measures of 

tax increases. Other methods, applied over the same time frame (2007-2012), will likely 

indicate a similar diversity in tax policy. 

1 "The standard rate of VAT increased from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on 4 January 2011." Source: GOV.uk, "VAT 

rates," https:llwww.gov.uk{vat-rates (accessed June 6, 2013). 
450 

Page 2 of 19 

(b) Similarly, you say, in "[the] countries routinely lumped as 'austere'" spending cuts are 

"rare." In its own Restoring Public Finances, 2012 Update, the DECO defines "fiscal 

consolidations" as "concrete policies aimed at reducing government deficits and debt 

accumulation, e.g. active policies to improve the fiscal position." In analyzing the "fiscal 

consolidations" of each nation, the DECO looked at "expenditure reductions" and 

"revenue enhancements." According to the DECO's own data (please see the attached 

summary prepared by my staff), of the 15 European nations with major austerity 

programs, 9 of those countries had more expenditure reductions than revenue 

enhancements, and only Estonia and Poland's austerity programs consisted of less than 

40% expenditure reductions. How is that rare? 

The discrepancy between my data and the Fiscal Consolidation Survey (FCS) data 

presented in Restoring Public Finances, 2012 Update is that my data is historical and the 

FCS was a self-reported survey of plans taken in early 2012.' The original wording of this 

question misrepresents the FCS data and puts words in the OECD's mouth. 

Question 1 selectively and deceptively quotes from Restoring Public Finances in the 

sentence that reads: 

In analyzing the "fiscal consolidations" of each nation, the OECD looked at 

"expenditure reductions" and "revenue enhancements." 

The quoted phrases are severed from context. In Restoring Public Finances, the first use 

of the words "fiscal consolidation" is in the phrase "fiscal consolidation strategies.,,3 Just 

below that we have "fiscal consolidation need." The second paragraph mentions 

"progress in implementing fiscal consolidation and the further development of the 

consolidation plans." Chapter 1 is titled, "Fiscal consolidation targets, plans, and 

measures in OECD countries.'" Each country's data is presented with a subsection titled 

"The government's fiscal consolidation plan." The plans are reported for dates as late as 

2016. 

But question 1 refers to "major austerity programs" in the past tense, using the verbs 

"had" and "consisted of." 

But the original data reflect plans, and span dates in the past and the future. There is no 

conflict between my claim that spending cuts since 2007 have been rare and the FCS's 

claim that spending cuts will become common in the future. 

, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Restoring Public Finances: 2012 Update, p. 72. 

'Ibid., p. 3. 

'Ibid, p. 17. 
451 

Page 3 of 19 

There is overlap between my data and the DECD data behind the Senator's spreadsheet 

(2009 in 2 cases, 2010 in 8 cases, and 2011 in 14 cases). But since both sets of data -

mine and the Senator's - were presented in a summarized form, there is no reason the 

data could not be in harmony for those few overlapping years. 

In addition, Question 1 refers to "the DECD's own data (please see the attached 

summary prepared by my staff)." But the FCS data is not, as a point of fact, DECDoriginated data but data reported by the particular governments of the DECO member 

states. This is clear in the Foreword to the DECO's Restoring Public Finances: 

The survey is based on self-reporting from governments .... Some countries did 

not provide data on implemented consolidation (2009/10-11). The Secretariat 

has included implemented consolidation in 2009-11 based on last year's report 

for the most obvious cases. Some countries did not provide cumulative data, so 

the data have been recalculated into cumulative terms by the Secretariat 

wherever possible. Some countries did not provide quantified data for the total 

consolidation period, even if measures were specified. 

The DECD has done an excellent job gathering and harmonizing the data gathered in its 

survey, and DECD staff has been helpful and prompt in responding to requests for 

documentationS Knut Klepsvik, DECD Senior Policy Analyst, confirmed in personal 

communication, "The data of the Restoring Public Finances, 2012 Update are based on 

self-reporting from countries but the DECD Secretariat has performed a data quality 

control as we do on all surveys. The projections are still the governments' own 

estimates and may include more or less optimistic estimates." The insinuation that the 

FCS data is superior to data from Statistics DECD' is bizarre. 

Worse, the summary prepared by your staff' and attached to the Questions for the 

Record is in direct conflict with Figure 1.15 in Restoring Public Finances,8 which is the 

DECD's own calculation of the composition of the reported fiscal austerity plans. 

5 For example, Knut Klepsvik, DECO Senior Policy Analyst, clarified the sources of Estonia's data in personal 

communication: "Concerning Estonia, we enquired if their figures were cumulative or incremental. The Estonia 

authorities confirmed that all the expenditure measures are cumulative but there are some one-off revenue 

measures that aren't cumulative. However, Estonia don't have a consolidation plan after 2010 (Box 1.6) but have 

implemented large front-loaded consolidation since 2008. We have interpreted their response as Estonia is 

withdrawing from fiscal consolidation and gradually are removing expenditure measures which may be considered 

as stimulating the economy." Reproduced as received. 

, Statistics DECO, http://stats.oecd.org/. 

7 I have included the summary as Appendix A. 
452 

Page 4 of 19 

I successfully replicated the data in your staff's spreadsheet only by making the same 

error that they did: they treated cumulative data as non-cumulative, vastly overcounting 

the early years in each country's record, and grossly exaggerating the total fiscal 

consolidation in each country. This spreadsheet, while its proportions end up looking 

similar to the correct ones, is utterly meaningless and I will disregard it. 

Turning instead to the DECO's own summary of the data, in Figure 1.15, the reason that 

my data do not match is that they are drawn from a different period. The data for 2012 

through 2016 are all projections or plans offuture changes. The DECO authors recognize 

the distinction, noting for example, "The DECO has calculated the deviation of the actual 

fiscal balance in 2010 and 2011 compared to the targeted fiscal balances described in 

last year's report.'" 

By contrast, my data, by design, are dated from before the crisis. Uke Figure 1.15, it 

summarizes several years of data, and finds that spending cuts have been rare. 

According to DECO data/o government consumption grew in 20 of 27 countries from 

2007 to 2012 (or 2011 where 2012 data was unavailable). Spending fell in six crisis 

countries plus the U.K. 

As I note in the documentation, government spending as a share of GOP rose in 23 

countries. I chose to use the indicator I deemed most accurate, not the one that yielded 

the most dramatic results. 

What is important in determining that spending cuts have been rare is to use a dating 

convention that captures the full path of fiscal policy over several years. Some will 

disagree with that dating choice, but it is up to them to prove that their spending cuts 

do not merely represent the end of temporary spending measures undertaken in the 

worst years ofthe crisis. 

2. How do you define "austerity"? Under your definition, can "austerity" occur in the absence of 

government action? 

As I argue in the opening of my testimony, I do not like the term "austerity" because it is 

overly broad and has meant all sorts of things over the years. Thus, it should be no 

surprise that I do not favor any single definition of austerity. This debate should 

persuade observers that the label "austerity" should be dropped in favor of narrower 

terms like "tax increase" and "entitlement reform." 

a DECO, Restoring Public Finances: 2012 Update, p. 41. Data are downloadable in Excel format from 

htlp:lldx,doi, oro' I 0, J 78 7/88 89 32696894. 

9 DECO, Restoring Public Finances: 2012 Update, p. 27. Emphasis added. 

10 See Appendix B for the titles of the particular series I used and the calculations I performed. 
453 

Page 5 of 19 

For illustrative purposes, I labeled "austere" countries in my two charts. However, each 

chart does so using a different definition, and the purpose of the charts is more to show 

how diverse fiscal approaches have been, not to offer a taxonomy of austerity. 

As a general rule, I would consider it unlikely that austerity would be an accurate 

description of a country that had made no policy changes, but perhaps some exception 

exists. 

3. If, in the absence of government action, the ratio of revenue to GOP increases, would you 

consider that austerity in the form of a tax increase? 

No." This question is a good reminder of the importance of knowing the context. Had 

any of the four fast-growing economies in my sample had a revenue rate increase, I 

would have investigated the narrative to make sure I was not reporting a misleading 

statistic. 

4. Using the OECO's own definitions of terms [from the OECO's Restoring Public Finances), do 

any of nations which have undergone major "fiscal consolidations" lack significant 

"expenditure reductions." 

Because Restoring Public Finances is mainly a prospective, not retrospective, 

publication, its fiscal consolidations are primarily planned, not "undergone." 

In Box 1.1, the OECD's definition of fiscal consolidation emphasizes the forward-looking 

nature ofthis particular report." 

In this report, fiscal consolidation is defined as concrete policies aimed at 

reducing government deficits and debt accumulation .... Merely announcing an 

ambitious deficit target over the medium term with no accompanying 

consolidation plan on how to achieve the deficit target is not regarded as 

consolidation in this analysis. Consolidation plans and detailed measures are 

given as a per cent of nominal GDP. 

The definition provided does not offer a measuring stick for evaluating which countries 

have undergone major fiscal consolidations. 

This is not nit-picking. When the member countries provided data to the OECD, they did 

so for whatever years they chose, reflecting their different views and plans. That's why 

there is 2009 data for only two countries. These data are not deSigned to look 

backwards and are sparsely populated for the first two years. 

11 Given the recent "fiscal cliff," it is worth stipulating that policy expiration is a form of government action. 

"OECD, Restoring Public Finances: 2012 Update, p. 18. 
454 

Page 6 of 19 

Finding spending cuts in 2010 and 2011 is like finding rapid u.s. GDP growth in 1933 and 

1934: out of context, it will give the wrong impression. 

5. If the United States laid off 25% of the federal workforce to trim its budget, would you 

consider that to be an austerity measure? Does your answer depend on how much socialsafety-net-program spending increases to support those now-unemployed workers and their 

families? 

Yes, I would absolutely consider it an austerity measure. A major part of my testimony 

was to argue that one austerity measure - tax increases - was being counteracted by 

stimulus spending. The tax increase is an austerity measure, as would be mass layoffs. 

But I am interested in looking at the net effect. 

If the social safety net were so generous (or inefficient) that the government spent more 

on social services for a laid-off worker than it did to employ a worker, then austerity (or 

its lack) would be the least of the government's problems. 

6. In your testimony, you stated "higher tax rates slow the economy immediately and depress 

future growth:' Are you familiar with the U.S. experience in the 1990s, during which tax rate 

increases in 1993 were followed by 7 years of economic growth at 4% per year, with 23 million 

new jobs created? How do you explain this prosperity following major tax increases? 

The early 1990s are a great example of the success of structural reform and spending 

cuts. Fiscal consolidation from 1993 on featured 67 percent spending cuts and 33 

percent tax increases. IMF economists recently quantified a detailed narrative of the tax 

increases and spending cuts during that era." 

Again, cautioning against drawing too much from a single example, the early 1990s 

featured steady fiscal consolidation in the U.s., as well as welfare reform (a key 

structural reform) in 1996. The table below shows the fiscal consolidation undertaken 

each year, and the ensuing real per capita GDP growth. 

1990 had fiscal consolidation mainly on the tax side. A recession followed. Consolidation 

accelerated, with an even tax-spend split over the next two years and the economy 

recovered, but less rapidly than after most previous recessions. 

1993 continued the spending cuts but with few tax increases, and the economy boomed 

at 2.8 percent growth from 1993 to 1994. 

"Pete Devries, Jaime Guajardo, Daniel Leigh, and Andrea Pescatori, "A New Action-based Dataset of Fiscal 

Consolidation," IMF Working Paper 11/128, June 2011, pp. 81-8S. 
455 

Page 7 of 19 

U.S. Fiscal Consolidation and Growth During the 1990s 

En ... ;ng GOP growth 

Tax Incruses Spending Cuts Tot.1 (log difference, next year 

(%ofGOP) (%ofGOP) (%ofGOP) minus current year) 

1990 0.26% 0,07% 0.33% -1.6% 

1991 0,29 0,29 058 2,0 

1992 0,24 0,28 052 1.5 

1993 0,08 0,23 0.32 2,8 

1994 0.4 05 0.9 1.3 

1995 0,2 0,33 0.53 25 

1996 0,08 0,22 0.29 3,2 

1997 0,06 0.24 0.3 3,1 

1998 ° 0.15 0,15 3,6 

Source: Pete Devries, Jaime Guajardo. Daniel Leigh, and Andrea Pescatori, "A New Action~based 

Dataset of Fiscal Consolidation," International Monetary Fund, June 2011, pp. 81-85, http://www.imf,org/ 

externaVpubs/fVwp/2011jwp11128,pdf (accessed Jun.n, 2013), 

The large spending cut and tax increase passed in August 1993 had its greatest effects 

during 1994.14 In particular the OBRA-1993 sought major savings from Medicare and 

federal employee benefits," which are good examples of the structural reforms I 

recommended in my testimony. 

GDP per capita grew only 1.3 percent from 1994 to 1995. That's not bad, reflecting a 

private sector that rapidly picked up the slack as government's growth slowed. 

From 1995 to 1998, fiscal consolidation was heavily on the spending side, and growth 

accelerated to a smoking 3.6 percent and the deficit turned to a surplus. 

The fact that growth was strongest right after spending cuts preponderated and 

weakest when taxes increased most is an excellent exhibit of the case for preferring 

spending cuts. Using a regression to quantify the correlations,'6 I find that a 0.1 percent 

of GDP cut in spending is associated with 1.2 percentage point higher GDP growth. And 

a similar tax increase is associated with 1.4 percentage point lower GDP growth.17 These 

coefficients have no applicability out of sample, but they tell us that in the 1990s U.S. 

higher taxes and lower growth went together like fire and smoke. 

14 Devries, Guajardo, Leigh, and Pescatori, "A New Action-based Dataset of Fiscal Consolidation," p. 84. 

15 Congressional Budget Office, "The Economic and Budget Outlook: An Update," September 1993, p. 29, 

http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/76xx/doc7670/09-1993-outlookentirerpt.pdf. 

16 I am not claiming causation on the basis of these nine data points. I include a time trend. 

17 Both coefficients are statistically significant at the 95 percent level, but it's still only a correlation. 
456 

Page 8 of 19 

Good economists do not draw conclusions based on a handful of data points. The 

argument against spending cuts leans heavily on blaming Europe's failed recovery for 

austerity. Just as the U.S. experience in the 1990s does not prove that spending cuts are 

expansionary, the European experience in the 2010s cannot prove that spending cuts 

are contractionary. 

7. Though you warn against combating deficits by raising revenues, you cite a study (Alesina, 

Perotti, and Tavares, 1998) that found that successful consolidations have included 66% 

spending cuts. From where did the nations studied generate the other 34% of deficit 

reduction? Does this study not suggest that revenue has played a critical role in successful 

deficit-reduction plans? 

The successful consolidations consisted of 34 percent tax increases." In unsuccessful 

consolidations (which are about twice as common), tax increases preponderate: 73 

percent of the consolidation is on the tax side. 

This paper is mainly about political outcomes, showing that you can get reelected even 

if you cut spending and raise taxes. "Moreover, cabinets that are willing to cut transfers 

and the government wage bill - traditionally considered the two most politically 

charged components of spending - are not punished by the voters."'9 

As such, the paper does not provide a detailed breakdown of taxation and expenditure 

splits in the fiscal consolidations it considers, nor does it advocate the 34/66 split as 

ideal. So it's hard to go beyond reporting the averages, as I did in my testimony. 

The final question wants me to endorse non-linear effects of taxation in fiscal 

consolidation. But there is simply not enough evidence in any of the papers that I cited 

to argue for a general tipping point in the optimal mix. Nor can I prove it does not exist. 

With a dozen years more data to work with, Biggs, Hassett, and Jensen are willing to put 

an upper bound on the optimal amount of revenue increases: 15 percent,'O substantially 

lower than the average successful consolidation in Alesina et al.'s earlier data. 

If these numbers seem contradictory, consider a contrived example: 

18 Alberto Alesina, Roberto Perotti, Jose Tavares, "The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments," in Brookings 

Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 1998(1), Maurice Obstfeld and Barry Eichengreen eds., 1998, p. 201. 

19 Alesina, Perotti, and Tavares, "The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments," p. 198. 

20 Andrew G. Biggs, Kevin A. Hassett, and Matthew Jensen, "A Guide for Deficit Reduction in the United States 

Based on Historical Consolidations That Worked," American Enterprise Institute Economic Policy Working Paper 

2010-04, December 2010, p. 13. 
457 

Page 90f19 

Suppose consolidations that are 5% tax succeed 75% of the time, if they're 25% 

tax they succeed 40% of the time, and if they are 100% tax they succeed 20% of 

the time. After 100 attempts with each policy (5%, 25%, 100%), the average 

successful policy will be close to 25% tax increases. But the optimal policy will 

remain 5% tax. 
458 

Page 10 of 19 

Appendix A: Spreadsheet from Senator Whitehouse's Questions for the Record. 

Balance of Spending Cuts and Tax Increases In European Austerity Plans 

Announced cumulative spending cuts! tax increases, 2009-2016 

Austria 61% 39% 

Belgium 46% 54% 

Czecn Rep u b lie 44% 56% 

Estonia 26% 14% 

France 53% 47% 

Greece 53% 41% 

Iceland 72% 28% 

Ireland 66% 34% 

Italy 46% 54% 

P·oland 38% 62% 

Portugal 47% 53% 

Slovak Republic 64% 36% 

Slovenia 100% 0% 

Spain 67% 33% 

69% 31% 

15 

9 

2 

Sources: OECD Fiscal Consolidation Survey, November 2012 (consolidations); IMF (GOP); 

Federal Reserve Economic Data, Yahoo! Finance (exchange rates). 

17% 

13% 

27% 

29% 

16% 

85% 

46% 

95% 

18% 

22% 

31% 

23% 

16% 

l3% 

28% 
459 

Page 11 of 19 

Appendix B: Documenting the tables in Furth's Senate Budget Committee Testimony 

To inform the arguments made in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee on June 4, 2013, I 

used data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECO). In this 

note, I will detail my sources, choices, and calculations for the tables I presented. 

My goal was to accurately portray the net fiscal effects of policy decisions taken during recent years. As I 

made very clear in my testimony, I find the word "austerity" too broad for meaningful discussion. I 

prefer the better defined "fiscal consolidation," and for policy evaluation, what is really important is 

distinguishing between tax changes and spending changes. I argue forcefully in favor of structural 

reform, cautiously in favor of spending cuts, and firmly in opposition to tax increases. 

On "austerity" broadly, I have no opinion. 

Throughout the testimony, ! do not adhere to any particular definition of austerity. Where I labeled 

countries "austere" in graphs, it was to show that by that metric they were austere. I discuss other 

metrics that would yield different sets of "austere" countries. 

In my testimony, I am careful not to draw any causal conclusions from recent data. I leave the causality 

to the academic literature, and complement it by documenting what has occurred over the past five 

years. I also do not discuss Europe's plans for future policies. Throughout the paper it is abundantly clear 

that I am discussing what has occurred since 2007, not what may occur next year. 

As I will show, the choices! made lead to sober results, and other choices might have led to more 

exciting but less enlightening graphics. 

I first discuss the main choices in the paper. Then I discuss in detail how and why I produced Chart 1 and 

Table 1. If a reader would like a copy of my data, ! would be happy to provide it. 

General approach 

One of the truisms of academic economics is that "all papers make choices, and this one is no 

exception." 

I chose to use a data analysis approach, not a narrative approach. 21 Both are valid and valuable. I believe 

the data analysis approach better lends itself to cross-country comparisons. 

Most consequentially, I chose to begin my series prior to the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. This 

choice reflects the importance of viewing the crisis years as a whole. That is particularly important 

because many countries engaged in large, temporary deficit spending programs, such as the American 

21 A narrative approach involves cataloging, categorizing, and quantifying historical events - policy changes, in this 

case. Thus a narrative approach would record (for instance) each tax cut and tax increase, its rate changes, its 

expected or realized revenue gains, and the justification given by its enactors. 
460 

Page 12 of19 

Recovery and Reinvestment Act. If one dates from 2009 or 2010, when temporary spending programs 

peaked, one comes away with the meretricious impression that new policies have cut spending even 

where policies have not changed but temporary spending has expired and transfer payments have fallen 

back from their peak. 

Almost any data analysis will fail to find extensive austerity, by any definition, over the period from precrisis to the present. Likewise, almost any analysis that embarks from the peak of the crisis is likely to 

find rampant austerity, at least in the Euro Area. 

Another approach which I avoid would be to add up all the deficits (adjusted or not) of the past several 

years. That would be a cheap and easy way to display huge multi-year deficits, but would badly 

confound policy with relative crisis severity. 

Perhaps some wish to make the case that austerity - however they define it - was not a major policy 

until 2010 or 2011. If so, they have the burden of using the narrative approach or of showing that their 

results do not mainly stem from policy decisions taken in the 2008-2009 crisis. They also must be careful 

not to blame economic performance in 2010 on decisions taken in 2011. 
461 

Page 13 of 19 

CHART} 

Few Governments Have Enacted Real Austerity 

CYCUCAllY 

ADJUSTED SURPLUS 

2006 and 2012 and 

2007 2013 Change 

Japan -2.30 -9.90 -7.60 

New Zealand 4.20 -2.55 -6.75 

Spain 055 -4.50 -5.05 

Finland 3.05 -1.35 -4.40 

Canada 0.80 -2.85 -3,65 

Australia 1A5 -2.15 -3,60 

Iceland 3.30 -0,20 -350 

Israel -230 -5,80 -3.50 

Denmark 2.60 -0.80 -3.40 

Ireland -1,70 -3.95 -2,25 

United States -3.65 -5.80 -2.15 

Netherlands -0,20 -2,00 -LSD 

Belgium -0,95 -2.60 -1.65 

United Kingdom -4,10 -5.70 -1.60 

Korea 3.85 2,60 -1.25 

Sweden LOO -0,10 -1.10 

Slovenia -2.S0 -3.75 -0,95 

Poland -2.90 -3.60 -0,70 

Germany -1.05 -0.30 0.75 

Switzerland 0.35 1.10 0,75 

Austria -2,35 -1.55 O,SO 

Czech Republic -3.40 -2.40 1.00 

France -3.95 -2.80 1.15 

Portugal -4.20 -2.85 1.35 

Estonia -0.85 0.65 1.50 

Italy -3.95 -0.15 3.80 

Hungary -9.40 -1.15 8.25 

Greece -9.60 -0.70 8.90 

Source: OECD. 

Chart 1. 

Sources 

KEYNESIAN 

Change = Below -2.0 

Steady 

Change = -20 to 2,0 

Chart 1, "Few Governments Have Enacted Real Austerity," relies on data from the DECO's Economic 

Outlook, Volume 2013, Issue 1," which is also referred to as Economic Outlook No. 93. Due to the very 

22 GECD iLibrary, OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2013, Issue 1, May 29, 2013, http://www.oecdilibrary.org/economics/oecd-economic-outlook-volume-2013-issue-1 eco outlook-v2013-1-en (accessed June 5, 

2013). 
462 

Page 14 of 19 

timely publication date, I was working from the preliminary version (released May 29, 2013), which is 

publicly available as an embedded PDF online." 

Chart 1 is drawn directly from the table entitled "General government cyclically-adjusted financial 

balance: surplus (+) or deficit (-) as a percentage of potential GOP."" In order to have the data available 

in a timely manner, it was manually entered into an Excel spreadsheet and double-checked. 

The only calculation in Chart 1 is subtraction to calculate the change in cyclically adjusted financial 

balance from 2006-2007 to 2012-2013. 

Choices 

Chart 1 reflects the broad view of fiscal consolidation. Although the measure is imperfect, it is intended 

to abstract from business-cycle changes in revenues, spending, and GOP. The implication is that it 

reflects policy, not economic conditions. However, there is always substantial uncertainty about 

potential GOP in very recent years, so recent (and projected) years are subject to substantial revision. 

As mentioned in Footnote 9 of my testimony," I excluded luxembourg and Norway because their data 

may not be directly comparable. In luxembourg'S case, the country's large proportion of international 

commuter employees and heavy dependence on the financial sector make it exceptional. Norway's data 

excludes off-shore oil revenues, although those are (implicitly) included for other oil producers such as 

the U.K. and the Netherlands. The exclusions are trivial: both countries would have fallen around the 

middle of the table in Chart 1. 

The only major choice I made in Chart 1 was my choice of beginning and ending years. I chose to average 

two years together in both cases, because the series is fairly volatile and the economic slowdown before 

the crisis occurred at different times in different countries. Nor did I want my results to be too heavily 

influenced by short-lived policies. 

I chose to end the series with an average of 2012 and prOjected 2013 data. Although the OECO 

publication does not explicitly say so, one suspects that 2012 data, while close to accuracy, are not final 

numbers. However, the 2012 data were in several cases significantly revised from Economic Outlook No. 

92 (December 2012), indicating that new information is being taken into account. As 2013 unfolds and 

23 DECD Publishing, DECO Economic Outlook, Volume 2013, Issue 1, http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-AssetManagement/oecdLeconomics/oecd-economic-outiook-volume-2013-issue-l eco outlook-v2013-1-en (accessed 

June 5, 2013). 

24 DECD Publishing, DECO Economic Outlook, Volume 2013, Issue 1, p. 238. The previous edition of Economic 

Outlook labeled this data "Statistical Annex Table 28" and used the word "balances" instead of the phrase 

"financial balances." 

25 Salim Furth, "Testimony on the Fiscal and Economic Effects of Austerity before the Committee on the Budget," 

June 4, 2013, p. 4. 
463 

Page 15 of 19 

2012 data is finalized, the results I present may change, but probably not enough to alter the qualitative 

conclusions. 

likewise, I chose to begin the series with an average of 2006 and 2007 data. 

The data in Chart 1 can be read in two ways relative to the question of austerity. 

Some reasonable definitions of austerity could rely on the current size of the cyclically adjusted surplus. 

For instance, one might define countries with a surplus while at least 1 percent below potential GOP as 

"austere". Or one might define all countries with a surplus above 2 percent of GOP as austere, 

regardless of the business cycle. 

Alternately, one can define austerity as a change in the underlying cyclically adjusted surplus. This 

approach implicitly takes politics into account, recognizing that once interest groups have become 

accustomed to government largesse, they will resist its withdrawal. Thus Greece, while it still has a 

cyclically adjusted deficit, has narrowed that from 9.6 to 0.7 percent of GOP. 

For Chart 1, I chose a definition of austerity as at least a 2 percent tightening of the cyclically adjusted 

deficit. That takes advantage of a natural discontinuity in the data between Estonia and Italy. But for 

those who think that a better definition is, for instance, a 1 percent tightening, the data is easily 

readable and clearly labeled. 

Note that the alternate definitions of austerity would give very different results. None of the countries 

that tightened budgets by at least 2 percent are actually running a structural surplus, by the OECO 

estimate. This supports my main points: experiences are diverse, austerity is vague, and by any measure 

it is not as widespread as reported. 
464 

Page 16 of 19 

TABLE 1 

Changes in GDP, Government Spending, and Revenue, 2007-2012 

GROWTH IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING 

Government Change in Actual 2012 

Consumption Transfers Revenue Rate Surplus or Deficit 

GDP Growth Growth Growth (share of GDP) (%ofGDP) 

Eurozone 

Austria 3.0% 8B% 11% 1.76% -2.51% 

Belgium 2.1% 14.5% 19% 3.33% -4.08% 

Czech Republic 1.4% 0.1% 10% -2.41% -4.15% 

Estonia -5.0% 13.9% 22% 4.48% -0.28% 

Finland -2.8% 11.9% 19% 1.31% -2.32% 

France 0.5% 7.2% 12% 2.06% -4.97% 

Germany 3.5% 10.9% 6% 0.83% 0.16% 

Greece -22.4% -20.6% 0% 4.55% -10.05% 

Ireland -6.2% -7.5% 20% -4.05% -7.38% 

Italy -7.1% -3.4% 7% 2.18% -3.06% 

Netherlands -0.3% 9.6% 14% -0.11% -3.99% 

Portugal -5.8% -14.4% 12% -0.36°;b -6.60% 

Slovak Republic 10.0% 9.8<% 22% -0.06% -4.32% 

Slovenia -5.4% 7.7% 11% 0.60% -3.72% 

Spain -4.3% 1.8% 19% -6.31% -10.94% 

European Union, Non-Eurozone 

Denmark -4.4% 11.1% 16% 3.25% -4.51% 

Hungary -4.9% -4.7% 0% 4.26% -2.13% 

Iceland -5.3% -1.2% 21% -4.82% -3.21% 

Poland 16.7% 17.0% 18% -1.54% -4.00% 

Sweden 5.1% 8.2Cl/o 7% -4.48% -0.72% 

United Kingdom -2.0% -1.3% 12% -0.72% -5.90% 

Others 

Australia~ 13,0% 13.7% 17% -2.11% -4.16% 

Israel" 17.6% 9.0% 14% -5.47% -4.12% 

Japan' -0.8% 5.4% 16% -1.90% -8.53% 

Norway 3.2% 18.1% 17% 2.52% 15.60% 

Switzerland~ 6.1% 13.7% 17% 3.02% 0.56% 

United States' 2.8% 7.2% 22% -3.02% -9,96% 

Median 0.0% 8.2% 16% -0.06% -4.08% 

. Incomplete OEeD data for 2012 at the time of writing, so 2011 data was used where necessaty, 

Note: GOP, Government Consumption, and Transfers Growth are caklliated as log differences. 

Source: OEeD. 
465 

Page 17 of 19 

Table 1 and Chart 2 

Chart 2 is based on data from Table 1. These data are not cyclically adjusted. 

Sources 

Data for Table 1 come from Statistics OECD'6 and were accessed in the week prior to June 4, 2013. As 

noted in my testimony, data were not up-to-date for all countries. Switzerland and the non-European 

countries lacked 2012 data, and I excluded several countries which also lacked 2011 data. This panel is 

thus more heavily European than Chart 1. 

"GDP Growth" is the log difference in GDP between 2012 and 2007, expressed in constant 2005 USD, 

current PPP (purchasing power parity). I record the log difference as a percentage change for 

expositional ease, as noted in a footnote. One factor I did not account for in this or other series is the 

growth of population. 

"Government Consumption Growth" is derived from the OECD series "GP3P: Final Consumption 

Expenditure."" I convert it to constant 2005 USD using PPP exchange rates and the U.S. consumer price 

index, and take the log difference from 2007 to 2012 (or 2011). 

"Transfers" is similarly derived from the sum of OECD series "GD62_631XXP: Social benefits + Social 

transfers in kind (via market producers), payable" and "GD7P: Other current transfers, payable."" 

"Change in Revenue Rate (share of GDP)" is derived from "GTR: Total General government revenue."" 

The figures listed are the percent of GDP difference. 

"Actual 2012 Surplus or Deficit (% of GDP)" is derived from "GB9: Net lending (+)/Net borrowing (_),,,30 

and reported as the 2012 (or 2011) ratio of net lending to GDP. Because the OECD reports general 

government statistics, it would not have been accurate, for instance, to use the (available) 2012 U.S. 

federal deficit in place of series GB9. 

Choices 

"Statistics OECO, http://stats.oecd.orgl. 

27 Statistics OECD, 12. Government deficit/surplus, revenue, expenditure and main aggregates, 

http://stats.oecd.org!lndex.aspx?DatasetCode=SNA TABLE12 (downloaded May 29, 2013). 

2B Ibid. 

"Ibid. 

'" Ibid. 
466 

Page 18 of 19 

The most difficult choices in this exposition relate to presenting the growth of components of 

government income and spending. I chose the methods I best judged would give accurate comparisons 

across the various phases of the business cycle in which DECO countries presently find themselves. 

I took my cue from the ways in which government spending and revenues are generally decided. 

Consumption is usually statutory, and - absent policy change - does not change drastically with the 

business cycle. Tax policy is a set of progressive rates, not lump sums, and as a consequence the revenue 

rate is procyclical. Transfers are composed of strongly procyclical income support and old-age pensions, 

which ought to be acyclical. 

The current archetype of austerity is a country that has cut spending and raised taxes at the same time. 

Relevant to the present debate is just how much of each is taking place. 

One expects consumption to fall, on net, in austere countries. After all, most forms of government 

consumption have spending levels set by statute, and some government consumption is specifically tied 

to a revenue stream, leading to mild pro-cyclicality (such as in American municipalities). 

Another reasonable way to present these data would be to look at countries where government 

spending has fallen as a share of GOP. That yields similar results, but they are less illuminating: only the 

Czech Republic, Ireland, Israel, and Portugal saw a drop. 

Thus, a definition based on government consumption as a share of GOP rather than the level of 

government consumption would find even less austerity than the measure I chose. 

It was not obvious to me which was best to present changes in government transfer payments. A draft 

version of Table 1 presented both "Transfers Growth" and "Transfer Rate Change (% of GOP)." The 

results were very similar: only fast-growing Israel had transfers fall as a share of GOP. 

Some have protested that high transfer growth reflects weakening economies. If that is the case, the 

data would show that the strongest economies had less transfer growth. There's a correlation between 

transfer growth and GOP growth, but it's in the wrong direction (0.5) and depends heavily on the Greece 

data point. Stipulating that the zero growth of transfers in Greece and Hungary strongly suggests 

statutory transfer cuts, there's little evidence of austerity in the sector beyond Greece, Hungary, and 

maybe Italy and Sweden. And even in those cases, the "cuts" still leave transfers growing as a share of 

GOP. 

Presenting taxation as a revenue rate was the easiest choice. Revenue collection is roughly proportional 

to GOP and progressive in income. If one looked only at total revenue collected, one would find that 

growing economies increased revenues and shrinking economies lost revenue (proportionality). That 

sheds no light on austerity. 

Instead, controlling for proportionality, I used the fact that progressivity generally pushes the revenue 

rate down in a slow economy. Thus, where I observed the revenue rate rising substantially in depressed 

economies, it would be strong evidence that tax rates have risen. 
467 

Page 19 of 19 

The change in the revenue rate is mixed, and the median change is just below zero. While that is what 

one might expect during an era of average growth, the many countries that raised revenue rates despite 

a shrinking overall economy are the strongest evidence of "austere" policies that I found in the data. 

Philosophically, using revenue rates as an indicator of tax rates reflects my neo-classical economic 

beliefs. I believe that tax rates are the locus of the distorting, welfare, and growth effects of taxation. A 

Keynesian might be more inclined to focus on tax revenues. 

The final column of Table 1 was included for reference, and is not mentioned in the text of my 

testimony. 

(469) 

INVESTING IN OUR FUTURE: THE IMPACT OF 

FEDERAL BUDGET DECISIONS ON CHILDREN 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Whitehouse, Kaine, King, Sessions, 

Crapo, and Johnson. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and Eric 

M. Ueland, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. Good morning. This hearing will come to 

order. 

Let me just say that my Ranking Member Senator Sessions will 

be joining us shortly. He is on the floor, and I want to thank him 

and all of our members who will be joining us off and on throughout this Committee hearing today, as well as the members of the 

public who are here and all those watching online. 

I particularly want to thank our witnesses today. We have: Bruce 

Lesley, president of First Focus; Margaret Nimmo Crowe, the acting executive director at Voices for Virginia’s Children; Shavon Collier, a parent from the Edward C. Mazique Parent Child Center, 

and her daughter, Sakhia Whitehead, who is with her today; and, 

finally, David Muhlhausen, a research fellow in empirical policy 

analysis at the Heritage Foundation. Thank you all so much for 

being here for this important conversation. 

As I have often said, despite what you sometimes hear 

here in Washington, D.C., our budgets are about a lot more than 

abstract numbers and political winners and losers. They are about 

our country’s values and priorities. And they are about our visions 

for how Government should be serving its citizens today and for 

generations to come. 

As we move forward with our budget negotiations, it is critical 

that we keep in mind the individuals and families across the country who are impacted by the decisions that we make. Their values 

and priorities need to be represented, and their stories need to be 

told. And there is one group in particular whose voices are not 

heard often enough when it comes to the Federal budget process, 

and that is our Nation’s children. 
470 

They may not be walking the halls of Congress—or calling up 

their Senators—or strategizing with lobbyists about how to protect 

funding for their programs; but they deserve a seat at the table, 

even if they need a booster seat to get there. 

As First Focus noted in a recent report, our Federal Government 

funds over 180 different children’s programs, from health care, to 

education, juvenile justice, and nutrition. Their analysis found that 

spending on children makes up about 8 percent of the Federal 

budget. So I am glad we are having this important discussion today 

about a key group impacted by the budget decisions we make here 

in 

Washington, D.C., especially because, in recent years, children 

have been particularly affected by our economic conditions and our 

fiscal policies. 

In the wake of the Great Recession, millions of families lost their 

jobs, their homes, and their livelihoods, and the most vulnerable 

among us, including our children, were among the most impacted. 

And now, at a time when our economy is recovering, but far too 

slowly, and when too many American families are struggling with 

unemployment and underemployment, the automatic cuts of sequestration are hitting children and their families hard in communities across the country. 

They are being asked to bear a large share of spending cuts, despite the fact that children clearly did not cause our debt and deficit challenges. And I think that is just simply wrong. In fact, I 

think it is a national embarrassment and we need to fix it. 

We cannot and should not solve our debt and deficit problems on 

the backs of our children. It is wrong for our kids and it is not good 

economic policy. 

Our children are the next generation of scientists, teachers, inventors, and leaders. If we cut out investments in them, we diminish our ability to lay down a foundation for long-term growth and 

prosperity and risk our position as a global leader in the 21st century economy. 

When I worked with my colleagues on this Committee to write 

the Senate Budget that passed just 2 months ago, one of our highest priorities was investing in programs that would pay off for our 

country over the long term and ensuring the United States continues to lead for years to come. And I cannot think of anything 

more critical to that goal that protecting our investments in the 

next generation. 

As a former pre-school teacher, I know that investments in our 

children are some of the smartest the Federal Government can 

make with some of the highest return on investment, especially 

when it comes to early childhood education. 

Just ask Shavon, who is here with us today, about her two children who have been on the honor roll since graduating from their 

Head Start program. Or the single parent that I met at a Head 

Start facility in Seattle earlier this year. He was able to enroll his 

young daughter in Head Start, and the results were incredible. 

Within just a few weeks, he told me, she was more engaged and 

eager to learn. 

Children in high-quality early education programs are less likely 

to be held back in school, require special education, engage in 
471 

criminal activity, or use social safety net programs later in life. 

They are more likely to graduate from high school and have higher 

earnings as adults. 

So if you are looking for an investment that is going to pay off, 

quality early childhood education is one of the best places you can 

put your money. We should be investing more in our children, but 

sequestration right now is really taking us in the wrong direction. 

Hundreds of thousands of children across the country will lose 

access to these vital Head Start programs if those automatic cuts 

continue. For those reasons, and for many more, the Senate Budget 

fully replaces sequestration with an equal mix of responsible 

spending cuts and new revenue from those who can afford it the 

most. It prioritizes education, including expanding early learning 

programs, so that we are not unfairly hurting the children that we 

should be investing in. 

The House Republican Budget takes a very different approach. It 

does not simply accept sequestration; it makes it worse. In order 

to keep defense spending at the pre-sequester level, it simply shifts 

the entire burden of the cuts onto children, families, and communities. 

Their recently released spending levels for education programs 

come in at 18.8 percent below sequestration levels. And that does 

not make sense to me. In fact, I think it is pretty shameful. 

As Secretary Arne Duncan, who testified in front of this Committee last week, said, and I quote, ‘‘America cannot win the race 

for the future without investing in education.’’ 

We should be investing in and supporting our future leaders so 

that we can compete and win in the 21st century economy, not 

slashing funding for programs that help them learn and grow. 

It is not just education either. We need to make sure that our 

kids are getting other kinds of support they need to grow up to be 

healthy, successful adults. 

I know firsthand what a huge impact a strong safety net can 

have on children when their families fall on hard times, because 

when I was growing up, my dad was diagnosed with multiple Sclerosis; he had to stop working. My mom, who had stayed home to 

raise seven kids, had to take care of him, but she also had to get 

a job so she could support our entire family. She found some work, 

but it did not pay enough to support all of us and a husband with 

growing medical bills. So, without warning, our family fell on very 

hard times. 

And I know that the support we got from our Government was 

the difference between seven kids who might not have graduated 

from high school or college and the seven adults we have grown to 

be today, all college graduates, all working hard, all paying taxes, 

and all doing our best to contribute back to our communities. 

Because our Government was there to help my family through a 

very hard time, those seven kids grew up to be: a firefighter, a lawyer, a computer programmer, a sports writer, a homemaker, a middle school teacher, and a United States Senator. I think that was 

a pretty good investment. 

Now, I know my family is not unique. Similar stories are told all 

over this country, from coast to coast, in small towns and large 

towns. So it is critical that we maintain investments in other key 
472 

safety net programs, like those that provide health care, nutrition, 

energy, and housing assistance to low-income families and children. 

That is exactly why our Senate budget builds on the reforms of 

the Affordable Care Act, which mandates that children can no 

longer be denied health insurance based on pre-existing conditions 

and requires health insurance coverage to include pediatric services. 

And the Senate budget protects programs like the Supplemental 

Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which prevent 

hunger and malnutrition and provide healthy food and nutrition 

education to children and families. 

Our budget also increases funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and protects housing assistance programs 

to make sure all children have access to safe and stable housing. 

Research has shown that children who have access to programs 

like those during their formative years are less likely to have 

health issues, go hungry, or be at risk for developmental delays. 

The across-the-board cuts of sequestration make deep cuts to 

safety net programs, and the House budget takes those cuts even 

further. If they had their way, low-income children would be left 

more hungry and in less stable home environments, the number of 

Americans without health insurance would rise, and the most vulnerable families in our country would be put at greater risk. 

I do not think that is fair or right. These are exactly the kinds 

of programs that are critical for our children, especially those who 

are hit hardest by the economic recession. Now, while I share many 

of my colleagues’ goals of reducing our debt and deficit and reducing our debt-to-GDP ratio over the next 10 years, I do not share 

their beliefs that indiscriminate cuts are the answer. 

We cannot ask our children, especially our most vulnerable children, to bear the burden of our spending cuts. The decisions that 

we make today about our Federal budget policy will have huge impacts on the next generation. 

And to make the right choices for our children, I feel very strongly that we have got to stop lurching from crisis to crisis. The managing of our budget policy by crisis has not worked; it needs to end. 

And that is especially true when it comes to decisions that impact 

our kids. 

We should not have to wait here in Congress until the last 

minute to sit down at a table, find common ground, and work 

something out. And that is why now that the House has passed 

their budget and the Senate has passed ours, Democrats have now 

gone to the floor 14 times to ask consent to go to conference so we 

can work out our differences and come to a deal. 

Democrats are willing to make some tough decisions to find savings across the Federal budget, as long as it is done responsibly 

and fairly. If we end up headed toward another manufactured crisis this fall, the situation is only going to be made worse for our 

children and grandchildren. 

As a mother and a proud grandmother, I know that I want to 

leave my kids and grandkids a better country than the one I received. We owe it to all our children to come together to find some 

fair solutions that help our economy grow and tackle our deficit 
473 

and debt responsibly—solutions that call for responsible, sustainable spending cuts and that call on those who can afford it most 

to pay their fair share. 

America has always been a country that strives to build a stronger country for the next generation, through investments in infrastructure and innovation and education and research. We know our 

future will be defined by the scientists who come out of our schools, 

by the businesses that we create, and the technologies that we invent. And that starts with investing in our children. 

And at the very least, right now it starts with replacing sequestration and reversing the devastating cuts that are hurting children across the country as we speak. 

So I look forward today to hearing from our witnesses about this 

important subject, and I really do appreciate all of you coming here 

to testify. 

With that, I will turn it over to my Ranking Member Senator 

Sessions for his opening statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chair. You have firsthand 

experience in education, having been engaged as a teacher in an 

elementary school and, I guess, a pre-school teacher. You understand these issues. 

I had one year of teaching sixth grade, but I learned a lot about 

education during that. My wife was an elementary school teacher, 

taught second grade, for a number of years. A lot of our best 

friends are teachers and have taught throughout their lives, and 

education is really important to us. So we are glad you are here, 

and we want to see if we can do a better job of utilizing the resources of the United States to improve education in America. 

I thank all of our witnesses, and I look forward to hearing from 

you today. I am involved in the debate on the floor. We will have 

some votes a little later, and I had to speak this morning, and I 

came directly from there to here. I am sorry, Madam Chair, to be 

late. I respect your time, and I am sorry I could not be here at that 

beginning. 

The impact of our present budgetary situation on children is an 

issue that we need to talk about. What we have learned is that 

over the years many of the programs that are intended to help lowincome children and others in poverty have not had the positive 

impact we would like them to have. Indeed, the welfare reform act 

of the 1990s was said to be most damaging to children and others, 

but after it passed, poverty went down. Children living in poverty 

were reduced, and we had some positive advances from that, and 

it actually was done with less cost to the taxpayers in the process. America spends $1 trillion today on welfare and poverty programs if you count the contribution that States make. Our Federal 

Government is well over $700 billion a year for these programs. 

That is larger than Social Security or our Defense Department, yet 

poverty is now increasing. And so something is wrong. We must 

start defining compassion and helpfulness, not by how much money 

we spend but how many people we actually help to remove themselves out of poverty, how many people we can help be lifted out 

of poverty. 
474 

Of the $1 trillion spent on Federal welfare, there is $780 billion 

alone spent in the Federal budget on 83 different programs that 

provide benefits for low-income families. That is a great deal of 

money, and we need to ask ourselves and spend some real intensive effort on how we can do better with the money we are spending at a time of serious budget deficits. 

Now, the sequester does impact certain programs, but virtually 

all the larger welfare programs that provide benefits to families 

with children are exempt from the sequester. They are not being 

cut under the sequester. These programs include the Children’s 

Health Insurance Program, child nutrition programs, the National 

School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs, Medicaid, food 

stamps. All have no reductions in their appropriations from the sequester. In fact, the sequester will reduce welfare spending in 2013 

by less than 1 percent, about eight-tenths of 1 percent. And when 

we look at the effectiveness of some of the programs under review, 

we discover that even for the success stories that occur for individual families and children, overall programs themselves too often 

fail the children that they serve and do not produce the benefits 

we would like them to produce. 

The Department of Health and Human Services in December of 

2012—produced a report in October, but they revealed it on my 

birthday, in honor of my birthday—it just happened to be Christmas Eve when people were not paying much attention to it. Perhaps that was why they chose that date, not my birthday, to release the report. But what it found was that after a thorough evaluation, in December 2012, by the Department of Health and 

Human Services under President Obama’s leadership, they found 

that the program does little to improve academic outcomes of the 

children it enrolls. So that is something that ought to cause us all 

to think. We have a great program. It spends lots of money nationwide, and we have little academic improvement. 

So we will hear today from those who will suggest that programs 

like Head Start can help them to succeed, and I am sure that is 

true. Many people have been benefitted from this program. But, 

unfortunately, too often that is an exception. 

So I encourage the exploration of ways to improve our situation. 

I would note that good reading programs like in Alabama based on 

scientific studies of reading actually improve reading scores at the 

level the Nation has never seen before. Other States are using that 

program. It does not cost much money at all. It is just a different 

method of teaching. 

I note today’s AP story for Philip Elliott, U.S. tops global list in 

spending for education: ‘‘The United States spends more than other 

developed nations on its students’ education each year, with parents and private foundations picking up more of the costs than in 

the past, an international survey released Tuesday found.’’ So we 

are spending more—the average in the OECD advanced nations is 

about $9,000 per student. In the United States, it is about $15,000, 

counting college, at the same level, the report says. 

So the question is: Can we do more with the money we have and 

get better improvement? 

Thank you, Madam Chairman, for the expertise you bring to 

this, and I look forward to the hearing. 
475 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

We will now turn to our witnesses, and, Mr. Lesley, we will start 

with you and just move across the table. 

STATEMENT OF BRUCE LESLEY, DIRECTOR, FIRST FOCUS 

Mr. LESLEY. Thank you very much. I would like to thank Chairwoman Murray and Ranking Member Sessions for holding this 

hearing focused on the impact of Federal budget decisions on children, and I would also like to thank Senator Johnson, Senator 

Kaine, and Senator King for being here. 

Chilean educator, poet, and Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral 

wrote: ‘‘We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our 

worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of 

life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right 

now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being 

made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow.’ His name is ‘Today.’’’ 

Certainly, there is a clear and personal aspect to her sense of urgency. Parents and families are primary in the lives of children. 

And yet there is also an imperative for a strong public interest in 

ensuring children have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and a prosperous future or we will pay for our negligence. 

So how are we doing? Last fall, First Focus and Save the Children, at the behest of Senator Chris Dodd, sought to do a comprehensive analysis by looking at a number of indicators across all 

domains of child well-being. Although there is some good news, including the fact that passage of the bipartisan Children’s Health 

Insurance Program in 1997 has helped spur a dramatic drop in the 

number of uninsured children in this Nation so that today 91 percent of our Nation’s children now have health coverage, a 47-percent reduction ion the uninsured children in this country, the news 

for children is far from positive across the board. 

More than 8.5 million children lived in households where one or 

more child was food insecure, 1,560 children died due to abuse and 

neglect, and 1.1 million children were identified as homeless. Our 

Nation has the second worst infant mortality rate among industrialized nations, and a shocking 22 percent of our Nation’s children 

live in poverty. In fact, child poverty now stands at its highest level 

in 20 years, and the effects of child poverty are lasting and deeply 

damaging. 

At the Federal level, it is often said that our Nation’s Federal 

budget is a reflection of our Nation’s values and priorities. If so, 

children are faring quite poorly. According to our analysis in the 

soon to be released Children’s Budget 2013, and on the first slide 

in the back of my testimony, it shows that since a peak in 2010, 

total spending on children has fallen by $35 billion after adjusting 

for inflation, a 16-percent drop. Total spending on children has now 

declined for 3 years in a row. As a result, children now receive less 

than 8 percent of the Federal budget. 

With respect to discretionary spending, where Congress makes 

decisions every year, that has been cut by more than $11 billion, 

a drop of almost 13 percent. It is estimated that this year alone sequestration will cut a total of $4.2 billion out of funding for chil-
476 

dren, particularly in the areas of education, early childhood, and 

housing. 

Though sequestration is a major reason for the drop in discretionary investments, it is making an alarming trend that began 

several years earlier become worse. As a result of sequestration, 

schools districts have been forced to lay off teachers and drastically 

reduce support services to needy students and students with disabilities. Some schools have eliminated athletics and all extracurricular activities as well as some bus routes, making it more 

and more difficult for children to get to school. Head Start programs have had to close weeks early or kick children out. One program in Columbus, Indiana, literally held a lottery drawing to decide which family would lose their seat. That is a contest no parent 

wants to win. 

If sequestration remains in place, the pain is only going to get 

worse. As Chairwoman Murray noted, the House of Representatives passed a 302(b) allocation for their discretionary spending priorities that makes sequestration worse. Compared to pre-sequestration levels, the House allocations cut an additional 22 percent in 

the Labor, HHS bill, where most discretionary investments for children are made. 

Over the long term, because of sequestration and other poor policy choices, additional budget analysis by the Urban Institute—and 

the Brookings Institution in the past—in their report entitled 

‘‘Kids’ Share 2012’’ finds that: interest on the national debt will 

eclipse our investments in children by 2017 and exceed investments in children by 50 percent by 2020; and also, if things do not 

change, the share of spending for kids as a share of GDP will drop 

by 24 percent over the next decade. 

Moving forward, there are dramatic differences in the vision as 

to the extent of making investments or substantial budget cuts to 

children’s programs. First Focus has analyzed both of the budget 

proposals that passed the House and Senate and has found that 

the budget produced by the Senate to be far superior for kids. 

In every policy area, the Senate budget clearly places a much 

higher value on America’s children and protects investments critical to them, while the House budget would make enormous cuts. 

And in our testimony, we highlight some of those impacts and various policy issues. 

In addition to the recent Federal budget cuts, there are dramatic 

cuts at the State level that are compounding the problem, and 

some of those cuts both in early childhood and in early education 

are also highlighted in our budget. In fact, for the first time in decades, overall spending on public education has dropped. 

So how does the public feel about these trends? According to recent polling, Americans are dismayed by our failure to address the 

needs of kids. By a nearly 3:1 margin—56 to 20 percent—Americans believe the lives of children have become worse over the last 

10 years and are deeply pessimistic about their future. The group 

most concerned was Republican women, who believe that things 

have become worse over the last 10 years for children by a 74–10 

percent margin. 

Chairman MURRAY. Mr. Lesley, if you can wrap up. 

Mr. LESLEY. Wrap it up? Sure. 
477 

Chairman MURRAY. Unfortunately, we have votes at 11:30, so I 

am trying to keep tight timelines. 

Mr. LESLEY. Absolutely. 

As we look at the myriad of challenges facing children, it is also 

important to examine whether funds are spent in the most efficient 

way possible. In our testimony we highlight a lot of the things— 

Chairman MURRAY. And all of that will be put in the record. 

Mr. LESLEY. —about the positive impacts. So here just to conclude, continued cuts from sequestration will only make the numbers fall even further. With support so low and outcomes as poor 

as they are, children should no longer be an afterthought in Federal budget and policy decisions. Our children cannot wait any 

longer. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lesley follows:] 
478 

Senate Budget Committee 

"Investing in our Future: 

The Impact of Federal Budget Decisions on Children" 

Testimony by 

Bruce Lesley 

President, First Focus 

June 26, 2013 
479 

Bruce Lesley 

President, First Focus 

Written Testimony for Senate Budget Committee 

Hearing on Hlnvesting in our Future: The Impact of Federal Budget Decisions on Children" 

June 26, 2013 

Chilean educator, poet, and Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral wrote: 

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, 

neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now 

is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being 

developed. To him we cannot answer 70morrow: his nome is today. 

Certainly, there is a clear and personal aspect to her sense of urgency. Parents and families are primary 

in the lives of children. And yet, there is also an imperative for a strong public interest in ensuring 

children have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and a prosperous future or we will pay for 

our negligence. Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University says: 

The core that children receive matters for their development and for the kind of adults they will 

turn out to be. To grow and thrive, children need not just food and material goods but 0150 core 

and affection that promote their health, cognitive development, and social and emotional wellbeing. When children's needs in these areas are well met, all of us benefit. But when they are 

not, SOCiety SUffers. So all of us have on interest in what happens to children ... ond in how well 

their needs are met. 

America's Report Card on Children 

So, how are we doing? 

Last fall, First Focus and Save the Children, at the behest of Senator Christopher Dodd, sought to do a 

comprehensive analysis by looking at a number of indicators of child well-being to assess how our nation 

is faring. In our report, America's Report Cord 2012: Children in the U.S., we found some points of 

success, including the fact that passage of the bipartisan "Children's Health Insurance Program" in 1997 

has helped spur a dramatic drop in the number of uninsured children in this nation, so that today 91 

percent of our nation's children now have health coverage. 

But the news for children is not all good. More than 8.5 million children lived in households where one 

or more child was food insecure, 1,560 children died due to abuse and neglect, and 1.1 million children 

were identified as homeless. Our nation has the 2nd worst infant mortality rate among industrialized 

nations, and a shocking 22 percent of our nation's children live in poverty. 

In fact, child poverty now stands at its highest level in 20 years and the effects of child poverty are 

lasting and deeply damaging, particularly to children's health, nutrition, education, housing, safety, and 

future earnings. Parental stress over finances during a child's early years can also result in what is known 

as "toxic stress," which can further threaten a child's future cognitive, social, emotional, and health 

outcomes in ways difficult to alter. 

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According to a 2012 study by UNICEF: 

... failure to protect children from poverty is one of the mast costly mistakes a society can make. 

The heaviest cast of all is borne by the children themselves. But their nations must also pay a 

very significant price - in reduced skills and productivity, in lower levels of health and 

educational achievement, in increased likelihood of unemployment and welfare dependence, in 

the higher casts ofjudicial and social protection systems, and in the lass of social cohesion. 

After reviewing all the domestic and international indicators, it was the conclusion of a distinguished 

group of experts advising First Focus and Save the Children in fall 2012 that, if our nation were graded 

for how well we are doing in support of our children, the United States would receive an overall grade of 

C- and failing grades in a number of specific areas. 

Although a C- is not a failing grade, it is far from excelling. In fact, the United States now ranks 25th out 

of 29 nations, according to UNICEF, in terms ofthe percentage of 15-19 year-olds enrolled in schools 

and colleges and 23'd in the percentage not participating in either education, employment, or training. 

We are witnessing a rapid increase in the number of disconnected youth in our nation that is a 

consequence of our failure to help children reach their full and God-given potential. 

We simply must do better. The poor outcomes children face are terribly unfortunate because we have 

models for success but often fail to act or even pay attention to the crisis at hand. Even worse, at all 

levels of government, our nation is cutting current investments and support for children. 

Federal Budget Cuts to Investments In Children 

At the federal level, it is often said that our nation's federal budget is a reflection of our national 

priorities. If so, children are faring quite poorly. According to our analysis in the soon to be released 

Children's Budget 2013: 

Children now receive less than 8 percent ofthe federal budget (7.8 percent). 

Since a peak in 2010, total spending on children has fallen by $35 billion after adjusting for 

inflation, a 16 percent drop. Total spending on children has now declined for three years in a 

row. 

• Discretionary spending, where Congress makes decisions each year, has been cut by more than 

$11 billion, a drop of almost 13 percent. 

• The share of the federal budget invested in children is also down 8 percent from 2010. Some 

might think this is due to all federal spending being reduced to combat the federal deficit, but 

the fact that the share of spending has declined shows that children have borne a 

disproportionate share of the cuts. 

• It is estimated that this year alone, sequestration will cut a total of $4.2 billion out of funding for 

children, particularly in the areas of education, early childhood, and children's housing. 

Though sequestration is a major reason for the drop in discretionary investments - it's underscoring an 

alarming trend that began several years earlier and making it even worse. As a result of sequestration, 

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481 

schools districts have been forced to lay-off teachers and drastically reduce support services to needy 

students and students with disabilities. Some schools have eliminated athletics and all extra-curricular 

activities as well as some bus routes, making it more and more difficult for kids to get to school. Head 

Start programs have had to close weeks early or kick children out. One program in Columbus, Indiana, 

literally held a lottery drawing to decide which family would lose their seat. That's a contest no parent 

wants to win. 

According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2013 Kids Count, nearly lout of 3 children (32 percent) 

have parents who lack secure employment. Our own data shows that 2.8 million of those children have 

parents who have been unemployed for 6 months or more. Because of sequestration,.states are cutting 

emergency unemployment compensation by at least 10 percent, with many cutting it by substantially 

more. Some states like North Carolina are eliminating it entirely. 

If sequestration remains in place, the pain is only going to get worse. Already, families have lost housing 

supports and more children will face homelessness in the coming years. In anticipation of further cuts, 

schools in Idaho have already made plans to cut the school week from five days a week to four. We've 

heard from the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, that some schools, particularly in 

rural areas, are likely to be forced to close entirely if cuts continue. How can we tell our children that we 

value them so little? 

Even with these dire statements, the House of Representatives passed a 302(b) allocation for their 

discretionary spending priorities that makes sequestration even worse. Compared to pre-sequester 

levels, the House allocations cut an additional 22 percent in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and 

Education bill, where most discretionary investments are made for kids. 

What does a 22 percent cut mean in real dollars? It means $3.2 billion in TItle I cuts to support students. 

It means $2.5 billion less for students with disabilities. It means nearly $300 million less for schools that 

serve military families and Native American reservations. It means $140 million less for maternal and 

child health services. And it means $62 million less to protect children from child abuse and neglect. 

Over the long term the because of sequestration and other poor policy choices, additional budget 

analysis by the Urban Institute in their report entitled Kids' Share 2012 finds that: 

• Interest on the national debt will eclipse our investments in children by 2017 and exceed 

investments in children by 50 percent by 2020. 

Defense spending is now triple the federal investment in our nation's children. 

Federal spending on the elderly exceeds that for children by a 7-to-1 ratio. When including state 

and local funding, seniors still receive twice as many public dollars as do children. 

The projected level of federal spending on children as a share of GDP will drop by 24 percent in 

the next decade if federal budget policy does not change. 

Senate vs. House Budget for Children 

Moving forward, there are dramatic differences in the vision as to the extent of making investments or 

substantial budget cuts to children's programs. First Focus has analyzed both of the budget proposals 

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482 

that passed the House and Senate and has found that the budget produced by the Senate under 

Chairman Murray's leadership to be far superior for children. 

In every policy area, the Senate budget clearly places a much higher value on America's children and 

protects investments critical to them, while the House budget would make enormous cuts. 

Key findings from the First Focus analysis include: 

Children's health: The Senate budget protects the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) 

and Medicaid, which provide health care for millions of children. The House budget cuts 

Medicaid by $810 billion and converts the program into a block grant, which would 

compromise care for children, and eliminates the Affordable Care Act's protections for CHIP. 

Child nutrition: The Senate budget protects the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program 

(SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children 

(WIC), explicitly recognizing these investments' value for children. The House budget leaves 

"sequestration" budget cuts to WIC in place and cuts SNAP by $135 billion and converts the 

program into a block gra nt. 

• Education and other non-defense discretionary investments: The Senate budget largely 

protects the "non-defense discretionary" component of the federal budget, which includes 

education, housing, child abuse and neglect prevention and response, child care, and other 

critical initiatives for children. The House budget extends sequestration cuts to such 

investments and expands their impact on children by more than $100 billion over 10 years. 

Some of those impacts I've mentioned above. 

Anti-poverty tax credits: The Senate budget makes permanent improvements to the Child Tax 

Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which with those improvements, lift more than five 

million children out of poverty every year. The House budget allows those improvements to 

expire in 2017. 

State Budget Cuts to Children 

In addition to the recent federal budget cuts and future threats to children programs, there are dramatic 

cuts at the state level compounding the program and will undoubtedly harm the next generation. For 

example: 

• The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) recently released its annual 

yearbook and found that state funding for pre-K decreased by over $500 million in 2011-2012, 

adjusted for inflation, and this was the largest one-year drop ever. As a result, funding per child 

dropped by more than $400, and state spending per child has decreased by more than $1,100 

since 2001-2002. 

• The U.S. Census Bureau reported that per-student public education spending decreased in 2011 

for the first time in four decades with accompanying stories of how school districts have been 

closing schools, cutting teachers, increasing class size, and cutting extracurricular activities 

across the country. 

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483 

The Public Values Investing in Children - Our Future 

How does the public feel about these trends? According to recent polling, Americans are dismayed by 

our failure to address the needs of children. In fact, by a nearly 3-to-l margin (56-20 percent), 

Americans believe the lives of children have become worse over the last ten years and are deeply 

pessimistic about their future. The group most concerned was Republican women, who believe that 

things have become worse over the last ten years for children by a 74-10 percent margin. 

And while voters recognize the need to make budget cuts to reduce the federal deficit, they 

overwhelmingly want policymakers to make real choices that reflect the importance children and 

families. Thus, in two separate polls conducted by Public Opinion Research and Greenberg Quinlan 

Rosner Research (one Republican and one Democratic firm), voters strongly opposed making major cuts 

to K-12 education, child nutrition, the Children's Health Insurance Program (which outpolled Medicare), 

Medicaid, early childhood education, funding to combat child abuse and neglect, and student loans. 

In fact, Tea Party supporters expressed opposition to cutting critical programs for children, such as 

funding to prevent child abuse and neglect (35-64 percent), Medicaid (37-62 percent), education (42-58 

percent), and tax credits for working families with children (40-56 percent), in order to reduce the 

federal deficit. Again, they chose a number of non-children's programs to cut instead. 

Money Matters: Cost Effectiveness and Adequacy 

As we look to address the myriad of challenges facing children, it is always important to examine 

whether funds are spent in the most efficient way possible. For example, in education policy, finance 

experts Michael Rebell and Joseph Wardenski have concluded that "money spent on qualified teachers, 

smaller class sizes, preschool initiatives, and academic intervention programs does make a substantial 

difference in student achievement.. .. " 

Bruce Baker at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education concurs: 

To be blunt, money does motter. Schools ond districts with more money cleorly hove greoter 

ability to provide higher-quality, broader, and deeper educational opportunities to the children 

they serve. Furthermare, in the obsence of money, or in the aftermath of deep cuts to existing 

funding, schools ore unable to do many of the things they need to do in order to maintain quality 

educotional apportunities. 

It is certoinly reasonoble to acknowledge that money, by itselt is not a comprehensive solution 

for improving school quality. Clearly, money can be spent poorly and have limited influence on 

schaol quality. Or, money can be spent well and have substantive positive influence. But money 

that's not there can't do either. The available evidence leaves little doubt. Sufficient financial 

resources are a necessary underlying condition for providing quality educatian. 

In contrast, it is far less clear that all the dollars spent on more and more student testing has had a 

positive impact on educational achievement. 

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484 

Meanwhile, funding for high-quality, early childhood programs has been proven to have enormous 

positive outcomes for children. According to the Texas Equity Center in its report Money Still Matters!, 

these include: 

Improvements in school readiness 

• Narrowing ofthe achievement gap 

Improvements in academic performance 

• Reductions in retention-in-grade rates 

Reductions in dropout rates 

• Reductions in incarceration rates 

Reductions in referrals to special education 

Prevention of academic failure 

Remediation of the negative effect of poverty 

Increased employment and earnings when adult 

Increased IQ 

Increased college attendance 

Improved vocabulary acquisition 

Improved self-esteem 

• Stimulated intellectual curiosity 

• Improved social skills 

The promise of these significant changes in the life-trajectory of children from high-quality and effective 

early childhood programs has been proven to yield a substantial return on investment to national, state, 

and local economies. 

In his book entitled Investing In Kids: Early Childhood Programs and Local Economic Development, 

economist Timothy Bartik concludes that high-quality universal pre-K education, high-quality child care, 

and the Nurse Family Partnership program all yield significant returns on investment and increased state 

earnings per capita, particularly in the long-term. 

Arthur Rolnick and Rob Grunewald from the Federal Reserve Back of Minneapolis have concluded: 

Campa red with the billions of dollars spent each year on questionable economic development 

schemes, we think investment in early childhood is a far better and more promising economic 

development tool. We are confident that ECE investments, driven by a scalable market-based 

approach thot focuses on at-risk children, encourage parental involvement, produce measurable 

outcomes, and secure a long-term commitment, will lower crime, create a stranger workforce, 

and yield a high public return . .. Not only will these efforts benefit children and families, they will 

benefit the taxpaying public and the national economy. 

And, in research for the Foundation for Child Development by William O'Hare at the Annie E. Casey 

Foundation and Mark Mather and Genevieve Dupuis at the Population Research Center, they also find 

that a strong correlation clearly exists between the well-being of children and state decisions to make 

investments in children. 

As their study, entitled "Investing in Public Programs Matters: How State Policies Impact Children's 

lives," concludes: "Public investments from federal, state, and local governments matter ... When 

6 
485 

states invest in programs that benefit children and families and contribute to their well-being, children 

and families are better off. When states cut or neglect investing in these programs, the nation is worse 

off." 

But lawmakers need not rely on academics for proof of the value of smart investment in kids. Each of 

your states administers a federal-state Children's Health Insurance Program partnership that proves it 

every day. CHIP, the creation of a Republican-controlled Congress and a Democratic president, works 

with Medicaid to provide cost-effective care for kids every day. That means spending a few hundred 

dollars for inhalers that keep asthma under control, rather than a few thousand dollars on a hospital 

admission when it gets out of control. It means kids don't fall behind in school because of vision or 

hearing problems. And it means parents climbing the economic ladder can spend more time at work and 

less time at home with sick children. 

The evidence and our own experience are clear: the choices we make with respect to children and their 

future matters for both them and the nation. 

Agenda for ActIon 

As a result, we can make the right investments now to take advantage of our nation's greatest resource, 

its children, or we can fail them and our future. It is our choice to make and now is the time. 

As President Barack Obama said at the prayer vigil in Newtown, Connecticut, in December, "This is our 

first task, caring for our children. It's ourfirstjob.lfwe don't get that right, we don't get anything right. 

That's how, as a society, we will be judged." 

And, as House Speaker John Boehner said on CBS's 60 Minutes in December 2010, "I have been chasing 

the American Dream my whole career. There are some things that I have a difficult time talking aboutfamily, kids ... Making sure that these kids have a shot at the American Dream like I did is important." 

It takes a partnership of families, schools, communities, and yes, government to help children grow 

strong bodies and minds. And, Americans very much want to restore American leadership in the world 

and ensure that the next generation is better off than we have been. 

But, the simple fact is that you cannot expect returns on investments you do not make. And children 

have just one childhood, so they cannot wait any longer for action. Now is the time for us to start 

making cost-effective and targeted investments in our children or we will bear the consequences of our 

inaction for decades and generations to come. 

To reverse the three-year downward trend for America's children, a first step would be to renew the 

National Commission on Children, which finalized its call to action, Beyond Rhetoric: A New American 

Agenda for Children and Families in 1991. 

That Commission, appOinted by President H. W. Bush and chaired by Senator Jay Rockefeller, put forth a 

national blueprint to improve the lives and well-being of America's children and families. It successfully 

generated momentum toward the enactment of some critical policy changes, such as the Child Tax 

Credit and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Building on the basic principle that every child 

should have the opportunity to develop to his or her full potential, the Commission sought to identify 

ways to ensure that parents have the necessary means and supports to raise healthy children. Now, 22 

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486 

years after the Commission's final report, a fresh look at how our children are faring reveals a 

compelling need for an updated national action plan, ensuring the wellbeing of our youth with a focus 

on creating a bipartisan vision for America as a global frontrunner in child well-being. 

Recognizing current budget constraints and that the bUdget deficit is also a children's issue, the 

President and Congress should consider some low-cost, immediate changes to make the systems, 

structures, and overall functions of government work better for children. These include, but are not 

lim ited to, the following ideas: 

Creation of a Children's Budget whereby the federal government commits to measuring and 

fully understanding whether children are gaining or losing ground in the federal budget, which is 

symbolic of our national priorities and commitment to our children. 

Adoption of a Child Poverty Target that would commit the United States to the goal of cutting 

our nation's child poverty rate in half in 10 years, just like British Prime Minister Tony Blair 

successfully did after his pledge in 1999. 

Establish more Youth Councils, as have been created in a number of states across the country 

and in at least 93 countries spanning the alphabetfrom Anguilla to Zimbabwe, to give children 

and youth a voice in public policies that impact their lives. 

In short, less than 8 percent of the federal budget is currently dedicated to children and that amount is a 

fraction of the total provided to our nation's senior citizens. Continued cuts from sequestration will only 

make that number fall even further. With support so low and outcomes as poor as they are, children 

should no longer be an afterthought in federal budget and policy decisions. Our children cannot wait any 

longer. 

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487 

APPENDIX: Additional Materials 

1. Slides - Kids & the Federal Budget 

2. House 302(b) Puts Kids at Risk 

3. Fiscal Year 2014 Budget's At A Glance 

9 
488 

2010 2011 2012 2013 

Fiscal Year 
489 

p 

2 
490 

201 0 2013 

3 
491 

Children 

Social Security, 

Medicare & Medicaid 

(Non-Child) 

III Defense 

II Interest on the Debt 

IIIIi All Other Outlays 

4 
492 

20]0 2011 2012 2013 

Fiscal Year 

5 
493 

6 
494 
495 

H N 

8 
496 

9 
497 

10 
498 

K-12 Education 

Child Nutrition Programs 

CHIP 

Medicaid 

Medicare 

Head Start 

Student loans/Pel! Grants 

Unemploymenet Insurance 

Medical & Scientific Research 

N ati an a I Defe n se ~~~::::::::::;:~:~~i::···········::::::::~ .. :,,:,.:.:,.".,:,.,.,: .. :",,:;;;;;;;;;~~~:~:l;::;::;:::ii::iii!!;;;li!lilll~iiiil!!!!I!ii!!1IIi1lll 

Job-Training Programs 

Transportation Funding 

iii! No Reduction Minor Reduction l1li Major Reduction 

11 
499 

Medicaid, which provides health 

care to lower income seniors, the 

disabled, and children 

Education programs aimed at 

inl1,prnnrt,'n 10 twelfth grade 

to prevent child abuse 

ID NO 

12 
500 

The Children's Health Insurance 

Program or CHIP 

Tax credits for working families with 

children, like the Child Tax Credit and 

the Earned Income Tax Credit 

Head Start programs for 

pre-school children 

Head Start programs for 

pre-school children 

s 

13 
501 

Medical & scientific research 

Tax credits for working families 

with children 

Programs to prevent child 

abuse & neglect 

The Children's Health Insurance 

Program or CHIP 

Medicaid 

Education programs aimed at 

kindergarten to twelfth grade 

Medicare, which provides 

healthcare to seniors 

Social Security 

NG 

14 
502 

.. '"v.r 

1r 

OUSE 302(B) APPROPRIATIONS CAPS 

PUT KIDS' INITIATIVES AT RISK 

FIRST Focus May 2013 

onrOnt·latlons Committee in the HOllse of Representatives recently approved snbcomtnittec allocation ltTe:lS, commonly 

allocatlOos, \\lhlCh wIll dcyastate investments to kids. The 302(b) allocation provtdes each appropriation 

~ubconun1ttee amount of money it has to speod OIl discrettonary budget Items - or programs that are not funded 

automatically through legislation, 

Compared to the levels in the Fiscal Year 2013 

Human Sernces, Education commIttee, \vhich funus the 

(ut. Jnvestments In educatlOn, children's health, duld abuse neglect prevention, and early childhood education 

cut almost 513 billLon. The TransportatIon, and erban Development commlttee '\vill sec a 15 percent cut, me-anmg 

tnvestments 111 chitdrcn's houstn,e; could be cut as much as S 1 A- b1llion. 

In total, the cut to lnVeSilllents for kids could be S15 billion. Sequestration cuts, "l,vhich took effect earlier this year, hayc 

already hIt kIds by nearly 54 Inllion. Thr:sc allocatlons arc another mon: 10 the 'Hong direction 

\\"nh child poverty at levels not s('{~n for 

Congress must repeal S(;qucstratlon and restorc cuts 

short SIghted but rrl"eSpollSlble to cut invcstm(;llts in ktds 

chtldren's fut'lIfe;; arc at stake 

Contact: JOfed Solomon! joreds@firstfocus.net 1 20).657.0610 I www firsifocus.net 
503 

"'fIr • 

1r 

FIRST Focus 

THE PRESIDENT'S 2014 

BUDGET AT A GLANCE 

April 2013 

On April 10, 2013, President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2014 budget request. This document provides a comparison of President Obama's budget and the budgets passed by the I-louse and Senate, looking at four key areas that impact 

children's well-being: health; nutrition; federal budget sequestration and non-defense discretionary investments like education; 

and family tax credits. It also provides a detailed analysis of the discretionary portion of his budget proposal from a children's 

perspective, highlighting notable increases, cuts, and new initiatives. 

KEY ISSUES: SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISONS 

Investments in Health 

Federal investments in children's health go a long way in helping kids grow-up strong and happy. Medicaid and the Children's 

Health Insurance Program (CHIP) together help provide health services for nearly one third of the nation's children. Nearly 

half of all Medicaid beneficiaries are children, despite the fact that they only make up 20 percent of the cost 

House Budget Senate Budget Obama Budget 

• Turns Medicaid into a block gtant, 

cutting $810 billion over the next 10 

years, resulting in a cut of more than 

$160 billion to children's health. Last 

year the Urban Institute estimated that a 

very similar ptoposal in the House 

budget would result in 14 to 21 million 

individuals losing Medicaid coverage 

by 20221 

• DefWlds the Affotdable Care Act 

(ACA), making it harder for low-income 

and middle class families to get health 

coverage. In last year's analysis, the 

Congressional Budget Office found that 

the ACA cuts would cause states to make 

considerable cutbacks including CHIP 

and Medicaid eligibility restrictions, 

rationing the care children receive, 

and lower payments to providers - all 

of which would make it harder for 

children to get the care they need. 

Tax Credits 

• Protects investments in Medicaid, 

CHIP, and the ACA and highlights 

their importance for children, The 

budget plan also explicitly recognizes 

that half of the beneficiaries in Medicaid 

are children. 

• Protects investments in Medicaid, 

CHIP, and the ACA and highlights 

their importance for children. 

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are two of the most effective anti-poverty investments 

for working families "With children. Combined, these credits lift 5 million children out of poveny annually. In 2009, 

Congress passed significant improvements to these credits, which alone kept neady 1 million kids from poverty in 

201L2 The American Tax Relief Act, of January 2013 e..xtended these credits with the improvements through 2017. With more 

than one in every five children in poverty, preserving these improvements is vital 

House Bud et 

• Assumes the improvements will 

expire in 2017 and does not extend 

them 

Senate Bud et 

• Calls for the improvements to be 

made pennanent, 

Obama Bud et 

• Calls the improvements to be made 

pennanent. 

Contact: Jared Solomon, Senior Director Budget Policy I ioreds@firsrlocus.net I 202.657.0670 I www.firsrlocus.net 
504 

Investment. in Nutrition 

One in every five children in I\.mcrica faces the possibility that they or a family member will not have enough food to eat 

tomorrow. Investments in child nutrition are critical to pW,\Tirling the help families need to put food on their tahles. Nearly half 

of all resources in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) go to children. In 2011, SNAP alone helped lift 

2.1 million children out ofpoverty.3 

House Bud et Senate Bud et Ohama Bud et 

• Turns SN~-\'P into a block grant and 

changes eligibility requirements, 

cutting $135 billion over ten years. 

This would result in a cut of more 

than $63 billion to kids. lbese cuts 

and changes would jeopardize the food 

security of millions of children."' 

• Leaves in place harmful sequestration 

cuts that could have had a dramatic 

impact on the Special Supplemental 

Nutrition Program for \"'{iomen, Infant, 

and Children (\VIC)5 

• Protects investments in SNAP and 

WIC. The budget plan explicitly 

recognizes the importance of these 

programs for children and strongly 

supports their role in reducing hunger. 

• Protects investments in SNAP and 

Wrc. The budget plan explicitly 

recognizes tlle importance of these 

programs for children and strongly 

supports their role in reducing hunger. 

Sequestration & Non-Defense Discretionary Investments like Education 

Discretionary- investments make up one third of all federal money that goes to children. These crucial investments include 

things like Head Start and child care assistance, special education services and help for low income students, as well as child 

abuse prevention and housing supports that prevent homelessness. Discretionary investments provide some ofthe 

biggest bang for the buck, particularly in early childhood, where studies show a retum of seven dollars for every one 

dollar spent. 6 From 2010 to 2013, discretionary investments for kids have already been cut by more than $5 billion 

dollars. 

House Budget Senate Budget Obama Budget 

• Leaves in place and extends harmful 

sequestration cuts that proportionally 

could cut investments to kids by more 

than $40 billion over 11 years. These cuts 

fall heavily on investments in educatlOn, 

early childhood, and children's housing.? 

• Cuts non-defense discretionary spending 

by an additional $650 billion over 10 

years by shlftlng all the scheduled cuts in 

defense spending onto non-defense areas. 

"-\pplied proportionally, these additional 

cuts could cost kids another $72 

billion.8 

• By protecting defense spending, in total, 

the I rouse budget cuts non-defense 

illscretionary investments by nearly $1 

trillion below the Budget Control Act 

over 10 years, meaning kids lose $112 

billion. 

• Eliminates sequestration, 

including the restoration of all cuts 

currently in effect. This alone 

would restore more than $4 

billion in investmeuts for kids 

for Fiscal Year 2013. 

• Further IO"\\o"ers non~defense 

discretionary spending caps by $150 

billion. Applylllg this reduction 

proportionally, this would result in 

a $17 billion reduction in funding 

for children's initiatives. J Iowever, 

the budget proposal emphasizes the 

importance of early education, child 

care, child nutrition, as well as other 

areas suggesting the intent to 

protect critical investments in 

children. 

• Eliminates sequestration, including 

the restoration of all cuts currently in 

effect. This alone would restore more 

than $4 billion in investments for 

kids for Fiscal Year 2013. 

• Further lowers non~defense 

discretionary spending caps by $101 

billion over 10 years, beginning Ul 

2017. ~-\rplying this reduction 

proportionally, this would result in an 

$11 billion reduction in funding for 

children's initiatives. However, like the 

Senate budget, the proposal 

emphasizes the importance of early 

education, child care, child nutrition, 

as well as other areas sU&.lScsting the 

intent to protect critical investments in 

children even "\\o;th the lowered caps. 

In addition to the categories above there are several other sharp distinctions between the budget plans that impllct kids. 111e 

House budget also calls for significant cuts in mandatory programming, much of which serves low income children. Initiatives 

like Supplemental Social Security, which helps disabled and orphaned children, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families 
505 

The President's 201 <1 at a Glance 

are likely to be cut. Tbc House budget also includes reconciliation instructions to eight committees calling on them each to 

produce legislation that saves at least $1 billion. While details are unclear at this point, similar instructions last year 

resulted in at least another $40 billion in cuts to investments for kids over 10 years, including endjng access to the 

eTC for up to 5.5 million kids.' 

The Senate budget includes no such reconciliation instructions and does not call for any additional substantial cuts in 

mandatory initiatives that impact children. The Senate budget does sets aside an additional $100 billion worth of 

stimulus investments. Though not detailed, the budget calls for a large part of the stimulus to be invested in 

rebuilding schools, new education and training initiatives, and expansion of high quality early childhood initiatives. 

The President's budget calls for a number of new initiatives that will greatly benefit children, These include a 10 year 

investment of more than $76 billion for universal pre-kindergarten, a push for higher minimum wage, a stronger 

unemployment insurance system, a renewed focus and investment in low-income housing, and a restoration of the 

TANF supplemental block grants. 

DISCRETIONARY BUDGET DETAILS 

Changes below are denominated in nominal dollars, compared to 2013 appropriations, unless othcnvise noted. The President's 

budget restores sequestration cuts, so discretionary increases to many investments for children are striking. The kids' share 0:1 

total discretionary spending would rise mote than 14% under President Obama's budget, compared to 2010. 

Overall Discretionary Investment ($) 

Overall Discretionary Investment (%) 

Overall Discretionary Investment 

(real dollars) 

Kids' Share of Total Discretionary 

Spending 

Children's Health 

Child Nutrition 

Child Safety 

Child Welfare 

Early Childhood 

Education 

Housing 

Training 

11ft-

~; Totals reflect First Focus calculations on the share of spending in each program 

means sequester has gone into effect. These cuts result m an approximate 5% cut 

With 2.2% inflation 

for 2014. 

From 6.3% in 2010 

to 7.19% in 2014. 

Down 3% 

Up 9.7% 

Up71.7% 

Down 6.3% 

Up 29.5% 

Up 10% 

Up 12.7% 

Up 5.8% 

2013 spending totals assume current law, which 

II 
506 

Selected Notable I"creas ... 

Child Care Devej~pment BI~ck Grant 

Head Start 

Healthy Homes Program 

Homeless Assistance Grant.sl,) 

Juvenile Justice Programs!! 

Proiect Based Rental Assistance" 

Promise Neighborhoods 

Public Housing Operating Fund" 

Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infonts, & 

Children (WIC) 

Tenant Based Rental Assistance H 

Unaccompanied Alien Child Program 

Seleded Notable Cut. 

Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Educati~n 

Community Service Block Grant 

High School Graduation Initiative 

low Income Home Energy Assistance l '; 

Selected New Proposal. 

P~~;~-h~~1 beve'i~pment G'ra~ts 

Preschoal for All", 

Proiect AWARE & Other School Based Mental Health 

Expansions 

CONCLUSION 

l"cre""0 

12% 

$2.038 27% 

$15.5M 164% 

$454M 24% 

$73M 37% 

$1.4B 16% 

$243M 429% 

$560M 14% 

$631M 10% 

$2.03B 11% 

$335M 210% 

Decrease to 

fY20n 

$166M 65% 

$325M 48% 

$46M 100% 

$270M 8% 

$1.3B 

$130M 

\Xllile President Ob-ama's budget and the S~natc budget plan arc they clearly place a higher value on investments 

in children than the Home plan. The \Vhite House and Senate plan possible to deliver fiscal progress while still 

investtng in our children. As policymakcrs continue with the !;Y14 budget process, it is important to remember that 
507 

I he President's 2014 Budget at a Glance 

investments in children make up less than 8 percent of the entire federal budget. Children arc not the cause of our fiscai 

imbalance, and cutting the investments that help them grow is a poor decision that threatens their future. 

The right budget for our nation is one that provides appropriate investments in our children's hcalthcare, housing, nutrition, 

and education. Every child deserves an equal chance at the American dream. 

1 Children make-up 20 percent of the o\'crall costs of Medicaid, which applied proportionally, equals the cut to childrt'o's invc$tmel\t$ . 

. : CBPP (February 1, 2013) "Policy Basics: The Child Tax Credit," http://www.cbpp.oqrlcms/index.cfm?EcY1l'W&id:::c2982 

'\ carp (;\larch 15, 2013) Ryan Budget Would Slash SNAP Funding By $135 Billion Over Ten Years," 

http://\\r\vw.cbpp.ofj:;!cms/indcx.cfm?fa=:vi.:w&id-3923# ftnref17 

4 ChIldren make up 47 percent of the overall costs of S~AP, which applied proportionally, equals the cut to childrco's investments. 

S At the last minute the Senate approved a spending bill for the Department of Agriculture that restored much of the funding cut from 

WIC because of sequestration in 2013. ;\dditional cuts were offset by tapping into transfer funds, as well as the \VIC contingency fund, 

which is meant to be used for increases in food costs or additional enrollees during a time of high need. 

6 [icckman,James, Journal of Public Economics. '~rhc Rate ofRetum to thl' flighScope Perry Preschool Program." 18 November 2009. 

7 !\:on-defensc chscretionary investments in children make-up 11.2 percerJt of all non-defeose discretionary investments. /\pphed proportiooally to the 

extended sequestration b;lsdine as well 'as scheduled cuts for FY13 getS you to over $40 btllion. 

~ ShIfts the 555 bIllion for from the defense sequestration and shifts additlooa! Pell resources onto the non-defeose discretiooary ledger. 

11 Includes Title ll, Title V, & the JuvCllile Accountability Block Grant, 

!2 Share dedicated to children is 26%. 

!3 Share dediC'Jted to children is 41 %. 

14 Share Lledicated to rhtldrco is 16%. 

15 Share dedicated to children is 23%. 

16 Preschool for J\ll is a maodatory investment and is not included in the discretionary totals on page 3. 

Welfare," 

D 
508 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe? 

STATEMENT OF MARGARET NIMMO CROWE, INTERIM 

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VOICES FOR VIRGINIA’S CHILDREN 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Good morning. Thank you so much for the 

opportunity, Chairwoman Murray and Ranking Member Sessions 

and members of the Committee. 

Voices for Virginia’s Children is a nonpartisan, privately funded 

child advocacy organization in Virginia. We have been working 

since 1994 with Republicans and Democrats, primarily at the State 

level, to pass commonsense solutions for the problems that face 

Virginia’s children. 

I would first like to give you a snapshot of how kids are doing 

in Virginia. We are the Annie E. Casey Foundation grantee in Virginia for the KIDS COUNT data, which just came out on Monday, 

and this shows that we rank 11th in child well-being overall in the 

country. That is consistent with the fact that Virginia is eighth in 

per capita income. So you can see that, relatively speaking, children are doing very well in Virginia, and we are proud of that. And 

some of that is due to the action of our previous Governors, as well 

as our current Governor— 

Senator SESSIONS. Take a bow, Senator Kaine. 

[Laughter.] 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Senator Kaine, when he was Governor, put 

a particular focus on pre-K. Senator Warner had a particular focus 

as Governor on enrolling children in health insurance. And both of 

those indicators, education and health, we have improved in Virginia. 

What is really worrying to us as child advocates in Virginia is 

the child poverty rate. Although our economy is starting to recover, 

the child poverty rate has been going up every year since 2005. We 

now have 280,000 children in Virginia who live below the poverty 

line, and the overall percentage is 15.6 percent, one in six kids. 

And that does not sound so bad, but that masks the fact that there 

are areas of Virginia which have a much higher poverty rate. 

Largely the rural Southside and southwestern Virginia have a rate 

of one in four children living in poverty, and in the relatively prosperous Richmond region, the city of Petersburg has a rate above 

one in three children living in poverty. So I just wanted to give you 

a picture of what that is like in Virginia, and the reason that we 

are so focused on the child poverty rate is because research has 

shown that, long term, children who spend a lot of time in poverty 

growing up have much poorer outcomes in terms of chronic health 

problems, including mental health problems, academic failure and 

dropping out of school, as well as they are much more likely to 

have lower-paying jobs as adults. 

So I want to make two points to you today about the effects of 

the sequester and Federal budget on Virginia’s children. 

The first is that our economy is improving, but investments in 

children are still below where they were at the beginning of the recession. So this is despite the fact that we have more children in 

poverty every year. 
509 

Lower investments in kids have a double effect on our economy. 

They actually cut jobs currently for our current workforce, and they 

mean that our workforce of the future is not getting prepared in 

a way that they should be. I want to give you two examples. 

The Head Start Association in Virginia predicts that this fall 

they will cut 112 jobs at Head Start programs and 647 children 

will lose their slots. 

You also may not be aware that Virginia has the highest number 

of students who are eligible for Impact Aid. This is for primarily 

military children in Virginia. They predict $1.76 million in cuts 

from three school systems that have a large percentage of kids in 

military families. Prince George County school system is one of 

those. Since 2009, they have lost 41 jobs, including instructional 

staff, and this is while they have gained 150 students in their 

school system. 

The second point I would like to make about the sequester cuts 

is that it is not just the cuts themselves, but those cuts are compounded at the State level. I want to tell you what Virginia’s General Assembly has done over the last few years. For the last two 

General Assembly sessions, on top of our rainy day fund, the General Assembly has set aside $50 million to hedge against the sequester cuts. On the one hand, this is a very prudent thing to do. 

On the other hand, it reduces the already diminished pot of general 

fund dollars by $50 million. These are funds that go to K-12 education, social services, and health care. 

A very concrete way that this has affected kids in Virginia is 

through the Early Intervention Program, which is part of IDEA, 

the special education law. This serves kids 0 to 3 who have developmental disabilities and delays. We are facing a 52-percent increase in the number of children identified for this service and a 

State funding gap of $8.5 million in the coming year. We have been 

advocating very hard about this at the State level, but we were still 

not able to make up that gap. 

This affects kids like Tommy Mellett in Chesterfield, who had a 

brain hemorrhage before he turned 6 weeks old. He has been receiving physical therapy and occupational therapy to recover from 

this brain injury. If we cannot find the State funding to replace the 

dollars that are lost, his therapy is going to be cut in half. Not only 

is this bad for him and his family, but it is really shortsighted from 

a policy perspective because one in five children who receive early 

intervention services actually graduate from the program before 

they turn 3. They never need money spent on them in special education. And the remainder of those children catch up to their full 

potential, whatever that may be. 

So, in conclusion, I would just like to make the point that the effects of the sequester are not hypothetical. They are very real, 

where the rubber meets the road. And they are affecting both our 

current and future workforce. We are very alarmed by the cuts in 

the House budget that would come on top of that, and we appreciate the fact that the Senate budget is preserving those investments in children. 

Thank you very much for your time. 

[The prepared statement of Nimmo Crowe follows:] 
510 

[Voij] 

f ir. ' lJurps 

llliItien 

Testimony for United States Senate Budget Committee Hearing: 

"Investing in our Future: The Impact of Federal Budget Decisions on Children" 

June 26, 2013 

Margaret Nimmo Crowe 

Acting Executive Director 

Voices for Virginia's Children 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify to the Committee today. Voices for Virginia's Children 

is a nonpartisan, nonprofit child advocacy organization. Our mission is to champion public 

policies that improve the lives of Virginia's children, particularly those who are vulnerable. It is 

important for you to know that we achieve this mission strictly with private funding, which 

enables us to speak for children without any competing interests. Since 1994 we have worked 

with Republicans and Democrats alike, primarily at the state level, to find common-sense 

solutions to the problems affecting Virginia's children. 

We are the Annie E. Casey KIDS COUNT organization in Virginia, and this Monday the 

Foundation released its 2013 KIDS COUNT data book, which includes indicators of child wellbeing across several domains for each state. 11"\ Virginia, kids are doing relatively well, giving us 

an overall ranking of 11th in child well-being. We have improved on several indicators in the 

domains of education, health, and family and community. And that is consistent with the fact 

that we are a relatively prosperous state: we rank 8th in per capita income." 

Some of the reasons for this high ranking go back to the actions of previous governors, 

including Senator Warner's push to enroll children in Medicaid and CHIP while he was Governor 

and Senator Kaine's emphasis on pre-kindergarten as Governor. Making children's issues a 

priority and funding programs that have a proven positive impact on children reap rewards into 

the future. 

Where we continue to have the greatest struggle is on economic indicators for our children: 

one in six in 6 Virginia children live in poverty-that's 280,000 children. The number of children 

living in poverty has increased every year since 2005, and children are faring worse overall than 

the general population. (15% child poverty vs. 12% overall poverty rate.)2 

We know from previous recessions that children thrown into poverty are likely to remain in 

poverty several years after a recession ends. So even though Virginia's economy is recovering, 

1 http://ilarc.virginia.gov/reports/Rpt438.pdf 

2 http://datacenter .kidscou nt.org/data/tables/5879-children-ages~O-17 -livi ng-lnpovertv?loc-48&loct=2#detailed12/any/false/867,133,38,35,18/any/12493.12494 

Voices for Virginia's Children 701 E. Franklin Street, Suite 807 Richmond, Virginia 23219 www.vakids.org 
511 

children continue to suffer. Research shows that children living in prolonged poverty are more 

likely to develop chronic health problems, emotional and behavioral problems, experience 

academic failure and drop out of school, and have low paying jobs as adults.3 

It's important to note that the one in six rate of child poverty statewide masks some areas of 

concentrated poverty. For example, the Richmond region has a child poverty rate of 16.5 

percent, yet ranges from 7.3 percent in Hanover to 37.7 percent in Petersburg.4 That means 

more than one in three children in Petersburg live below the federal poverty rate, which is 

$23,550 per year for a family of four. The regions with the highest child poverty rates are the 

mostly rural Southside VA, and Southwest VA, where roughly one in four children lives in 

poverty. 

Now that you have the background of how children in Virginia are doing, I would like to tell you 

how the federal budget impacts these children. 

Federal budget cuts lead to lost opportunities for children. lost jobs for adults 

During the great recession, we had to make serious cuts to programs impacting children to 

balance our state budget. States are just starting to claw out of recession-many programs for 

children like home visiting have still not been restored to their pre-recession funding levels. 

Federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds were used as a backstop to fill 

some of those holes, but of course those are gone. Now, Virginia is regaining its financial 

stability, and more federal cuts-even small ones - jeopardize our children's well-being. Since 

the sequester cuts are ongoing, states are going to continue to struggle to meet children's 

needs. 

Unfortunately, the House of Representatives is proposing significant future cuts to children's 

funding; with the current subcommittee appropriation levels, kids programs in total would take 

an additional hit of up to $15 billion, while the levels in the Labor, Health and Human Services, 

and Education bill are cut 22% from pre-recession funding. Children would be affected 

negatively across the board, from special education to Title I funding in schools, to housing 

assistance and nutrition programs. 

You've heard what a 22 percent cut means nationally in real terms, but what does it mean for 

Virginia? It means $51 million in additional TItle I cuts to support students. It means nearly $8 

million less for schools that serve military families. It means nearly $3 million less for maternal 

and child health services. And it means $1 million less for children to receive immunizations and 

vaccinations. Knowing that children continue to live in poverty at a disproportionate rate to the 

general population, we simply cannot afford to pile on further budget cuts to the programs that 

help lift them out of poverty. 

3 Brooks-Gunn. J. & Duncan, G.J., ''The Effects of Poverty on Children', The Future of Children - Princeton-Brookings - Volume 

7, Number 2, Summer/Fall 1997 

4 U.S. Census Bureau, Small Area Estimates Branch, 2011 

Voices for Virginia's Children 701 E. Franklin Street, Suite 807 Richmond, Virginia 23219 www.vakids.org 
512 

Significantly, as we lose programming that helps children-whether it's in pre-k to 12 

education, Head Start, or home visiting, we also lose jobs. For example, according to the Head 

Start Association of Virginia, Head Start will cut 647 children this fall, as well as 112 jobs. Staff in 

seven programs who have retained their jobs have been furloughed- anywhere from ten days 

to eight weeks. 

In York County, where Dennis Jarrett is chief financial officer, the school district has reduced 

124 positions over the last four years. Jarrett explains: "One of them was a guidance 

counselor-a tough position to keep unfilled when 42 percent of the students are connected to 

the military or some other branch of federal government. Parents' deployment and frequent 

moves put unusual emotional strain on children. What we're concerned about .. .is the quality of 

life for our students." 

Sequestration cuts are compounded at the state level 

Virginia, as you know, is poised to take a huge hit from sequestration due to the impact of 

government contracts and military bases in our Commonwealth. In order to be good fiscal 

stewards, Virginia's General Assembly has put aside approximately $50 million in the last two 

years to protect against these cuts. This is above and beyond our rainy day fund. 

What does that mean for kids? It means that on top of reduced state general funding during the 

receSSion, an additional $50 million was taken out of the pot as we were climbing out of the 

recession. These are dollars that go toward things like preK-12 education, case workers for kids 

in foster care, and early intervention services for babies and toddlers with developmental 

delays. 

For example, Virginia has experienced a 52% increase in the number of infants and toddlers 

identified with developmental delays and disabilities since 2007. Virginia's Part C program - the 

part of the federal IDEA legislation that provides early intervention services to babies and 

toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities - faced an $8.5 million shortfall in fiscal year 

2014 because funding has remained flat while the need has increased. During the past year, we 

have advocated that Virginia needs to meet this obligation and serve all of the infants 

indentified. While our policymakers easily made the decision to hold funds in reserve, they 

have to be convinced to serve families like Tommy Mellet's in Chesterfield, who participate in 

physical therapy and occupational therapy to help their son gain skills after experiencing a brain 

hemorrhage before he was even six weeks old. Tommy's therapy time would be cut in half 

without the additional state dollars. Providing early intervention services to babies like Tommy 

helps us save state and federal special education dollars in a few years-one in five of the 

children served in early intervention catches up to his peers by age three and never needs 

special education services. 

Another example of the direct impact of sequestration is the reduction in Impact Aid to Virginia 

schools. Virginia serves the highest number of Impact Aid-eligible students in the country 

Voices for Virginia's Children 701 E. Franklin Street, Suite 807 Richmond, Virginia 23219 www.vakids.org 
513 

(107,719 in FY2013). Most of these students in Virginia are part of military families. For the 

2012-2013 school year, the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools estimates a total 

of $1.76 million in cuts to the Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Prince George County school systems. 

In Prince George, 41 administrative, instructional and support personnel have been lost 

because of the budget squeeze since 2009, and this has occurred while they have gained 150 

new students. If sequester cuts continue, this situation and others mentioned earlier will only 

worsen. 

Fragmented approach to federal funding leads to gaps in services for children 

Getting a handle on the effect of the federal budget on children is further complicated because 

the federal government is simultaneously cutting funding for some programs due to the 

sequester but providing new funding for other critical programs. This disjointed approach 

makes it difficult for agencies and the local organizations they support to plan, and that means 

kids and families get left out. Let me give you an example. 

Child Development Resources (CDR) is a nonprofit agency that serves young children and 

families in Williamsburg and James City County. Usa Thomas, Deputy Director at CDR, explained 

that two years ago CDR lost all of its state funding for evidence-based home Visiting because of 

recession-related state budget shortfalls. This year CDR was able to replace that funding and 

add the Parents as Teachers curriculum through the funding for the federal Maternal, Infant, 

and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program, meaning that families will now be able 

to participate in a more comprehensive program to improve outcomes for children. However, 

as a result of sequestration, CDR must cut twelve families from the Early Head Start rolls, and 

child care subsidies in their community ran out months ago. As they try to plan for the future, 

they are wrestling with the possibility that federal MIECHV funding will not be reauthorized and 

it will be "deja vu all over again" with a significantly reduced home visiting program. Lisa 

Thomas says they are in a "constant scramble" trying to match services and professionals to the 

funded programs, while ultimately trying to meet their mission of providing high quality early 

learning opportunities. 

Programs for children that receive federal funding - from education to health to specialized 

services for particularly vulnerable kids - are a vital component to having healthy and 

productive communities and states. The children of today are the workforce of tomorrow, and 

we will see the results of our investments, or lack thereof, in the readiness of today's children 

to enter the workforce, contribute to their communities, and live up to their potential. For 

these reasons, Voices for Virginia's Children respectfully requests that this committee advocate 

for strong investments in children's services in the federal budget. We also ask that you support 

the "Children's Budget Act," that would require the President and the Office of Management & 

Budget to submit an annual children's budget, a detailed accounting of all federal funding for 

children and programs that serve them. 

Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony at this important hearing. 

Voices for Virginia's Children 701 E. Franklin Street, Suite 807 Richmond, Virginia 23219 www.vakids.org 
514 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Ms. COLLIER. 

STATEMENT OF SHAVON COLLIER, PARENT, EDWARD C. 

MAZIQUE PARENT CHILD CENTER, INC. 

Ms. COLLIER. Chairwoman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, 

and members of this Committee, thank you for holding this hearing 

on investing in children and for the opportunity to be here today. 

I want to tell you about my journey as a parent with children who 

have graduated from a local Head Start Program, the Edward C. 

Mazique Parent Child 

Center here in Washington, D.C. I have one child in the program 

currently and two who are Head Start graduates now thriving in 

elementary school. You will also hear from my daughter, Sakhia, 

today, an honor roll student at Garrison Elementary School. 

I found out about the Head Start program at the Edward C. 

Mazique Parent Child Center through a friend of mine. I was looking for child care for my daughter, but I could not find any options 

that were affordable with my income. My daughter was able to get 

enrolled, and I was able to continue working. But not everyone I 

know has been so lucky. Because there are so few affordable child 

care 

options in Washington, D.C., there are 181 children on the waiting list; and people are turned away throughout the year. To put 

it in perspective, the Mazique Center serves 106 Head Start children and 166 Early Head Start children. 

The program is high in demand because it is more than just a 

safe place for children while parents are at work; Head Start provides comprehensive child health and development to get them 

ready for kindergarten and lifelong learning. I could see the impact 

quickly. After only a few months in Head Start, I saw a tremendous gain in my children’s learning skills and ability to focus. They 

were learning new words, and the two who are Head Start graduates were both able to spell by age 4. It also helped my children 

build social skills. My son, for example, was a bit withdrawn at the 

time, but after only a few months, he was playing and interacting 

with his classmates. 

In addition, the Head Start staff demands that parents are invested in their child’s education and have the tools at home to provide the best possible learning environment. They also helped me 

with developing a number of parenting and job skills like public 

speaking, healthy cooking, reading budgets, creating budgets, and 

how to best interact with my children. I have served on the 

Mazique Center’s Policy Council, and I am a National Head Start 

Association board member. Without Head Start I would not be able 

to be here and speak with you today. 

After graduating the Head Start program, my two older children 

arrived at kindergarten excited, prepared, and eager to learn. They 

were much better prepared than many of their classmates. Entering kindergarten already knowing how to read and write, they 

were also able to sit in a group and focus—something that is not 

easy for many of us, especially 5-year-olds. Today they are thriving, 

building on what they have learned and both still on the honor roll. 
515 

Head Start also helped to identify a developmental delay in my 

youngest daughter when she was very small. I was able to get 

speech therapy for her and the comprehensive services that she 

needed. Now she is also spelling her name and speaking a lot clearer than before. She will be ready for kindergarten, too, and I have 

no doubt she will one day be an honor roll student with her siblings. Without Head Start’s ability to address a wide variety of 

needs, I do not know where my child would be today. 

There are decades’ worth of academic research that shows how 

Head Start positively impacts the lives of children and their parents. In fact, studies show that for every $1 invested in a Head 

Start child, society earns at least $7 back through increased earnings, employment, and family stability, as well as decreased welfare dependency, health care costs, crime costs, grade retention, 

and special education. 

But I do not need these studies to tell me what I already know— 

that Head Start has given me and my children an opportunity to 

build a better life, and I am so grateful for it. I hope this Committee will continue to support this investment in our children. 

And now I would like to turn to my daughter, Sakhia, for her own 

story. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Collier follows:] 
516 

Statement of 

Shavon Collier 

Head Start Parent 

Senate Budget Committee Hearing 

Investing in our Future: The Impact of Federal Budget Decisions on Children 

June 26, 2013 

Chairwoman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and Members ofthis Committee, thank you for 

holding this hearing on investing in children, and for the opportunity to be here today. I want to 

tell you about my journey as a parent with children who have graduated from a local Head Start 

Program, the Edward C. Mazique Child Center here in Washington, DC. I have one child in the 

program currently, and two who are Head Start graduates now thriving in elementary school. 

You will also hear from my daughter Sakhia, today an honor roll student at Garrison Elementary 

School 

I found out about the Head Start program at the Edward C. Mazique Parent-Child Center through 

a friend of mine. I was looking for child care for my daughter, but I could not find any options 

that were affordable with my income. My daughter was able to get enrolled and I was able to 

continue working. But not everyone I know has been so lucky. Because there are so few 

affordable child care options in Washington, DC, there are 181 children on the waiting list - and 

people are turned away throughout the year. To put it in perspective, the Mazique Center serves 

106 Head Start children and 166 Early Head Start children. 

The program is in high demand because it is more than just a safe place for children while 

parents are at work-Head Start provides comprehensive child health and development to get 

them ready for kindergarten and lifelong learning. I could see the impact quickly. After only a 

few months in Head Start I saw a tremendous gain in my children's learning skills and ability to 

focus. They were learning new words and the two who are Head Start graduates were both able 

to spell by age 4. It also helped my children build social skills. My son, for example, was a bit 

withdrawn at the time, but after only a few months he was playing and interacting with his 

classmates. 

In addition, the Head Start staff demands that parents are invested in their child's education, and 

have the tools at home to provide the best possible learning environment. They also helped me 

with developing a number of parenting and job skills like public speaking, healthy cooking, 

reading budgets, creating budgets, and how to best interact with my children. I've served on the 

Mazique Center's Policy Council and I am on the National Head Start Association board. 

Without Head Start I wouldn't be able to be here and speak with you today. 

1 
517 

After graduating the Head Start program, my two older children arrived at kindergarten excited, 

prepared, and eager to learn. They were much better prepared than many of their classmates. 

Entering kindergarten already knowing how to read and write, they were also able to sit in a 

group and focus - something that is not easy for many of us, especially five year olds. Today, 

they are thriving, building on what they have learned and both still on the honor roll. 

Head Start also helped to identify a developmental delay in my youngest daughter when she was 

very small. I was able to get speech therapy for her and the comprehensive services that she 

needed. Now she is also spelling her name and speaking a lot clearer than before. She will be 

ready for kindergarten too and I have no doubt she will one day be on the honor roll with her 

siblings. Without Head Start's ability to address a wide variety of needs, I do not know where 

my child would be today. 

There are decades' worth of academic research that shows how Head Start positively impacts the 

lives of children and their parents. In fact, studies show that for everyone dollar invested in a 

Head Start child, society earns at least $7 back through increased earnings, employment, and 

family stability;i as well as decreased welfare dependency,ii health care costs, iii crime costs,iv 

grade retention: and special education.vi 

But I do not need these studies to tell me what I already know-- that Head Start has given me and 

my children an opportunity to build a better life, and I am so grateful for it. I hope this 

Committee will continue to support this investment in our children. And now, I would like to 

turn to my daughter, Sakhia, for her own story. 

, Ludwig, J. and Phillips, D. (2007). The Benefits and Costs of Head Start. Social Policy Report. 21 (3: 4); Deming, D. (2009). Early 

childhood intervention and life~cycle skill development: Evidence from Head Start. American Ecanomic Journal: Applied 

Economics, 1(3): 111-134; Meier, J. (2003, June 20). Interim Report. Kindergarten Readiness Study: Head Start Success. 

Preschool Service Department, San Bernardino County, California; Deming, D. (2009, July), Early childhood intervention and lifecycle skill development: Evidence from Head Start, p. 112. 

Ii Meier, J. (2003, June 20). Kindergarten Readiness Study: Head Start Success. Interim Report. Preschool Services Department of 

San Bernardino County. 

ili Frisvold, D. (2006, February). Head Start participation and childhood obesity. Vanderbilt University Working Paper No. 06-

WG01; Currie, J. and Thomas, D. (1995, June). Does Head Start Make a Difference? The American Economic Review, 85 (3): 360; 

Anderson, K.H., Foster, J.E., & Frisvold, D.E. (2009). Investing in health: The long-term impact of Head 5tart on smoking. 

Economic Inquiry, 48 (3), 587-602. 

iv Reuters. (2009, March). Cost of locking up Americans too high: Pew study; Garces, E., Thomas, D. and Currie, J. (2002, 

September). Longer-term effects of Head Start. American Economic Review, 92 (4): 999-1012. 

, Barnett, W. (2002, September 13). The Battle Over Head Start: What the Research Shows.; Garces, E., Thomas, D. and Currie, J. 

(2002, September). Longer-Term Effects of Head Start. American Economic Review, 92 (4): 999-1012. 

vi NHSA Public Policy and Research Department analysis of data from a Montgomery County Public Schools evaluation. See 

Zhao, H. & Modarresi, S. (2010, April). Evaluating lasting effects o!full-day prekindergarten program on school readiness, 

academic performance, and special education services. Office of Shared Accountability, Montgomery County Public Schools. 

2 
518 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Sakhia? 

STATEMENT OF SAKHIA WHITEHEAD, STUDENT, AGE 10, 

EDWARD C. MAZIQUE PARENT CHILD CENTER, INC. 

Miss Whitehead. Chairwoman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and members of this Committee, thank you for inviting me 

to speak to you today. My name is Sakhia Whitehead. I am 10 

years old and just finished fourth grade at Garrison Elementary 

School. 

I graduated the Head Start program at the Edward C. Mazique 

Child Center 5 years ago, but I do remember how much I liked it. 

I remember them teaching me how to read and write my name. I 

also remember sometimes seeing the doctor there to get a checkup. 

Head Start helped me get prepared for kindergarten. When I got 

to kindergarten, I already knew how to read and write. But my 

new classmates did not. So kindergarten was pretty easy for me. 

I tell my brothers all the time how much I loved Head Start. I 

tell them it can help them in school, because I know it helped me 

to be the honor roll student that I am today. I have been on the 

honor roll since I started elementary school, and I am very proud 

of that. I want my brothers to follow in my footsteps. 

Today my favorite subject in school is math, which not many people enjoy. But when I grow up, I want to be a teacher so that I 

can continue to teach children like myself and help them to succeed. 

Thank you again for listening to me today. 

[The prepared statement of Miss Whitehead follows:] 
519 

Statement of 

Sakhia Whitehead 

Head Start Alumnus 

Senate Budget Committee Hearing 

Investing in our Future: The Impact of Federal Budget Decisions on Children 

June 26, 2013 

Chairwoman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and Members of this Committee, thank you for 

inviting me to speak to you today. My name is Sakhia Whitehead. I am ten years old and just 

finished fourth grade at Garrison Elementary School. 

I graduated the Head Start program at the Edward C. Mazique Child Center five years ago, but I 

do remember how much I liked it. I remember them teaching me how to read and write my 

name. I also remember sometimes seeing the doctor there to get a checkup. 

Head Start helped me get prepared for Kindergarten. When I got to Kindergarten, I already knew 

how to read and write. But my new classmates did not. So Kindergarten was pretty easy for me. 

I tell my brothers all the time how much I loved Head Start. I tell them it can help them in 

school, because I know it helped me to be the Honor Roll student that I am today. I have been on 

the Honor Roll since I started elementary school and I'm very proud of that. I want my brothers 

to follow in my footsteps. 

Today, my favorite subject in school is math, which not many people enjoy. But when I grow up, 

I want to be a teacher so that I can continue to teach children like myself and help them to 

succeed. 

Thank you again for listening to me today. 
520 

Chairman MURRAY. Excellent. Thank you so much, Sakhia. 

Dr. MUHLHAUSEN. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID MUHLHAUSEN, PH.D., RESEARCH FELLOW IN EMPIRICAL POLICY ANALYSIS, THE HERITAGE 

FOUNDATION 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Thank you. My name is David Muhlhausen. 

I am a Research Fellow in Empirical Policy Analysis in the Center 

for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. I thank Chairwoman Patty Murray, Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, and the rest 

of the Committee for the opportunity today to testify on the effect 

of sequestration on children. The views I express in this testimony 

are my own and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation. 

My testimony is based on my recently published book titled, ‘‘Do 

Federal Social Programs Work?’’ 

Two types of Federal social programs—early childhood education 

and youth job training programs—are the focus of my testimony 

today. Some argue that sequestration cuts the budgets of domestic 

programs too deeply. For example, President Barack Obama has 

claimed that over 70,000 young children will be kicked off Head 

Start due to sequestration. The clear implication is that 70,000 

children will somehow be harmed by not attending Head Start. 

This would be true if Head Start was an effective program that 

benefits the children it serves. 

Calling for more spending on programs may seem morally compelling, but continuing to spend taxpayer dollars on ineffective programs is morally indefensible. Using evidence from scientifically 

rigorous evaluations of national programs, my written testimony 

makes the case that real reductions in spending on early childhood 

education and youth job training programs will not produce harm. 

I will begin by briefly reviewing the effectiveness of two early 

childhood education programs. The first is Early Head Start, a program that serves low-income families with pregnant women, infants, and toddlers up to age 3. The results of a multi-site experimental evaluation of Early Head Start are particularly important 

because the program was inspired by a local program previously 

thought to be effective. By the time Early Head Start participants 

had reached age 3, Early Head Start had beneficial impacts on only 

a few outcome measures for child cognitive and socio-emotional development. However, by the time these children reached the fifth 

grade, all those effects had disappeared. The program had no lasting impact. 

Perhaps the most well known early childhood education program 

is Head Start. Head Start is intended to help disadvantaged preschool children catch up to children living in more fortunate circumstances. The Head Start Impact Study found that almost all 

the benefits of participating in Head Start disappeared by kindergarten. Similar results occurred when the children were assessed 

in the first and third grades. 

Moving on to youth job training programs, the Federal Government has spent decades trying to improve the earnings of disadvantaged youth through various programs. While my written tes-
521 

timony covers several youth job training programs, I will focus on 

Job Corps. 

In 2011, then Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis claimed that ‘‘Job 

Corps program has a long history of preparing disadvantaged youth 

for a successful transition into the workforce.’’ 

Fortunately, we do not have to rely on Secretary Solis’ personal 

opinion about the effectiveness of Job Corps. We have a multi-site 

experimental evaluation. The evaluation found that Job Corps participants were less likely to earn a high school diploma; they were 

no more likely to attend or complete college; and the ones that actually found jobs, they earned only 22 cents more per hour compared to similar youth who did not have access to the program. Job 

Corps does little to boost the skills of job training participants. 

While we all agree on the importance of children having a solid 

foundation when entering school, this belief, no matter how noble, 

does not change the fact that Federal early childhood education 

programs have been found to be ineffective. The same holds true 

for youth job training programs. 

Thus, concerns over the effects of sequestration on children are 

unwarranted. Reduced funding for ineffective programs will not 

harm children because these programs largely do not work in the 

first place. 

Given the enormous amount of debt that Congress has accumulated. reducing Government spending now will likely decrease the 

financial burden that we are already leaving our children. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Muhlhausen follows:] 
522 

c. 

~~!!!~ 214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE' Washington DC 20002' (202) 546-4400· heritage.org 

CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY 

Do Federal Social Programs for 

Children Work? 

Testimony before 

the Committee on the Budget 

United States Senate 

June 26, 2013 

David B. Muhlhausen, Ph.D. 

Research Fellow in Empirical Policy Analysis 

The Heritage Foundation 
523 

My name is David Muhlhausen. I am Research Fe\1ow in Empirical Policy Analysis in 

the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. I thank Chairwoman Patty 

Murray, Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, and the rest of the committee for the opportunity 

to testify today on the effect of sequestration on children. The views I express in this 

testimony are my own and should not be construed as representing any official position 

of The Heritage Foundation. 

My testimony is based on my recently published book, Do Federal Social Programs 

Work?1 This is a simple question. While the question may be straightforward, finding an 

answer is complicated. To answer in the affirmative, federal social programs must 

ameliorate the social problems they target. In essence, social programs seek to improve 

human behavior in ways that will make people better off. 

Two types of federal social programs-early childhood education and youth job-training 

programs--are the focus of my testimony.2 Determining the effectiveness of these social 

programs is particularly relevant given the current political debate over the federal 

government's persistent deficits and debt. For example, President Barack Obama has 

claimed that "70,000 young children would be kicked off Head Start" due to 

sequestration.3 The clear implication is that 70,000 children will somehow be harmed by 

not attending Head Start. This would be true only if Head Start is an effective program 

that actua\1y benefits the children it serves. 

Before I review evaluations of federal early childhood education and youth job-training 

programs, the standards Congress should use in judging the effectiveness of social 

programs are discussed. 

Standards for Assessing the Effectiveness of Federal Social Programs 

Given the fiscal crises that the federal government is facing, holding federal social 

programs accountable for their performance is necessary to regain control over excessive 

spending. Operating with increasingly scarce resources, federal policymakers need to 

start denying funds to ineffective programs, even if ca\1s for funding these programs seem 

mora\1y compel1ing. Ca\1ing for more spending on social programs may seem mora\1y 

compelling, but continuing to spend taxpayer do\1ars on programs that do not produce 

their intended results is mora\1y indefensible. Americans, especia\1y income tax-payers, 

deserve better. 

Social programs should be carefu\1y evaluated to determine whether they do, in fact, 

work. Determining whether these programs work requires reliably sorting out the effect 

of a social program from confounding factors, which is a difficult task. Unfortunately, 

Congress too often relies on self-serving anecdotal observations offered by individuals 

and organizations dependent on federal government funding. 

Science Versus Anecdotal Observations. There are numerous methods of making sense of 

the world around us. We frequently make personal observations of events around us to 

bring order to our lives. We often assign cause-and-effect relationships to events we 

persona\1y experience. For instance, learning that touching a hot stove will bum one's 
524 

hand is an easy cause-and-effect association that does not need to be tested more than 

once. We can easily correlate the act of touching the stove with the pain felt. Firsthand 

experience is often instrumental to developing knowledge. Every day, we make personal 

observations that guide us in our activities. We often seek the advice of others based on 

their personal experiences. 

Congress frequently seeks policy advice through hearings. At congressional hearings, 

congressional committees seek the testimony of experts. On many occasions, these 

committees are collecting advice on the merits of social programs. As is often the case at 

these hearings, the invited panelists offer their opinions of the pros and cons of the social 

program of interest. A frequent type of panelist is an administrator of a social program 

that is financially dependent on continued federal funding. 

Members of Congress should take any claim of effectiveness from individuals dependent 

on federal funding with a healthy dose of skepticism. No one who comes before Congress 

with hat in hand seeking federal funding is going to admit that they do not know if their 

program works or that their program is ineffective. The same holds true for claims of 

impending doom if budget cuts occur, no matter how small or large. With the federal 

government spending hundreds of billions of dollars per year on social programs, we 

should expect Congress to not rely on personal opinions that are too often self-serving. 

Further, the usefulness of personal observations or experiences can be suspect when 

assessing complex social interactions that can have mUltiple causes. This problem is 

particularly acute when assessing the effectiveness of social programs where mUltiple 

factors can cause the outcomes of interest. 

Assessing the effectiveness of federal social programs should be based on evaluations 

with two important characteristics. First, policymakers should rely on experimental 

designs that use random assignment. Second, policymakers should rely on large-scale 

evaluations that assess the effectiveness offederal social programs in mUltiple settings. 

Experimental designs. Impact evaluations often assess impacts by comparing treatment or 

intervention groups to control or comparison groups. Determining the impact of social 

programs requires comparing the conditions of those who received assistance with the 

conditions of an equivalent group that did not experience the intervention. However, 

evaluations differ by the quality of methodology used to separate the net impact of 

programs from other factors that may explain differences in outcomes between 

comparison and intervention groups.4 

Experimental evaluations are the "gold standard" of evaluation designs. Randomized 

experiments attempt to demonstrate causality by (1) holding all other possible causes of 

the outcome constant, (2) deliberately altering only the possible cause of interest, and (3) 

observing whether the outcome differs between the intervention and control groups. 

When conducting an impact evaluation of a social program, identifYing and controlling 

for all the possible factors that influence the outcomes of interest is impossible. We 

2 
525 

simply do not have enough knowledge to accomplish this task. Even if we could identify 

all possible causal factors, collecting complete and reliable data on all of these factors 

would likely still be beyond our abilities. For example, it is impossible to isolate a person 

participating in a social program from his family in order to "remove" the influences of 

family. This is where the benefits of random assignment become clear. 

Because we do not know enough about all possible causal factors to identify and hold 

them constant, randomly assigning test subjects to intervention and control groups allows 

us to have a high degree of confidence that these unidentified factors will not confound 

our estimate of the intervention's impact. Random assignments should evenly distribute 

these unidentified factors between the intervention and control groups of an experimental 

evaluation. 

However, the benefits of random assignment are most likely to occur when large sample 

sizes are used. Randomized evaluations using small sample sizes do not have the same 

scientific rigor as randomized evaluations using large sample sizes. Random assignment 

helps to ensure that the control group is equivalent to the intervention group in 

composition, predispositions, and experiences. Randomization is supposed to result in the 

intervention and control groups having an identical composition. The groups are 

composed of the same types of individuals in terms of their program-related and 

outcome-related characteristics. In addition, the intervention and control groups should 

have identical predispositions. Members of both groups are similarly disposed towards 

the program. Further, the intervention and control groups should have identical 

experiences with regards to time-related internal validity processes, such as maturation, 

and history.s 

Randomized experiments have the highest internal validity when sample sizes are large 

enough to ensure that idiosyncrasies that can affect outcomes are evenly distributed 

between the program and control groups. With small sample sizes, disparities in the 

program and control groups can influence the findings. For this reason, evaluations with 

large samples are more likely to yield scientifically valid impact estimates. 

Multi-site designs. Congress can take several steps to ensure that federal social programs 

are properly assessed using experimental evaluations. These experimental evaluations 

should be large in scale and based on mUltiple sites to avoid the problems of simplistic 

generalizations. A multitude of confounding factors influences the performance of social 

program. Thus, the larger the size of the evaluation (e.g., sample size and number of 

sites), the more likely the federal social program will be assessed under all of the 

conditions under which it operates. 

When Congress creates social programs, the funded activities are implemented in 

multiple cities or towns. While individual social programs operating in a single location 

and funded by the federal government may undergo experimental evaluations, these 

small-scale, single-site evaluations do not inform policymakers of the general 

effectiveness of national social programs. Small-scale evaluations assess only the impact 

on a small fraction of the people served by federal social programs. The success of a 

3 
526 

single program that serves a particular jurisdiction or population does not necessarily 

mean that the same program will achieve similar success in other jurisdictions or among 

different populations. Simply, small-scale evaluations are poor substitutes for large-scale, 

multi site evaluations. As will be detailed later in my testimony, Congress created the 

national Early Head Start program based upon the findings of the small-scale Carolina 

Abecedarian evaluation. After undergoing a multi site experimental evaluation, the federal 

government failed to replicate original effects of the Abecedarian Project on a national 

scale. 

Thus, federal social programs should be evaluated in multiple sites so that social 

programs can be tested in the various conditions in which they operate and in the 

numerous types of populations that they serve. In addition, a multi site experimental 

evaluation that examines the perfonnance of a particular program in numerous and 

diverse settings can potentially produce results that are more persuasive to policymakers 

than results from a single locality.6 

The case of police departments perfonning mandatory arrests in domestic violence 

incidents is a poignant example of why caution should be exercised when generalizing 

findings from a single evaluation. During the 1980s, criminologists Lawrence W. 

Shennan and Richard A. Berk analyzed the impact of mandatory arrests for domestic 

violence incidents on future domestic violence incidents in Minneapolis, Minnesota.7 

Compared to less severe police responses, the Minneapolis experiment found that 

mandatory arrests lead to significantly lower rates of domestic violence. Shennan and 

Berk urged caution, but police departments across the nation adopted the mandatory 

arrest policy based on the results of one evaluation conducted in one city. 

However, what worked in Minneapolis did not always work in other locations. 

Experiments conducted by Shennan and others in Omaha, Nebraska; Milwaukee, 

Wisconsin; Charlotte, North Carolina; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Dade County, 

Florida, found mixed results.s Experiments in Omaha, Milwaukee, and Charlotte found 

that mandatory arrests lead to long-tenn increases in domestic violence. Apparently, 

knowing that they would automatically be arrested prompted repeat offenders to become 

more abusive. It seems that the following sick logic occurred: If the offender is going to 

automatically spend the night in jail, then he might as well beat his wife or girlfriend 

extra good. In a subsequent analysis of the disparate findings, Shennan postulated that 

arrested individuals who lacked a stake in confonnity within their communities were 

significantly more likely to engage in domestic violence after arrest, while married and 

employed arrested individuals were significantly less likely to commit further domestic 

violence infractions.9 Thus, mandatory arrest policies may be more likely to work in 

communities with high rates of marriage and employment, than communities with lower 

rates of marriage and employment. 

Contradictory results from evaluations of similar social programs implemented in 

different settings are a product not only of implementation fidelity (the degree to which 

social programs are implemented as originally intended), but also ofthe enonnous 

complexity of the social context in which these programs are implemented. Jim Manzi, a 

4 
527 

senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, uses the conflicting results of experimental 

evaluations to explain the influence of "causal density" on the social sciences. 10 "Causal 

density," a term coined by Manzi, is "the number and complexity of potential causes of 

the outcomes of interest. ,,11 Manzi postulates that as causal density rises, social scientists 

will find greater difficulty in identifying all of the factors that cause the outcome of 

interest. 

The confounding influence of causal density likely contributed to contradictory effects of 

mandatory arrest policies by location. To address causal density, experimental impact 

evaluations offederal social programs should be conducted using multiple sites. In fact, 

the total sum of the multiple sites should be nationally representative ofthe populations 

served by the social program being evaluated. Combined with random assignment, this 

approach is the best method for assessing the effectiveness of federal social programs. 

Using evidence from scientifically rigorous multisite experimental evaluations of national 

programs, my testimony makes the case that real reductions in spending or slowing the 

rate in increase in spending on early childhood education and youth job-training 

programs will not harm children and youth. The reason for my conclusion is that the best 

research available finds that these social programs are highly ineffective. With the federal 

government's debt approaching $17 trillion, the American public has nothing to fear from 

reduced funding for ineffective social programs. 

Early Childhood Education Programs 

Proponents of expanding early childhood education programs make scientifically 

unsupportable generalizations regarding effectiveness based on two small-scale 

evaluations-the High/Scope Perry Preschool and Carolina Abecedarian Projects-that 

are nowhere near being the definitive studies on the subject. 12 Policymakers should be 

very skeptical about speculated payoffs to society based upon two small-scale evaluations 

of early childhood education programs. 13 For example, James Heckman of the University 

of Chicago and his coauthors estimate that the Perry program, an early childhood 

education program that primarily targeted black children, produced $7 to $12 in societal 

benefits for every dollar invested. 14 The major benefit of the program is derived from 

reduced crime.ls 

Based on Heckman's research, President Barack Obama during his 2013 State of the 

Union Address made the broad generalization that "Every dollar we invest in high-quality 

early childhood education can save more than seven dollars later on-by boosting 

graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime.,,16 President 

Obama is making a narrow-to-broad generalization, where he assumes that a program 

implemented in Ypsilanti, Michigan will have the same effect everywhere else in the 

nation. There are several problems with making broad policy generalizations based upon 

the Perry and Abecedarian evaluation findings. 

first, the results of these outdated evaluations have never been replicated. The evaluation 

of the Perry program began in 1962. Despite all the hoopla, the results have never been 

replicated. In more than 50 years, not a single experimental evaluation of the Perry 

5 
528 

approach applied in another setting or on a larger-scale has produced the same results. 

The same holds true for the Abecedarian program which began in 1972. There is no 

evidence that these programs can produce the same results today. 

Second, as Amy E. Lowenstein of New York University points out, the Perry and 

Abecedarian findings are based on very small samples of children (123 and 111, 

respectively).17 The small sample sizes pose serious drawbacks to making assertions 

about effectiveness. 

Commenting on the Perry and Abecedarian evaluations, Charles Murray of the American 

Enterprise Institute correctly observes, 

The main problem is the small size of the samples. Treatment and control 

groups work best when the numbers are large enough that idiosyncrasies 

in the randomization process even out. When you're dealing with small 

samples, even small disparities in the treatment and control groups can 

have large effects on the results. There are reasons to worry that such 

disparities existed in both programs. 18 

Third, the sample children for the Perry and Abecedarian evaluations consisted almost 

entirely of low-income blacks. 19 Can these programs have the same effect on whites and 

Hispanics? There is virtually no evidence that the results ofthe Perry and Abecedarian 

evaluations can be generalized to other populations. 

Fourth, the beneficial impacts of these programs appear to be restricted to females in the 

treatment group.20 According to Lowenstein, "treated females showed sharp increases in 

years of schooling, improved economic outcomes, reductions in criminal behavior and 

drug use, and increased marriage rates, but there were no significant long-term effects for 

males." 

Fifth, the findings cannot be generalized to other locations.21 Lowenstein warns that "we 

must be cautious in drawing conclusions about crime effects based on the reductions in 

crime found in the Perry Preschool study, because there is no way to know if these effects 

were specific to Ypsilanti, Michigan, where the Perry Preschool was located, or if they 

would have emerged regardless of where the study took place.,,22 

Sixth, Robinson G. Hollister of Swarthmore College has pointed out that while the Perry 

evaluation was initially supposed to be based on random assignment, "the researchers 

made several nonrandom adjustments to the assignment, for instance, moving siblings so 

that they would be together in the treatment or control group, or moving all children of 

working mothers to the control group.,,23 As a result, 20 percent of the sample used to 

make inferences about the effectiveness of the programs was not randomly assigned. For 

Hollister, the failure to carry out the experimental design "greatly undermine[sJ one's 

ability to take estimates of the 'impacts' as sound.,,24 The bottom line is that the Perry 

evaluation is not really based on a true experimental design, and, thus, it does not benefit 

from the strong internal validity of true experimental designs. 

6 
529 

Seventh, the impacts of the Perry program seesaw over time. According to Hollister, 

Further doubts about the reliability of the estimates arise from the fact that 

the estimated impacts in given areas, for example, academic achievement 

test scores, vary sharply over time (age of the child). For instance, the 

crime data suddenly show big differences in favor of the program in the 

age 27 data. The estimated impacts on crime playa large role in the 

overall high benefit-cost ratios that have been highly touted.25 

Suddenly, the benefits of the program are prevalent long after the individuals participated 

in the program. 

Last, the Perry and Abecedarian programs are not representative of the vast majority of 

early childhood education programs operating today. These programs were "carefully 

constructed, high quality, expensive programs" that "do not reflect the assortment of 

scaled-up [early childhood education] programs available to most low-income families 

with young children today.,,26 The Perry and Abecedarian programs "represent the 

exception rather than the rule.',27 Thus, Lowenstein concludes that the claims of 

advocates are "somewhat misleading.',28 

The Perry and Abecedarian programs are not realistic models to draw conclusions about 

the effectiveness offederal early childhood education programs. Fortunately, we have 

ample evidence based upon multisite experimental evaluations.29 

Early Head Start. Early Head Start, created during the I 990s, is a federally funded 

community-based program that serves low-income families with pregnant women, 

infants, and toddlers up to age three. The results of the multisite experimental evaluation 

of Early Head Start are particularly important because the program was inspired by the 

findings of the Abecedarian Project.3D By the time participants reached age three, Early 

Head Start had beneficial impacts on two out of six outcome measures for child cognitive 

and language development, while the program had beneficial effects on four out of nine 

measures of child-social-emotional development.3l While the short-term (age three) 

findings indicated modest positive impacts, almost all of the positive findings for all 

Early Head Start participants were driven by the positive findings for black children. The 

program had little to no effect on white and Hispanic participants, who are the majority of 

program participants. For Hispanic children, the program failed to have a short-term 

impact on all six measures of child cognitive and language development, while the 

program had a beneficial effect on only one of nine measures of child-social-emotional 

development. For white children, the program failed to produce any beneficial impacts on 

these outcome measures. 

For the long-term findings, the overall initial effects of Early Head Start at age three 

clearly faded away by the fifth grade.32 For the II child-social-emotional outcomes, none 

of the results were found to have statistically meaningful impacts.33 Further, Early Head 

Start failed to have statistically measurable effects on the 10 measures of child academic 

7 
530 

outcomes, including reading, vocabulary, and math skills. 

What happened when the long-term results were analyzed by race and ethnicity? There 

were only two beneficial impacts for black children on II of the child-social-emotional 

outcomes. For Hispanic and white children, there was no beneficial effects for all these 

outcomes. 

For child academic outcomes, the long-term findings by race and ethnicity were 

consistent. Early Head Start failed to affect all 10 academic outcomes for each of the 

subgroups. 

Head Start. Created as part ofthe War on Poverty in 1965, Head Start is a preschool 

community-based program intended to help disadvantaged children catch up to children 

living in more fortunate circumstances. Despite Head Start's long life, the program never 

underwent a thorough, scientifically rigorous evaluation of its effectiveness until 

Congress mandated an evaluation in 1998. The Head Start Impact Study began in 2002, 

and the immediate-term, short-term, and long-term results released in 2005, 2010, and 

2012, respectively, are disappointing.34 According to CQ News, the 2012 study "revealed 

that children who attended Head Start had lost most of its benefits by the time they 

reached third grade.,,35This assessment is entirely wrong. Almost all of the benefits of 

participating in Head Start disappeared by kindergarten. 

Overall, the evaluation found that the program largely failed to improve the cognitive, 

socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes of children in kindergarten and first 

grade who participated compared with the outcomes of similar children who did not 

participate. According to the report, "[T]he benefits of access to Head Start at age four 

are largely absent by 1 st grade for the program population as a whole.,,36 Alarmingly, 

Head Start actually had a harmful effect on three-year-old participants once they entered 

kindergarten. Teachers reported that non-participating children were more prepared in 

math skills than the children who participated in Head Start. 

The third-grade follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study followed students' 

performance through the end of third grade.37 The results shed further light on the 

ineffectiveness of Head Start. By third grade, Head Start had little to no effect on 

cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting outcomes of participating children. 

In addition to the failures of Early Head Start and Head Start, multisite experimental 

evaluations of the Enhanced Early Head Start with Employment Services, which provides 

early childhood care and employment training services to families, and the now-defunct 

Even Start Family Literacy Program, which was intended to meet the basic educational 

needs of parents and children, failed to produce beneficial impacts.38 The scientific rigor 

of these evaluations clearly demonstrates that the federal government has serious trouble 

operating early childhood education programs. These programs have done a poor job of 

improving the cognitive abilities and socio-emotional development of children. 

8 
531 

Youtb Job-Training Programs 

The federal government has spent decades trying to improve the earnings of 

disadvantaged youth through various employment and training programs, but the 

Government Accountability Office has concluded that little evidence shows that youth 

and adult training programs are effective.39 

Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). Conducted in 16 sites across the nation during the 

late 1980s and early 1990s, the JTPA evaluation tracked program effects for more than 

20,000 adult men, adult women, and out-of-school youths over the course of 30 months.40 

The perfonnance of JTPA programs is widely considered to be a failure, especially for 

youth. 

Overall, JTPA programs failed to raise the incomes of female youth and male youth 

without an arrest record prior to random assignment. However, JTPA programs had a 

harmful impact on the incomes of male youth with prior arrest histories. Even more 

alarming, male youth nonarrestees were more likely to be arrested for crimes after 

participating in training, compared to similar counterparts not given access to training. 

Job Corps. Created in 1964, Job Corps is a residential job-training program that serves 

disadvantaged youths aged 16 to 24 in 125 sites across the nation. Before the U.S. Senate 

Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, 

Education, and Related Agencies in 20 II, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis testified that 

the "Job Corps program has a long history of preparing disadvantaged youth for a 

successful transition into the workforce.,,4! Is Job Corps an effective program? Its 

primary hypothesis relating to employment and earnings is that "youth who obtain Job 

Corps education and training will become more productive and, hence, will have greater 

employment opportunities and higher earnings than those who do not.,,42 Fortunately, we 

have a multisite experimental impact evaluation of Job Corps ("2008 outcome study") to 

assess the program's effectiveness.43 

The 2008 outcome study found: 

• Compared to non-participants, Job Corp participants were less likely to earn a 

high school diploma (7.5 percent versus 5.3 percent);44 

• Compared to non-participants, Job Corp participants were no more likely to attend 

or complete college;45 

• Four years after participating in the evaluation, the average weekly earnings of 

Job Corps participants was $22 more than the average weekly earnings ofthe 

control group; and46 

• Employed Job Corps participants earned $0.22 more in hourly wages compared to 

employed control group members.47 

If the Job Corps actually improves the skills of its participants, then it should have 

substantially raised their hourly wages. However, $0.22 increase in hourly wages 

suggests that Job Corps does little to boost the job skills of participants. 

9 
532 

Other impact evaluations of Job Corps have found similar results. In 2001, the National 

Job Corps Study: The Impacts of Job Corps on Participants' Employment and Related 

Outcomes ("2001 outcome study") measured the impact ofthe Job Corps on participants' 

employment and earnings.48 While the 2001 outcome study found some increases in the 

incomes of participants, the gains were trivial. For example, compared to nonparticipants, the estimated average increase in the weekly incomes of all participants over 

four years was never more than $25.20.49 

Another evaluation, the National Job Corps Study: Findings Using Administrative 

Earnings Records Data ("2003 study"), was published in 2003, but the Labor Department 

withheld it from the general public until 2006.50 The 2003 study found that Job Corps 

participation did not increase employment and earnings. Searching for something positive 

to report, the 2003 study concludes that "There is some evidence, however, of positive 

earnings gains for those ages 20 to 24.,,51 

Why Withhold the 2003 Study? Based on survey data, the 2001 cost-benefit study 

assumed that the gains in income for participants will last indefinitely, a notion 

unsupported by the literature on job training. 52 But included in the 2003 study is a costbenefit analysis that directly contradicts the positive findings of the 2001 cost-benefit 

study. 

The 2003 study used official government data, instead of self-reported data, and used the 

more reasonable assumption that benefits decay, rather than last indefinitely. 53 

Contradicting the 2001 cost-benefit study, the 2003 study's analysis of official 

government data found that the benefits ofthe Job Corps do not outweigh the cost ofthe 

program. Even more damaging, the 2003 study re-estimated the 2001 cost-benefit study 

with the original survey data using the realistic assumption that benefits decay over time. 

According to this analysis, the program's costs again outweighed its benefits. 

Is Job Corps Worth $1. 7 Billion Per Year? According to Job Corps, the cost of the 

program per participant in program year 2009 was $26,551. 54 This estimate excludes 

program administration expenses, so it undercounts the true cost ofthe program on a per 

participant basis. The Office ofInspector General estimates that the actual cost per 

participant is $37,88o-a difference of$II,329.55 Perhaps a more important performance 

metric is the cost per successful job placement. For this measure, the OIG estimates that 

each Job Corps participant who is successfully placed into any job costs taxpayers 

$76,574.56 

If Job Corps actually improves the skills of its participants, then it should have 

substantially raised their hourly wages. The 2001 study found participants earned $0.24 

more per hour than nonparticipants. 57 Six months later, this difference had decreased to 

$0.22 per hour. 58 Job Corps does not provide the skills and training necessary to 

substantially raise the wages of participants. One is certainly within reason to question 

whether the program is a waste of taxpayers' dollars as it costs $76,574 per participant 

placed in any job with an average participation period of eight months,. 

10 
533 

JOBST ART. The JOBSTART Demonstration evaluated the impact of 13 job-training 

programs that were offered by community-based organizations, schools, and the Job 

Corps across the nation.59 The targets of the training programs were 17- to 21-year-old 

"economically disadvantaged" school dropouts with poor reading skills. Overall, the 

programs failed to increase the earnings of participants. Of the 13 sites, 12 were found to 

be ineffective at raising the incomes ofparticipants.6o However, one site--the Center for 

Employment Training (CET) in San Jose, California-had a positive impact on earnings. 

For policymakers, the important question is whether the CET results can be replicated at 

different sites and for different populations. 

CET Replication. Based on the JOBST ART evaluation results for the CET program in 

San Jose, California, the U.S. Department of Labor, in 1992, sought to replicate the 

program at 16 other sites across the nation. Twelve of the sites were evaluated.61 The key 

elements of the CET model include a full-time commitment to participate in employment 

and training services in work-like settings.62 In addition, employers were involved in 

designing and delivering services.63 

In a classic example of not being able to replicate the results ofa "proven" social 

program, CET Replication job-training programs failed to increase the employment and 

earnings of participants. Over more than a five-year follow-up period, the CET model 

had little to no effect on the employment and earnings outcomes at these 12 locations. 

The multisite experimental evaluation ofCET, according to its authors, "shows, that even 

in sites that best implemented the model, CET had no overall employment and earnings 

effects for youth in the program, even though it increased participants' hours of training 

and receipt of credentials.,,64 

However, CET participation was associated with some harmful outcomes. Male youth 

experienced declines in employment, earnings, and number of months worked. Individual 

participants who possessed a high school diploma or GED at the time of random 

assignment experienced declines in the number of months worked and earnings. 

Quantum Opportunity Program (QOP). The Quantum Opportunity Program (QOP) 

demonstration, operated by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Ford Foundation from 

1995 to 2001, offered intensive and comprehensive services with the intention of helping 

at-risk youth graduate from high school and enroll in postsecondary education or 

training.65 As an afterschool program, QOP provided case management and mentoring, 

additional education, developmental and community service activities, supportive 

services, and financial incentives.66 QOP provided services to participants year-round for 

five years. The results of the QOP demonstration are particularly important because the 

program included several features of Workforce Investment Act's (WIA) youth 

programs' funding stream.67 

QOP has many similarities with WIA youth programs, including: 

11 
534 

• Case management and mentoring by adult staff; 

• Basic education and study skills tutoring; 

• Community service training; 

• Year-round services, including summer jobs; 

• An assortment of support services, including transportation, childcare, food, and 

emergency financial assistance; and 

• Technical assistance to local service providers.G8 

According to the authors of the QOP evaluation: 

These similarities between QOP and WIA youth programs suggest that the 

findings from the evaluation of the QOP demonstration might reveal some 

of the implementation challenges that WlA youth programs might 

encounter and indicate whether WIA youth programs are likely to be 

effective [Emphasis added]. 69 

Thus, the findings from the QOP experimental evaluation, according to its authors, 

provide some insight about the effectiveness of WIA youth programs. 

The QOP demonstration was implemented at seven sites across the nation. Five sites 

were funded by the Department of Labor, while the remaining two sites were funded by 

the Ford Foundation.7o The total cost per participant for the Labor-funded sites was 

$18,000 to $22,000, while the cost per participant in the Ford-funded sites ranged from 

$23,000 to $49,000.71 

At the initial and six-year follow-up periods, participation in QOP failed to have 

beneficial impacts on the employment and earnings of participants. 72 The job skills 

learned from QOP apparently had no effect on earnings. However, youth participating in 

QOP were more likely to be arrested by the six-year follow-up period. In addition, these 

youth were less likely to find jobs that provided health insurance benefits. 

Conclusion 

Do federal early childhood education and youth job-training programs work? Based on 

the scientifically rigorous multisite experimental evaluations, the answer certainly cannot 

be in the affirmative. Despite the best social engineering efforts, overwhelming evidence 

points to the conclusion that these social programs are ineffective. 

It cannot be just a coincidence that these multisite experimental evaluations 

overwhelmingly find failure. While we all agree on the importance of children having a 

solid foundation when entering school, this belief, no matter how noble, does not change 

the fact that federal early childhood education programs are ineffective. The same holds 

true for youth job-training programs. 

12 
535 

Concerns over effects of sequestration on children and youth are unwarranted. Reduced 

funding for ineffective programs will not hann children and youth, because these 

programs largely do not work in the first place. Private companies are not hurt by 

eliminating inefficient divisions and neither are people when ineffective government 

programs are cut. In fact, reduced government spending will likely help children face a 

smaller financial burden of enormous debt that Congress's overspending has already 

imposed upon them. 

Our nation faces a severe debt crisis that threatens our very future. Americans should not 

fear reductions in funding for these social programs. Now is the time for deep budget cuts 

to federal social programs. 

******************* 

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recognized as exempt under section 50 1 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. 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 States. 

During 2012, it had nearly 700,000 individual, foundation, and corporate supporters 

representing every state in the U.S. Its 2012 income came from the following sources: 

Individuals 

Foundations 

Corporations 

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5% 

The top five corporate givers provided The Heritage Foundation with 2% of its 2012 

income. The Heritage Foundation's books are audited annually by the national accounting 

firm of McGladrey & Pullen. A list of major donors is available from The Heritage 

Foundation upon request. 

Members of The Heritage Foundation staff testify as individuals discussing their 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. 

13 
536 

1 David B. Muhlhausen, Do Federal Social Programs Work? (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013). 

2 While my testimony focuses on early childhood education and youth job-training programs, Do Federal 

Social Programs Work? reviews the failure of other federal social programs that serve children and youth, 

including the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, Upward Bound, and sexual abstinence education 

programs. 

The White House, Office ofthe Press Secretary, "Fact Sheet: Examples of How the Sequester Would 

Impact Middle Class Families, Jobs and Economic Security," February 8, 2013, at 

http://www. whitehouse.gov/the-press-ofllce/2013/02108/fact-sheef-examples-how-sequester-would-impactmiddle-class-families-iob (accessed June 19,2013). 

4For a detailed discussion of evaluation methodology, see ibid. 

5 The internal validity threat of history occurs when events taking place concurrently with the intervention 

could cause the observed effect, while maturation occurs when natural changes in participants that occur 

over time could be confused with an observed outcome. For a more detailed discussion of threats to internal 

validity, see Muhlhausen, Do Federal Social Programs Work? 

"Erica B. Baum, "When the Witch Doctors Agree: The Family Support Act and Social Science Research," 

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 10, No.4 (Autumn 1991), pp. 603~15, and Judith M. 

Gueron, "The Politics of Random Assignment: Implementing Studies and Affecting Policy," in Frederick 

Mosteller and Robert Boruch, eds., Evidence Matters: Randomized Trials in Education Research 

(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002), pp. 15-49. 

'Lawrence W. Sherman and Richard A. Berk, "The Specific Deterrent Effects of Arrest for Domestic 

Assault," American Sociological Review 49, No.2 (April 1984), pp. 261-272. 

'Lawrence W. Sherman, Domestic Violence: Experiments and Dilemmas (New York: Free Press, 1992); 

Lawrence W. Sherman, Douglas A. Smith, Janell D. Schmidt, and Dennis Rogan, "Crime, Punishment, and 

Stake in Conformity: Legal and Informal Control of Domestic Violence," American Sociological Review 

Vol. 57 (October 1992), pp. 680~90; Lawrence W. Sherman, Janell D. Schmidt, Dennis Rogan, Douglas 

A. Smith, Patrick R. Gartin, Ellen G. Cohn, Dean J. Collins, and Anthony R. Bacih, "The Variable Effects 

of Arrest on Criminal Careers: The Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment," Journal of Criminal Law 

& Criminology 83, No. I (1992), pp. 137-169. 

9 Sherman, Domestic Violence. 

lOJim Manzi, "What Social Science Does-and Doesn't-Know," City Journal 20, No.3 (Summer 2010), 

pp. 14-23, http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_social-science.html (accessed June 21, 2013). 

"Ibid 

12 Lawrence J. Schweinhart, Helen V. Barnes, and David P. Wiekart, Significant Benefits: The High/Scope 

Perry Preschool Study through Age 27 (Ypsilanti, Mich.: The High/Scope Press, 1993) and Frances A. 

Campbell and Craig T. Ramey, "Effects of Early Intervention on Intellectual and Academic Achievement: 

A Follow-Up Study of Children from Low-Income Families," Child Development, Vol. 65 (1994), pp. 684-

698. 

13 James J. Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev, Adam Yavitz, "The Rate of 

Return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 94 (2010), pp. 114-

128; Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald, "Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a 

High Public Return," The Region, December 2003, pp. 6-12. 

14 Heckman et aI., "The Rate of Return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program," pp. 115-116. 

15 Ibid., p. 119. 

16 Barack Obama, "Remarks by the President in the State ofthe Union Address," The White House, Office 

ofthe Press Secretary, February 12,2013, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press0/fi.ceI20 131021 12Iremarks-president-state-union-address (accessed June 18, 2013). 

1 Amy E. Lowenstein, "Early Care and Education as Educational Panacea: What Do We Really Know 

About Its Etfectiveness," Educational Policy, Vol. 25, No. I (2011), p. 102. 

18 Charles Murray, "The Shaky Science Behind Obama's Universal Pre-K," Bloomberg.com, February 20, 

2013, hUp:/lwww.bloomberg.cominewsI20 13 -02-21 Ithe-shaky-science-behind-obama-s-universal-prek.html (accessed June 19,2013). 

19 Lowenstein, "Early Care and Education as Educational Panacea," p. 102. 

20 Ibid. 

21 Ibid. 

22 Ibid. 

14 
537 

23Robinson G. Hollister, "Opening Statement," in Social Experimentation, Program Evaluation, and Public 

Policy, ed. Maureen A. Pirog (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), pp. 19-20. 

24 Ibid. 

25 Ibid. 

26 Lowenstein, "Early Care and Education as Educational Panacea," p. 102. 

27 Ibid. 

28 Ibid. 

29 The results of the evaluations for early childhood education and job-training programs reported in my 

testimony are based upon the 5 percent level of statistical significance. 

30Geoffrey D. Borman, ''National Efforts to Bring Reform to Scale in High-Poverty Schools: Outcomes and 

Implications" in Scaled-Up in Education: Issues in Practice, Vol. II, eds. Barbara Scheider and SarahKathryn McDonald (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefeild, Inc., 2007), pp. 41-67. 

J1 John M. Love, Ellen Eliason Kisker, Christine M. Ross, Peter Z. Schochet, Jeanne Brooks-Gun, Diane 

Paulsell, Kimberly Boller, Jill Constantine, Cheri Vogel, Allison Sidle Fulingi, and Christi Brady-8mith, 

Making a Difference in the Lives of Infants and Toddlers and Their Families: The Impacts of Early Head 

Start, Volume I: Final Technical Report, Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, June 2002 

32 Cheri A. Vogel, Yange Xue, Emily M. Moiduddin, Barbara Lepidus Carlson, and Ellen Eliason Kisker, 

Early Head Start Children in Grade 5: Long-Term Follow-Up of the Early Head Start Research 

Evaluation Project Study Sample: Final Report, OPRE Report # 2011-8 (Washington, DC: Office of 

Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health 

and Human Services, December 2010). 

"Vogel et aI., Early Head Start Children in Grade 5, Table 111.2, pp. 24--25. 

"U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of 

Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Head Start Impact Study: First Year Findings, June 2005, and U.S. 

Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, 

Research, and Evaluation, Head Start Impact Study: Final Report, January 2010; and Mike Puma, Stephen 

Bell, Ronna Cook, Camilla Heid, Pam Broene, Frank Jenkins, Andrew Mashburn, and Jason Downer, 

"Third Grade Follow-Up to the Head Start Impact Study: Final Report," U.S. Department of Health and 

Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, 

OPRE Report 2012-45, October 2012. 

35 CQ News, "Obama Details Plan for Expanding Preschool Education," February 14,2013. 

36U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of 

Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Head Start Impact Study: Final Report, January 20 lOp. xxxviii. 

37Puma et aI., "Third Grade Follow-Up to the Head Start Impact Study: Final Report." 

"JoAnn Hsueh and Mary E. Farrell~ Enhanced Early Head Start with Employment Services: 42-Month 

Impacts from the Kansas and Missouri Sites of the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ 

Demonstration and Evaluation Project, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration 

for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, OPRE Report No. 2012-05, 

February 2012; U.S. Department of Education, Third National Even Start Evaluation: Program Impacts 

and Implicationsfor Improvement, 2003; and Anna E. Ricciuti, Robert G. st. Pierre, Wang Lee, Amanda 

Parsad, and Tracy Rimdzius, Third National Even Start Evaluation: Follow-Up Findings from the 

Experimental Design Study, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National 

Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, December 2004. 

39U.S. Government Accountability Office, Multiple Employment and Training Programs: Providing 

Information on Collocating Services and Consolidating Administrative Structures Could Promote 

Efficiencies, GAO-l 1-92, January 20 II. 

46Larry L. Orr, Howard S. Bloom, Stephen H. Bell, Fred Doolittle, Winston Lin, and George Cave, Does 

Trainingfor the Disadvantaged Work? (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1996). 

41 Hilda L. Solis, "Statement of Hilda L. Solis, Secretary of Labor, before the Subcommittee of Labor, 

Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, United 

States Senate," May 4, 2011, http://www.dol.gov/_sec/mediaispeeches/20II0504_subcom_labor.htm 

(accessed June 21, 2013). 

42Peter Z. Schochet, John Burghardt, and Steven Glazerman, National Job Corps Study: The Impacts of Job 

Corps on Participants' Employment and Related Outcomes (Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 

Inc., June 2001), p. 30. 

15 
538 

43 Peter Z. Schochet, John Burghardt, and Sheena Mcconnell, "Does Job Corps Work? Impact Findings 

from the National Job Corps Study," American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No.5 (December 2008), pp. 

1864-1886. 

44 Ibid., p. 1871. 

45 Ibid. 

46 Ibid., p. 1872. 

47 Ibid . 

• , Schochet et aI., National Job Corps Study: The Impacts of Job Corps on Participants' Employment and 

Related Outcomes. 

49 Ibid., p. 130. 

50 Erik Eckholm, "Job Corps Plans Makeover for a Changed Economy," New York Times, February 20, 

2007, at www.nytimes.comI2007102120Iwashington!20jobcorps.html(June 21, 2013) and Peter Z. Schochet, 

Sheena McConnell, and John Burghardt, National Job Corps Study: Findings Using Administrative 

Earnings Records Data: Final Report (Princeton, N.J.: Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., October 2003). 

51 Schochet et aI., National Job Corps Study: Findings Using Administrative Earnings Records Dala: Final 

Report, p. 70. 

52 Pedro Carneiro and James Heckman, "Human Capital Policy," NBER Working Paper No. 39495, 

February 2003. 

53 Schochet et aI., National Job Corps Study: Findings Using Administrative Earnings Records Data: Final 

Report. 

54 U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Inspector General, Job Corps Needs to Improve Reliability of 

Performance Metrics and Results, September 30, 2011, http://www.oig.dol.govlpublicireportsloa/20I1126-

1 1-004-03-370.pdf(June 21, 2013). 

55 Ibid. 

56 Ibid. 

s7Ibid., p. 139. 

5'Schochet et aI., National Job Corps Study: The Impacts of Job Corps on Participants' Employment and 

Related Outcomes .. 

"George Cave, Hans Bos, Fred Doolittle, and Cyril Toussaint, JOBST ART: Final Report on a Program for 

School Dropouts, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, October 1993, p. xvii. 

6OIbid., p. 158, Table 5.13. 

61 Cynthia Miller, Johannes M. Ros, Kristen E. Porter, Fannie M. Tseng, and Yasuyo Abe, The Challenge 

of Replicating Success in a Changing World: Final Report on the Center for Employment Training 

Replication Cites (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, September 2005), p. I. 

62 Ibid., p. 7-8. 

6) Ibid., p. 9. 

64lbid., p. xi. 

65 Allen Schirm and Nuria Rodriguez, The Quantum Opportunity Program Demonstration: Initial Post 

Intervention Impacts (Mathematica Policy Research, June 2004), p. 1. 

66 Ibid., p. v. 

67 Ibid. 

68 Ibid., p. 7. 

6' Ibid., p. 7. Emphasis added. 

70 Ibid .. 

7I Ibid., p. vii. 

n Allen Schirm and Nuria Rodriguez, The Quantum Opportunity Program Demonstration: Initial Post 

Intervention Impacts (Mathematica Policy Research, June 2004) and Allen Schirm, Elizabeth Stuart, and 

Allison McKie, The Quantum Opportunity Program Demonstration: Final Impacts (Mathematica Policy 

Research, July 2006). 

16 
539 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much to all of our witnesses. 

We are going to rounds of questions, and, again, we have votes at 

11:30, so I am going to hold everybody to 5 minutes here. 

Let me just start with Ms. Nimmo Crowe and Mr. Lesley. You 

testified a little bit about sequestration. I am very concerned that 

this management from crisis to crisis has really put us in a bad 

place and sequestration is really harming our young kids. You 

talked a little bit, Ms. Nimmo Crowe, about the impacts of that. 

You gave us some good numbers. Tell us a little bit about how you 

see the effects of sequestration in the future if we continue to take 

things away from kids today. You talked about one child with disabilities and the costs later. Broaden that out and talk a little bit 

about some of the other costs you see. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Thank you. Well, I think that what we see 

is that demand is going up. Certainly with the increase in the 

number of children in poverty, the 52- percent increase in the number of children identified as needing early intervention services, the 

demand for the services that we are talking about is not going 

down. And so if sequestration is to continue, it does two things. It 

is whatever the percentage cut is that is passed down to the States 

and to the localities, but it is also going to be that ripple effect that 

State governments have. You know, we have to balance our budget 

at the State level, and we have to plan. Our sessions are short. We 

are not in session all the time. So in January and February of 

every year, our legislators have to make their best guess in terms 

of what is going to be available for these programs in the future. 

And in Virginia, we have a wonderful record of being very fiscally 

conservative, and so we are going to hedge on the side of pulling 

aside more money. And while that is smart on the one hand, on 

the other hand we are pulling services away from the very children 

who need them right now who are in front of us. 

I think the other piece of that that comes out is the difficulties 

that, you know, this is all very nice when we are talking about it 

at a hypothetical level, but when you are a local program that is 

trying to serve families in need and children in need, it is very difficult to do your planning. There is an example of an organization, 

a nonprofit organization in Williamsburg and in James City County 

that serves vulnerable young children and their families, Child Development Resources. CDR was telling me about the juggling act 

that they have where, 2 years ago, State funding was cut for their 

evidence-based home visiting programs for vulnerable families that 

are for health promotion and also child abuse prevention and neglect prevention. And so those programs all went away. 

Then the Federal Government came forward with new home visiting money, which is wonderful, and they have been able to start 

up those programs again. But at the same time they are starting 

up those home visiting programs, they are pulling 12 slots out from 

their early Head Start families, and their child care subsidies vanished months ago. 

So it is a constant juggling act. It is very hard to plan, and vulnerable families are falling through the cracks right now and we 

know will continue to do that if these cuts continue. 

Chairman MURRAY. And, Mr. Lesley, if you could just really 

quickly, because I want to get to a couple other questions, and I 
540 

just have a short amount of time. For the record, if you could give 

us your information, but just quickly in 20 seconds, if you could tell 

me the top sequestration impact you have seen. 

Mr. LESLEY. Absolutely. The big cuts thus far have been, you 

know, we have seen the cuts in Head Start and these lotteries and 

the loss of slots. But in the long term, we are also seeing that there 

are now cuts in military education, Indian health clinics—I used to 

work for Senator Bingaman, and those are devastating in States 

with Native American populations. And then in the fall, we are 

going to start seeing those impacts on public education, and those 

are going to be devastating, and because Federal money is predominantly to low-income programs like Title I and other things, 

what you are going to see is major disproportionate hits on schools 

that have high need and low resources. 

Chairman MURRAY. And if you can get that to us in writing, I 

would appreciate it. 

Mr. LESLEY. Absolutely. 

[The information follows:] 

/ COMMIT 

Chairman MURRAY. Sakhia, I just wanted to ask you really 

quickly, thank you so much for your courage in coming and talking 

to us. Do you think the extra help that you got early on in Head 

Start would have assisted your classmates that you see that did 

not have it perhaps be on the honor roll? 

Miss Whitehead. May you repeat that again, please? 

Chairman MURRAY. So you got the advantage of having Head 

Start, and you are on the honor roll today. You have friends in 

your class who did not get Head Start that you probably know. Do 

you think Head Start would have helped them, too? 

Miss Whitehead. Yes. 

Chairman MURRAY. In what ways? 

Miss Whitehead. Because I am on the honor roll, maybe I could 

help them get on the honor roll. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. Well, I really appreciate your coming, 

and I just have a few seconds left. But, Mr. Lesley, I just have to 

ask you—I am sorry. Mr. Muhlhausen, I read your testimony and 

you criticized all of us in Congress who listen to people at hearings 

who, in your words, and I quote, ‘‘come hat in hand’’ and express 

their ‘‘self-serving personal opinions,’’ and you question about personal observations or experience being useful. I happen to think 

that as a legislator, it really makes a difference when I go home 

and hear from families in my communities about the impacts that 

the Federal Government has on their lives, and I think it is really 

important that we listen to those kinds of people. You just had an 

opportunity to hear from two here, and I am just curious: Do you 

think what we heard from Ms. Collier and Sakhia was not worth 

it for us to hear today? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, when you look at the effectiveness of 

programs, whether they work or not— 

Chairman MURRAY. Do you want to turn your mic on? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. —which are funded on a national level, programs that are funded on a national level, the Federal Government 

does not just operate a program in a single location. It funds programs all over the country. And you have to look at the national 
541 

effect, whether these programs actually work or not. And you can 

always find somebody who is going to praise the program, but Congress never invites anybody to say, ‘‘Well, you know what? I do not 

know if the program works or not or the program does not work.’’ 

Congress never invites those people, because the idea is always 

they find people who are going to praise the program and ask for 

more money— 

Chairman MURRAY. But do you think— 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. —and right now we have a huge debt that we 

just cannot afford. 

Chairman MURRAY. Do you think the perspective of Sakhia who 

lived through this program is important for us to hear? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, I think it is important, but you cannot 

judge the national effectiveness of a particular program based on 

one person’s opinion. You need to look at the scientific research. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, I would just say to you I am not trying 

to judge the entire program. I just think when I go home and hear 

people from all different kinds of walks of life, which is what every 

member of the legislature does, and we have the opportunity to 

hear from them today, it is important for us to hear. So I just 

wanted to clarify that. I was kind of offended by your remarks in 

your testimony. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you, and thank you, Sakhia, for 

your testimony, and I am glad you are doing well in school. Congratulations and keep it up. We are not doing what we should do 

in math, and you are particularly to be congratulated for being 

good in that. And if you were a math teacher, you would have a 

lot of people who would want to hire you to go to work because we 

have a shortage of those in America today. 

I am concerned—now, I will ask Mr. Muhlhausen and Mr. Lesley 

this question—well, first, Ms. Crowe, with regard to Virginia and 

the importance they placed on fiscal management, your remarks 

talk about the danger of reductions in spending. But based on your 

study, have you concluded that many of the programs that are operating could be operated better, that there could be better StateFederal coordination, that there might be activities that could 

produce better results than the current way we are doing it for 

even less money on occasion? 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Well, I think that is a great question. Thank 

you. I think that there are ways in Virginia that we are looking 

at how programs are run. I think that is happening all across the 

country. I think continuous quality improvement and those types 

of initiatives are very important. I can tell you that in Virginia we 

have been funding evidence-based home visiting programs for a 

very long time, and I was just talking about those. The new Federal funding that has come out, the MIECHV funding for home visiting, includes very specific performance targets for those programs 

that are getting the funding. They can only go to particular areas 

that have a very high level of need. We welcome that in Virginia. 

That is what we have been doing. 

I think we are looking at implementing coordinated care in Medicaid in Virginia and ways that we have not in the past, for example, in the behavioral health services. So I think there is certainly 

always room to be looking at how these things are working. 
542 

I think when it comes to being fiscally prudent and responsible 

at the State level, it is always a balancing act. And I do not pretend to have all the answers. I am merely a child advocate. But it 

is my job to be here today to let you all know that there are real 

consequences to these very difficult decisions, and oftentimes I am 

the only one in the room in Virginia who is pointing that out. So 

thank you for the opportunity to do that today. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I thank you, and Governors Warner and 

Kaine and King work hard to deal with the budget issues that they 

face. And I can say I think without being contradicted that States 

are on a regular basis advancing new and better ideas to get results for the amount of money they spend. And the real truth is 

that the Federal Government is just continuing the programs that 

we have, basically sending the same money out. Maybe now it is 

going to be reduced some because of our financial crisis. But I just 

want to say the Federal Government, Madam Chair—and this 

hearing has some potential for us. We need to see if we cannot do 

better with the amount of money we spend, because the reality is 

we are not going to have large increases, and the reality is that 

even as a percentage of GDP, we are one of the highest nations in 

the whole world on—I think only Denmark maybe has a higher 

percentage of GDP on education than we spend. So we need to use 

every dollar wisely and try to get the most bang for the buck. 

I am concerned, and I think we need to think about— maybe I 

will ask Mr. Lesley and Mr. Muhlhausen to answer, just give 

thoughts about it, because our time is short. This study that was 

produced by Health and Human Services, not by an independent 

group but their own Department, determined that by the end of the 

third grade, regarding Head Start, there were very few impacts. 

And in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional 

health, and parenting practices of children granted access to Head 

Start during the period of the study. And it ultimately found that 

few impacts were found that showed a favorable or unfavorable impact on the children. 

So I guess my first question is: We invest a lot in Head Start. 

Can we make it better to get the improvements that we would like 

to see in that area? Mr. Muhlhausen and Mr. Lesley. And I do not 

have much time. I am sorry— 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, I would say that one of the things—you 

are talking about the National Head Start Impact Study, and it 

really found that most of the cognitive benefits disappeared by kindergarten. So the effect of the program quickly faded away. And I 

am not sure if the Federal Government can run a program effectively from 

Washington, D.C. I would say that a more effective program 

would let the States take the lead, let local governments take the 

lead. Let them raise the money to run their programs and have 

those programs live and die on the success the local perceive or 

find their programs to be operating. I think that is the best model. 

It allows for the greatest variation and experimentation to find out 

what actually works. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Mr. Lesley? 
543 

Mr. LESLEY. Thank you, Senator Sessions. I think it is important 

to point out with respect to Head Start that the numbers actually 

do improve in the short term, and there is a fade-out in terms of 

standardized testing, but in a lot of other areas, there is longitudinal data that shows that Head Start has been very effective in 

terms of less use of special education and, you know, graduating 

from high school, and in the long term things like employment 

have also been very positive effects of Head Start. And I also think 

we need to be a little bit careful about drawing the wrong conclusions. In terms of the fade-out, one of the things there is that in 

elementary school there are interventions that take place, like you 

had family members who are early education teachers, and there 

is enormous investments also that the Federal Government makes 

in terms of interventions. So while the Head Start kids, you know, 

as our witness testified, come to school reading in a better way, 

what happens is the kids that were behind then catch up because 

there are these interventions in terms of reading programs and 

other things. 

So I think that the catch-up shows that Head Start works and 

that then K–12 actually kicks in and there is some catch-up. So the 

catch-up is an important thing to think about, and I do not think 

it says that Head Start does not work. I think it shows that Head 

Start worked and then K–12 then moves in and takes it, you know, 

into effect and then catches people up. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you, and we have an absolute 

duty to serve the children effectively, and we need to make sure 

every dollar we spend is wisely used to get a good result. And I am 

confident we have a long way to go from our Federal Government. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Kaine. 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. And to the witnesses, 

it is great especially to have Margaret Nimmo Crowe here from 

Virginia. I appreciate your great work with Voices. I have a comment and then a line of questioning. 

I think the testimony of the witnesses—and maybe especially the 

written testimony—sheds some light on one of the challenges, 

Madam Chair, that we are having about trying to get the Senate 

budget into conference with the House. And this is not a comment 

about any of the members of this Committee. We all worked on a 

budget, and we amended it, and we might have voted yes or no. 

But when we passed it in March, I think it was with all of our expectation that we would go into a conference with a very different 

House budget. 

Page 4 of Mr. Lesley’s testimony and page of Ms. Nimmo Crowe’s 

testimony talks about some of the comparisons between the House 

and Senate budget. And I think they really illuminate why a handful of Senators do not want the budget in conference, and that is 

not any of the members of this Committee. These Committee members are not standing and trying to block that budget from going 

into conference on the floor. But the handful it is, I am convinced 

are trying to block the budget from going into conference because 

the differences between the budgets, especially on issues like this 

affecting children, are so vast that they do not think the comparison will help their point of view and their House colleagues. 
544 

But I am glad that you have illuminated those differences, and 

I hope, Madam Chair, we might do some more things to illuminate 

the differences if that blocking of conference will continue. But, 

again, page 4 of Mr. Lesley’s testimony and page 2 of Ms. Nimmo 

Crowe’s testimony is helpful. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe, you and then Ms. Collier talked about an 

issue that I am really interested in, which is the reduction of funding for young kids with developmental delays, what that means. 

The reduction of funding to focus on children with special needs 

has an immediate effect on those children, and we are seeing those 

reductions very sizably based on sequester; and if the House budget were to go into effect, they would have a significant effect as 

well. 

But both of you sort of from a statistical standpoint, and, Ms. 

Collier, from your own experience, you kind of shared the notion 

that it is also sort of penny wise and pound foolish if you reduce 

money for young kids with developmental delays, you block their 

ability to get that assistance at a young age and then basically get 

right back on the on ramp and be right where the rest of their colleagues are. 

I learned that again and again in working on early childhood 

education issues in Virginia that just a little bit of early intervention for youngsters who have a developmental delay might mean 

years where they are not in special education classes when they 

are in the K–12 system that is both great for them and also saves 

us a lot of money. 

So I would love it if you would each talk about it maybe a little 

bit from the system standpoint. And maybe, Ms. Collier, I will start 

with you. You just shared the story that, you know, one of your 

youngsters was identified with a developmental disability, and 

Head Start helped them get right back on track when they moved 

to elementary school. 

Ms. COLLIER. The child that we are speaking of, she is still in 

Head Start, but she is reading—well, she is not reading now, but 

she is spelling her name, and without the services that she did get 

in Head Start, I do not think she would be able to do that. She has 

gotten speech therapy and also other therapy that helped her, and 

she is now on the level that she should be with the services that 

she got in Head Start. 

Senator KAINE. And your feeling today is that when she starts 

kindergarten she will be— 

Ms. COLLIER. She will be ready. 

Senator KAINE. First, at a level with her colleagues, but in a 

place that she would not have been had she not had that assistance 

and that diagnosis of the developmental— 

Ms. COLLIER. Exactly. 

Senator KAINE. Great. Thank you. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe? 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. And I would just add to that, we cannot escape the fact that the first 5 years of brain development are absolutely critical for children. And so when we miss that window, we 

have missed a huge opportunity. And certainly the types of disabilities and delays that children have in early intervention run the 

gamut from horrible problems that are never going to be fully re-
545 

mediated, but those children can still live up to their potential to 

fairly minor but very troublesome problems that can easily be corrected with a little bit of physical therapy or occupational therapy 

that can then get that child right back on track to where they need 

to be. 

And you are exactly right, it is important to remember that Part 

C, the Early Intervention Program, is part of IDEA, the special 

education program. So at age 3, those children transfer into Part 

B in the school system, and that is more Federal, State, and local 

money that we are spending on those kids, and that is the lifetime 

from age 3 until they graduate that we are spending that we could 

have in many cases ameliorated right before they turned 3. 

Senator KAINE. Ms. Nimmo Crowe, I also appreciate about your 

testimony, and you were talking with Senator Sessions about this, 

that you are not coming and I do not view any of you as coming 

to this Committee and just saying, hey, you know, it is just all 

about more money. You are interested in the management and the 

effectiveness side, too. You have a part of your testimony about 

fragmentation of Federal funding and how that can create gaps and 

inefficiencies in the system. We saw that at the State level, too. We 

ought to be committed to investing in our kids, and we ought to 

be committed to making sure that the investments are done the 

best possible way. We ought to be a culture of continuous improvement, always wanting to be better tomorrow than we are today. 

And I appreciated that your testimony offered us some ideas about 

how we can not only invest the right amount but then get better 

about how we make the investments. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator Johnson? 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to 

thank all the witnesses, particularly Sakhia. We are all proud of 

you. You should be proud of yourself, and we certainly hope that 

you go on to great things. We love the fact that you are also interested in math. We need a lot of that. So, again, congratulations. 

We are a compassionate society. I think all Americans want a 

strong social safety net. I think all Americans certainly understand 

that education is vital and we have got to get the kids and provide 

them a good education. 

But to a certain extent, we are whistling past a graveyard in 

terms of our financial situation in this country. We are talking 

about sequester. It is part of the Budget Control Act, which was, 

unfortunately, a minimal response to what is going to be over 30 

years maybe $100 trillion worth of deficit spending. You know, my 

concern is if we do not address that, if we do not impose that fiscal 

discipline on ourselves, the markets will do it. 

From 1970 to 1999, the average interest expense or interest rate 

the Federal Government paid was 5.3 percent. We have been paying about 1.5 percent. If we revert to that average, that is going 

to add another $600 billion per year to our annual interest expense. Of course, CBO is estimating we will be at that 5.3 percent. 

So, you know, Mr. Muhlhausen, I agree with you. You have to 

look at the empirical evidence, and I have actually got the last 4 
546 

charts in my PowerPoint presentation I give all over America that 

kind of addresses this. So let us look at a little facts and figures. 

You know, again, America is a compassionate society. In the mid1960s, because we saw poverty rates too high, the number of people 

in positive too high, quite honestly it had actually been declining 

by the mid-1960s, but it was still too high, and unfortunately, outof-wedlock birth rates had gone from 4 percent in the 1940s and 

doubled to 8 percent. So, again, America, very compassionate. We 

want to be able to help people help themselves. We embarked collectively on what has turned out to be a $16 trillion War on Poverty. 

What were the results? Next slide. 

We went from 23 million to 43 million Americans in poverty. You 

can say, well, the population grew, so let us take a look at poverty 

rates. They went from 12 percent to 14 percent. It is varied—and, 

Mr. Lesley, you remarked that we are at the highest level of child 

poverty today. Well, maybe, just maybe, on that very last metric, 

maybe all of our good intentions solved that problem. Let us check 

out—no, we went from 8 percent to 41 percent. 

I think we have to start asking ourselves in this Nation the very 

hard questions. Have all the spending, have all the Government’s 

intrusion into our lives, have they actually worked? I think you can 

argue—I think you need to consider maybe all of our good intentions have had some very harmful negative consequences. 

And I will tell you what. If we do not get our debt and deficit 

under control—and sequestration is not a good way of doing it because Congress refuses to prioritize spending. We want to spend 

money on everything. 

So, Mr. Lesley, I just want to ask you, do you acknowledge the 

danger in terms of our budget deficit and how harmful $600 billion 

of additional interest expense would be in terms of every Government program? Does that not concern you? 

Mr. LESLEY. Yeah, no, absolutely. In my testimony, I talked 

about—I am sorry. In my testimony I talked about how interest on 

the debt will actually exceed all Federal spending on kids by 2017, 

so I do believe that deficit reduction is a children’s issue and something that is very important. 

But I also note that what is happening is in these cuts, the share 

of spending for kids—kids are 25 percent of the population, and we 

are spending less than 8 percent of our funding on them. And so 

when we do across-the-board cuts, disproportionately those cuts are 

falling on kids. We exempt other areas, and so— 

Senator JOHNSON. Yes, because two-thirds of the budget is off 

budget. It is on automatic pilot. It is not subject to appropriations, 

so the only thing that Congress can have any effect on is a very 

small slice, you know, a third of the budget, $1 trillion, which is 

difficult. 

Mr. LESLEY. Right, which is disproportionately kids. 

One chart in my testimony also to point to is on page 10 of the 

appendix. In my testimony what we show is the poverty rates for 

seniors from 1966 to 2010, and kids— 

Senator JOHNSON. It has declined and poverty rates for— 
547 

Mr. LESLEY. —have not. And it is the difference between what 

Social Security means for seniors and what TANF does not mean 

for kids. And— 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. Before I run out of time, Ms. Nimmo 

Crowe, you are operating at the level that I think we really ought 

to be trying to solve these problems, the State and local levels. I 

would like you to just speak, you know, to your concern about the 

Federal mandates and the costs that the Federal mandates impose 

on the States. And how big a factor is that in terms of the States 

trying to grapple with these very serious issues? 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Federal mandates on particular programs or 

just across the board? 

Senator JOHNSON. Education—well, it is across the board, but 

particularly on education. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Well, I think that the Federal mandates are 

certainly something that the States grapple with. What I mostly 

hear, though, is frustration that there are mandates coming down 

from the Federal level to the State level or the State level to the 

local level without the appropriate funding to go with them. 

Senator JOHNSON. Because we do not have the money to fund 

them. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Understandably. But it is a catch-22 if you 

are the person stuck trying to implement whatever the program is. 

So I think that that is certainly a concern. I think that we need 

to look broadly. There are obviously some decisions that have to be 

made, but I think Bruce is right that when we look at the disproportionate share of the burden that children are taking in terms 

of budget cuts, in terms of rising poverty, those are facts that simply cannot be ignored. 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, I have a great deal of faith in individuals, in local governments, State governments, local teachers, 

school administrators. We see the Federal Government has not 

been particularly effective at it, so, again, thank you for what you 

are doing, and, again, I thank all the witnesses. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. The vote had been called. We have 

two more Senators with time. Senator King? 

Senator KING. I will try to be very brief. 

Mr. Muhlhausen, I am very interested in your testimony because 

I, too, believe programs should work. And we are spending the taxpayers’ dollars, and we should be sure that they are effective. 

Do you believe that there is a possibility of an effective pre-school 

education, early childhood education program? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. I certainly do believe it. I just think that it 

is hard for the Federal Government to implement an effective program on a national scale. I think you can probably find throughout 

the country some small-scale local programs that are doing a wonderful job. But when you look at the programs on a national level 

in the Federal Government and say that—when the Federal Government created Early Head Start, it was based on the Carolina 

Abecedarian Project at a small-scale randomized experiment found 

to be effective. Well, we know that Early Head Start does not work 

today. So the Federal Government— 
548 

Senator KING. Excuse me. Is it all Early Head Start programs or 

is there a variation between programs? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, you are going to have a variation, but 

when the Federal Government did an analysis of several Early 

Head Start programs across the country, they found that the program largely did not work. And so the Federal Government has a 

lot of trouble scaling up local— 

Senator KING. But what I am trying to get at is what do we draw 

from that: that programs cannot work or that this particular one 

in the aggregate did not work, but where there are successful 

ones—I am interested in improvement, not elimination. 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, it is very hard for the Federal Government to take a small-scale program and blow it up on the national 

scale and have it be effective. Since 1990 there have been about 20 

large-scale randomized experiments of Federal social programs. 

Only one of those evaluations finds a positive consistent effect, and 

that was welfare reform. All the other job training programs, the 

early childhood education programs, the various multitude of other 

programs that were looked at—housing vouchers—all failed the 

test of being effective. 

The Federal Government has a hard time taking an effective 

idea done at the local level and blowing it up on the national level. 

Senator KING. What if it simply provides funding and allows the 

local levels to determine how the program worked? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, I think in many cases the Federal Government is doing that, and the problem is that when we assess 

the—we need to assess the effect of whether it works or not. We 

need to actually go in there and evaluate it and see if it works. And 

there are far too many programs today that are operating that do 

not get assessed. We maybe have some real good programs that we 

do not know about because we have never evaluated them. But the 

thing is, when we do do a national large-scale evaluation of Federal 

social programs, we almost always find disappointing results. 

Senator KING. But I get back to the idea of is the concept good 

but the execution not good, assuming—I am assuming, by the way, 

the validity of the study, and I think there are questions about that 

study and what the more persistent grounds are that do not necessarily get picked up in various kinds of tests. But assume that 

if the—I mean, I cannot believe you would testify that early childhood education does not matter. 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Let me say—let me give you a good example 

of a good concept. In the 1980s, Minneapolis experimented with 

mandatory arrest for people who were committing domestic violence. What they found in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was that when 

they made a mandatory arrest, the offender was less likely to commit future domestic violence crimes in the future. Everybody was 

amazed. They replicated that policy across the country. And when 

they evaluated it in other sites, they found in some sites across the 

country the offender—and this is horrible—said, well—he had some 

sick logic where he ended up beating his spouse or girlfriend even 

more because he knew he was going to get a mandatory arrest, and 

he was going to spend the night in jail. 

So a good idea that actually reduced harm in Minneapolis did not 

work in other localities. So sometimes programs work for specific 
549 

localities because the circumstances are right. The people who are 

running the program are the best at doing it. The local conditions 

are right. So you are going to find success. But taking that idea 

and dropping it into other communities does not mean we are going 

to have the same success. And sometimes we have failure. 

Senator KING. Let me make a general point I have made at this 

Committee before. The problem with the debts and the deficits is 

not Head Start. It is not Pell grants. It is not the national parks. 

It is health care, period. The driver of the Federal deficit over the 

next 25 years, with all these charts that show it going up, is health 

care. And I said this at a Committee before. Attacking Head Start 

when the real problem is health care is like invading Brazil after 

Pearl Harbor. We really should be talking about what is the real 

problem driving Federal debts and deficits. 

Now, having said that, I do not disagree that we need to hold 

programs that we fund to a standard of effectiveness. And I think 

we need to continue to study them and continue to try to improve 

them. But to say because a study says we cannot find a numerical 

result from Head Start, says let us forget about Head Start, I just 

think defies common sense. 

Do you have children, Mr. Muhlhausen? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. No, I do not. 

Senator KING. Well, I have five children and five grandchildren. 

You cannot tell me that all the hours I spent reading to those kids 

when they were 1 and 2 and 3 years old did not matter. I know 

it matters. Early childhood education is probably one of the best investments we could make. The challenge, it seems to me, is not to 

say we should not do it but that we should do it better. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

And, Senator Whitehouse, you can wrap up. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you very much, Chairman. 

Let me focus on Job Corps for a second, and, Mr. Muhlhausen, 

let me ask you about your testimony. About three-quarters of people who enroll at Job Corps, when they get started, before Job 

Corps kicks in, when they show up, when they first enroll, about 

three-quarters of them are high school dropouts. On average, they 

read at an eighth-grade level. Most have never had a full-time job. 

Do you believe that when a child first shows up at Job Corps they 

are facing more challenges, equal challenges, or fewer challenges 

than their peers? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, I think they are facing a lot of challenges, but— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. A lot of challenges, right? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, the research that I use in my testimony 

took Job Corps applicants who wanted to participate in the program. They all had similar backgrounds. They randomly assigned 

some of the students, some of the kids to be in Job Corps, and 

other students could not be in Job Corps. Then they looked at the 

success, whether the program worked— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. But you will concede— 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. —and they found the program does very little. 
550 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. You will concede that a child showing up 

for Job Corps is in a different set of—facing a different set of challenges than their age group peer? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, when I say ‘‘peer,’’ when I think of peer, 

I mean a similar— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Well, I am asking the question— 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. —someone with a similar background. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. —so that the way I say ‘‘peer,’’ which 

means that their peers in their age group, the common definition 

of the word. 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. All right. But when you look at effectiveness, 

we are comparing them to kids with similar socioeconomic backgrounds. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. I am not asking you about effectiveness. 

I am asking you about— 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. Well, of course. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. —this question. 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. That is why we have the programs for disadvantaged kids. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Bingo. And when you describe Job Corps 

participants in this data, you are including folks— the kids who 

never made it through Job Corps, correct? You are counting the 

ones who washed out and did not complete the program? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. No. We are counting kids who were not granted access to the program. It was a randomized experiment where— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Now, when you say somebody is a Job 

Corps participant—right?—you are included people who participated but did not complete the program. Correct? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. I am talking about—when I saw Job Corps 

participant, I am talking about individual kids who participate in 

the Job Corps evaluation— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. But did not necessarily complete the program, correct? 

Mr. MUHLHAUSEN. I would have to get back to you on that. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Okay. 

[The information follows:] 
551 

Question for the Record 

By Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 

June 26, 2013 

Senate Budget Committee 

On page 9 of your testimony, you cited findings of a 2008 study comparing the educational and 

vocational status of "participants" and "no-participants" of Job Corps. Did the "participants" 

group include individuals who enrol1ed in Job Corps for a time, but who dropped out before 

attaining a GED or vocational certificate? If so, would a more useful comparison look at 

differences between those who successfully completed Job Corps and those who did not 

participate at all or who dropped out before attaining a GED or vocational certificate? 

Answer 

By David B. Muhlhausen, Ph.D. 

July 1,2013 

The section of my written testimony that refers to Job Corps is based on the findings of a 

Department of Labor-sponsored multisite experimental evaluation that assessed the impact of the 

youth job-training program using program (intervention) and control groups. For the evaluation, 

eligible youth who applied to participate in Job Corps were randomly assigned to intervention 

and control group. The program group members (participants) gained access to Job Corps 

services, while the control group members (non-participants) were not al10wed access to the 

program. According to the 2001 Job Corps evaluation, "The random assignment design ensures 

that no systematic observable or unobservable differences between program and control group 

members existed at the point of random assignment, except for the opportunity to enrol1 in Job 

Corps. Thus, simple differences in the distributions of outcomes between program and control 

group members are unbiased estimates of program impacts for eligible applicants."! 

The findings for Job Corps summarized in my written testimony are based on the comparisons 

between the program and control groups. For example, 48 months after random assignment, 5.3 

percent of the program group had earned high school diplomas, while 7.5 percent of the control 

group earned the same credential-a statistical1y significant harmful impact of 2.2 percent.2 This 

finding is based upon what is called an intent-to-treat (ITT) effect. ITT assesses the average 

effect of being offered access to a program and does not assess the effect of actually participating 

in the ~rogram. Approximately 73 percent of members ofthe program group participated in Job 

Corps. These individuals, on average, participated in Job Corps for about 8 months with about 

25 percent participating for over a year and 28 percent participating for less than three months.4 

The ITT technique is commonly used for large scale evaluations because the method utilizes the 

scientific rigor of random assignment that yields unbiased impact estimates. When the "real 

world" impacts of a program are sought, ITT impact estimates are considered the most policy 

relevant. This relevancy occurs because the assumption that every eligible person will actually 

participate in the program is unrealistic. 

However, in some cases, evaluators estimate impacts by focusing only those individuals who 

actually participated in the program. These estimates, called treatment-on-the-treated (TOT) 

often use quasi-experimental methods to estimate program impact. When TOT estimates are 
552 

used in a study originally based on random assignment, the TOT estimates no longer hold the 

same scientific rigor of ITT estimates. The evaluator can no longer make the assumption that 

members of the TOT group are equivalent to the control group in composition, predispositions, 

and experiences. Researchers cannot be sure that TOT estimates are unbiased. 

The 2008 study did estimate TOT effects. For example, 48 months after random assignment, the 

TOT method estimates that 4.4 percent of actual Job Corps participants earned high school 

diplomas, while 7.5 percent of the control group earned the same credential-a statistically 

significant harmful impact of3.1 percent.5 Thus, the use of TOT for this outcome measure 

increased the harmful effect of Job Corps. 

The second part of your question asks whether it would be more useful to compare successful 

Job Corps graduates to either youth who did not participate at all or who dropped out before 

obtaining a OED or vocational certificate? The short answer is absolutely not. 

The long answer is that such faulty comparisons wiIllikely yield biased impact estimates due to 

what is referred to as "selection bias." Selection bias is, perhaps, the most problematic threat to 

internal validity for evaluations of social programs.6 When systematic differences in the 

characteristics of intervention and comparison participants are present, the observed outcomes 

may be the result of selection bias and not the effect of the social program. This threat is 

common in quasi-experimental designs when the estimate of the counterfactual derives from a 

comparison group. Pre-existing differences can become confounded with the effects of the 

intervention. 

Selection bias would be present in an evaluation of Job Corps that compared program graduates 

to non-participants or program dropouts. If the intervention group is comprised of those 

participants who successfully completed Job Corps, while the comparison group consists of Job 

Corps dropouts, then the findings would only show use that successes succeed and the failures 

fail. This type of "cream skimming" comparison is incapable of providing a scientifically valid 

assessment of the effectiveness of Job Corps. The successful graduates may have been just as 

likely to have had successful outcomes without participating in Job Corps. The individuals 

graduating from Job Corps may have been more motivated to better themselves, so such 

comparisons would not yield scientifically valid estimates of program effectiveness. The same 

problem of selection bias would occur if graduates were compared to youth who did not 

participate at all in Job Corps. 

I Peter Z. Schochet, John Burghard~ and Steven Giazerman, National Job Corps Study: The Impacts of Job Corps 

on Participants' Employment and Related Outcomes (Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., June 200 I), 

r· 35 . Peter Z. Schochet, John Burghardt, and Sheena Mcconnell, "Does Job Corps Work? Impact Findings from the 

National Job Corps Study," American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No.5 (December 2008), p. 1872. 

3 Ibid., p. 1871. 

, Ibid., p. 1871. 
553 

, Ibid., p. 1872. 

6 For detailed discussion of selection bias and other threats to internal validity, see David B. Muhlhausen, Do 

Federal Social Programs Work? (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013). 
554 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Ms. Nimmo Crowe, you did not talk about 

Job Corps in your testimony, but I suspect you deal with it in Virginia. Do you have any thoughts about how Job Corps works for 

kids who face it? And, by the way, greetings from Elizabeth Burke 

Bryant of Rhode Island, who is your colleague at Rhode Island 

KIDS COUNT. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Thank you. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. We love her and her program. 

Ms. Nimmo Crowe. Thank you. She does an excellent job. I would 

love to tell you that I did know something about Job Corps, and 

I am sure that we have it in Virginia, but I personally have not 

had any experience with it, so I cannot answer that question. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Mr. Lesley? 

Mr. LESLEY. We do a little bit of work on that, but it is not— 

I could get back to you in writing with some—to answer your question. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. I think it would be helpful to have a more 

balanced record on this. 

Mr. LESLEY. Absolutely. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thanks very much. 

I think we have to leave for the vote, so I will yield back my 

time. 

Chairman MURRAY. We do. Thank you very much. 

I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today, Sakhia, 

especially you. You did a great job, and I think we owe her a round 

of applause. 

[Applause.] 

Miss Whitehead. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. As a reminder to my colleagues, additional 

statements or questions for any of the witnesses from today’s hearing are due in by 6 o’clock today to be submitted to the Chief Clerk, 

and with that I will call this hearing to a close. 

[Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
(555) 

THE IMPACT OF SEQUESTRATION ON 

NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE ECONOMY 

TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:32 a.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Whitehouse, Warner, Kaine, King, 

Sessions, Crapo, and Wicker. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and Eric 

M. Ueland, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. This hearing will now come to order, and I 

want to thank my Ranking Member, Senator Sessions, and all of 

our colleagues who are joining us here for this Committee meeting 

with me today. 

I also want to thank all of our witnesses: Bob Work, who is CEO 

of the Center for a New American Security; Mark Klett, president 

and CEO of the Klett Consulting Group; Jennifer Green, a secretary at Madigan Army Medical Center in my home State of 

Washington; Baker Spring, F.M. Kirby Research Fellow in National 

Security Policy at the Heritage Foundation; and Tom Donnelly, codirector of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the 

American Enterprise Institute. Thank you all for coming today and 

joining us for this very critical discussion on the impact of sequestration on our economy and our national security. 

Sequestration is having serious impacts across the Federal budget, but today we are going to focus on the automatic cuts and future spending reductions that impact defense spending specifically. 

As the daughter of a World War II veteran, I believe we have a 

sacred obligation to keep the promises we have made to our men 

and women in uniform. They deserve our support while they serve, 

as well as when they come home. 

But, unfortunately, the indiscriminate cuts from sequestration 

are threatening our fragile economic recovery, as well as our national security. 

At a time when too many Americans are struggling to find work, 

civilian defense employees are being furloughed, and small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, our economic recovery and our 

military preparedness is suffering. 
556 

While I believe there are responsible spending cuts to be made 

in defense programs, the current across-the-board cuts and future 

arbitrary spending reductions over the next 8 years as part of sequestration are not the answer. 

Especially during this time of global uncertainty, we need to 

maintain a strong national defense that allows us to meet today’s 

international threats and be prepared for those of the future. And 

we need to be investing in job creation and long-term economic 

growth—not causing furloughs that in turn hurt our families and 

the economy, as well as small businesses and service members 

alike across our country. 

Defense sequestration is hurting small businesses like Mr. 

Klett’s, who is here today, which does work on critical areas like 

cyber security and the new aircraft carrier. As he will tell you, his 

company has lost a substantial portion of its income and has been 

forced to lay off 30 percent of their staff. He has even reduced his 

own salary so he is now one of the lowest paid employees in his 

company in order to keep his workers on the payroll as long as possible. Even though his company is a service-disabled veteran-owned 

small business, and even though they do work important to our national security efforts, they are not protected. 

Sequestration is also impacting people like Ms. Green. She is 

dealing with furloughs and the loss of at least 20 percent of her income for the rest of this fiscal year, while still doing her own work 

as well as filling in for a second full-time position in another department. On top of this, she is a single mother and a full-time college student dealing with high health insurance premiums, college 

costs that are not all covered by her Pell grants, and daycare on 

the base for her son that, because of sequestration, cannot stay 

open late enough. 

Mr. Klett and Ms. Green, you are both sacrificing immensely and 

doing your best to get through some very difficult times. And we 

thank you and admire you for your determination and really appreciate your being here today, especially Ms. Green, who has come 

all the way across the country to share her story. 

I hope that all of our colleagues take note of your examples, because there are other parents, students, and business owners 

struggling to make it through in every one of our home States. And 

if sequestration continues next year, there are going to be a lot 

more stories like the ones we hear today. 

Now, sequestration is not just impacting individuals and their 

families. Those cuts will also have a serious national and international consequence if they are allowed to continue. 

Earlier this month Secretary Hagel sent a letter to the Armed 

Services Committee describing some of the expected impacts if sequestration happens in fiscal year 2014 and DOD is forced to cut 

another $52 billion. For DOD personnel, civilian employees would 

face continued furloughs or layoffs, and a hiring freeze would remain in effect. For military members, involuntary separations, a 

freeze on promotions, and other actions would be required. 

Training, which keeps our forces the most capable in the world, 

would see dramatic cuts. For instance, earlier this year, the Air 

Force was forced to ground a third of its squadrons. They just managed to redirect some funds to get those squadrons flying again, 
557 

but under a fiscal year 2014 sequester, that work would be undone, 

and an even larger percentage of Air Force squadrons would be 

grounded. 

Critical research and development of new tools to maintain our 

technological advantage and better protect our service members 

would also be cut dramatically—all while our competitors around 

the world increase their investment to try to reduce the advantage 

we now have. 

Secretary Hagel stated that, if sequestration continues, ‘‘The Department will have to make sharp cuts with far-reaching consequences, including limiting combat power, reducing readiness, 

and undermining the national security interests of the United 

States.’’ And he called on Congress to, ‘‘Pass a balanced deficit reduction package that the President can sign that would replace 

these deep and arbitrary cuts in fiscal year 2014 and in future 

years.’’ 

Secretary Hagel also noted that this kind of comprehensive replacement would help not just DOD but many other agencies, including those with a role in supporting our troops and veterans. So 

I really hope that we can come together to address this in a bipartisan way. It is simply wrong, and it does not make sense, as our 

world remains a complex and dangerous place. 

With the end of the war in Afghanistan approaching and the rebalance to Asia beginning, this is not the time to allow irresponsible defense cuts to impact our security. 

In Secretary Hagel’s letter he warned that if sequestration remains in place for fiscal year 2014 and beyond, ‘‘The size, readiness, and technological superiority of our military will be reduced, 

placing at much greater risk the country’s ability to meet our current national security commitments.’’ 

Now, it is critical to understand that we are only just beginning 

to see the impacts of these cuts. And as we all remember, they 

were never intended to be implemented. Sequestration was meant 

to be so terrible that both sides would come to the table and compromise. 

Democrats and Republicans spent a lot of time over the last 2 

years talking about how devastating these cuts would be. A number of our Republican colleagues traveled around the country to 

talk about the ways that sequestration would ‘‘hollow out the military.’’ 

And Republican members of this Committee joined Democrats in 

saying that the cuts from sequestration should be reexamined by 

Congress. But despite all of our efforts, and despite Democrats’ 

willingness to make some tough decisions to find responsible savings to replace sequestration, we have not come to an agreement 

yet. And if sequestration is not replaced, the effects on our economy 

and our national security over the long term will only get worse. 

Cuts to other parts of our budget also make us less secure. For 

example, our international trade not only helps the economy, but 

it also creates stability around the world. But sequester cuts to 

commerce and agriculture put that in jeopardy. 

Cuts to foreign affairs hurt critical work to build stability, create 

good will towards America, and defuse conflict. Ultimately, as experts like General Mattis have testified, and as we will hear more 
558 

about today, that retreat from the world will make us more vulnerable. 

House Republicans say they are adhering to the BCA with their 

budget, but we all know they are doing the opposite and replacing 

sequestration only for defense. 

Senate Democrats, on the other hand, have said if we replace sequestration for defense, we also have to protect the Departments 

of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, the FBI and other law 

enforcement agencies, and vital efforts to ensure our competitiveness through investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure from deep, unsustainable, and often arbitrary cuts over the 

next 8 years. 

Both the House and Senate appropriation allocations require a 

replacement of sequestration to prevent another round of acrossthe-board cuts. 

So I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are ready to 

work together to address this and end this arbitrary system that 

really hurts our prosperity, because we all know we can replace 

these cuts with smarter choices that are better for our national security and long-term growth, as well our fiscal health. 

And it should be clear that we need to work together to invest 

in keeping America strong and secure and to keep the promises we 

have made to our veterans that their country will be there for them 

when they come home. 

We owe it to the American people to come together around a real 

and comprehensive solution to this problem that is hurting our 

economy, is hurting our national security and our families and 

communities. We cannot afford to keep these cuts around for 10 

more years. And we cannot keep governing from crisis to crisis. 

I especially appreciate the views of members like Senator 

McCain and so many others on the other side of the aisle who have 

joined us in that simple request, that we return to regular order, 

start a bipartisan budget conference, and work together to tackle 

the challenges we face. 

There is bipartisan agreement that sequestration is the wrong 

way to cut spending, and a bipartisan agreement needs to be made 

to fix it. So there is absolutely no reason for us to get closer and 

closer to October 1st—and closer and closer to another manufactured crisis—before we come to a solution on this. 

It is not going to be easy, but the families we represent are looking to us to end the constant artificial crises and political 

brinksmanship that is threatening our fragile economic recovery 

and our national security, and work together to replace sequestration responsibly. 

So I am very glad that this Committee is having this extremely 

important discussion today, and I thank all of you for being a part 

of this conversation. 

I want the members of our Committee to know that I am going 

to have to step out. My THUD bill is on the floor, and I have to 

manage that. Senator Warner has agreed to chair the Committee 

in my absence, but I just think this is so important and really appreciate everybody being here today. These are critical issues, and 

we need everyone’s perspectives. So I look forward to this hearing 

and the testimony, and I will turn it over to my Ranking Member, 
559 

Senator Sessions, and I want to thank Senator Warner for helping 

me out this morning. 

Thank you very much. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Chairman Murray. I know you are 

always here first, but you also have a bill on the floor, and you 

have to be there, so we fully understand that. 

I join you in welcoming our distinguished panel to discuss the 

impact of sequestration on our national security. It is a very serious matter. We are here for reasons that I have a different view 

of than the Chairman, and we have got to deal with the realities 

of where we are. And I take it very, very seriously. 

The matters that we are facing today have been made substantially worse by the fact that the President has blocked defense 

planning to make this happen. Sequestration was passed in August 

of 2011, yet this year, 2013, all the cuts occurred in 7 months. And 

I asked General Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, just 

a few days ago at the Armed Services hearing, how that happened 

and didn’t it make it worse. He said it did make it worse. And I 

said, ‘‘How did that happen?’’ And he said, ‘‘We were told basically 

from the White House not to start planning and not to start phasing in the reductions.’’ And I have heard from many people that the 

furloughs that may be necessary to some degree could have been 

avoided in many instances, but it was determined to do the furloughs, I suppose, as a way to politically drive the issue. 

So we have not done a good job of this, and I believe the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America has a high duty. 

He promised in a debate during the last election that this would 

not happen, and all he has proposed is eliminate sequester and pay 

for it by raising taxes which is what we know would not happen, 

and it is not going to happen. He raised taxes in January $600 billion, but we agreed as part of deficit reduction to reduce spending 

by $2.1 trillion in that Budget Control Act. 

So we have got a difficult situation, and we are not having any 

leadership. I am beginning to wonder if the President is not quite 

happy to see the Defense Department take this much cuts. If he 

was sincerely worried about it, why isn’t he providing more leadership to confront it? I know a lot of his supporters are quite happy 

to see the Defense Department take these cuts. 

In August, Congress and the President came to an agreement 

that $2.1 trillion needed to be cut from our projected growth in 

spending. And we must stick to that agreement. We need to spread 

the spending cuts around. Under the agreement, spending would 

increase from the then level of $37 trillion over 10 years to $45 trillion over 10 years rather than a projected growth to $47 trillion 

over 10 years. Why then is there so much intense turmoil about 

this issue? 

First, it is important to realize that spending on national defense 

is not the root cause of our financial difficulties. 

Secondly, the Department of Defense has already contributed to 

the Nation’s deficit reduction efforts by cutting its proposed spending by nearly $500 billion over 10 years to accommodate the initial 

round of budget control caps. 
560 

So now, even before one considers the impact of sequestration, 

we have defense spending that is lower as a share of the budget 

and a share of the economy than it has been in the past and it is 

continuing to go lower. 

As a share of the Federal budget, just 17 percent of Federal 

spending will go to defense this year. Just 50 years ago, defense 

spending made up 46 percent of all Federal spending. As a share 

of the economy, spending on defense will average 3 percent over 

the next 10 years, which is down from the post-World War II average 7 percent. By fiscal year 2023, the last year of the President’s 

10- year budget, defense spending as a percentage of GDP will hit 

an all-time World War II low of 2.4 percent of GDP. 

Now, defense spending, which is already on the decline and 

makes up only one-sixth of the entire Federal budget, is being required to take another $500 billion in cuts due to the sequestration 

provisions, and this drawdown is not occurring in an era of peace 

and stability but a time that General Dempsey, Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs, has said is ‘‘actually more dangerous than the era we 

are just leaving.’’ In fiscal year 2013, we saw $40 billion in across-the- board cuts to national security spending, $37 billion of which came out of the 

Department of Defense through the sequestration. As a result, our 

troops and the men and women of DOD’s civilian workforce are 

paying a price. The uniformed leadership of our military have expressed dire consequences on training and readiness arising from 

these reductions. 

General John Campbell, Army Vice Chief of Staff, said, ‘‘The reality is that if sequestration continues as it is, the Army simply 

will not have the resources to support the current defense strategic 

guidance, and we risk becoming a hollow force.’’ Others have said 

the same, and I think that is an honest evaluation. 

As for the civilian workforce, we are all aware of the budget 

pains they are personally feeling as over 650,000 have received furlough notices, taking away 11 days of work from July until the end 

of the fiscal year. These men and women, who are critical partners 

for the troops, deserve better. 

After two consecutive budget submissions from this administration, with no credible plan to turn off sequestration, we are headed 

on a dangerous path of an additional $52 billion in cut for fiscal 

year 2014 and similar cuts in subsequent years to the Department 

of Defense budget. These reductions that Secretary Hagel has said 

would reduce the size, readiness, and technological superiority of 

our military need to be reexamined. 

Next year will be the worst year as we deal with this for sure. 

As we move forward, let us work together to stave off these unwise 

levels of cuts to defense spending. It is important that we hold to 

the reasonable reductions in the rate of spending growth as set 

forth in the Budget Control Act. However, Congress should modify 

the mechanism to ensure shared sacrifices. Too many agencies 

were not required to tighten their belts at all. They were allowed 

to continue to grow without restraint. 

It is time for the Commander-in-Chief to provide certainty in the 

defense budget and explain the dangers of these large defense cuts. 

The Commander-in-Chief should do that. 
561 

It is also time to examine the large protected programs that have 

outpaced DOD in spending by many times. Food Stamps have increased 4 times in just 11 years, from $20 to $80 billion, and Medicaid has increased at a rate nearly twice DOD increases in recent 

years. Yet those programs and others were not required to even minutely control their rate of growth. 

It is time to adopt a balanced approach, as my colleagues say, 

to deficit reduction. Remember, half these sequestration cuts are 

falling on one-sixth of the Federal budget. That is the Defense Department. They are having more cuts than anyone else. 

Chairman Warner, I am just looking at the numbers, and all of 

us should—I hope you would join me in considering what is happening. When they laid out the 5-year budget plan for the Defense 

Department in fiscal year 2012, we projected to spend $571 billion 

in fiscal year 2013. What actually occurred was $495 billion was 

spending. That was $76 billion off the projection. It was a growth 

path, but that is what was projected. But it is even worse next 

year. Next year, we were projected to spend $586 billion; whereas, 

the cap would bring us down to $475 billion. So that is a $111 billion reduction, and that is where we are hitting an unsustainable 

situation that is just difficult to absorb. And if you look at the numbers over time, they begin to go back up from next year. But for 

the next 2 years, we are having a very serious, unwise reduction 

in spending that does more damage than should occur. 

Thank you. 

Senator WARNER. [Presiding.] Thank you, Senator Sessions. I 

would simply add that while these cuts are remarkable on the defense side, they are equal to some of the cuts on the domestic discretionary side that took place even before the BCA, and I will 

come back to that in my comments. But I would like to get to this 

panel, because I think what we are going to see is—I would say 

what Chairman Murray said. It is even worse. Sequestration was 

set up to be so stupid that no rational group of people would ever 

let it happen. Yet it is happening. And I think we are going to hear 

from this panel that this is stupidity on steroids and that we are 

going to actually see that,in many cases under the guise of ‘‘cutting 

spending,’’ we are actually costing the taxpayers more money. 

So I am anxious to get to this panel. I appreciate everyone being 

here. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, we will work with you to see 

where we can find other areas that the budget can be tightened, 

and I think that is the approach. 

Senator WARNER. And I have put forward some of those approaches in past efforts, as you are aware, on both sides of the 

ledger. 

We are going to start with Mark Klett, who is from the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was Small Businessman of the Year back in 

2011. He will speak to the questions of the effect of sequestration 

to his business. 

We are going to then hear from Bob Work, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Center for a New American Security, and a 

former Under Secretary of the Navy. He will testify about the strategic level impacts of sequestration. 
562 

Ms. Jennifer-Cari Green, who is a civilian employee from Washington State, will talk about some of the direct impacts some of 

these furloughs and others will have on her family. 

Mr. Baker Spring, the Kirby Research Fellow in National Security Policy at the Heritage Foundation, will talk about the strategic 

impact of these cuts. 

And, finally, Tom Donnelly, co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at AEI, will talk about the strategic impact. 

Mr. Klett, if you could start, and then we will go down the line. 

STATEMENT OF MARK N. KLETT, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, KLETT CONSULTING GROUP, INC. 

Mr. KLETT. Thank you, Senator Warner, and good morning to all 

the great Senators here in the room today. It is a distinct honor 

for me to be able to address you on this critical issue of national 

security and our economy from a small business perspective. 

I have been in business for over 11 years. We have had some 

very good growth years in our company, and I have got some tremendous employees. Over 60 percent of our employees are veterans. Most of them are subject matter experts. Most of them have 

advanced degrees. We have developed a national resource in our 

company where we do work in cybersecurity, information assurance, and have worked on some very sensitive programs that help 

our national security. 

In the last couple of years, 2011, 2012—well, 2013, because of the 

continuing resolutions, because of sequestration, the funding and 

the planning just has not been there that is needed on some of 

these critical programs. The result is for the small businesses that 

are out there, as we have—it is stop and go, it is herky-jerky, if 

you will, to try to get the funding to keep personnel working. 

In the last year, for example, I have had to put 30 percent of my 

personnel, critical personnel, to programs not because anyone 

wanted them to be there on the bench, but they have had to sit 

on the bench and not be able to follow our model. The best way to 

predict the future is to create it. We have not been able to do that 

in some critical programs, in command and control for 

cybersecurity. We have had to go in for 90 days to 120 days, come 

off and do it. And who pays for those folks to sit on the bench? 

That comes out of our company overhead. And I gladly pay that because they have bills to pay, and that has reduced our profit margin, which I call ourselves a nonprofit company anyways, although 

we are not, but that is what you have to do. You have to maintain 

your people and your core capabilities, because it is a national resource. And that is what you do as a small business. 

We do not have any pink paper in our company. Okay? There are 

no pink slips. 

Sequestration creates inefficiencies and delays. Sequestration— 

and Senator Sessions very eloquently described a whole bunch of 

numbers, a lot of percentages of things. Sequestration only reduces 

our budget—or its intention is to reduce our budget 2 percent. Two 

percent. But the majority, it is defense and national security centric. Most of that 2 percent is in the Defense Department, as I 

think all of you well know. So it is critical that it is affecting our 
563 

national defense and our national security. That is where most of 

the cuts are. That means when we have large programs that cannot be started or continuing, like building new aircraft carriers, 

which we are intimately involved in, in integrating all those systems, ensuring their information assurance programs are like they 

need to be, doing some of the cybersecurity things that we are intimately involved with in many programs, some of those things are 

new. They cannot be funded or turned on when you have to stop 

and you do not have a budget and you do not have approval for 

appropriations. That is what a budget and a plan does to make 

sure the appropriations start on 1 October. They do not start on 1 

October. This year they started in April. Now, from April to September, now you have it. 

What happens then? A lot of people have to sit on the sidelines 

waiting for that money to drip out of the different program offices 

so that people can do the work that needs to be done. That is the 

process. And who gets hurt? Large companies, mid-sized companies, and small companies—in all agencies. I am not just talking 

DOD. All agencies. And then what happens, we have not seen the 

impact of all that yet because the furloughs just started. And we 

are going to see our economy go down. We are going to see other 

things happening. 

These are serious problems. I know you all work extremely hard 

together to try to get a budget put together. I know you all work 

very hard to try to do the jobs that you are trying to do. But in 

business, it is all about relationships. If you do not have relationships with other people—because no one company can do everything, no one company can do all those things. Work on your relationships with both sides, with the House, and get things done. 

And that is what I do to be successful, and I ask you all to do the 

same. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Klett follows:] 
564 

TESTIMONY OF 

Mr. Mark N. Klett 

President and CEO Klett Consulting Group, Inc 

Tuesday, July 23, 2013 

Distinguished members of the Senate Budget Committee, it is an honor for me to speak to you regarding 

the impacts of sequestration on national security/economy from the perspective of a veteran owned 

small business 

I am a small business owner, and a disabled veteran who proudly served my country in the U.S. Navy for 

over 20 Years as a Surface Warfare Officer -I dedicated my life to national security when I was 18 years 

old and enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy. 

After serving my Country, I transitioned into the Defense Contracting industry. After working for three 

large Defense Contractors -I found that my entrepreneurial passion could only be satisfied by going out 

on my own. With the unwavering support of my family, I established Klett Consulting Group in August of 

2002. Since then my company has created over SO jobs, purchased an office building in my hometown, 

and expanded into federal, state and municipal marketplaces. 

Klett Consulting Group has grown into a multi faceted Professional Services Firm with a specialization in 

Department of Defense System Engineering & Cybersecurity. We provide government-industry teams 

with technical solutions, program management, and operational expertise. As a small business, we have 

written the Open Architecture Implementation Strategy for the US Navy, led the Enterprise Architecture 

and Information Assurance efforts for the next generation aircraft carrier - CVN-78, and was a significant 

contributor to the Presidential Executive Order on Cybersecurity this past February. We deliver these 

projects with an efficient team of professionals who understand the government's missions and 

requirements. 

As a Service Disabled Veteran Small Business owner, approximately 60% of my workforce is veterans. 

This presence of veterans is consistent with the geographic area in which I represent - South East 

Virginia, Hampton Roads. With the presence of the Norfolk Naval Station, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Oceana 

Air Station, NASA Langley, and a collection ofthe world's largest ship yards; it makes sense that 

Hampton Roads has the highest veteran density in the country and thus is significantly more susceptible 

to the effects of sequestration. 

Thankfully, these Veterans served a country where the government didn't just say "tough luck." 
565 

Sequestration creates inefficiencies and delays 

In a time in which efficiencies need to be created, Sequestration introduces inefficiencies and delays 

that are making a bad situation worse for companies of all sizes -large, mid and small businesses. 2012 

and 2013 have been the most difficult business years in my 11 year existence. Instead of focusing on 

fulfilling the work requirements necessary for critical national security and warfighter resources, I have 

been forced into an increased amount of paperwork and waiting periods for contract and purchase 

order awards. Because of the perpetual continuing resolutions and lack of decisions, Contracting 

Officers lack the proper foundation or backbone of their program - A BUDGET and acquisition authority. 

Without the proper budget authority contained in the appropriations bills the contracting officers and 

Program Officials cannot obligate any new work to be performed. Because of this uncertainty in 

budgets, Programs can not plan to execute to meet missions efficiently, even if they have the resources 

to do so. Many programs have adopted the model of "Incremental Funding" as a way of life during this 

uncertainty. This means instead of going through the contractual approval process once every year we 

are going through it every 30 - 60 days. This has often led to gaps in workforce which means gaps in 

capabilities. Contractors are left with no access to work while incremental funds can be released 2-4 

weeks later. The government's inability to execute timely contracts for what is needed in critical areas 

leads to overall waste offunds and the government is getting less products in the end. 

Our small business has seen gaps of two weeks to one month on contracts due to this inefficient funding 

methods - and this is very manpower intensive on both the government and industry side. This practice 

costs a lot of time and dollars just to get critical work done. 

Example 1: According to VADM Myers (Deputy CNO N8), the Continuing Resolution and sequestration 

will lead to inefficiencies caused by loss of learning; productivity losses; cost increases driven by 

lengthening schedules; he added that increased burdens on military personnel and lower morale - all 

translates to reduced readiness. 

Example 2: Devastating effects have already been caused in the ship building industry. The uncertainty 

ofthe looming sequestration has caused a civilian-hiring freeze at Shipyards which have already caused 

non-recoverable impacts to the shipyards' ability to execute many assigned workloads and nuclear 

submarine availabilities while threatening to impact Docking Planned Incremental Availabilities for the 

USS Eisenhower (CVN 69) and the USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74). 

Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, said it best - "Right now, for example, we are in the 

absurd position that it is only lawful to build the ships we already built last year!" 
566 

Sequestration creates competitive disadvantage for small businesses 

It is often said small businesses are the backbone of the economy and it is true. Many of my business 

peers have had their backs broken. Sequestration creates a competitive disadvantage for small 

businesses. Due to the aforementioned delays and gaps in work, I have had to put nearly 30% of my 

work force on the bench or overhead for as little as two weeks and as long as two months this year. 

With no approved budget, or appropriations bill- no government agency, prime contractor or 

subcontractor can plan beyond a few months. No one can plan beyond 30 September 2013. The impact 

will be even greater on subcontractors, who lack the capital structure to withstand uncertainty. 50 to 70 

percent of defense dollars are subcontracted, and many of the subcontractors are small businesses like 

myself. 

As a small business owner - and an American citizen -I ask Congress to work together for the good of 

the country to help sustain jobs by giving us a combined budget that results in the expeditious passing of 

appropriations bills that can be executed. This is a complicated process that needs to be done for the 

be,nefit of all our citizens to ensure our National Security and our place in the Global Economy. 

Veterans are out of work 

In my company alone, I currently, have an Air Force Veteran, and Navy Veteran and a Marine Corps 

Veteran who are out of work because of Congress' indecision. In the last 3 months all three of those vets 

were on long term contracts that were not executed, or have been told to hold off until year end. These 

vets are Subject Matter Experts in their field performing critical support for the warfighters. There is an 

entire work force of military vets out of work, on the verge of losing work or have been furloughed. I 

receive a Stack of resumes every week of military vets looking for work. Back in February, a large 

shipyard in Norfolk, VA sent warning letters to 1,500 of its workers, adviSing that layoffs were a 

possibility, amid concerns over sequestration defense-cuts. 

Thankfully, they live in a country where the government didn't just say "tough luck." 

According the economist Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, sequestration could cause a total 

of 2.14 million jobs lost (both directly and indirectly caused by sequestration), resulting in a 1.5 point 

increase in the unemployment rate. 

As 000 draws down its forces and spending -we need to develop a strategy to be ready to fight and win 

the next war not the last one. A big part of that preparation is having a ready agile Force that is 

equipped to meet our nation's strategic security requirements and our trained veterans can fill much of 

those strategic niches with small business capabilities. My Company like many others has created a 

strategic capability for our national security - but must fight everyday to keep it alive due to the 

government processes in place that serve no competitive or compliant purpose - just delays the award 

and increases the price of doing business. A PLAN - A CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET - and ASSOCIATED 

APPROPRIATIONS BILLS are required to get our talented veterans work force working and all our 

American force moving forward. Only 0.03% ($l.4B) of our budget is committed to the Small Business 

Administration -I certainly think we can do better for the engine of our economy - small businesses. 
567 

Conclusion 

Thank you for the opportunity to share a view from the trenches of how small veteran businesses are 

affected by sequestration. Sequestration is affecting the economy evidenced by increased inefficiencies 

which is affecting national security. We are less secure now than we were a year ago. The cuts are tough 

on everyone, but the larger problem is the uncertainty caused by not having a budget plan. No one, 

government, military nor industry can plan and move out without knowing where the government 

wants to put its resources. 

Recommendation - Relationships are critical to success in the business world - in running this great 

country of ours, Congress has been entrusted with putting a budget and appropriations together each 

year to ensure that the our country meets and honors all our commitments to our citizens to ensure 

their security and our economic strength in the global economy. I plead with all of you here in the 

senate to commit to all Americans to work for the best interests of our Country and work to foster a 

working relationship with all members of Congress to put both an executable budget and appropriations 

bills together so that sequestration can be avoided at all cost and our National Security and Economic 

Stability of all Americans can be safe. We do not need a government of inaction that just says tough 

luck to our hard working citizens. 

Leon Panetta said it best -letting the sequester go into effect would be "shameful and 

irresponsible," and it would "damage the readiness" of the U.S. 
568 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Mr. Klett. 

Mr. Work? 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ROBERT O. WORK, CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN SECURITY 

Mr. WORK. Senator Warner, Ranking Member Sessions, distinguished members of the Committee, thanks for the opportunity to 

be with you today and speak about the potential effects of sequestration. 

It is hard to imagine improving upon the two opening statements 

or Secretary Hagel’s letter, so what I would like to do is just try 

to put what is happening into context and explain why sequestration could potentially be so damaging. 

Sequestration is part of the fifth defense drawdown since World 

War II. Each of the four previous drawdowns had their own unique 

character, and this one will be no different. This drawdown comes 

on the heels of the longest sustained defense buildup since World 

War II. 

In hindsight, Secretary Gates’ efficiency effort during the formation of the fiscal year 2012 budget was an attempt to get ahead of 

the inevitable downturn that occurs after wars. However, just as 

the efficiencies drill ended, the Department was levied a lastminute $78 billion cut, which was incorporated in the final fiscal 

year 2012 budget, and this budget thus marked the start of the 

drawdown. 

Now, preparation of the 2013 budget was focused on accommodating the cuts that were addressed from the 2012 Budget Control 

Act, which ultimately came to about $489 billion apportioned over 

10 years. I believe this effort was generally well led and executed. 

The output, as outlined in ‘‘Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,’’ published in January 2012, is in 

my opinion one of the more cohesive and coherent documents published by DOD since the end of the Cold War. 

Now, this was followed by the year-long ‘‘debate’’ over sequestration. We were told not only from the White House but all of the 

signals from Congress and the Office of the Secretary of Defense 

was that sequestration could and would not happen because it was 

indeed stupidity on steroids. But as a result, for better or worse, 

we did not plan, and it was implemented, which will cause another 

$520 billion apportioned over the next 10 years to cut. 

So with this as background, what might be the effect? First and 

foremost, for Congress, these cuts are certain to cause a further alteration to our basic national military policy and force-sizing construct. From 1993 through 2012, our stated policy was to have a 

joint force size and ready to fight two regional wars in overlapping 

time frames. This policy helped to underwrite our conventional deterrent. However, ‘‘Priorities for 21st Century Defense’’ announced 

a future joint force would be sized to fight only one major contingency while simultaneously denying the objectives of— or imposing 

the unacceptable costs on—an opportunistic aggressor. 

Now, one might have expected this important change to spark a 

serious debate in Congress because of its national security ramifications. But it did not happen. In my view, right now maintaining 
569 

the policy we have now, fighting one major war and denying an opportunistic aggressor, is the absolute minimum requirement for a 

global superpower. But sequestration is undoubtedly going to make 

this very difficult to achieve this minimum standard. And if it 

could not, I would hope that Congress and this body would carefully consider the strategic ramifications. 

Second, sequestration’s associated defense cuts will likely result 

in a less capable future joint force that is less ready. The problem, 

in my view, is not necessarily about the overall size of the cuts, 

however painful they may be. It is the mindless way they are being 

apportioned. The problem begins in 2013. When the timing came 

late in the year, the services were forced to cut maintenance, training, and slow buying parts. This started a downward spiral in readiness that continues to play out. This spiral will continue through 

2014 and 2015 as the Department’s scrambles to hit the $52 billion 

sequestration marks. Manpower is exempted from sequestration. 

And in any event, in an all- volunteer force, you do not get savings 

in the year that you cut the people primarily because you likely 

have to buy them out or have early retirements, which may actually cost money in the near term. This means that services will inevitably have to go to research and development, procurement and 

military construction, and all of these will make the force less capable. But more problematically, they are going to have to cut operations and maintenance further. The cuts in 2013 will roll into 

2014. The cuts in 2014 will roll into 2015. We will continue to dig 

a very deep readiness hole. 

What will happen is we will prioritize the forces that are deploying, but all of the forces that back them up, our so-called surge 

forces, will be less resilient and less ready, which will be very problematic in the case of a crisis. 

There is also not a lot of freedom of action for DOD. DOD needs 

a BRAC. It needs to get a handle on personnel costs. It needs to 

get a handle on health care costs. We need to be able to give DOD 

those flexibilities. 

Now, I have personally been involved in three drawdowns. As a 

young second lieutenant in 1975, I arrived on Okinawa at the very 

tail end of the Vietnam drawdown. I saw firsthand its debilitating 

effects. I lived through the entire fourth drawdown and started the 

fifth as the Under Secretary. My worry is that what is the worse 

effect of sequestration is it will—the readiness effects it will have 

in 2014 and 2015, and I urge this Committee and Congress to at 

least give DOD flexibility in those 2 years. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Work follows:] 
570 

Statement of 

The Honorable Robert O. Work 

Chief Executive Officer 

Center for a New American Security 

Before the Committee on the Budget of the United States Senate 

Delivered July 23,2013 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about the potential wideranging effects sequestration could have on the U.S. defense establishment. 

Before explaining why and how sequestration could be so damaging to national 

security, however, I'd like to first put what is happening into historical context. 

The Fifth Drawdown 

We are well into the fifth major defense drawdown since World War II. Each of 

these drawdowns commenced at or near the end of either a hot or cold war. The 

first came on the heels of the Second World War, before the menace of communism 

had become clear. The second and third came towards the end of the Korean and 

Vietnam Wars, respectively. The fourth came as the long Cold War was winding 

down. And this fifth drawdown began roughly with the end of the war in Iraq, and 

will likely continue at least through our disengagement in Afghanistan, if not 

beyond. 

Each of the previous four drawdowns had their own unique character. The first 

drawdown was coincident with the massive post-World War II demobilization, with 

the size of the defense budget falling over 80 percent off the wartime high. For 

example, the Navy went from over 6,700 ships in commission in September 1945 to 

just 634 ships five years later. The other services coped with similar dramatic 

reductions. Unsurprisingly, given the magnitude of the cuts, our forces were 

generally unprepared when the North Koreans invaded South Korea in June 1950. 

The post-Korean and Vietnam War drawdowns were similar in that they followed 

hot wars waged during the broader national emergency known as the Cold War. 

Both wars were fought with large conscript forces, which were shed at the end of 

the conflicts without regret. The final post-war cuts to defense topline averaged 

between 30 and 40 percent off the wartime highs, spread out over four to eight 

years. Thereafter, the demands of containment and for forces ready to respond to 

communist aggression arrested the cuts and led to subsequent defense buildups. 

The post-Cold War drawdown was much different than the three relatively short, 

sharp downturns that preceded it. It was the first drawdown in the era of the allvolunteer force, and occurred over a much longer period. The downturn started 

1 
571 

after FY1985, as the threat of communist expansionism seemed to be moderating. It 

then accelerated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Through much of this 

period, even as the defense topline was being reduced year after year, successive 

administrations worked with the Department of Defense (000) and Cong'ress to 

establish a post-Cold war floor in defense spending. The floor's foundation was laid 

during the 1993 Bottom Up Review, which adopted a national military policy and 

force-sizing construct that called for a Joint Force capable of fighting and winning 

two regional wars in over-lapping time frames. By FY1998, after thirteen years of 

declining defense budgets and a 33 percent drop off the FY1985 spending peak, it 

was clear that this policy was being underfunded. The next year thus saw a real 

increase in defense spending, as did each year of following ten years. 

I was confirmed as Undersecretary in May 2009. When I arrived, the FY2010 

President's Budget (PB) was being debated in Congress. The Pentagon was in the 

midst ofthe 2009 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Despite the sharp national 

economic downturn in 2007-2008, the Department's general mindset was that it 

would continue to see real increases in yearly defense spending, if at more modest 

rates than seen over the previous decade. Based on this assumption, the 2009 QDR 

and the supporting FY2011 PB submission affirmed and sustained the two-war 

strategy. 

This mindset began to change the following year. Because personnel costs and 

operations and support costs consistently outpaced inflation, Secretary of Defense 

Gates reckoned the Department would need to see real defense increases of 2-3 

percent per year to sustain the two-war policy and supporting force structure. 

However, he believed the defense budget would flatten by FY2015. He therefore 

ordered each of the Military Departments to come up with at least $30 billion in 

"efficiencies" in overhead or "tail," and divert it to force structure and program 

"tooth." 

In hindsight, this laudable goal was a last ditch effort to stave off the inevitable 

defense downturn that was coming as we ended the war in Iraq. However, just as 

the efficiencies drill ended, 000 was levied a last minute $78 billion cut in the final 

budget pass back, which was incorporated in the FY2012 PB submission. This 

budget thus marked the official start of the fifth post-World War II drawdown. 

The drawdown accelerated in a big way with the passage of the 2011 Budget 

Control Act. The associated cuts to future defense toplines ultimately came to $489 

billion apportioned over ten years. I believe the strategic review to accommodate 

these cuts was generally well led and executed. The President, Secretary and Deputy 

Secretaries of Defense, Service Secretaries and Undersecretaries, and Service Chiefs 

and Vice Chiefs were all personally invested and involved in the process. The output 

of this effort was ou tlined in Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21 st 

Century Defense, published in January 2012 in advance of the FY2013 PB 

submission. In my opinion, it stands as one of the more cohesive and coherent 

documents published by 000 since the end of the Cold War. 

2 
572 

That said, Priorities for 21 st Century Defense announced a major change to our 

national military policy and force-sizing construct that had been modified but never 

substantially altered since 1993. Instead of being sized and ready to fight two 

simultaneous regional wars in overlapping timeframes, the document announced 

the future JOint Force would be sized to fight one major regional combined arms 

campaign while simultaneously denying the objectives of-or imposing 

unacceptable costs on-an opportunistic aggressor. I, for one, hoped this important 

change in policy might spark a serious debate in Congress over its ramifications. But 

I was disappointed in the response, which might be best summed up as a collective 

"hohum." 

In any event, the 2011 strategic review was followed in 2012 by the yearlong 

"debate" over sequestration. Through late Fall 2012, all of the signals coming from 

the White House, Congress, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense suggested 

sequestration could and would not happen. As a result, for better or worse, the 

Department did little to prepare for it. However, as we now know, no grand bargain 

was struck and sequestration was triggered on 1 January 2013, although it did not 

take effect until 1 March. If fully implemented, future defense spending will be cut 

another $520 billion, apportioned equally over the next ten years. 

I provide this background not only to put sequestration into proper historical 

context, but to make an important point. The Pentagon is suffering from intense 

change fatigue. The staff completed a QDR in 2009, a major efficiencies drill in 2010, 

and a major strategic review in 2011, requiring the development of two alternative 

budgets; and a year of playing "what if?" On top of this, DoD's civilian workforce has 

been progressively demoralized due to several years of pay freezes, cuts in bonus 

pools, and now furloughs. These patriots provide much of the brainpower and 

energy behind the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System. As a result, 

unlike the strategic review following the 2011 BCA, DoD is behind the planning 

power curve and is finding it hard to catch up. 

Sequestration: Piling On 

With this as background, what might be the effect of sequestration's additional $520 

billion in planned spending cuts? First and foremost, the cuts will surely cause a 

further alteration to our national military policy and force-sizing construct. For a 

global superpower, maintaining a force capable of responding to two crises-such 

as fighting one major war and denying the objectives of an opportunistic aggressor 

in a different theater-would seem to be the absolute minimum requirement for a 

credible conventional deterrent. However, sequestration will make it very difficult 

to maintain this minimum standard, at least to a credible degree. 

Second, the associated defense cuts will inevitably result in a less capable future 

Joint Force that is less ready and less resilient The reasons for this are quite easy to 

understand. The problem is less about the overall size of the cuts, however painful 

3 
573 

they might be. Instead, it is the mindless way the cuts are being apportioned and 

applied. 

To begin with, the cuts were triggered nearly halfway into FY2013, on top of a 

continuing resolution in effect since October 2012. Thankfully, Congress quickly 

resolved the CR and later approved a generous reprogramming of Department of 

Defense funds. These actions helped stave off more serious carnage to programs and 

damage to readiness in FY2013. However, the way the cuts were apportioned and 

applied inevitably forced all ofthe Services to take big cuts in operations and 

maintenance by deferring maintenance, cutting training, and slowing the buying of 

spares and parts. Make no mistake, although the effects might not be immediately 

obvious, these actions mean the readiness of the Joint Force has already started a 

downward spiral. 

This spiral will continue and accelerate through FY2014 and FY2015, as the 

Department scrambles to hit the abrupt $52 billion yearly sequestration budget 

marks. And once again, the way the cuts are apportioned and applied will compound 

the problems encountered in FY2013. For example, military manpower was 

exempted from sequestration. Regardless, because this is an all-volunteer force, any 

savings associated with manpower cuts would not be seen in the year of execution. 

Sequestration means the Services will likely have to involuntarily separate 

volunteers, not conscripts, many of whom want to remain on active duty. This will 

likely require buy-outs and early retirements, which may actually impose additional 

personnel costs in the near term. 

This means that the Services will only be able to hit their share of the $52 billion 

sequestration mark by turning to two major accounts. The first will be the 

investment account, which includes research and development, procurement, and 

military construction. Funding for promising technologies, key to making the Joint 

Force ready for future challenges, will be cut. Weapon buys will be cut to minimum 

sustaining rates, which will increase the unit price for all munitions, making it more 

expensive to buy less weapons. Aviation "tails" will be cut, increasing the average 

age of already old aircraft inventories. Ground combat equipment accounts will be 

cut. Our restoration and renovation efforts to upgrade our aging barracks and 

infrastructure will be slowed, ifnot stopped altogether for a period of years. When 

taken together, all these cuts will inevitably make the future Joint Force less capable, 

at least in the near to mid-term. 

The second place Services will be forced to cut will be in their operations and 

maintenance accounts. All the maintenance deferred in FY2013 will roll into 

FY2014. All the maintenance deferred in FY2014 will roll into FY2015. And so on, 

and so on. We will simply keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a 

readiness hole. The result will be that maintenance and training will be prioritized 

to those units deploying. Those that aren't scheduled to deploy won't train, at least 

to the levels to which they are accustomed. Consequently, while our forward 

4 
574 

deployed forces may be ready, their backup-our so-called "surge" forces-won't 

be. The Joint Force will thus be less resilient and ready if a major crisis erupts. 

The effects of sequestration will not be all bad. One of the first rules of strategy is 

that all resources are scarce. The past decade of sustained defense budget increases 

has helped to obscure this enduring principle. Thus, inside the Pentagon, nothing 

will sharpen the debate and analysis more than the prospect of budget cuts and the 

need for DoD to become more efficient. One would thus expect the entire 

Department to take advantage of the opportunity provided by sequestration to 

better balance strategic ends, ways, and means; streamline business operations; and 

shed unneeded overhead. The recent announcement by Secretary Hagel that staffs 

will be reduced by 20 percent is a step in the right direction. 

However, this process will be made more difficult by DoD's reduced freedom of 

action. For example, the Department urgently needs a new Base Realignment and 

Closure Round, to shed unneeded infrastructure. It needs to reduce personnel costs 

by shaving back some ofthe generous benefits given to the force over the past 

decade. It needs to charge our service members a bit more for the terrific health 

care benefits they are receiving, in order to halt the growth in costs of military 

health care. Yet, DoD is being precluded from pursuing these options as aggressively 

as it might. By working with DoD to address these difficult issues that are beyond 

their control, the White House and Congress could help reduce overhead costs, 

thereby making the effects of sequestration on investment and readiness far less 

onerous. 

Pursuing Defense Budget Cuts in a More Responsible Manner 

I have been personally touched by three of the five post-World War II defense 

drawdowns. As a young Marine Second Lieutenant in 1975, I arrived on Okinawa at 

the very tail end of the Vietnam War drawdown, where I saw firsthand its 

debilitating effects. I was on active duty throughout the thirteen years of the postCold War drawdown, observing both its start and finish. And as Undersecretary of 

the Navy, I was on hand to see the start of the current drawdown and helped fashion 

the initial programmatic response to it. 

My greatest fear is that the way we are implementing sequestration could lead to 

many of the problems I found when I arrived on Okinawa. I initially lived in a 

barracks infested with rats and vermin. Our equipment was in shambles. We had 

little money to train with and even less to spend on things like toilet paper or office 

supplies. We were not remotely ready, and it was utterly demoralizing. It is hard for 

me to imagine things getting as bad as they were in 1975. However, unless we 

change the mindless way sequestration has been implemented, I see us headed into 

a similar downward spiral in readiness. And, once you dig into a readiness hole, it 

takes several years to climb back out, no matter how much money your throw at the 

problem. 

5 
575 

I thus urge Congress to find a way to achieve the sequestration savings targets in a 

more responsible manner. Reducing DoD's sequestration targets in FY2014 and 

FY2015 and providing it with greater degrees of freedom to cut its overhead would 

help delay the near-term investment and readiness problems outlined above. More 

importantly, it would also allow the Department time to take a breath, conduct a 

full-blown Quadrennial Defense Review to better align its strategic ends, ways, and 

means, and better plan a responsible way to achieve its targeted savings. 

I hope this Committee, and the entire Congress, will consider doing so. 

Thank you. 

6 
576 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, sir. 

Ms. Green? 

STATEMENT OF JENNIFER–CARI GREEN, SECRETARY, NEUROSURGERY AND PLASTIC SURGERY SERVICES, MADIGAN 

ARMY MEDICAL CENTER, REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN 

FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES 

Ms. GREEN. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank 

you for the opportunity to testify today about the impact furloughs 

at the Department of Defense will have on my family’s budget. My 

name is Jennifer-Cari Green. I am 26 years old. I am the divorced 

mother of a 6-year-old boy. 

I have worked at Madigan since 2007 where I serve as a secretary for the neurosurgery service. I study full time at Pierce 

Community College and hope to earn my associate’s in 2014. My 

ex-husband does live in the area but was terminated from AAFES 

in 2010, so his employment since then has been intermittent and 

part-time, likewise with his parental involvement and financial 

support. 

My current budget is already stripped to bare bones, but we have 

been making it. Before furloughs, my finances were already such 

that I have to rent a small apartment in a not so great part of 

town. The car I drive and rely on to get to and from work, college, 

and my son’s school or daycare is financed through a loan with a 

relatively high interest rate. I pay almost $360 a month for a 2011 

Chevy Aveo. It is not a luxury vehicle by any means. 

I live without luxuries. I do not have cable in my home. I do not 

go get my nails done or eat out frequently or any of the things that 

people think of that they will have to cut back on when times are 

tough. For my family, times have already been tough for quite a 

while. My salary has been frozen for the last 3 years, and because 

of the hiring freeze at DOD, I have been expected to do the work 

of two positions for over a year. 

However, I have been able to provide a life for my son and myself 

without depending on others or public assistance, and that is something I have always been proud of. 

I keep hearing 20 percent as the size of the pay cut that 11 furlough days creates when people talk about DOD furloughs. But 

that is really a misrepresentation of what being on furlough will 

mean for my household, and I am sure I am not the only one. 

Based on a furlough calculator distributed at work, I will actually be losing 32 percent of my take-home pay because most of the 

deductions from my paycheck do not change just because my earnings go down. My take-home will go from $1,477 per month to 

$1,008 at a 32-percent reduction. So I will be losing—or I will be 

at least $215 short for monthly budget expenses that I cannot control. I do not know where I will make up that cost at this time let 

alone find room for anything extra. And by ‘‘extra,’’ I do not mean 

entertainment costs or gifts or leisure activities. I mean car maintenance, medical prescriptions, school supplies, household goods. 

This furlough will likely cause me to slip below the line into poverty, and it feels punitive, and I worry that it will make me become 

a beggar. I am afraid that I will be forced to seek handouts, Government assistance, or food bank donations. 
577 

I have attached a chart to illustrate the impact that the furlough 

will be having on my budget. My gross will go down by $580 per 

month. That is the 20 percent that everyone talks about. The only 

reductions that go down with my salary are taxes and FERS. Everything else stays the same. So everything becomes a bigger percentage of my pay, and that is how I have a personal loss that is 

greater than 20 percent. 

Even before furloughs, I have only been able to save $25 per pay 

period for TSP, which is not enough to receive maximum employer 

match, but it is what I can afford. So before furloughs, I was not 

able to fully participate in FERS either. 

I often hear people talk about tightening your belt. I looked into 

dropping my medical insurance, but was told that I could not do 

that in the middle of a plan year. I cannot get to work without my 

car, and selling it for a cheaper car has other costs associated with 

it. I cannot find less expensive child care, although I have tried. I 

earn too much for my son to be eligible for free or reduced lunch 

or food stamps. I already declined to participate in employee- payall ‘‘benefits’’ like vision and dental insurance. There is really very 

little I can do to close the gap between what I earn and my expenses. 

It is extremely difficult to come to work and to do justice to this 

job, to care for our patients with the level of compassion and concern and courtesy they deserve when you know you do not even 

have enough money to buy bare necessities as a working adult. To 

know that your efforts at being hardworking self-reliant, and dependable are for naught, to know that you had an implicit contract, 

a promise to receive a certain level of pay for your work, and that 

you accepted a job under those conditions, and then to spend all 

day away from your child, struggling against seemingly impossible 

odds to meet a mission and provide quality care in less time than 

seems fair. 

To overextend yourself, to try to be helpful and as understanding 

as possible, and to make the patients are not the ones who suffer 

when so much of what determines their fate lies far beyond your 

own control. And at the end of the day, you still have to worry 

about whether or not your lights will be shut off or if you even 

have enough gas to make it to pick up your child and to take him 

home for supper. 

And the mission only gets harder. Providing the type of care we 

are expected to provide and indeed owe to our service members and 

their families becomes almost impossible, surely improbable. I am 

trying to—and pretending like it is not is stressful. 

Again, I thank you for this opportunity to testify. I ask you to 

end the austerity budgeting that led to sequestration and ultimately these furloughs. I am just one example of hundreds of thousands of Federal employees whose lives are being drastically damaged by these policies. We and service members who rely on us are 

the victims of these budget policies, and I ask you to remember 

that when you vote on policies that make it impossible for us to 

support ourselves and our families. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Green follows:] 
578 

AMERICAN FEDERA TlON OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, 

AFL-CIO 

STATEMENT BY 

JENNIFER-CARl GREEN 

AFGE LOCAL 1502 

MADIGAN ARMY MEDICAL CENTER 

TACOMA, WASHINGTON 

BEFORE THE 

SENATE BUDGET COMMITTEE 

ON 

THE IMPACT OF SEQUESTRATION ON NATIONAL SECURITY 

AND THE ECONOMY 

JULY 23,2013 
579 

Madam Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 

testify today. My name is Jennifer-Cari Green. I am 26 years old. I am a divorced 

mother of one. My son is six years old. I have worked at Madigan Army Medical since 

December 2007. I originally began at Madigan as a volunteer in the Surgical Services 

Center, starting in February 2007, and was hired as a medical support assistant to work 

in Orthopedics ten months later. After two years and a promotion to secretary, I moved 

to Neurosurgery, and that is where I have been working ever since. I am also a full time 

student at Pierce Community College, and alternate between night, evening and online 

classes. I hope to eam my associates degree by 2014. 

My ex-husband does live in the area, but was terminated as an Army Air Force 

Exchange Service (AAFES) employee in 2010. Since then his employment has been 

intermittent and part-time. Likewise, his parental involvement and financial support are 

intermittent and frankly not very helpful. 

My current budget is already stripped to bare bones, but we've been making it (barely). 

Before furloughs, my finances were already such that I have had to rent a small 

apartment in the not-so-great part of town. The car I drive and rely on to get to and from 

work, school and my son's school or daycare is financed through a loan at a relatively 

high interest rate; I pay almost $360 a month for a 2011 Chevrolet Aveo. It's not a 

lUxury vehicle by any means. It's the smallest and least expensive car that GM makes. 

It's what I could afford and what I bought because I needed a safe and reliable car to 

get me from "point An to "point B". (I was in an accident in January, hit by an uninsured 

motorist and my current budget did not have room for me to pay the deductible to have 

my car repaired. So I am paying monthly for a damaged car.) 

I live without luxuries. I don't have cable in my home. I don't go get my nails done, eat 

out frequently or do any of the things people generally think they will have to cut back 

on whenever times are tough. For my family, times have already been tough for quite a 

while. My salary has been subject to the three year federal pay freeze. Because of the 

hiring freeze at 000, I have been expected to do the work of two positions for over a 

year. However, I have been able to provide a life for my son and myself without 

depending on others, or public assistance and that is something I have always been 

proud of. 

I keep hearing twenty percent as the big number - the size of the pay cut that eleven 

furlough days creates - when people talk about Department of Defense furloughs. But 

that's really a misrepresentation of what being on furlough will mean for my household, 

and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Based on a furlough calculator that was distributed 

from hospital administration in order to help employees figure out and antiCipate the 

furlough's impact, I will actually be losing 32 percent of my take home pay because 

{OO322892.DOOC ·1 
580 

most of the deductions from my paycheck don't change just because my eamings go 

down. My take-home pay will go from $1,477.58 per month to $1,008.76 per month, a 

32% reduction. This means I will be at least $215 short for monthly budgeted expenses 

that I cannot control. I don't know where I will make up that cost at this time, let alone 

find room for anything extra. By extra, I am not even talking about entertainment costs, 

gifts or leisure funds. I mean money for car maintenance, medical prescriptions, 

household good, and school supplies. This furlough will likely cause me to slip below 

the line into poverty. It feels punitive and I worry that it will make a "beggar" out of me. 

am afraid that I will be forced to seek handouts, government assistance, food bank 

donations, etc. 

I have attached my furlough calculator to illustrate the impact that the furlough is having 

on my budget. My gross pay will go down by $290.24 per pay period, or $580.48 per 

month. That is the twenty percent that everybody talks about. But the only deductions 

that go down when my salary goes down are taxes and the FERS; everything else stays 

the same. So everything else becomes a bigger percentage of my pay, and that's how I 

get a bigger than twenty percent cut in my take-home pay. 

I want you to see that even before the furlough, I have only been able to afford to save 

$25 per pay period for the Thrift Savings Plan. That amount isn't enough for me to 

receive the maximum employer match, but it is alii can afford. So even before furlough 

I was not able to partiCipate fully in the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS). 

I often hear people talk about "tightening your belt" but I have very few options available 

to me. I looked in to dropping my health insurance, but was told that I could not do that 

in the middle of a plan year. I cannot work without my car, and selling it and buying 

another less expensive one has other costs associated with it. I cannot find less 

expensive childcare, although I have tried. I eam too much for my son to be eligible for 

free or reduced lunch or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or food 

stamps. I already decline to partiCipate in the employee-pay-all "benefits" like vision and 

dental insurance. There is really very little that I can do to close the gap between what I 

eam and my expenses. 

It is extremely difficult to come to work, and do justice to this job, to care for our patients 

with the level of compassion, patience, concem and courtesy they deserve when you 

know you don't even have enough money to buy the bare necessities as a working 

adult. To know that all your efforts at being a hardworking, self-reliant, and dependable 

woman and mother are for naught. To know that you had an implicit contract, a promise 

to receive a certain level of pay for your work, and that you accepted a job under those 

conditions, and then to spend all day away from your child, struggling against seemingly 

impossible odds to meet a mission and provide quality care in less time than Seems fair. 

{00J2:!892.DOCX· } 
581 

To overextend yourself to try to be as helpful and understanding as possible, to make 

sure the patients aren't the ones who suffer when so much of what determines their fate 

lies far beyond your own control. And then at the end of the day, to have to still worry 

about whether or not your lights will be shut off, or if you even have enough gas to make 

it to go pick up your child and take him home for supper. 

And the mission only gets harder. Providing the type of care we are expected to 

provide, and indeed owe to our service members and their families, becomes almost 

impossible, surely improbable. So much so, in fact, that even trying to pretend like it is 

possible is stressful. 

I thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I ask that you end the austerity 

budgeting that led to sequesters, and ultimately, to these furloughs. I am just one 

example of hundreds of thousands offederal employees whose lives are being so 

drastically damaged by these policies. We and the service members who rely on us are 

the victims of these budget pOlicies, and I ask you to remember us when you vote on 

policies that make it almost impossible for us to support ourselves and our families. 

{OO3n892.DOCX -I 
582 

FURLOUGH PAY ESTIMATOR 

IN THE EVENT SEQUESTRATION OCCURS 

Complett! the blue/green a!e~s as renected on your CURRENT l1:!;)ve tu,d E<lrnlngs St~tement (lESj. EsHm~ted FURLOUGH amounts wi!! automatically compute. 

EnlN adjustments to deductIons in the red/orange areas 10 show new FURLOUGH amount wIth different voh.lI1tar)' deductlc1rl5. 

HOURLY PAY RATE 

GROSS 

NONTAXABLE INCOME 

TAXABLE INCOME 

TAX DEFERRED 

DEDUCTIONS 

FEGU 

OA5DI (FERS = 6.2%, CSRS = 0%) 

Tax, Federal 

Tax, State 

Medicare 

Retirement Plan (CSRS =: 79'( 7.5% or 8%) 

(FERS prior to 2013 = 0.8%, after 2013 =: 3.1%) 

FEHB 

Dentrll 

Vision 

F5A 

TSP (Traditional using percentage) 

TSP (Roth using percentage) 

TSP Catchup (using percentage) 

TSP (Traditional using dO!!ilr amount) 

TSP {Roth using dollar amount} 

TSP Catchup (using doHar amount) 

Allotment 1 (or other) 

Allotment 2 (or other) 

Allotment 3 (or other) 

Allotment 4 (or other) 

Allotment 5 (or other) 

TOT Al DEOUCTIONS 

NET PAY 

CURRENT NET - FURLOUGH NET 

NET::: % OF GROSS 

% Of LOST GROSS 

% OF LOST NET 

% 

I 6,2% 

10.8% 

0.0% 

1.45% 

~ 

F 

$18,141 

CURRENT 

$ Amount 

$1,451.20 

$183,85 

$1,2'2.35 

$25,00 

$6.00 

$78,58 

$134,001 

$18.38 

$lL61 

$183,85 

$0,00 

$0.00 

$0,00 

525.00 

$240.00 

$15.00 

$712.41 

51% 

FURLOUGH 

(No Adjustments) 

$1,160.96 

$1B3,85 

$952,11 

$25,00 

$6.00 

$60.58 

$102,69 

$0.00 

$14.17 

$9,29 

$183.85 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$25,00 

$0,00 

$0.00 

$240,00 

$15.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$555.58 

$504.381 

$23",1 

43% 

-20% 

FURLOUGH w/ADJ 

% $ Amount 

$1,160.96 

$1B3.B5 

$977.11 

$0.00 

$6.00 

$60,58 

$105.39 

$0.00 

$14.17 

$9.29 

$183,85 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$0.00 

$379.28 

$7B1.6BI 

-$42,89 

67% 

-20% 

6% 
583 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Ms. Green, for your story. 

Mr. Spring? 

STATEMENT OF BAKER SPRING, F.M. KIRBY RESEARCH FELLOW IN NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION 

Mr. SPRING. Senator Warner, Senator Sessions, it is an honor for 

me to testify before the Senate Budget Committee on this pressing 

topic of the impact of sequestration under the Budget Control Act 

of 2011, which is currently in effect, on the ability of the Government to meet existing national security requirements and, finally, 

its impact on the economy. The views I express in this testimony 

are my own and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation. With your permission, I 

will summarize my testimony. I have made my full statement 

available to the Committee pursuant to its rules, which the Committee may use as it sees fit. 

I believe Congress at this point realistically has three options for 

future defense budgets. Unfortunately, all three would impose significant damage on the Nation’s defense posture. This is because 

even the highest level of funding among the three options would 

shrink the portion of the economy committed to defense, shrink 

force structure, reduce the number of people serving in the military, impose slower increases in military compensation, reduce the 

scope of training and maintenance, and deprive the military of significant portions of the new weapons and equipment it needs. Most 

importantly, the budget reductions would result in a military of insufficient overall strength to meet the established security commitments the Federal Government has made to the American people 

and U.S. friends and allies around the world. 

Let me go into the scope of these reductions under the three options. 

I think that the three options that are available to Congress 

start with the Obama administration’s fiscal year 2014 defense 

budget proposal: about a $100 billion reduction over 10 years from 

the spending caps imposed on defense under the BCA. 

The second is something that is roughly equivalent to what the 

Senate has approved in its budget resolution, which I calculate as 

being in the neighborhood of a $300 billion reduction over 10 years 

from the spending caps imposed by the BCA. 

And, finally, the sequestration level itself, which, as has been 

pointed out before, is roughly $500 billion over 10 years. 

For practical reasons, however, I am going to limit my comparisons to the remaining period covered by the BCA— fiscal year 2014 

through fiscal year 2021—because this is the best means of comparison for Congress as it drafts legislation on a defense program 

in the course of this year. 

The following are the funding levels for the total defense program under the three options for the 8-year period. That includes 

overseas contingency operations and mandatory as well as the discretionary. 

Option 1 would be $4.865 trillion, Option 2 would be $4.684 trillion, and Option 3 would be $4.489 trillion. 
584 

Accordingly, Option 2 provides about 4 percent less for total defense program than Option 1, and Option 3 provides about 8 percent less than Option 1. 

It is important to understand, however, that the defense reductions have been going on for several years at this point. Even Option 1 in 2014 is more than 11 percent below what the Nation 

spent on defense in fiscal year 2010. 

Let me speak about the economy here briefly. 

Defense spending, like all Federal spending, imposes a direct 

burden on the economy. On the other hand, it provides essential indirect support for the economy both domestically and globally by 

providing the secure environment necessary for productive business 

activity. Further, as I described before, defense absorbs a relatively 

small share of the economy, and the share is expected to shrink in 

future years even under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, 

this does not stop the critics of the defense program from asserting 

that the burden it imposes on the economy is intolerably high, and 

they are only too happy that the sequestration imposes a disproportionately high share of funding reductions on defense. 

This circumstance leads directly to the question: If defense expenditures impose an intolerably high burden on the economy, how 

is it possible to explain that entitlement expenditures do not do so 

at an even much greater degree? In reality, defense is not now and 

in the future will not become the source of Federal Government’s 

fiscal woes. 

I believe that Congress needs to go back to square one, which is 

to establish a strategy first defense program based on the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, and through a strategy-drive approach, arrive at the proper funding figures which I think would 

be higher than all three of these options, and if put in the proper 

context, allow for U.S. economic growth. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Spring follows:] 
585 

TESTIMONY OF BAKER SPRING 

F.M. KIRBY RESEARCH FELLOW IN NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY 

THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION 

BEFORE 

THE SENATE BUDGET COMMITTEE 

ON 

THE IMPACT OF SEQUESTRATION 

ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE ECONOMY 

July 23, 2013 
586 

Madam Chainnan, Senator Sessions, it is an honor for me to testify before the 

Senate Budget Committee on this pressing topic of the impact of sequestration under the Budget 

Control Act of2011(BCA), which is currently in effect, on the ability of the government to meet 

existing national security requirements and its impact on the economy. My name is Baker 

Spring. I am the F.M. Kirby Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in 

this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of 

The Heritage Foundation. With your pennission, I will summarize my testimony. I have made 

my full statement available to Committee pursuant to its rules, which the Committee may use as 

it sees fit. 

Madam Chainnan, as you know, the Department of Defense (DOD) has examined its 

options for proceeding under the extension ofthe ongoing automatic reductions in defense 

expenditures under the process of sequestration through fiscal year 2014, the outline of which 

Secretary of Defense Hagel has provided to the Chainnan and Ranking Member of the Senate 

Anned Services Committee in a letter dated July 10. Given this outline, I believe Congress has 

three options for future defense budgets. Unfortunately, all three would impose significant 

damage on the nation's defense posture. This is because even the highest level of funding among 

the three options would shrink the portion ofthe economy committed to defense, shrink force 

structure, reduce the number of people serving in the military, impose slower increases in 

military compensation, reduce the scope of training and maintenance, and deprive the military of 

significant portions of the new weapons and equipment it needs. Most importantly, the budget 

reductions would result in a military of insufficient overall strength to meet the established 

security commitments the federal government has made to the American people and U.S. friends 

and allies around the world. 

The Scope of the Reductions Under the Three Options 

The three options available to Congress are: 

1. The Obama Administration's fiscal year (FY) 2014 defense budget proposal: a $)00 

billion reduction over 10 years from the spending caps imposed on defense under the 

BCA; 

2. A $300 billion reduction over) 0 years from the spending caps imposed by the BCA; and 

3. The level offunding for defense provided by the BCA in accordance with sequestration, 

which is a $500 billion reduction over 10 years. 

The best starting point for comparing the three options is President Obama's request for 

defense in FY 2014 and beyond, which Secretary Hagel has confinned as the Administration's 

preference. However, the DOD has also revised the request to provide a finn number of a bit 

over $79 billion for the defense portion of overseas contingency operations (OCO) in FY 2014, 

but it omits OCO funding levels for any year beyond FY 2014. 

For practical reasons, however, I will limit the comparisons to the remaining period covered 

by the BCA (FY 2014 through FY 2021) because this is the best means of comparison for 

Congress as it drafts legislation on the defense program in the course of this year. The following 

are the funding levels for the total defense program under the three options for the eight-year 

period: 

Option 1: $4.865 trillion; 

2 
587 

Option 2: $4.684 trillion; 

Option 3: $4.489 trillion. 

Accordingly, Option 2 provides about 4 percent less for the total defense program than 

Option I. Option 3 provides about 8 percent less than Option I. It is important to understand, 

however, that the defense reductions have been going on for several years at this point. Even 

Option I in FY 2014 is more than II percent below what the nation spent on defense in FY 

2010. 

By way of analysis, there are eight bases for comparing the three options and their impact on 

defense. Each basis provides Congress a different means for assessing the impact. All of the 

comparisons apply the spending amounts in percentage terms and on a straight line across 

elements of the defense program: 

1. Percent of GDP devoted to defense. Option I would reduce the share of the economy 

devoted to defense to 2.6 percent in FY 2021, as measured in budget authority. Option 2 

would reduce it to a little more than 2.5 percent. Option 3 would reduce it to somewhat 

less than 2.5 percent. By way of comparison, the U.S. devoted 5 percent of gross 

domestic product (GDP) to defense in FY 2010. 

2. Modernization funding. Modernization funding is defined here as the sum of 

procurement and research and development. The Administration's current budget is 

proposing to spend roughly $200 billion in FY 2021 on modernization. Option 2 would 

reduce it to around $190 billion in FY 2021. At best, Option 3 would leave it at about 

$184 billion. The latter figure depends on the formula for sequestration being eliminated, 

which would end its exemption for military personnel funding. 

3. Active-duty manpower levels. It appears that the Obama Administration wants to 

stabilize active-duty manpower in the military. Accordingly, Option I appears to support 

a total active-duty manpower level of 1,326,000. Option 2 would reduce it to 1,273,000. 

Option 3 would reduce it to 1,220,000. Comparatively, the military requested 1,401,000 

total active duty personnel in FY 2013. 

4. Air Force force structure. The Obama Administration has an objective of retaining 40 

combat-coded Air Force fighter squadrons in the active service. This represents the Air 

Force active force structure under Option 1. Option 2 would reduce it to 38. Option 3 

would reduce it to 37. 

5. Army force structure. The Obama Administration's objective is to retain 37 active 

brigade combat teams (BCTs), which represents the active army force structure under 

Option 1. Option 2 would reduce it to 35 or 36. Option 3 would reduce it to 34. By way 

of reference, the army currently has 45 active BCTs. It should be noted that Army Chief 

of Staff Raymond Odierno announced that the Army intends to reduce active BCTs to 32 

or 33, but this is being done, in my judgment, for structural as well as budget reasons. 

6. Navy ships. The Obama Administration's objective is to retain 291 ships. There is 

considerable uncertainty regarding the viability of this objective under Option I funding 

levels. Option 2 would reduce this number to no more than 279. Option 3 would reduce it 

to no more than 267. These numbers could be significantly lower. 

3 
588 

7. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) funding levels. The Administration's current budget 

proposal, which is in keeping with Option 1, looks to fund the MDA at about $7.5 billion 

annually later in this decade. Option 2 would reduce this amount to $7.2 billion. Option 3 

would fund the MDA at $6.9 billion. The MDA budget for the current fiscal year is $S.3 

billion-prior to the application of sequestration. 

S. Funding for atomic energy defense activities. These activities are largely under the 

Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is 

under the DOE. The Obama Administration is proposing to fund these activities at $20.5 

billion in FY 2021. This funding level is in accordance with Option I. Option 2 would 

reduce this amount to $19.7 billion. Option 3 would reduce it to $IS.8 billion. It should 

be noted that nuclear weapons delivery vehicle acquisition programs are under the 

purview of the DOD and are funded under the modernization accounts described above. 

Defense Spending and the Economy 

Defense spending, like all federal spending, imposes a direct burden on the economy. On 

the other hand, it provides essential indirect support for the economy both domestically and 

globally, by providing the secure environment necessary for productive business activity. 

Further, as I described earlier, defense absorbs a relatively small share of the economy and the 

share is expected to shrink in future years even under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, 

this does not stop the critics of the defense program from asserting that the direct burden it 

imposes on the economy is intolerably high; they are only too happy that sequestration imposes a 

disproportionately high share of funding reductions on defense. 

By contrast, the major entitlements - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - already 

absorb a much larger share of the economy now and will absorb increasing shares of the 

economy for decades to come. According to my colleagues at The Heritage Foundation who do 

economic and broader budget analysis, these three programs will outstrip projected economic 

growth so that by the middle of this century their share of the economy will almost double. They 

also forecast that these three entitlement programs will absorb 100 percent of historical levels of 

federal revenue by about the same time. Finally, they assess that even eliminating defense 

spending completely would not balance the budget, assuming other existing elements of their 

budget projections remain intact. This circumstance leads directly to the question: If defense 

expenditures impose an intolerably high burden on the economy, how is it possible to explain 

that entitlement expenditures will not do so to a much greater degree? In reality, defense is not 

now and in the future will not become the source of federal government's fiscal woes. 

Does the Obama Administration Want Sequestration for Defense or Not? 

As I alluded to earlier, among the three options, the Obama Administration has publicly 

endorsed Option 1. In reality, however, I believe it has chosen Option 3. 

Since the enactment of the BCA in 2011, the Obama Administration has consistently 

stated that it does not want sequestration cuts to apply, and the President's current defense 

budget proposal does not account for it. On the other hand, the White House has just as 

consistently opposed proposals from the House of Representatives to set sequestration aside by 

issuing veto threats. I believe it is becoming clear that President Obama's position against the 

application of sequestration to defense is being driven more by tactics and less by a genuine 

commitment to protecting his defense proposal. Specifically, it is entirely plausible that he and 

4 
589 

Secretary Hagel are decrying the impact of sequestration on defense for the purpose of ramping 

up pressure on the House of Representatives to pennit the further acceleration of the rate of 

growth in domestic spending, particularly for entitlements, and to raise tax rates. After all, 

Secretary Hagel called the defense budget "bloated" in 2011, and it is difficult to imagine that his 

view in 2011 was uninfonned. Logic dictates that the about-face he has taken regarding the 

negative impact of further defense budget reductions in his July 10 letter stems from reasons 

other than a realization that his assertion in 20 II was wrong. 

The Role of Congress 

Looking ahead, Congress should set aside the ongoing budget-driven exercise for defense 

in favor of proceeding with the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) through a strategy-driven 

approach. Further, it should demand that the QDR establish a national security policy that meets 

the needs ofthe nation and then recommends funding the defense program at the necessary level. 

More immediately, however, Congress should not sit by passively as the Obama Administration 

claims that it supports adequate funding for national security while behaving in ways that 

effectively block such funding. National security requires setting aside sequestration and 

imposing restraint on domestic spending, most particularly by adopting carefully planned 

refonns of the major entitlement programs, which is necessary to the purpose of accelerate U.S. 

economic growth. 

5 
590 

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6 
591 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Donnelly? 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS M. DONNELLY, RESIDENT FELLOW 

AND CO–DIRECTOR OF THE MARILYN WARE CENTER FOR 

SECURITY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 

FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH 

Mr. DONNELLY. Thank you very much, Senator Warner and Senator Sessions. It is an honor to be here. I say that as somebody 

whose previous congressional service was on the other side of the 

Hill, so I will try to bury my House hostility towards the senior 

body for a moment or two, if I may. 

I would also like to deviate a bit from my prepared testimony 

and try to bring together some of the themes that I have heard in 

some of my colleagues’ testimony. 

I would begin with the observation that even though sequestration makes the problem much, much worse and late sequestration 

in 2013 doubled that effect and, as Bob Work said, will ensure that 

it extends for a year or more to come, the problem began before sequestration. One thing I hear particularly from Jennifer’s testimony and Mr. Klett’s testimony was that they were not exactly living the high life before sequestration happened. He described his 

business as a nonprofit, and it is clear from Jennifer’s story that 

she was not exactly mailing it in at her job either. And I think that 

observation can be made broadly about the Defense Department. 

The taxpayer has received extraordinary value for the cost of the 

U.S. military, and so the idea that there is a lot of waste, fraud, 

and abuse that will allow us to make cuts in an easy way without 

consequences I think is disproved by the testimony of both Mr. 

Klett and Ms. Green. 

The other point I would like to make is to pick up on a subject 

that Bob raised about the genuine strategic effects, and I think he 

is quite right to observe that the President’s defense guidance did 

represent the crossing of the Rubicon for this country in the years 

actually going back before World War II. 

To be a global power, to play the role the United States has 

played since that time, requires us to be able to do two things at 

once, to fight two major campaigns at once. And it is not surprising 

that back in the late 1930s the Congress passed the Two-Ocean 

Navy Act. Two is the right answer for a global power. We have 

crossed that threshold again, as Bob observed, with that debate. 

And we see the consequences of not only the strategic change in 

course that has been made, but by the steady erosion in the ability 

of the U.S. military to execute the strategy that has long been accepted by Presidents of both parties. We see it every day in the 

headlines from the Middle East where the U.S. withdrawal is precipitate, and the absence of American power is probably the most 

important influence on events that are happening there. It is also 

true particularly in Southeast Asia but in East Asia more broadly. 

Bob mentioned the Pacific pivot. The United States has been less 

and less present in the Pacific, particularly since the late 1980s 

when we withdrew from the Philippines. It took a long time. We 

had established a genuinely durable peace and set of security arrangements there that has allowed for the economic transformation 
592 

of that region and to the benefit of both America and the rest of 

the world. But now it has become a contested area as the Chinese 

elbow their way back across the South China Sea and begin to intimidate not only our partners out there but our treaty allies in the 

region. 

So I would argue we already see the consequences not just of 

what sequestration has done. That will be visible, it is already visible in small businesses, in Madigan Hospital, certainly on the 

training ranges where small units should be doing their business. 

I had recently visited Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, and I was 

appalled to see soldiers flipping burgers in the chow hall again. I 

had not seen that since the late 1970s. So these effects have opportunity costs as well as strategic costs as well. 

But there is no way that the world is going to stay the same if 

the United States plays a lesser role in the world. It will be more 

violent, it will be less secure, it will be less prosperous, and it will 

be less free. 

Sequestration is the first problem to fix, but only the first problem to fix. And if we fixate on the trees rather than looking at the 

forest, we will miss the larger picture of which sequestration is 

only a slice. 

Thanks for your time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Donnelly follows:] 
593 

SECURITY STUDIES 

Testimony of Thomas M. Donnelly 

Resident Fellow and Co-Director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies 

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 

Before the 

Senate Budget Committee 

On "The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy" 

Tuesday, July 23. 2013 
594 

There is, when viewed from a distance, an undeniable "Chicken Little" character 

to statements about sequestration coming out of the defense community. Even before the 

2013 cuts took effect, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of "the most 

serious readiness crisis" in more than a decade. l Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted that the effects would "incur an unacceptable risk.,,2 And 

now Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has taken his turn on the chorus, arguing that 

unless the Congress accedes to the administration's 2014 budget request, that the 

Pentagon "would be required to make major changes" in its plans. 3 

Secretary Hagel's July 10 letter, however, does represent a crack in the 

administration fayade - at least compared to last year, when the Defense Department was 

enjoined either from specifying the effects of sequestration or in formulating contingency 

budget plans. And, of course, as a result, the late-in-game enactment of the 2013 cuts 

much multiplied the amount of pain they are causing. 

But sequestration is sequestration; that is, the mechanism will be basically the 

same regardless of what political process produces the cuts. This also includes cuts 

arrived at through a "normal" congressional budget process. It may be that sequestration 

is a mindless way to reduce spending - and delayed sequestration the most mindless - but 

what matters most are the numbers. Even if managed "rationally," a further reduction of 

10 percent per year for the next decade, coming on top of the cuts already made in the 

past, will have, in my judgment, a crippling effect on the American military, on the 

United States' ability to shape a peaceful, prosperous and free world, and ultimately, on 

our national security. Secretary Hagel's letter is a useful yardstick to measure these 

effects. 

Hagel begins by discussing the personnel effects; quite rightly, with a very small 

"all-volunteer force," with less than half of one percent of Americans serving on active 

duty, "people issues" are and must be front and center. But, as the secretary notes, the 

personnel system established over the last generation was designed for the purposes of 

stabilizing the force. Notably, President Obama chose to exempt military personnel 

accounts from sequestration in 2013, predictably exercising the authority in the law. 

Thus, Hagel observed, in a 2014 sequestration, 

[m]ilitary personnel funding cuts would be disproportionately small (probably only a few 

percent of total military personnel funding) because reducing the size of the military 

yields relatively small savings in FY 2014. Even involuntary separations of military 

personnel save little in the year they occur because of added costs associated with 

separation payments .... Achieving a proportional, to percent cut in military personnel 

funding in FY 2014 would require that ODD put in place an extremely severe package of 

'Elisabeth Bumiller, "Panetta Warns of Dire Consequences to Military From Budget Cuts," The New York 

Times, February 6, 2013, http://www.nytimes.comi20 13/02/07/us/politics/panetta-warns-of-direconsequences-to-military-from-cuts.html. 

2 US Senate Committee on Armed Services, Hearing to Receive Testimony on the Defense Authorization 

Request for Fiscal Year 2013 and the Future Years Defense Program, February 14,2012, 

http://www.armed-services.senate.gov ITranscripts/20 12/02%20 F ebruarvll2 -02%20-%202-14-12. pdf. 

3 Letter to Chairman Carl Levin and Ranking Member James Inhofe from Secretary Chuck Hagel, July 10, 

2013, http://projects.militarytimes.comipdfslhagel-Ietter-sequestration.pdf. 

2 
595 

military personnel actions including halting all accessions, ending all permanent-changeof-station moves, stopping discretionary bonuses, and freezing all promotions. 

The only way to offset these problems of inflexibility in personnel spending 

would be to accelerate the overall force drawdown now underway in an attempt to 

forestall similar sequestration headaches in the future. 

The most immediate effect of sequestration would be in operations and 

maintenance accounts, and particularly those elements of O&M that fund unit readiness. 

In his letter, Secretary Hagel reiterates the need to increase readiness funding in FY 2014 

to make up for the problems created in FY 2013 - not reduce it further. Moreover, these 

budget accounts pay for civilian personnel, facilities maintenance and many health care 

benefits that are governed by laws, rules and regulations that constrain budget flexibility. 

This, in essence, places an even greater burden on true readiness accounts. Thus Hagel 

predicts that, under a 2014 sequestration, 

military training and readiness would remain at currently degraded levels or, in some 

cases, would even continue to decline .... [T]wo Navy air wings might not be able to 

achieve full flight hours and special operations units, which are key to counter terrorism 

activities, would experience declining readiness. The Army ... has cancelled many of the 

culminating training events at its combat training centers, would have difficulty avoiding 

similar cutbacks in FY 2014. The Air Force .... has had to stop all flying at about one 

third of its combat-coded active squadrons ... . 

But the longest-term effect of sequestration would be to further erode the 

technological edge u.S. military forces have long enjoyed, reflected in cuts to weapons 

procurement and research. These accounts have been profoundly underfunded since the 

end of the Cold War. Almost without exception, a whole generation of systems has been 

canceled, produced in severely limited quantities before termination or seen stretched 

schedules that have resulted in years of delay and multiplied costs. The Air Force bought 

only 21 B-2 bombers and 187 F-22 fighters. The Navy aborted submarine and destroyer 

projects as well as its first attempt to produce a stealthy carrier aircraft. The Army has 

not bought a single major new system of any sort. 

The Real-World Effect 

Yet none among this flurry of figures is a direct measure of how Americans view 

their national security: their physical safety, their political liberty, and their economic 

prosperity - securing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," as the Declaration of 

Independence reckoned the proper business oflegitimate government. 

The smaller, less well-trained, less well-equipped force that will be the inevitable 

result of past cuts - the "baseline" cuts contained in the Budget Control Act and the Act's 

sequestration provision - will not be able to fulfill the missions long demanded of it by 

the nation. The Joint Chiefs have said that if they were forced to make deeper cuts they 

3 
596 

would have to "adjust their strategy.,,4 Such a formulation makes it sound as though 

American strategy were endlessly adjustable and variable, as though all one had to do 

was dial back the "strategic rheostat" in relation to budget and force levels, and that the 

machine would keep humming along. 

But what it means in the real world is that the world will have to get along 

without what has been the reassuring presence of U.S. military forces and without the 

deterrent certainty that, in a crisis, the United States would be the first to respond and be 

capable of applying decisive military power. There are some most notably our 

adversaries - who view American military presence and power as a problem. On the 

other hand, there is a remarkable correlation between the energetic exercise of American 

global military power and the absence of direct great-power conflict since 1945. The 

world America has made has been, to my historically-inclined mind, exceptionally 

peacefuL Absent that presence, the world will certainly be different, and almost certainly 

more violent; we see this every day across the Middle East, where the American 

withdrawal has been most precipitate, but we also see it in the South China Sea, a region 

from which the United States drew back in the late 1980s. 

Nor can we imagine that the unprecedented progress of democratic forms of 

government will continue at the pace it has since the end of the Cold War, or that the 

growth of prosperity that has come from accelerated and open global trade - a system 

that has lifted hundreds of millions of human beings out of what was millennia of abject 

poverty and misery - will continue as it has either. While liberty and prosperity are 

themselves complex phenomenon, they are linked to - indeed dependent upon 

international security. 

The peaceful, free and prosperous world that America has made, and that the U.S. 

military has secured, is a robust and fundamentally healthy thing. It is easy to assume 

that it can survive sequestration or another round of budget cuts. And, of course, no one 

can say with certainty which straw will break the camel's back. What is certain, 

however, is that no amount of defense spending cuts - not even eliminating the 

Department of Defense entirely - would do much to remedy the federal government's 

fiscal woes; neither balancing the annual budget nor much affecting the national debt. 

When former JCS Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen worried that the debt and deficit were 

his top national security priorities, what he meant was that it was these fiscal woes that 

were threatening U.S security, not that the cost of security was bankrupting the nation. 

4 General Martin Dempsey, House Committee on Armed Services, Hearing on the Recent Developments in 

the Middle East: The Security Situation in the Syrian Arab Republic, April 19, 2012, 

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkglCHRG-112hhrg74473lhtml/CHRG-112hhrg74473.htm. 

4 
597 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Mr. Donnelly, and I think you did 

a good job of hiding your House biases in those comments. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator WARNER. Let me start by acknowledging that I think, 

like most of us, I agree we need to get rid of sequestration. I believe that it is going to require revenues and entitlement reforms. 

I believe there are smarter cuts that can be made. And while today 

I think the appropriate focus is on the defense side of the house, 

I think it is also just as important for the record to remind my colleagues and others that, in the aggregate, cuts since the beginning 

of this Presidency on the domestic side have been equally large. As 

a matter of fact, Senator Sessions cited defense at 17 percent spent, 

domestic discretionary at 16 percent. And if we were ever to adopt 

the House plan, which takes that 16 percent down over a little over 

past a decade to around 4 percent, I simply ask, not as a Democrat 

or Republican, but as a former business investor, would you ever 

invest in a business that spent less than 5 percent of its revenues 

on training and educating its workforce; staying ahead of the competition in research and development; and investing in its plant 

and equipment; which as a Nation is our infrastructure? That is a 

bad business plan for America. So I do hope, as all of us said, that 

we can find some common ground here. 

I want to start my questioning with Mr. Klett on the question 

of how stupid this is in terms of operations. We are running the 

largest enterprise in the world on 30-, 60-, 90-day continuing resolutions. And I guess what I would ask you to speak to a little bit, 

Mr. Klett, is, you know, what kind of added bureaucracy is there 

in this starting and stopping of your workforce? What kind of additional paperwork do you have to submit? What kind of inefficiencies are being built into your processes without having any kind of 

ability to predict when you are going to receive the revenues you 

need to operate your business? 

Mr. KLETT. Yes, sir, Senator, a very good question. Although we 

are a small business, we have a number of prime contracts with 

a number of the large agencies, and sometimes we can—and most 

of the time they are renewed annually. However, sometimes they 

cannot renew them annually. Sometimes they fund them for 6 

months. When we have subcontracts with large companies, we 

have to redo things from the very get-go. I mean, these are the reasons why I have to put people on the bench for 2 weeks to 2 

months, because the paperwork comes to the large companies, then 

we have to put somewhere between 50 to 60 pages of paperwork 

that they already have, but these are requirements of the bureaucracy. Unintended consequences, this is not anything that I think 

anyone in this room or in Congress or anywhere—but you have to 

start all over again. 

Senator WARNER. I think that this question of starting and stopping, the added costs that that has added in—and one of the things 

we have not been able to get is a good handle on that. 

I guess the other thing I would like to ask Mr. Work, Mr. Spring, 

and Mr. Donnelly on this, I actually believe this undermining of 

readiness is almost a cancer inside. And, again, if we can speak to 

that on a cost basis, the notion of what it would take to kind of 

get Navy pilot Senator Kaine and I met ith down in Oceana, to 
598 

kind of get their skill level back up if it has decayed is going to 

cost more than maintaining it on a regular basis. Do you want to 

speak to that comment? 

Mr. WORK. Yes, sir. As I said, I was a marine second lieutenant 

in 1975 right at the end of the Vietnam War drawdown. I was assigned—my first barracks was infested with rats and vermin. We 

did not have enough money to train. Our equipment was in a 

shambles. 

Once things started getting better in the early 1980s, I think as 

a battery commander later, it probably took until 1985 for the force 

really to dig itself out of the hole. And it is hard for me to imagine 

that things would get as bad as they were in 1975, but because of 

the way sequestration is triggered, where you start in a hole in 

2013 and start digging deeper in 2014 and start digging deeper in 

2015, as you said, pilots start to lose their quals on a carrier after 

a week. And after 90 days, it takes a long time to get those skills 

back. 

So the cost of maintaining readiness is far less than the danger 

of putting a non-ready force in combat. 

Senator WARNER. I want to get one last question in. I apologize. 

And I think Senator Sessions mentioned this. I think actually what 

I keep hearing—and in many ways, Virginia is ground zero on this 

issue because we have such a high preponderance of defense, 

whether it is civilian workforce or others— they just cannot believe 

we will allow this to continue. So in many ways, fiscal year 2013, 

people have been kind of covering their bets and moving around, 

the last little amounts, as you pointed out, 2014 is exponentially 

worse than 13 because there is nothing left. 

The last comment, I just simply want to ask maybe Ms. Green, 

what is the effect beyond this it is having in terms of your livelihood? What is effect is this having not only on you but the many 

other folks you work with in terms of morale? 

Ms. GREEN. Well, we have already lost a lot of staff when sequestration passed and they announced that furloughs were going to be 

happening. A lot of the staff either retired, if they were eligible to 

do so, or just simply quit and looked for employment elsewhere. 

And personally I love my job, I love working at Madigan, but my 

supervisor has already come to me and said, ‘‘If you need a letter 

of recommendation, I would be more than happy to give you one, 

although I would be very upset to see you go because we cannot 

ask you to stay with this burden.’’ And so that is probably what 

I would be looking at doing. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Well, Admiral Mullen said the 

greatest threat to our national security is our debt, and I think one 

of the things he was anticipating was that we would be in a situation where we unnecessarily and improperly reduce our defense 

spending, leaving us more vulnerable than we should be. I think 

that it is a very serious matter we are dealing with. 

There are some things, I think, Senator Warner, that we could 

do. I do believe the most important thing you suggested was in the 

next 2 years if we can avoid the more dramatic cuts that the private businesses and all are having to take. 

As I look at the numbers over 10 years, here is what they are: for 2014, as I noted, we were projected to spend $586 billion. That 
599 

was projected spending in the 2012 FYDP. We will actually spend, 

unless something changes, $475 billion. So that is $111 billion less. 

That is a dramatic reduction. If you had to reduce any private business’ expenditures by 20 percent in one year, it would be in trouble. 

I am upset about the White House. They have told the military not 

to plan for these cuts. They have directly told them not to. We 

asked them in Committee, ‘‘What is your plan?’’ We tried to pass 

legislation to mandate that they produce a plan, and we still have 

not really gotten that. 

But then in 2015 it goes up from 475 to 488; in 2016, 499; 2017, 

511; and so on. It goes on up. But over net, in inflation-adjusted 

dollars, my Budget Committee staff concludes that it is a net reduction of 11 percent in the Defense Department. And then we also 

had some residual benefits, I suppose, from the OCO spending that 

will be gone shortly. 

Remember, now, for anyone listening, the costs we are talking 

about do not include the war costs. That is entirely separate, funded by emergency spending. And, in fact, one thing we might could 

consider, Mr. Chairman—you are Acting Chairman—$4 billion is 

OCO money, is hammering the Defense Department at this time, 

too. Maybe we could all agree that that ought to be funded as we 

have the rest of OCO and not out of the base defense budget. But 

that is just one of the things that could add together to put us in 

a place where we could get out of such dramatic reductions. 

Mr. Donnelly, I am of the view that there is some ability to reduce spending in the Defense Department without reducing our 

ability to provide our global role. But I believe these reductions are 

too great. But I thank you for sharing this fundamental question 

that we have to wrestle with: What will be the role of the United 

States in the world to come? Are we going to continue this leading 

from behind or this reduction of our presence? And sometimes I 

think so. Sometimes I think maybe we are too engaged. But then, 

again, a vacuum of leadership from the United States you believe, 

you have expressed, could impact the stability, the prosperity of the 

world. 

Mr. Work, would you comment on Mr. Donnelly’s comment in 

that regard? 

Mr. WORK. Well, I do not believe that we have crossed the Rubicon yet. As I said, I believe that the ‘‘Priorities for 21st Century 

Defense’’ was a very cohesive and coherent document. But I agree 

with my good friend Tom that a global superpower needs to be able 

to respond to two crises simultaneously. We are at that level right 

now. I consider it to be the minimum standard. 

Sequestration I think will make it more difficult to achieve that, 

but I agree with you that I think that further cuts could be taken, 

responsibly, provided we had some time to really prioritize and 

think about the cuts and keep from digging a readiness hole that 

we simply would take too long to dig out of. So I believe there are— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, let me just—a couple things. 

First, I believe our first responsibility, Senator Warner, would be 

to see what we can do about the next 2 years and see if there are 

not some ways that we can work together to lessen the irrational 

impacts that would happen. 
600 

Second, Mr. Work, do you have a number in your mind about 

where we ought to be. 

Mr. WORK. I agree with Baker that it really should be driven by 

a strategy, so we have the QDR first. Then I would be able to answer that question intelligently. I personally believe that the $520 billion would be a really difficult swing, but I think it should be developed by strategy, and 

that should inform how much we should spend to implement that 

strategy. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Spring, I guess my time is up. I would ask 

you to respond. If you had a brief comment, maybe the Chair would 

let us do that. 

Mr. SPRING. Let me say that— 

Mr. SPRING. It should be driven by the strategy, and that number, in my judgment, will be significantly higher than even what 

the President has proposed as the first option that I described. But 

we also need to do look at this from a fiscal policy perspective— 

this is the Budget Committee, after all—and what is the effect on 

the economy. In my judgment, I think the United States can easily 

afford up to 4 percent of GDP for defense. But we are on our way 

to basically 2.5. So that I think that the economic argument that 

defense is the source of our fiscal problems is really wrong. What 

we need to do—and I have a slightly different opinion than Admiral Mullen. Clearly the debt is a really serious problem, but I 

would still outrank the future expected growth in the entitlement 

programs to be the greatest threat to the U.S. national security. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Senator WARNER. I would simply add, Senator Sessions, I would 

concur that maybe the defense planning for sequestration was not 

that good. I have to say I do not think the domestic agencies did 

much better planning because I think there was this great hope 

that perhaps—again, I just recall the discussions back when this 

took place. This was such a bad option that no rational group of 

people would ever let it happen. 

Senator SESSIONS. I just talked to an agency person, I said, ‘‘Will 

you be having layoffs?’’ They said, ‘‘No. We planned early, and we 

are not going to have to have layoffs.’’ So some of the layoffs and 

furloughs are a result of lack of planning. There is no doubt about 

that. 

Senator WARNER. Senator Whitehouse. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you. Yes, I think for those who say 

that Congress cannot get anything right, the sequester certainly 

disproves it. It was intended to be stupid, painful, and damaging, 

and sure enough, it has been stupid, painful, and damaging. What 

we did not foresee was that there would be a hard-edged group of 

people in Congress who wanted cuts at any price, cuts at any cost, 

and were willing to allow the sequester to go into effect. And there 

is still work going on. I know that Chairman Levin and Senator 

McCain, who are two of the defense experts in this, are trying to 

continue to work towards a way to fund an end to the sequester. 

It probably will involve raising taxes. That should not come as a 

surprise because Domenici-Rivlin, Simpson-Bowles, all of the independent groups that have taken a look at the debt problem, have 

had revenues built into that. But we want to be pretty clear about 
601 

what we are looking at. What we are looking at mostly is, for instance, the offshoring of revenues so that companies hide revenues 

overseas. That has been the subject of the Levin-McCain effort. 

I am from Rhode Island. CVS is a great American corporation. 

It pays a 35-percent tax rate. Carnival Cruise Lines hides its revenues overseas and pays a 0.6- percent tax rate. Why we need to 

be defending a 50:1 discrepancy in corporate tax rates and preventing the sequester from going forward makes no sense. 

Hedge fund billionaires pay often a lower tax rate than a Rhode Island brick mason. I mean, literally you are making $1 billion a 

year, and you are paying a lower tax rate than a brick mason? 

That does not make any darn sense. 

So what we have got to remember is that the Tax Code is not 

just rates. It is also riddled with loopholes and with special favors 

that people have carved out for themselves over time. And if we 

cannot even look at those, yeah, then the sequester is going to continue. But when Rivlin- Domenici, when Simpson-Bowles, when 

every independent person that has taken a look at this has said 

revenues have to be a part of it, when the revenues that you are 

protecting are lower tax rates for billionaires than for brick masons, and continued rights for certain corporations to cheat on 

taxes and disfavor the American corporations that pay their taxes 

here by hiding their revenues overseas, pretending that their intellectual property is in Ireland, all those gimmicks and games, I 

mean, we have got to be willing to look at that, I think, if we take 

this problem seriously, and if it is, in fact, the number one issue 

that we have got in this country that the debt is too high. 

Well, if that is the number one issue, then protecting those 

things presumably is a number two or a number three or a number 

250 issue and should yield to the number one issue. 

We see this in Rhode Island right now happening. This past 

weekend was the Save the Bay’s annual swim across Narragansett 

Bay, and because we could not use Naval Station Newport, we 

could not swim across Narragansett Bay. So they went out and 

back around buoys instead. 

We have canceled the annual air show at Quonset. Water Fire 

brings huge crowds to Providence and is a wonderful, wonderful 

civic event. Canceled in many cases because of the Army Corps’ inability to play their role in it. The National Guard Leap Fest, 

which is a parachuting display and competition, also canceled. But 

as Ms. Green pointed out, you know, these symbolic things take 

place and are very visible effects of sequestration. 

But when it hits home with a 20- to 30-percent reduction in your 

take-home and you have got expenses and you have got a family 

to take care of, that is really where the rubber hits the road. We 

have seen 90 layoffs among the top ten defense contractors in 

Rhode Island just March to July. I do not know that they are all 

sequester, but I strongly suspect that the timing would indicate 

that. 

We have got 4,200 civilians at Naval Station Newport now subject to furlough, and the whole darn thing is unnecessary. 

I want to appreciate particularly Ms. Green’s testimony because 

she really made it so clear how, when it comes right down to people, this is really hurting people. We deal with statistics very often 
602 

here, Ms. Green, and sometimes they are nowhere near as compelling as a personal story. Yours was really valuable, and I appreciate it. I appreciate all the witnesses’ testimony and the agreement we have that the sequester has indeed been stupid, painful, 

and damaging. Now let us hope that we can get beyond it. 

But if one party is going to draw a bright line and say, no, billionaires paying lower tax rates than brick masons is more important than solving the sequester, that is a sticking point. If they are 

going to say that corporations should be able to offshore their income places and pay a 0.6-percent tax rate, yeah, that is going to 

be a sticking point, because we have got to be able to look at those 

inequities and be reasonable about this. 

So I thank the witnesses, and I appreciate the Chairman for the 

hearing. 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse. I did not ask 

the question, but I am sure Ms. Green did not get a sequestration 

discount from daycare, car payments, or rental payments. 

Senator Kaine? 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to all the witnesses, thank you for being here for your testimony and for your 

agreement on the proposition that we need to be strong as a Nation 

and we need to have that national defense that is both strategic 

and funded at an appropriate level. 

I think that still is a bipartisan view among folks in this building 

in both chambers. How we get there is a challenge, and I just want 

to begin by saying, you know, some of—I have a polite difference 

of opinion with my friend Senator Sessions about where the blame 

in this lies and with at least one of the witness’ written testimony. 

It would be comforting to say that the President and the administration is to blame for this. It would be comforting as a Member 

of Congress to put the blame on the administration for sequester. 

But it is squarely on the shoulders of Congress. 

The Budget Act of 1974, it is the Senate and the House that pass 

the budget. It does not even go to the President for signature. It 

is a resolution. We have not passed one for a number of years. 

The role of the Congress in appropriating money, it is a congressional role. There is not an appropriations bill that gets to the 

President’s desk if Congress has not passed it. And so if the funding levels are not what they ought to be or if the budget is not 

what it ought to be, it is not the President’s fault. 

I could find instances of leadership where I think the President 

should have done more to force this, but the President cannot make 

an ill-behaved Congress behave. He does not have that power and 

no President has that power. We are the first of the three branches 

in the Constitution. We are the one that was meant to be the most 

powerful. And we have fallen down so badly on this budgetary job 

that while it would be comforting to put the blame on somebody 

else, I do not think we can. 

We had a February vote in the Senate to avoid the sequester 

completely. It got more than 50 votes in the Senate, but because 

of the choice of the minority, which was their choice, to use filibuster procedures, a majority was not enough in that instance to 

turn off the sequester. 
603 

We had a budgetary vote in March that restructured the sequester to much better effect, and the budget passed in the Senate for 

the first time in 4 years. 

We had a markup of an NDAA in the Armed Services Committee 

in June, and a unanimous Committee vote in that instance that the 

sequester was a bad thing for national defense and should be replaced. 

And we are currently in a battle. We are in a battle about compromise. About compromise. There is a House budget, and there is 

a Senate budget. If you know nothing about either of these budgets, let me tell you one thing. The Senate wants to go into a budget 

conference, to sit down at a conference table with our House colleagues, to bring our budget to the table and have them bring their 

budget to the table, and to listen to each other and see if we can 

find compromise. 

The House does not want to go into a conference, and they have 

used what a few Senators have described themselves in the Senate—we are a handful of Senators who are blocking a conference, 

and they are blocking it at the request of their House colleagues. 

If you knew nothing about the two budgets, House and Senate, and 

all you knew is that one side wanted to go into a conference room 

and sit down in a conference and find an answer, and one side did 

not, that should tell you something. And what it should tell you is 

that one side has a confidence in their position and in their budget 

and they are open to finding an answer, and one side lacks the confidence in their position and they are afraid of sitting down at a 

conference table where there will be a spotlight shining on both 

budgets that the American public can see in a way that will then 

produce an outcome. 

The right answer for this problem is dialogue and compromise. 

Mr. Klett, you said that. You said, look, this is what we do in business; you need to do it in conference. That is the right answer for 

this problem. We ought to be having a budget conference. We ought 

to be sitting down and listening to one another, just as all Senators 

did a week ago tonight. We got in a room when we had a tough 

problem, and we listened to each other, and we found a solution 

that we might not have known we would find when we walked into 

the room. 

We need to listen. We need to compromise. A side that is unwilling to conference is unwilling to listen. A side that is unwilling to 

conference is unwilling to compromise. We need to listen and we 

need to compromise. 

I believe that the right answer is an answer budgetarily that will 

involve us making targeted cuts to deal with our budgetary challenges, those mentioned by other Committee members, including 

reforms to entitlement programs, that will do, as Senator 

Whitehouse suggested, close unnecessary tax loopholes and that 

will make investments to grow the economy. 

But we are not going to get to the right answer, we are not going 

to get to a mediocre answer, we are not going to get to a wrong 

answer, if we cannot sit down as two Houses and listen to one another and compromise. 

So while it would be comforting, I think, to say as a Member of 

Congress that this big sequester problem is something I can point 
604 

a finger at the Executive and say, ‘‘It is your fault,’’ I just think 

that is a hollow argument. It is on us. We have got to show a willingness to listen to each other and compromise. And it is my 

strong, strong hope that the members of this Committee, that the 

Members of the Senate, will eventually convince the House that 

that is the right way to proceed. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator WARNER. Senator King. 

Senator KING. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to all the witnesses. 

At one point in this room today, there were a majority of Senators who were also on the Armed Services Committee, so nothing 

you were saying was news. 

This whole situation as a newcomer is extraordinary. I have not 

yet heard anybody say a good word about the sequester in this 

building for the past 6 months, but we still have it. It is like we 

are all standing out in a rainstorm and everybody is looking at 

each other and saying, ‘‘Have you noticed this rain?’’ ‘‘Why, yes, it 

is raining. But nobody puts their umbrella up or goes inside. You 

know, what is it? You do not have sense enough to come in out of 

the rain. 

Well, you know, I would slightly disagree with the Chair. I think 

the most—and Senator—I mean, Leon Panetta said this at one of 

our hearings. ‘‘The most serious threat 

to national security today is the United States Congress’’— because of our inability to pass a rational budget. And the problem 

is, I think, worse than many of you outlined, because you said this 

sort of in a little bit more vague way. 2013 was relatively easy. 

There was low-hanging fruit. There were unexpended balances. 

There were all kinds—there was money that could be found. 

2014 is going to be different. I heard yesterday from some people 

at the Pentagon. Their calculation is it is more like 14 percent this 

year, and it is going to be—and we are paying a national security 

price. And what bothers me is that this institution is pretty good 

about laying the blame when something goes wrong. Well, when 

something goes wrong in national security and we have not adequately funded our defense, we should look at ourselves. 

A famous philosopher of the 1950s named Pogo once said, ‘‘We 

have met the enemy, and he is us.’’ And truer words were never 

spoken. And it just seems to me—I want to echo Senator Kaine’s 

remarks. There has got to be a solution here. And I guess I want 

to ask at least one question. 

Mr. Spring, you are at the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage 

Foundation is a very influential group in this city, a conservative 

think tank, a lot of quality work. How do we get out of this? I 

mean, you have told us that the sequester is bad, but we have got 

to get out of this. Do you have a strategy? Would you suggest to 

the Congress where we can—how we could get to a place where we 

have compromise and we have a solution so we are not continuously hollowing out our defense as well as the rest of the Federal 

Government? 

Mr. SPRING. Yes, absolutely. I think— 

Senator KING. Microphone, please. 
605 

Mr. SPRING. Yes, I think you have to do that on two levels. The 

first one I described in my testimony, which is to have a strategydriven approach as to what you need for the defense budgets. 

Senator KING. No, but I am talking about the overall budget. 

Mr. SPRING. Overall, what you need to do is have a comprehensive fiscal plan that we have spelled out, the Heritage Foundation, 

called ‘‘Saving the American Dream Plan,’’ that includes tax reform 

because we agree with Senator Whitehouse that you need to do tax 

reform. 

Senator KING. Does it include revenues from tax reform or just 

a rate cut? 

Mr. SPRING. No—well, in terms of rates, no. What it does is it 

says that we will lower the rates by closing the loopholes. 

Senator KING. But that does not do anything for the deficit. That 

is deficit neutral. 

Mr. SPRING. Right, and we think that the heart of the problem 

is the future growth in entitlement spending. I mean, we could— 

a decade or two from now, we could eliminate the defense budget 

entirely, and you still would not balance the budget. 

Senator KING. I agree with that, and I have said this several 

times in this Committee. The problem with the Federal budget is 

health care costs—Medicare, Medicaid, pensions, health care costs 

across the board. It is not the defense budget. It is not Pell grants. 

It is not national parks. It is not Head Start. It is health care costs. 

And we are sitting here talking about cutting the defense budget— 

and I have said this before—it is as if after Pearl Harbor we invaded Brazil. It is the wrong target. And we ought to be talking 

about health care costs. 

But to get back to the point, I have not yet figured out a way 

you can make all these pieces come together without some additional revenues, given the demographics of the country, people getting older, aging, demands on Medicare. We can shift costs out of 

Medicare, but they are just going to go to other people unless we 

deal with health care costs. 

But it just seems to me we need entitlement reform, we need 

some revenues, we need cuts. And there is a package there, and if 

we do enough tax reform, we could do both some revenues and rate 

cuts, and that could be a deal. Is that something—is that anathema 

to you? 

Mr. SPRING. Well, let me say I am not the expert on the econometric modeling that was done at the Heritage Foundation. I am 

a defense analyst, so I am not going to try and pretend that I can 

answer that question in a direct and quantitative way. 

I do believe that there is a package there that reduces tax rates, 

closes loopholes, imposes restraints on the growth in entitlement 

spending, maintains a reasonable level of investment in defense, 

and eventually balances the budget. When I say we are not going 

to do that immediately, it is going to be like a decade-long process. 

But, yes, we think that we can do that, and in general terms, if 

I recall correctly from the Saving the American Dream Plan, we 

are talking somewhere in the neighborhood of a target for that, 

which I think is the easiest way to do it, which is, as an percentage 

of GDP, somewhere in the neighborhood of I think it is 18 percent 

in the Saving the American Dream Plan. 
606 

Senator KING. Well, that is the problem, because 18 percent is 

not going to do it in an age of aging baby boomers. You cannot 

make the numbers work unless you drastically reduce defense and 

all the other areas of the Federal Government. And when you talk 

about reforming entitlements, you are cutting—you want to cut 

Medicare. But if you do not do anything about health care expenses, you are just shifting those costs to the States or to the seniors. 

Mr. SPRING. Well, again, the Saving the American Dream Plan 

includes a comprehensive approach to health care, not just with regard to Medicare and Medicaid alone. So that it involves, you 

know, how people would actually obtain their insurance and so 

forth and so on. 

Again, I am a defense analyst, so I do not want to misrepresent 

inadvertently something that is in that plan. But obviously there 

is another element to this that is extremely important, which is 

that we tie it to GDP because GDP can be whatever. And so the 

economic growth is not the total answer to the problem, but it is 

an essential answer to the problem. 

Senator KING. Of course it is. 

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your indulgence. I think just one 

other point, to get back to defense. All the testimony we have had 

at Armed Services is that this is the most complex and dangerous 

world that any of our experts in the intelligence community and 

the military have seen in their careers. And at the same time, we 

are gutting our military and hollowing out our readiness. I think 

it is a tragedy. 

Thank you. 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Senator King, and I want to call 

on Senator Sessions for a quick comment. Then I will make a quick 

comment, and then I will bring this hearing to a close. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Senator WARNER. We have got a vote at noon. 

Senator SESSIONS. Right. Well, I do agree that 2014 is going to 

be a particularly problematic time because the cuts come so fast 

that there is no real way to phase them in, and you have to breach 

contracts that run up costs for private companies, Mr. Klett and 

others. And you end up, Ms. Green, with people like you having to 

take furloughs. 

So this is not a healthy way to do business, and somehow we can 

fix that. And then we will have to wrestle, Mr. Donnelly and Mr. 

Spring, on what kind of defense level we can sustain. 

Senator Kaine, with regard to the Budget Control Act, what happened was, in 2011, in August, we hit the debt ceiling, and we were 

on a path to spend $37 trillion over 10. But the projected growth 

was to $47 trillion over 10. So the Congress agreed, the President 

signed off on, that we would have this mechanism that would reduce spending by $2.1 trillion and there would be no tax increases 

unless the Committee somehow fixed entitlements and whatever 

and did some tax increases. The Committee did not perform. 

So that is in law, and that is what the current baseline is. And 

so the Republicans have been saying constantly, look, there are a 

lot of areas in this Government that had no reduction in spending, 

let us spread this out and it will not fall so hard on the Defense 
607 

Department. The President’s view is we eliminate the sequester 

and we raise taxes to pay for it. Now, he got taxes in January, $600 billion. Not a dime of that 

went to fix the sequester. So it does not seem to me that the President is very interested in fixing the sequester. 

So I would say, Senator Warner, that I do not believe this sequester is going to be fixed with new taxes. I do not believe the 

House is going to pass it, and I will oppose it. We told the American people we will raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion, but we will 

at least reduce the growth of spending that was going to be $10 

trillion, we would only let it grow to $8 trillion. And then we cannot find how to do that? 

Now, of course, the Defense Department’s numbers have been 

not growing much in the last 3 or 4 years, even before the sequester, at 3 percent or less for 3 or 4 years here. But Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are increasing at 5, 6 percent a year, and 

that is where we are out of control. And you know these numbers 

so well. Senator Warner has invested so much time in wrestling 

with the reality of it. 

Senator WARNER. With not a lot of results. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator SESSIONS. You never know. The apple might fall out of 

the tree if you keep shaking it, which you are doing. 

So the growth there is such that interest on our debt will pass 

the Defense Department expenditure by 2019 or so. Now, this is 

unbelievable. And the means-tested Government benefit programs, 

all 83, now net more than Defense Department, more than Social 

Security, more than Medicare, $750 billion. We have not dealt with 

those means-tested programs very well. 

So we have a difficult challenge, and all of us have dug in our 

heels pretty hard, certain things that will happen. So my simple 

view is that sequester needs—and the reduction of $2.1 trillion 

needs to be there without more revenue, and if we need more revenue, that fixes our entitlements and it reduces deficits. That is 

what I would say. But others can have a disagreement. 

You are very patient. Thank you. 

Senator WARNER. Well, thank you, Senator Sessions. I would 

simply, again, reiterate a couple of points. 

One, you are right, interest payments could exceed the defense 

budget. But since the defense budget already exceeds the domestic 

discretionary budget, it will also exceed the domestic discretionary 

budget. I 100 percent believe, Mr. Spring, you have got to grow this 

budget. I do believe an educated workforce, infrastructure, and research and development, that unfortunately has moved more and 

more from the corporate side onto the public side, are ways that 

any country grows in a knowledge-based economy. And that undermines that ability to grow. 

I would add—I mean, I am a bit obsessed about these numbers. 

I do think, Mr. Spring, I would simply point out the last 13 years, 

when we were going from surpluses to these remarkable deficits— 

and I would argue both sides bear a burden here—we cut revenues 

$4.5 trillion over 10 years. That was unsustainable when you take 

into consideration, as I think we have here, we live in a very dangerous world. We have seen a doubling of defense spending. We 
608 

have gone to war not once but twice, entirely on the credit card. 

Unprecedented in American history. And we are all growing a lot 

older, which is a blessing, but it does mean the math around our 

entitlement programs is fundamentally flawed. Senator King pointed this out. You know, when I was a kid, 16 people paying in for 

every 1 person on retirement, Social Security and Medicare. Now 

the ratio is 3:1. Medicare and Social Security are the best programs 

ever. The math does not work anymore. 

So I respectfully believe that you cannot—and we did $600 billion on New Year’s Eve. I agree with Senator Sessions. I say there 

is no way to run this Government, even with entitlement reform, 

on that revenue base. I say there is no way to run this Government 

without reforms to the entitlement programs. There ought to be a 

rational way to get here. What we have heard today is what happens and the consequences if we fail to act. What we are doing to 

our ability to maintain America’s preeminent role in an extraordinarily dangerous world, what we are doing to Mr. Klett’s business not only in terms of what it does to his employees but what 

drives me as a former business guy just crazy is the amount of 

money we are costing under the guise of saving money by starting 

and stopping, and what we are doing in the very human terms of 

people like Ms. Green who said that she wanted to work with our 

military veterans and work with folks helping out in a hospital 

that does not get- -you said it correctly. You had an implied contract. If you did your job, we were going to honor that contract. You 

entered into obligations based upon that implied contract. You are 

not getting a daycare discount or a car payment discount or a rental discount. I can assure you—and I know Senator Kaine has got— 

and I am sure Senator Sessions and Senator King has got as well, 

the letters I am getting from people all across the Commonwealth 

of Virginia, people most of whom served our Nation in the military 

who feel like that basic trust has been broken. And they look at 

us and say, you know, you seem to break into red team/blue team 

when the relative amount of change on the entitlement programs, 

on revenues, on a relative basis—I mean, we have got to get about 

$2 trillion in additional deficit savings over the next 10 years with 

the $2 trillion we have done, putting sequestration aside, based 

upon Simpson-Bowles and Domenici- Rivlin. The amount of revenue and entitlement change—and the more rational approach on 

spending cuts, is so small on a relative basis when you look at that 

$47 to $45 trillion number, that candidly shame on all of us if we 

do not do a better job of that. 

So I want to thank the witnesses for appearing here today, for 

very provocative testimony, and as a reminder to my colleagues, 

additional statements and/or questions for the record for today’s 

hearings are due in by 6:00 p.m. today. Please have them signed 

and submitted to the clerk in Room 624. 

And with that, again, my thanks to you colleagues and my 

thanks to the witnesses. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:01 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
609 

Responses to Congressional Questions 

Mr. Mark N. Klett 

President and CEO Klett Consulting Group, Inc. 

Committee on the Budget 

Questions for the Record 

The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Submitted by Chairman Patty Murray 

July 23, 2013 

Mark Klett 

1} Impact on DoD Capabilities 

Your company does a great deal of work in cyber security, as you discussed in your testimony. 

think both you and Mr. Wark would agree that the cyber threat continues to grow, and we need 

to prioritize our investments in that area. 

• If your company and other small businesses like yours cannat survive another year of 

sequestration, what happens to our ability to meet this critical threat? 

Response: 

Chairman Murray, 

Klett Consulting Group has a sizeable percentage of its personnel involved in programs or 

projects related to the defense industry. We are located in Hampton Roads where multiple 

centers of defense industrial excellence exist. Though I cannot speak to the totality of the 

impact small businesses have on the defense industry, I can provide insight into the kinds of 

issues that will result if another round of sequestration forces small business to close and some 

specific examples if Klett Consulting Group were to close. 

The first impact would be the migration of key skilled workers to new occupations. For 

example, in one project that KCG members support for the Department of Defense, 

approximately 60 percent of the contract personnel are already gone; many of whom have 

gone on to other projects - unrelated to defense. The on-again-off-again breaks in funding due 

to sequestration and Continuing Resolutions create unfunded periods that were too long for 

companies to endure and those highly skilled contract employees have moved on to other 

projects where their intellectual capital could be leveraged. Those that could stay in their 

current company had to move to other projects in non-defense related business sectors. As a 

result, even ifthe project defense funding can be stabilized, the expertise of these contractors 

cannot be readily restored, and may be lost as part of our national capability permanently. 

Another example of this bleeding of highly skilled defense workers is demonstrated 

when the US Joint Forces Command shut down. Two thousand of two thousand five hundred 

Mr. Mark N. Klett-Response to Congressional Questions Pagel 0/5 
610 

contractors lost their jobs. About half were able to find work supporting projects, some at 

other defense organizations, but many others in the commercial sector. Others still had to 

geographically relocate. 

Additionally, the lack of clear guidance for the Department of Defense regarding what to 

skills and core competencies to preserve and where to refocus efforts has had a serious impact 

on the entire defense industry's ability to meet critical threats. Sequestration has put 

everyone, civil service and defense contractors alike, into a "bunker mentality. New projects or 

projects that rely on Department of Defense funding are paralyzed- as no new projects or 

programs can be funded without the appropriations bills being signed into law. Many of these 

efforts are high priority projects supporting the forward operating warfighters. Because 

Sequestration cut across the board, the kind of guidance that comes from the established 

budget processes, Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and a National Military Strategy Review are 

lacking. The result is indiscriminate cuts without the ability to adequately focus on future 

critical threats to develop requirements to retain vital skills while repairing and retaining the 

proper capability sets for our future National Security. 

My company may not survive another year of Continuing Resolutions and Sequestration. 

It stops the cash flow to small business and the acquisition process and does not allow the 

government to get what it needs, only what it may be able to procure through existing 

outdated, time consuming procurement processes. Many small businesses and many talented 

people have been put out of work the past two years and it does affect our National Security 

and Economy. I ask that the leadership in the Senate and the House work together to help stop 

the drain on our National Security and work to create jobs that will produce a vibrant economy 

for all Americans. 

Mr. Mark N. K/ett-Respome to Congressional Questiom Page 2 0/5 
611 

Responses to Congressional Questions 

Mr. Mark N. Klett 

President and CEO Klett Consulting Group, Inc. 

The Impact of Sequestration an National Security and the Economy 

Senate Committee an the Budget 

July 23, 2013 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 

Questions for the Record 

Economic Effect on Local Communities (for The Honorable Robert O. Work, Mr. Mark N. Klett, 

Mr. Baker Spring and Mr. Thomas Donnelly); In my home state, we are seeing the effect of 

sequestration in reduced wages as a result of furloughs, reductions in the scope of defense 

contracting work, and losses felt by local businesses due to restrictions an government travel 

and community relations events. We know that the effects of sequestrations on government 

travel and community relations events. We know that the effects of sequestration are being felt 

across communities that do business with the government - to prime defense contractors and 

their suppliers. However, the magnitude is difficult to quantify. How can Congress better 

understand the ripple effect caused by sequestration and how can information about the effects 

be captured and quantified? 

Response: 

The full impact of sequestration is far reaching yet difficult to envision. The ripple 

effects we see today are anecdotal, but require a comprehensive effort to collect and interpret. 

If we fail to adequately survey this impact, we are doomed to repeat and amplify the damage to 

the Nation's primary strength; a vibrant economy. As the jobs are eliminated in the defense 

industry, we bleed intellectual capital and vital capabilities within our Industrial base of both 

small and large companies. Many families must leave the Hampton Roads and other areas 

where the Department of Defense is a significant engine of economic activity to seek new 

employment, there is a downward pressure on this economy who relies on over half of its local 

revenues from Defense related industry. Fewer children are in the schools, causing fewer jobs 

for teachers at all levels, fewer jobs in retail sales and other goods and services. Many of my 

fellow small business owners and I have lost employees from teams due to the sequestration 

cut backs over the past year. 

These secondary and tertiary impacts of sequestration on our economy take time to 

develop and are difficult mpnitor. The loss of our most precious commodities, the highly 

experienced and educated defense industry workforce, has started in south eastern Virginia. 

We maintained a great national capability to design, manufacture and repair defense 

equipment in support of all the military services, agencies of the Department of Homeland 

security, and other federal agencies in this area. We have enjoyed a lower than average 

unemployment here in eastern Virginia because ofthis industrial base, but as sequestration 

takes hold, these highly skilled workers are on the move to provide for their families - as there 

Mr. Mark N. Klett-Response to Congressional Questions Page 3 0[5 
612 

is no economic development plan in place as the defense industrial draws down the economy 

will not be able to sustain the newly unemployed. Additionally, regaining this strategic 

capability will take even longer, if ever, when the need is recognized again. Not only will we 

lose those valuable skills and abilities, but highly skilled individuals often have spouses who 

work in a variety of professions, service industries, volunteer work, and community activists. 

In order to better understand these ripple effects, Congress needs to aggressively 

pursue meaningful forward looking economic analysis. The Congressional Budget Office and 

private organizations should be encouraged to review existing economic indicators and put the 

"big picture" together. As sequestration impacts the defense industry and industrial base, those 

lost or reduced wages impact home sales, major purchases (both individual and business), 

spending on education, and discretionary spending. By looking at the entire impact of 

sequestration on regions such as Hampton Roads can enable Congress to focus efforts on 

exercising mature fiscal restraint to help grow our economy by creating jobs while ensuring that 

our National Security is not put at risk. 

Damage to Readiness (for The Honorable Robert o. Work, Mr. Thomas Donnelly, and Mr. Boker 

Spring): Secretory Hagel has warned about the harmful effect of a $52 billion cut to the 000 in 

FY14. His letter to the SASe outlined the damage sequestration would have on military 

readiness, both long and short-term. Given the instability in Egypt, the worsening situation in 

Syria, and other emerging threats around the globe, how would sequestration limit our options 

and ability to respond to the range of threats we cauld face in the foreseeable future? 

Response: 

While this may not have been directed at me, I would like to take the opportunity to share 

some thoughts. Let me start by relating what a member of my company learned while 

supporting a readiness study. He was part of a team investigating the US Navy's flight hour 

program which was realizing a dip in readiness between scheduled air wing deployments. The 

study found that an improvement in readiness could be obtained if flight hours in the aircraft 

where traded for cheaper training hours in the simulator. This seemed like the way to get a 

quick increase in readiness without having to commit additional resources. The analysis found 

that for a mere two flight hours per month for all aviators the readiness could be dramatically 

improved for a subset of qualifications. However, the rub was that the hours could not be 

taken from the flight crews on deployment. We would have to "double up" on the crews that 

where in between deployments. Also, crews working up would need priority on flying hours as 

well. So the flight crews standing down just after deployment would have to give up almost half 

of their already dwindling flight hours and fly more simulator hours. Additionally, some of the 

other qualifications and maintenance of proficiency to fly the aircraft would diminish, since the 

simulator could not replace the dynamics and fidelity of training that comes from flying the 

Mr. Mark N. Klett-Response to Congressional Questions Page 4 0[5 
613 

aircraft. These are second and third order effects of a decision to make changes that effect 

readiness. 

We believe that similar issues will arise from sequestration. Units back in stateside/not 

deployed will not be able to maintain as high a level of readiness. It will take longer to deploy a 

unit from garrison due to the time to elevate their readiness to ensure combat effectivel)ess. 

This may be limited by weapons, practice ranges, and all the other resources required to create 

the proper fidelity of training. 

There is the other issue of materiel readiness. Spare and repair parts and other support will be 

prioritized to the operating forces forward. The replacement forces and manpower will be 

prioritized to the front lines as well. Units in the rear probably will not be able to maintain as 

high a readiness. This it known by some as the bath tub effect - a unit's readiness rapidly falling 

off after redeployment and staying low until work up training commences just in time to 

provide relief to the off going units. 

An unfortunate fact is that sequestration forces skilled contractors out of defense contracting. 

Insourcing the skills to government are ineffective and the retraining needed for the 

government workforce is slow and costly. Skills like system engineering take years to gain 

proficiency and nearly a decade to gain the breadth and expertise necessary to manage the 

system engineering for a project. Unfortunately when faced with drastic unplanned cuts in 

funding, one of the first skills to go is system engineering. System engineering is like building 

the foundation of a tall bUilding. It is not glamorous and it takes time but if it is done right the 

building is erected quickly and soundly. If cut short the building may still go up, but there will 

be problems and it will be unsound and unsafe for occupancy. 

Mr. Mark N. Klett-Response to Congressional Questions Page 50[5 
614 

The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Senate Committee on the Budget 

July 23, 2013 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 

Questions for the Record 

Economic Effect on Local Communities (for The Honorable Robert O. Work, Mr. Mark N. Klett, Mr. 

Baker Spring and Mr. Thomas Donnelly): In my home state, we are seeing the effect of sequestration in 

reduced wages as a result of furloughs, reductions in the scope of defense contracting work, and losses felt 

by local businesses due to restrictions on government travel and community relations events. We know that 

the effects of sequestration are being felt across communities from local companies that do businesses with 

the government to prime defense contractors and their suppliers. However, the magnitude is difficult to 

quantify. How can Congress better understand the ripple effect caused by sequestration and how can 

information about the effects be captured and quantified? 

Answer: 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) addressed this question of the economic impacts 

of sequestration, including for defense, in a July 25, 2013, letter to Representative Van Hollen of 

Maryland. The analysis described in the letter assumed the cancelation of a portion of 

sequestration for the current fiscal year and all of it for fiscal year 2014. On this basis, CBO 

concluded that the cancellation of sequestration would increase real gross domestic product in the 

by .7 percent and the level of employment by 900,000 in the third quarter of calendar year 2014. 

However, the analysis goes on to state that these short-term economic gains would be undone over 

the longer term by consequences of increased deficits and debt and prospects of accelerated 

federal spending. It is also important to point out that the short-term gains resulting from the 

cancellation of sequestration for defense will be more pronounced than this for local communities 

where defense-related activity makes up a larger share of the local economy. 

My personal view, however, is that CBO's assessment somewhat overstates the short-term 

economic benefits of cancelling sequestration in the way it describes. This is because I believe that 

market forces will respond quickly to the prospect of higher levels of federal debt and deficits and 

the further acceleration of federal spending by restraining investment and employment. In short, 

sequestration may inflict marginal economic pain in the short term, but have a positive impact on 

the economy over the longer term. These long-term economic advantages, however, would be 

much more pronounced if the federal governmellt would seriously address the matter of 

restraining the projected growth in entitlement spending, which unfortunately is largely left out of 

the sequestration process. 
615 

Damage to Readiness (for The Honorable Robert O. Work, Mr. Thomas Donnelly, and Mr. Baker Spring): 

Secretary Hagel has warned about the harmful effects of a $52 billion cut to the Department of Defense in 

FYI4. His letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee outlined the damage sequestration would have on 

military readiness, both long and short-term. Given the instability in Egypt, the worsening situation in 

Syria, and other emerging threats around the globe, how would sequestration limit our options and ability to 

respond to the range of threats we could face in the foreseeable future? 

Answer: 

As sequestration provides marginal economic advantages over the long term, its negative 

consequences for the national security posture of the United States, both in the short term and the long term, 

are profound. This is because the scope of the cuts imposed by sequestration is disproportionate for 

defense. As pointed out in your question, the international security environment is not getting more benign. 

As a result of sequestration for defense, the military options available to the United States will be 

diminished to a dangerous degree. This is because under defense sequestration the military will in some 

combination become too small, lack modem weapons and equipment, prove unable to recruit and retain 

high quality personnel and have low levels of combat readiness to perform a number of vital military 

missions effectively. These missions include projecting military power, maintaining a forward presence in 

vital regions, deterring aggression in these same vital regions, providing for security on the high seas, in 

international airspace, outer space and cyberspace, and even deterring and defending the people and 

territory of the United States against strategic attacks. The degree to which these mission capabilities will 

be undermined in anyone area will depend on whether the across-the-board application of sequestration to 

defense accounts, outside those for military pay, has a disproportionate impact on some elements of the 

overall military posture. 

My biggest concern, however, is that U.S. military leadership is the foundation of to day's stable 

international political environment. Lacking this foundation, the possibility of an emerging instability 

dynamic increases, and with it the prospects for a large scale conflict between the major powers. As the 

experiences with World War I and World War II demonstrate, the humanitarian and economic 

consequences of such a conflict would be catastrophic. 
616 

Committee on the Budget 

Questions for the Record 

Hearing on The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Robert Work 

1) Global Capabilities 

Submitted by Chairman Patty Murray 

July 23, 2013 

The defense strategic guidance shifts DoD's baseline for readiness away from the ability 

to win two major theater wars to the ability to win one while deterring a second. But 

continued sequestration could compromise DoD's ability to meet even that revised 

standard. At the same time, we face many potential threats. Recently, the situation with 

North Korea seemed more dangerous than it had been in many years. We have 

committed to protecting Israel, especially as Iran continues to be provocative. And 

several members of this body want to do more to stop the bloodshed in Syria. 

• How would a $52 billion cut in defense funding next year affect our ability to 

intervene in these scenarios if we decide it is necessary? 

A $52 billion cut in FY 2014 defense funding comes on the heels of the FY 2013 

sequestration cut. Because this latter cut was applied on 1 March 2013, fully five months 

into the fiscal year, its effects were greatly magnified on targeted accounts. One of the 

accounts most affected was operations and maintenance (O&M). To reach the full cut by 

30 September, flying squadrons had to be grounded. Flying hours for the remaining 

operational squadrons were cut. Army and Marine Corps unit training rotations were 

eliminated or deferred. Aircraft and ground equipment depot work and ship availabilities 

were cancelled. All of these steps began to impact force readiness. In essence, the only 

parts of the Joint Force being trained to their typical standard of readiness were those 

scheduled to deploy. 

The $52 billion FY 2014 cut will simply compound this problem. This cut represents a 10 

percent reduction to the President's budget submission. This will be one of the biggest 

one-year reductions in annual defense spending since the post-Korean War drawdown. 

However, because the military personnel account is not impacted by sequestration, the 

reduction will have an even greater disproportionate hit on procurement, research and 

development, and operations and maintenance (O&M). The further cuts to O&M will 

simply accelerate the force-wide decline in readiness that began in FY 2013. 

The cumulative impact of these cuts will inevitably mean two things. First, readiness for 

our CONUS-based surge forces will decline in the near-term. Second, the continued 

deferment or elimination of aircraft and ground equipment depot work and ship 

availabilities will mean this readiness decline will extend over the long term. 
617 

Our forward-deployed forces will continue to be ready. But their backup--our surge 

forces-will be less trained and ready. Thus, while we will still be able to respond to 

small crises, it will make preparations for any larger intervention take longer than normal, 

with potentially negative consequences. 
618 

Committee on the Budget 

Questions for the Record 

Hearing on The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Robert Work 

1) Global Capabilities 

Submitted by Chairman Patty Murray 

July 23, 2013 

The defense strategic guidance shifts DoD's baseline for readiness away from the ability 

to win two major theater wars to the ability to win one while deterring a second. But 

continued sequestration could compromise DoD's ability to meet even that revised 

standard. At the same time, we face many potential threats. Recently, the situation with 

North Korea seemed more dangerous than it had been in many years. We have 

committed to protecting Israel, especially as Iran continues to be provocative. And 

several members of this body want to do more to stop the bloodshed in Syria. 

• Does sequestration make us more vulnerable by hurting our credibility and 

our ability to deter competitors abroad? 

Hard to say. In the near term, we will still have the best-equipped and technologically 

advanced military on earth. Our people will still be the equal of any in the world. 

Unquestionably, our overall readiness will be degraded. But we will still be engaged in 

Afghanistan, and our forward-deployed forces will still be present in every theater. 

Over the long term, the only way sequestration will impact credibility and deterrence is if 

it ultimately leads to a chronically underfunded and less ready, less technologically 

advanced force and a major and protracted retrenchment of American power and 

influence. 
619 

Committee on the Budget 

Questions for the Record 

Hearing on The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Submitted by Chairman Patty Murray 

July 23,2013 

2) Replacing Sequestration 

Mr. Work, as I mentioned in my opening statement, Secretary Hagel has called on 

Congress to pass a comprehensive package to replace the sequester cuts across the whole 

budget. Additionally, as Secretary Hagel has discussed, even full flexibility will not 

prevent serious harm to the Department under further sequestration. Only a full 

replacement will protect defense spending, and not trigger another round of sequestration 

by breaking the defense spending cap. 

Do you believe there is any step we could take more critical to protecting our 

national security than replacing sequestration? 

In the near-term, no. The problem is less the size of the cut than the abrupt way it has 

been applied. Secretary Hagel has said that we could continue to execute our national 

military policy and strategy with a $150 billion cut in defense spending, back-loaded 

toward the end of the ten-year planning period. He has also said while a back-loaded 

$250 billion cut would "bend" the strategy, it would not break it. However, even if 

Congress agreed to reduce defense spending cuts to these lower levels, ifthey were to be 

applied as abruptly in FY 2014 and FY 2015 as now planned, they would still cause 

major force-wide disruptions. 

A better way to approach this problem would be for the White House and Congress to 

agree on the final levels of defense spending cuts, and to impose more modest cuts in FY 

2014 and FY 2015. This would give DoD time to conduct a deliberate Quadrennial 

Defense Review, and for the National Defense Panel to assess its conclusions and 

recommendations. The resulting drawdown would then be shaped more by strategy than 

by mindless budget reductions. 
620 

Committee on the Budget 

Questions for the Record 

Hearing on The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

3) Allies and Partners 

Submitted by Chairman Patty Murray 

July 23, 2013 

The national security strategy and defense guidance emphasize the importance of 

working with allies and partners abroad. This includes building their capabilities, and 

relying on them to do more to provide security. As we put higher priority on these 

partnerships - in part due to our own budget problems - many of our partners are also 

cutting their defense budgets. In fact, the NATO Secretary General recently revealed 

European nations have slashed $45 billion from defense spending. 

• What is the right balance between asking more of our partner nations while 

recognizing they have serious budget challenges as well? 

The so-called "free rider" problem is nothing new. Since the end of the Cold War, many 

of our allies have reduced defense spending and become more reliant on U.S. assistance, 

particularly in the shape oflogistics, mobility, and intelligence, surveillance, and 

reconnaissance. The United States has actually contributed to this problem by 

emphasizing "partnership building capacity," which too often has simply meant spending 

U.S. defense dollars for regional security problems. 

However, many of our allies provided forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, even in the face of 

domestic opposition. Moreover, many of our allies in the Pacific and in Asia are 

considering improvements to their national capabilities. 

The United States should continue to work close with its regional allies and encourage 

them to allocate the requisite resources needed for their own defense needs. 
621 

Committee on the Budget 

Questions for the Record 

Hearing on The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Submitted by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 

July 23, 2013 

Economic Effect on Local Communities 

In my home state, we are seeing the effect of sequestration in reduced wages as the result 

of furloughs, reductions in the scope of defense contracting work, and losses felt by local 

businesses due to restrictions on government travel and community relations events. We 

know that the effects of sequestration are being felt across communities-from local 

companies that do businesses with the government-to prime defense contractors and 

their suppliers. However, the magnitude is difficult to qualify. How can Congress better 

understand the ripple effect caused by sequestration and how can information about the 

effects be captured and quantified? 

Two ways. First, continue to have hearings with witnesses like Mark Klett and JenniferCari Greene, who testified alongside me before the Senate Committee on the Budget on 

23 July 2013. Mr. Klett testified about the impact sequestration is having on small 

businesses, while Ms. Greene testified about the impact on her family budget. Both 

provided the committee with a compelling, first-hand view of sequestration's impacts. 

Second, establish a Congressional commission to conduct town halls in communities with 

a large military or 000 presence, and report back to both the House and the Senate on 

their findings. 
622 

Committee on the Budget 

Questions for the Record 

Hearing on The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Damage to Readiness 

Submitted by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 

July 23, 2013 

Secretary Hagel has warned about the harmful effects of a $52 billion but to the 

Department of Defense in FYI4. His letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee 

outlined the damage sequestration would have on military readiness, both long and shortterm. Given the instability in Egypt, the worsening situation in Syria, and other emerging 

threats around the globe, would sequestration limit our options and ability to respond to 

the range of threats we could face in the foreseeable future? 

A $52 billion cut in FY 2014 defense funding comes on the heels of the FY 2013 

sequestration cut. Because this latter cut was applied on I March 2013, fully five months 

into the fiscal year, its effects were greatly magnified on targeted accounts. One of the 

accounts most affected was operations and maintenance (O&M). To reach the full cut by 

30 September, flying squadrons had to be grounded. Flying hours for the remaining 

operational squadrons were cut. Army and Marine Corps unit training rotations were 

eliminated or deferred. Aircraft and ground equipment depot work and ship availabilities 

were cancelled. All of these steps began to impact force readiness. In essence, the only 

parts of the Joint force being trained to their typical standard of readiness were those 

scheduled to deploy. 

The $52 billion FY 2014 cut will simply compound this problem. This cut represents a 10 

percent reduction to the President's budget submission. This will be one of the biggest 

one-year reductions in annual defense spending since the post-Korean War drawdown. 

However, because the military personnel account is not impacted by sequestration, the 

reduction will have an even greater disproportionate hit on procurement, research and 

development, and operations and maintenance (O&M). The further cuts to O&M will 

simply accelerate the force-wide decline in readiness that began in FY 2013. 

The cumulative impact of these cuts will inevitably mean two things. First, readiness for 

our CONUS-based surge forces will decline in the near-term. Second, the continued 

deferment or elimination of aircraft and ground equipment depot work and ship 

availabilities will mean this readiness decline will extend over the long term. 

Our forward-deployed forces will continue to be ready. But their backup--our surge 

forces-will be less trained and ready. Thus, while we will still be able to respond to 

small crises, it will make preparations for any larger intervention take longer than normal, 

with potentially negative consequences. 
623 

The Impact of Sequestration on National Security and the Economy 

Senate Committee on the Budget 

July 23, 2013 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 

Questions for the Record 

Economic Effect on Local Communities (for The Honorable Robert O. Work, Mr. Mark N. Klett, Mr. 

Baker Spring and Mr. Thomas Donnelly): In my home state, we are seeing the effect of sequestration in 

reduced wages as a result of furloughs, reductions in the scope of defense contracting work, and losses felt 

by local businesses due to restrictions on government travel and community relations events. We know that 

the effects of sequestration are being felt across communities from local companies that do businesses with 

the government to prime defense contractors and their suppliers. However, the magnitude is difficult to 

quantify. How can Congress better understand the ripple effect caused by sequestration and how can 

information about the effects be captured and quantified? 

Answer: 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) addressed this question of the economic impacts 

of sequestration, including for defense, in a July 25, 2013, letter to Representative Van Hollen of 

Maryland. The analysis described in the letter assumed the cancelation of a portion of 

sequestration for the current fiscal year and all of it for fiscal year 2014. On this basis, CBO 

concluded that the cancellation of sequestration would increase real gross domestic product in the 

by .7 percent and the level of employment by 900,000 in the third quarter of calendar year 2014. 

However, the analysis goes on to state that these short-term economic gains would be undone over 

the longer term by consequences of increased deficits and debt and prospects of accelerated 

federal spending. It is also important to point out that the short-term gains resulting from the 

cancellation of sequestration for defense will be more pronounced than this for local communities 

where defense-related activity makes up a larger share of the local economy. 

My personal view, however, is that CBO's assessment somewhat overstates the short-term 

economic benefits of cancelling sequestration in the way it describes. This is because I believe that 

market forces will respond quickly to the prospect of higher levels of federal debt and deficits and 

the further acceleration of federal spending by restraining investment and employment. In short, 

sequestration may inflict marginal economic pain in the short term, but have a positive impact on 

the economy over the longer term. These long-tenn economic advantages, however, would be 

much more pronounced if the federal government would seriously address the matter of 

restraining the projected growth in entitlement spending, which unfortunately is largely left out of 

the sequestration process. 
624 

Damage to Readiness (for The Honorable Robert o. Work, Mr. Thomas Donnelly, and Mr. Baker Spring): 

Secretary Hagel has warned about the harmful effects of a $52 billion cut to the Department of Defense in 

FY 14. His letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee outlined the damage sequestration would have on 

military readiness, both long and short-term. Given the instability in Egypt, the worsening situation in 

Syria, and other emerging threats around the globe, how would sequestration limit our options and ability to 

respond to the range of threats we could face in the foreseeable future? 

Answer: 

As sequestration provides marginal economic advantages over the long term, its negative 

consequences for the national security posture of the United States, both in the short term and the long term, 

are profound. This is because the scope of the cuts imposed by sequestration is disproportionate for 

defense. As pointed out in your question, the international security environment is not getting more benign. 

As a result of sequestration for defense, the military options available to the United States will be 

diminished to a dangerous degree. This is because under defense sequestration the military will in some 

combination become too small, lack modern weapons and equipment, prove unable to recruit and retain 

high quality personnel and have low levels of combat readiness to perform a number of vital military 

missions effectively. These missions include projecting military power, maintaining a forward presence in 

vital regions, deterring aggression in these same vital regions, providing for security on the high seas, in 

international airspace, outer space and cyberspace, and even deterring and defending the people and 

territory of the United States against strategic attacks. The degree to which these mission capabilities will 

be undermined in anyone area will depend on whether the across-the-board application of sequestration to 

defense accounts, outside those for military pay, has a disproportionate impact on some elements ofthe 

overall military posture. 

My biggest concern, however, is that U.S. military leadership is the foundation oftoday's stable 

international political environment. Lacking this foundation, the possibility of an emerging instability 

dynamic increases, and with it the prospects for a large scale conflict between the major powers. As the 

experiences with World War I and World War II demonstrate, the humanitarian and economic 

consequences of such a conflict would be catastrophic. 
625 

CONTAINING HEALTH CARE COSTS: RECENT 

PROGRESS AND REMAINING CHALLENGES 

TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30a.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, chairman of the committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Wyden, Stabenow, Whitehouse, Baldwin, Kaine, King, Sessions, Grassley, Johnson, and Ayotte. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and Eric 

M. Ueland, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. This hearing will come to order. I apologize 

to everybody for being a few minutes late. We had votes and I am 

also managing the THUD bill on the floor and we had to get that 

going, but I appreciate everybody’s patience in getting this hearing 

started. 

I want to thank my Ranking Member, Senator Sessions, all of 

our colleagues who are joining us here today, as well as the members of the public here or who are watching online. 

I also want to thank our witnesses for coming today, Dr. Len 

Nichols, he is the Director and Professor at the Center for Health 

Policy Research and Ethics at the College of Health and Human 

Services at George Mason University; Dr. Kavita Patel, who is a 

Fellow and Managing Director at the Engelberg Center for Health 

Care Reform at The Brookings Institution; and Dr. Joseph Antos, 

Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at 

the American Enterprise Institute. Thank you all for coming and 

joining us today for this very important conversation about health 

care costs in the United States and the implications recent cost 

trends have on our Federal budget decisions. 

Almost five years now after the greatest economic crisis since the 

Great Depression, our economy is recovering, but far too slowly. 

Millions of workers are still looking for jobs. Millions of families are 

still worrying about staying in their homes or putting food on the 

table. We do have serious long-term deficit and debt challenges we 

need to tackle, since we certainly do not want to leave our children 

and grandchildren with an unmanageable pile of bills. And we have 

serious short-, medium-, and long-term economic challenges that 

we cannot ignore. 

But there has been some good news recently. The Congressional 

Budget Office released its latest forecast, which gave us an updated 

view on our debt and deficit. This latest outlook shows we have 

made substantial progress when it comes to our short- and medium-term deficits. It made clear that there is no short-term debt 

crisis and the deficit reduction we have done in the last few years, 

combined with the growing economy, is making a difference. 
626 

Recent trends in the health care sector have played an important 

role in this improved fiscal outlook. Medicare and Medicaid are two 

of the three largest Federal budget items, so trends in health care 

costs have major implications for our nation’s fiscal policy. Health 

care cost growth outpaces our economic growth, and it also grows 

at a faster rate than household incomes. 

The cost of health care affects every kitchen table and conference 

table conversation in the United States, as American households 

and American businesses face the question of how to pay for the 

health care coverage they want for their families and their employees. It remains a huge challenge for our businesses to stay competitive in a global market where their competitors have lower health 

care costs and continues to limit economic growth by reducing the 

investments businesses and families can make, whether it is starting a new venture or buying a new car. 

But there has been some positive news on this front lately. Over 

the last several years, health care costs have grown slower than at 

any time in our history. CBO now projects the Federal Government 

will spend well over $500 billion less on Medicare through 2020 

than it had predicted just a few years ago. The recently released 

Medicare Trustees Report showed an improvement in the Trust 

Fund, extending its solvency by two years until 2026 due to lower 

projected spending. And as the White House noted yesterday, consumer health care spending has increased this year at the lowest 

rate in 50 years. That is welcome news, and continuing these 

trends is going to be absolutely critical. 

There is an emerging consensus that the economic recession is 

not the only reason for the slowing of cost growth, which is also 

good news. There is evidence that structural changes in the way 

health care is delivered are underway and appear to be having an 

impact. And while the slowdown started before the Affordable Care 

Act was enacted, the law has set clear expectations for how health 

care will be financed and delivered in the future, and importantly, 

health care coverage is increasing at the same time and will continue to for the future. 

This is critical not only for families and communities, but also for 

our economy. Lower health care costs mean families and communities are getting care at a lower total cost to the system, and it 

means lower deficits and debt. By enacting comprehensive health 

care reform law, Congress took a critical step towards improving 

our health care system. And as I mentioned earlier, recent trends 

in the slowing of health care cost growth suggest we are moving 

in the right direction. 

But serious, long-term challenges remain. Right now, Americans 

still spend far more per person on health care than any other nation. But spending more on care has not made us any healthier. 

Our current system focuses far too much on healing sick people instead of prevention and wellness. This is not just bad for patients. 

It is bad for our economy. 

So we need to make sure we are moving towards a system where 

we prioritize prevention and quality. Fortunately, there are a number of reform ideas, many of which were included in the Affordable 

Care Act, that can help us address these problems and put us on 

track towards greater quality with lower cost. And the work that 
627 

providers across the country, including my home State of Washington, are doing is making a difference. 

Accountable Care Organizations, like the one run by Polyclinic 

and the one being launched by Providence Health, both in my home 

State of Washington, help ensure better communication between 

providers. Patient-centered medical homes, like the one run by 

Group Health in Seattle, aim to combine the personalized approach 

of a family doctor with innovative technology. And by creating fixed 

payments for all the care a patient is expected to need during a period of time, bundled payments could help incentivize coordination 

and efficiency between providers. These reforms will help us move 

towards a system where we are spending less on care and are 

healthier as a country. 

Increasing quality and encouraging efficiency and transparency 

is going to take all of us, providers, policy makers, and patients 

working together. But it is so important for the well-being of our 

families across the country as well as for the long-term strength of 

our economy. 

Now, more than ever, we need to be thoughtful about the reforms 

we are enacting and work together to ensure we are laying down 

a foundation for future growth and prosperity, both when it comes 

to enacting key health reforms and also when it comes to future 

budgetary policy. That is especially true when it comes to the complexities of health care and the consequences of decisions we make 

when it comes to the future of Medicaid and Medicare. 

We cannot lower health care spending simply by shifting these 

costs from the Federal Government onto seniors and States and the 

most vulnerable families. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the 

approach the House Republicans took in their budget. If they had 

their way, seniors would immediately see an increase in what they 

pay for routine doctors’ visits, the number of uninsured Americans 

would rise, and the most vulnerable families would be put at greater risk. That is not the right way to address our long-term challenges in health care spending. 

Now, Republicans claim that Democrats do not want to tackle 

health care costs. That is simply not true. We agree—we agree— 

we need to address this significant part of our Federal spending. 

But we believe we need to do so by coming together around a solution for real, lasting reform, not just by shifting costs and shifting 

risks. 

This is a complex issue and we should not have to wait until the 

last minute now to sit down at the table and try to find some common ground and work something out. And that is why, now that 

the House has passed their budget and the Senate has passed ours, 

I truly hope—truly hope—we can move forward with going to conference and working together to solve these major, complex issues 

that are facing our country. 

As everyone in this room knows, we have tried many times now 

to go to conference. Every time, we have been blocked. In fact, the 

latest threat coming from my colleagues Senators Rubio and Lee is 

that they want to actually defund health care reform or they will 

shut down the government. Well, I do not think that is a good solution and we do not want anybody, including Tea Party Republicans, 

to push us into a crisis, because if they do, they are going to cut 
628 

off health care coverage for 25 million people. They are going to 

end free preventive care for our seniors. And they are going to 

cause seniors to pay more for prescriptions. 

Those political games might play well with a particular base, but 

the reality is that not only is the Affordable Care Act already helping millions of Americans stay healthy and financially secure, but 

it is also helping slow health care cost growth. Instead of fighting 

what is now the law, I hope we could all be working together right 

now to make sure Obamacare is implemented in the best way possible for our families and businesses and communities. Continuing 

to manufacture crisis after crisis is only going to make the situation worse for our economy, whereas coming together to tackle 

these tough issues will help create jobs and keep America on its 

path to economic recovery. 

So I am hopeful Republicans will join us at the table in a budget 

conference under regular order and work with me and other Democrats to address our long-term debt and deficit challenges as well 

as our long-term health care challenges. I just believe we owe it to 

the American people to come together around some solutions that 

help our economy grow, tackle our deficit and debt responsibly, and 

ensure we have a health care system that delivers high-quality affordable care. 

So I am very glad we are having this important discussion today. 

I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses on this critical 

issue and really appreciate your being here and all our members 

being involved in this important discussion. 

With that, I will turn it over to my Ranking Member, Senator 

Sessions. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Chairman Murray, and I look forward to the hearing this morning on an interesting topic, an important topic, and welcome our guests today. 

I would like to see us go to conference. We just have a number 

on the budget, but we have a number of members who believe that 

the debt limit should not be part of a conferenced item. Senator 

Durbin said on the floor when I was there that he did not think 

it could be. If that is so, why would you not agree to not make that 

a part of any conference report and then the conference would 

occur. That is apparently the disagreement some of our members 

have. 

This year, our country is projected to spend $2.9 trillion on 

health care, almost 18 percent of our nation’s economy. I would 

note that we have the greatest health care in the world. You simply cannot judge our health care only on life expectancy and the 

choices people make, whether it is smoking or other issues that 

cause earlier death in the United States than in some countries. 

You go to any area of America, you can get first class health care, 

heart surgery, lung surgery, kidney surgery, cancer treatments, all 

over this country. It is a fabulous health care system we have, but 

it is expensive. 

Our hearing will focus on cost and the trends which brought us 

here. Looking at the data, it is clear that while the increase in 

health care costs, the rate of increase, at least, has slowed signifi-
629 

cantly over the last decade, health care costs will continue to rise, 

and today, for the most part, they still outpace the growth of inflation. 

Indeed, in the year 2000, health care costs increased 9.7 percent. 

They dropped every single year since then until when President 

Bush left office it was 4.7 percent. It is now, in 2011, the latest 

numbers I have, the increase was 3.9 percent. So we have had a 

real change in the increase, but I do not think facts can justify any 

allegation that it is a result of Obamacare, and we will talk about 

that as time goes by. 

So, we are now looking at the economic recovery that we are involved in. It is the slowest since the Great Depression. We are just 

not growing fast enough and not creating enough jobs. GDP growth 

last quarter was only 1.8 percent. It was 0.4 percent in the fourth 

quarter last year. It has averaged two percent or less since the end 

of the recession in 2009, and that is not a job creating growth rate. 

After six years, since the beginning of the recession, we still do 

not have as many jobs as existed in December of 2007. Americans 

are working fewer hours, and the fastest growing type of work 

today is part-time employment. Over 352,000 part-time jobs were 

created last month compared to only 195,000 full-time jobs. Last 

month alone—in May, at least, we lost 7,000 manufacturing jobs. 

In June, the June report shows we lost 6,000 manufacturing jobs. 

It is clear that this health care law has had a job effect and it 

is not for the better. There has been plenty of anecdotal evidence 

about hiring concerns, and according to the Federal Reserve’s Beige 

Book, the health care law has been cited as a job market concern. 

Along these lines, this month’s report from the Chicago Fed District stated, quote, ‘‘Several retailers reported that the Affordable 

Care Act would lead to more part-time and temporary versus fulltime hiring.’’ Folks are being held back from full-time work due to 

this law. That is just a fact. We are hearing it all over the country. 

Last month, the President held up premium decreases in States 

like New York as evidence that his health care law is working. But 

as one fact checker put it, quote, ‘‘He does not make clear that that 

kind of premium decrease is likely to be the exception rather than 

the rule among all the States.’’ 

Actuaries estimate the monthly premiums in New York’s individual market after the health care law is in effect will still be 37 

percent higher than the national average. And what the President 

does not say is that people in other States, like my State of Alabama, will likely see their premiums skyrocket once the law takes 

effect. 

The President argued at the bill’s signing that it would bring all 

sorts of benefits, but when it comes to the topic of this hearing, 

health care spending trends, it is fair to say there has been no benefit from the President’s health care bill. After all, much of the decline took place long before the President’s policies and long before 

he was elected. 

And actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 

have looked at the impact of his health care law and concluded 

that, to date, there is, quote, ‘‘no discernible impact of this legislation’’ on aggregate health care spending trends. That is obvious, I 

would think, but it needs to be said because there has been a real 
630 

attempt to try to suggest that the decline in the rate of growth in 

health care spending is attributable to the President’s health care 

plan. 

And looking into the future, its costs will be real while the promised savings will be illusory, I am afraid. Against claimed benefits, 

there are serious costs. If left unchanged, the President’s health 

care law could deal a devastating blow to the Federal budget. Earlier this year, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office— 

just this year—released a report which estimates that under a realistic set of assumptions, the President’s health care law will increase the deficit by 0.7 percent of GDP, or roughly $6.2 trillion 

over the next 75 years. That is almost as much as Social Security’s 

projected deficit over that period of time. 

So we are just about to add a new program to the Federal Budget of this country that will add almost as much unfunded liabilities 

over the long term as the Social Security program that we need 

desperately to be fixing. Adding more debt to a government which 

already cannot pay its bill is how a country goes broke, and it was 

hidden, basically, when this bill was passed. 

Addressing health care costs now, before this bill is fully implemented, can save trillions of dollars in new debt to our country and 

our people. That is a lot easier than having to change an existing 

program that people have been depending on, like Social Security 

and Medicare. 

So, colleagues, I believe that we need to work as hard as possible 

to head in a better direction, one that responsibly corrals spending 

excesses in Washington and creates the conditions for a more robust economic growth, helping people recover from the economic 

damage of the last five years. Blanket spending and risky programs 

will not meet the real needs of our constituents. We need to go 

step-by-step, and enact common sense health care reforms that 

lower costs and that the American people can support, not a bill 

that is widely opposed by the American people and will likely add 

trillions in new debt. 

I thank our witnesses for attending this morning and await their 

testimony. This is a most interesting subject. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, thank you very much, and I want to 

turn to our panel. We will have time for questions after that. 

Let me begin with Dr. Nichols. We will start with you. 

STATEMENT OF LEN M. NICHOLS, PH.D., DIRECTOR AND PROFESSOR, CENTER FOR HEALTH POLICY RESEARCH AND 

ETHICS, COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, 

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 

Mr. NICHOLS. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, 

other distinguished members of this committee, it is an honor and 

privilege to offer my thoughts on health care cost growth for your 

consideration as you seek to balance our vital priorities as a nation. 

My name is Len Nichols. I teach health policy and direct health 

system research at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. 

I will answer the two key questions as quickly as I can and spend 

the rest of my time on the remaining challenges before us. 

Question number one, is health care cost growth reduction real? 

Yes. 
631 

Question number two, can the recent health care cost growth 

slowdown be sustained? This is the key question. The correct answer to this, I believe, is maybe, sliding into probably, and I am 

going to tell you why I am optimistic. 

The first point is, the slowdown in cost growth began before the 

Great Recession and the ACA. The evidence is very clear on this 

point. The evidence is also clear that post-ACA Medicare payment 

policies and increases in private sector cost sharing have also affected spending growth, along with lagged GDP growth. 

Point number two, the key to actually bending the cost growth 

curve is to enable stakeholders to gain from reducing cost growth, 

to align their incentives with the trip aim, and I am optimistic 

about this because the private sector in every State of our Union 

is adopting the same kinds of incentives that are being tested by 

the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, pursuant to the 

ACA. These incentives make sense and it is the congruence between public and private efforts that makes delivery system reform 

far more feasible than I have seen in my lifetime of studying this 

system. 

I included in my written testimony a map maintained by America’s Health Insurance Plans that makes the point worth a thousand words. 

I also describe three promising examples of individual private 

health insurers which have combined creative incentives with information and care management systems and they each report 

positive early results. Massachusetts Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Blue 

Shield of California, and CareFirst here in the Mid-Atlantic area 

have each lowered cost growth and improved quality enough that 

each is expanding their programs, in some cases before definitive 

formal evaluation results are complete. This is a market test that 

shows they think it is working. This is the promise of health reform 2.0. 

Even more exciting, we are starting to see multi-payer payment 

reform experiments, some led by the public, some by private payers, and some by clinical catalysts. This is great news because you 

all know nothing holds back progress more than conflicting incentives within the same clinical practice. 

So, yes, slower cost growth can be sustained if we encourage 

these kinds of arrangements. 

I will now emphasize four of the seven challenges I mention in 

my written testimony. Challenge number one: Tell the American 

people the truth. The plain truth is, we can solve our current fiscal 

woes without abandoning our commitment to our most vulnerable 

citizens and to ourselves, but you would not know it from watching 

TV at night or on Sunday mornings. 

Health care cost growth, our most serious long-run fiscal problem, is coming down and will stay down if we are smart and disciplined about it. Not every payment model or pilot will work perfectly. We can learn from failures. We always have. But our country is large and diverse. We will need different models to reflect different local values, conditions, and strengths. But the evidence is 

clearly building. We can achieve the triple aim in a number of 

cases and we should stop this loose talk of draconian benefit cuts 

and ruinous tax rates. 
632 

Challenge number two: Enable clinicians to lead the transformation we need. Compared to 20 years ago, way more physicians, nurse leaders, hospital executives, and health plan executives are actually eager to help reform our expensive system. They 

know it is too expensive to maintain. But they are frustrated by 

the familiar roadblocks that make the status quo seem like the 

only operational choice, flawed though it is. 

In my view, all these folks have essential parts to play, but physicians need to be in the front of the reform bus, not in the back. 

For physicians to drive this thing, four things have to happen. The 

first two are relatively simple. You must improve the malpractice 

environment, and you must remove the scourge of SGR from our 

policy discourse. I do not really care how, just do it. The price of 

SGR repeal is at an all time low now and malpractice issues are 

not beyond your capacities. 

Third, for physicians to lead, they must have access to total cost 

of care data. Not all plans in our country are as enlightened as the 

ones I named. In some States, the only way to gather essential 

data is to require all payer claims databases to be created and appropriately shared. Only 12 States have them now. I urge you to 

provide powerful incentives to the other 38. Markets cannot and 

never have worked well without transparent cost, price, and quality data. We should give our health markets the tools they need 

over the objections of those who profit from our ignorance today. 

The fourth prerequisite for proper physician leadership of our reform enterprise is to upgrade our sense of urgency and make Medicare a true partner with them in health system reform. Only three 

of those all payer claims databases have access to Medicare data. 

Everyone should benefit from the lessons that Medicare and private sector data together can teach, as Senators Wyden and Grassley have recently argued. More generally, we should turbocharge 

CMMI into something more like the Manhattan Project, which, you 

may have read about, focused our best scientific minds to produce 

an atom bomb before the Germans got one. Like then, we cannot 

afford to fail, and like then, we are kind of in a hurry. We need 

to harness our best physician minds with a liberated CMS as a 

true partner to get those incentives right systemwide in real time. 

Challenge number three: Engage consumers and patients. I do 

not know why we are so afraid of telling patients what they know 

in their hearts. They have a huge role to play in their own health 

and in making our system sustainable for all. Provider organizations should be allowed to offer incentives to remain with the group 

for a year. An honest discussion of personal responsibility for behavioral choices might help bridge some of our partisan divides. 

Finally, I encourage you to focus health policy more on communities and less on States and the nation as a whole. In my experience these last few years of talking about health reform in virtually 

every State in our country, red, blue, and purple, communities are 

the one geographic area where people are able to put politics aside 

and focus on what needs to be done to make their own health system work where they live and work and play and pray. 

HHS and some States have made local data available and more 

user friendly than ever before, and I am proud to say that the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics, on which I serve, 
633 

has been learning how some communities are using data to promote local health improvements consistent with their own priorities. I can think of no better example of democracy in action. 

But we could do much better and go way beyond all payer claims 

databases. I sincerely urge you to ask HHS to think creatively and 

expansively about how to use existing government data and resources to empower communities to lead conversations about 

health and health system improvements they want rather than 

what some experts want or fear for them. 

In the end, our political system is based on the principle that the 

people are the experts who matter most, at least about what they 

want their government to facilitate. We should think more often 

about how government can help people inform and empower themselves. 

I thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning and I 

welcome any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Nichols follows:] 
634 

Containing Health Care Costs: Recent Progress and Remaining Challenges 

Statement of 

Len M. Nichols, Ph.D. 

Professor of Health Policy and Director, 

Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics 

College of Health and Human Services 

George Mason University 

Fairfax, VA 22030 

d ~ORGEI 

UN IVER~~ 

For the Committee on the Budget 

United States Senate 

July 30, 2013 

Washington, DC 
635 

Containing Health Care Costs: Recent Progress and Remaining Challenges 

Len M. Nichols, Ph.D. 

July 30, 2013 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, other distinguished Members of this Committee, 

it is an honor and a privilege to have been invited to offer my thoughts on health care cost 

growth containment for your consideration. You do have a daunting task, to shape public policy 

toward our vital public insurance programs, our health system generally, and our nations' key 

priorities through your budget making, including balancing our commitments to the most 

vulnerable among us with sound fiscal prudence, so that we may honor commitments made over 

time. 

My name is Len M. Nichols. [am a health economist, Professor of Health Policy, and Director 

of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics in the College of Health and Human 

Services at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. I conduct research about and help 

create public-private partnerships to pursue incentive realignments that can sustain a more 

efficient, effective, and humane health care system. I am an advisor to the Virginia Center for 

Health Innovationl and to the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative,2 two organizations 

committed to improving the health systems of Virginia and the nation, respectively. I am also on 

the governing boards of the National Committee on Quality Assurance3 and Academy Health,4 

and am a member ofthe National Committee on Vital Health Statistics.5 I do want to make clear 

though that my written testimony and spoken views are mine and mine alone. 

I organize my remarks around two key contextual questions and then address the most important 

challenges before us. 

Question #1: Is the recent health care cost growth reduction real? 

Though reform opponents do not like it much, there is little doubt that health care cost growth 

has been slowing lately. Rarely have important facts been so difficult to push to their proper 

1 http://www.vahealthinnovation.org/ 

, http://www.pcpcc.org/ 

'http://www.ncqa.org 

4http://www.academyhealth.org 

S http://www.ncvhs.hhs.gov 
636 

central place in the public mind. The Office of the Actuary (OACT) at the Center for Medicare 

& Medicaid Services (CMS), with expertise that spans health economics, actuarial science, and 

financial accounting, has long been our nation's official arbiter of health spending levels and 

trends. Table I is an excerpt from their most recent report on historical health care spending, per 

capita. 

Table I: Growth per capita, compared to the prior year 

1990 2000 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 

NHE 9.9 5.5 6.6 3.7 3.0 3.1 3.1 

GOP 6.6 4.4 4.1 0.9 -3.1 2.9 3.2 

- - ,0 NHE - natIOnal health expenditures, GOP - gross domestic product. Source. Hartman et ai, 

Clearly, health care cost growth per person has been much lower lately than its historical record 

of growing 2.6 percentage points faster than GOP per capita since 1960.7 Importantly, even as 

the economy has recovered from the Great Recession in 2010 and 2011, health care growth 

relative to GOP has held steady. Equivalent growth rates in health costs and national income per 

capita is a good definition of a sustainable health system. 

These trends are reflected in public insurance program growth rates as well. Table 2 is also 

excerpted from the recent OACT report. 

, Hartman, M., et al. "National Health Spending in 2011: Overall Growth Remains Low, but Some Payers and 

Services Show Signs of Acceleration," Health Affairs 32(1):87-99 (Jan 2013). 

7 Kaiser Family Foundation, "Assessing the Effects of the Economy on the Recent Slowdown in Health Spending," 

http://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brieflassessing-the-effects-of-the-economy-on-the-recent-slowdown-inhealth-spending-21 

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Table 2: Growth rates, compared to the prior year 

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 

Medicare 9.2 18.8 7.4 8.0 6.9 4.3 6.2 

Enrollment 1.8 2.0 2.1 2.6 2.4 2.5 2.5 

Per enrollee 7.2 16.5 5.1 5.3 4.3 1.8 3.6 

Medicaid 6.4 -0.9 6.3 5.8 8.8 5.9 2.5 

Enrollment 2.9 -0.6 0.1 3.5 7.3 4.9 3.2 

Per enrollee 3.4 -0.3 6.2 2.2 1.4 1.0 -0.7 

Source: Hartman, M., et aI, see note 6. 

There is no question that health care cost growth has recently slowed broadly across the health 

care system. 

Question #2: Can the recent health cost growth slowdown be sustained? 

This question has become the subject of considerable commentary, as well it should. It really 

matters. The Congressional Budget Office, another group of non-partisan analysts with crucial 

expertise and standing, has lowered their estimate of federal Medicare and Medicaid costs for 

2020 by 15% from what they had forecast three years ago, just as the Patient Protection and 

Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed. For Medicare alone, that equates to nearly $400 

billion lower projected spending over the next seven years.s If these trends continue to 2022, 

public sector health spending could be over $750 billion lower than recent projections.9 As this 

committee knows, that would represent serious progress toward a sustainable federal fiscal 

structure. 

The main argument advanced by pessimists (who are also typically ideological or at least 

political opponents of health reform) is that the health spending slowdown is an artifact ofthe 

reduction in demand for care that inevitably accompanies job and coverage losses in a recession 

and thus will disappear as the recovery continues to pick up steam. The first major empirical 

• Cutler, D. and Sahni, N. "The Forecast Slowdown in Medicare Spending: Is More Coming?" Journol of the 

American Medical Assocation Farum 2/21/13, http://newsatjama.jama.comfiama·lorum-the-Iorecast-slowdownin-medicare-spending-is-more-coming?/ 

, Cutler, D. and Sahni. N. "II Slow Rate 01 Health Care Spending Growth Persists, Projections May Be Off by $770 

Billion," Health Affairs 32(5):841-850 (May 2013). 

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hole in that argument was established in 2012 when Roehrig and colleagues at the Center for 

Sustainable Health Spending of the Altarum InstitutelO showed that the health cost growth 

slowdown pre-dated the recession's onset by two or more years. I I (The slowdown also pre-dates 

the ACA). This issue is sufficiently important to state the obvious: if cost growth reductions preceded the recession, then the recession cannot have been the major cause of recent cost growth 

reductions. The second major empirical hole in the pessimists' argument was provided by the 

Medicare data of Table 2. Why and how exactly would the recession lead Medicare 

beneficiaries, whose benefits have not been reduced, to lessen their demand for care enough to 

lower spending growth per enrollee? 

This is not to suggest that our long struggle with health cost growth in the US is over. And that 

judgment, shared by virtually all serious analysts of our health care system, has led to a number 

of recent important analyses of factors that might explain patterns in health spending growth, 

with particular emphasis on the recent slowdown. These studies are different and important 

enough to understand where and why they differ, and how they should be interpreted in their 

totality. 

The first one was published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in collaboration with the Altarum 

economists and systems engineers. That study's authors developed a model that can "explain" 

77% of health care spending growth solely with variables that measure general (economy-wide) 

inflation, lagged inflation, GOP growth, and lagged GOP growth. The fundamental contribution 

of the paper was to show that the effect of GOP on health spending occurs with as much as a 5-

year lag, and that the lagged effects are much larger, cumulatively, than the statistical effects of 

current GOP. Since the cost-growth slowdown clearly occurred before the recession it cannot 

have been primarily caused by the recession, and the model predicts that lingering dampening 

effects ofthe (lagged) recession on demand for health services will last for a while but will be 

counterbalanced as the economy continues to recover. The authors conclude that "Increases in 

health expenditures are likely to trend upwards over the coming decade as the economy returns 

10 http://altarum.orgfcshs 

11 Roerhig, c., et al. "When the Cost Curve Bent: Pre-Recession Moderation in Health Care Spending," New 

England Journal of Medicine 367(7) (August 16,2012). 

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to a more normal rate of growth.,,12 This is surely true, if nothing else matters to health system 

cost growth. 

Two other peer-reviewed studies take more traditional approaches of isolating the impact of 

GDP growth (or job losses) while controlling for health system impacts like Medicare payment 

policy (which changed substantially in the ACA), changes in insurance coverage, and benefit 

generosity.13 They conclude that the economy alone explains at most a third of health spending 

growth reductions in recent years. These results combined with the Kaiser study suggest that 

other, possibly structural factors are also at work lowering cost growth rates in the health care 

system. The authors infer from various data points that slower technological advance (more 

generic drugs, slower adoption or use rate of new diagnostic technologies, etc.) and greater 

efficiencies in hospitals have and may continue to contribute to health cost slowdowns. 

There is thus a consensus that the economy affects health care spending growth, but so do health 

policy and general market trends in the health care sector. Therefore, a return to robust 

economic growth does not mean we are doomed to repeat our health care cost growth past. It all 

depends on whether forces in the system now that dampen cost growth are stronger than forces in 

the system - including recovering demand - that increase cost growth, as they have been these 

last two years. 

I am personally and professionally optimistic that cost growth lower than long run trend could be 

maintained, because of the illustrative examples I am about to describe (briefly), which add to up 

to one overarching reality: private and public payers are developing congruent incentive 

structures for clinicians and hospitals, frequently in tandem, that have the potential to link the 

self-interest of all major health system stakeholders with the social interest in cost growth 

containment, quality improvement, and better health for our population (the triple aim).14 To see 

this congruence vividly, look at the following map, which we can call Figure 1. 

12 Cf. note 7. 

13 Cutler and Sahni, ct. note 9; Ryu, A., et al. "The Slowdown in Health Care Spending in 2009-11 Reflected Factors 

Other Than the Weak Economy and Thus May Persist," Health Affairs 32(5):835-840 (May 2013). 

14 Berwick, D., et al. "The Triple Aim: Care, Health, and Cost," Health Affairs 27(3):759-769 (May/June 2008). 

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Figure! . 

Alternative IIlId Payment Models-Private Sector 

PaIIaolc.n .. ""'_I_ .• _lodIf,""""" 010. .. """ ..... ." 

__ .1>100. .. -.1$1""_.... '1\1: C<l_""~halPIII''''1II 

This map is maintained and regularly updated by America's Health Insurance Plans, and is 

available from its website. ls Each symbol represents examples of patient centered medical 

homes, bundled payments, accountable care arrangements, or comprehensive global payments, 

designed and implemented by private plans with willing provider partners, but similar in spirit 

and detail to the demonstration projects underway at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid 

innovation (CMMI) pursuant to the ACA. The larger point is that in every state in the union 

payment reforms and incentive realignments arc taking place outside the government program 

that reinforce the care transfonnation objectives of current public policy. Coupled with the 

extensive array ofCMMI initiatives,16 the US health care system has not seen this much change 

''http://www .a hip. org/ 

16hlli2.;/linnovation.cms,£2Yj. One of my co-panelists today, Dr. Kavita Patel of the Brookings Institution, will 

discuss selected CMMI initiatives in some detail, so I will not, except in response to questions at the hearing or 

afterward. 

6 
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oriented around incentive realignments since Medicare switched from cost-based hospital 

reimbursement to diagnosis-based prospective payments in the early 1980s. If you remember the 

award-winning movie about the Von Trapp family, The Sound of Music, a good metaphor for the 

US health care system today is the opening sweeping panorama followed by the crescendo of 

Julie Andrews' voice singing "The Hills are Alive" with the sound of care process redesigns and 

incentive changes designed to make better outcomes sustainable at lower total cost. 

This alignment of public and private goals - made possible by the ACA and the private 

contracting innovations that preceded and have followed it is by far the most humane way to 

get the health spending portion of our long-run budget priorities where it needs to be. The 

alternative to incentive realignment is draconian benefit and price cuts, which would be incomebased rationing in reality ifnot in euphemistic name. Severe cuts are also wholly unnecessary if 

we choose to support and nurture those already on the path to a better aligned American health 

system that is within our imagination and our grasp. 

The examples I will describe deliberately exclude the many exemplary integrated systems of 

care, for though they are beacons in more ways than one, we have to make our health system 

work in all places, including where for various reasons fully integrated systems - like Group 

Health Cooperative and Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Intermountain Health Care in 

Salt Lake City, Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania, the Baylor Health System in 

Dallas, Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Maryland, Northern 

Virginia and DC, etc., - simply will not come to be anytime soon, if ever. 

The first promising example I will cite is the Alternative Quality Contract (AQC) implemented 

in 2009 by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts. That arrangement is essentially a 

global budget with willing provider groups that are rewarded for their quality and cost 

performance. They also bear financial risk and reap rewards if they do well. Hallmarks of this 

arrangement include a multi-year contract, technical and data support by the plan, and incentives 

tied to explicit quality metrics (roughly similar to those used by Medicare ACOs) as well as to 

reductions in the total cost of care of enrolled patients, even if some of the care is delivered by 

providers not covered by the AQC. Participating provider groups include large mUlti-specialty 

medical practices, small physician groups, and large physician-hospital organizations. Peer 

reviewed and published results for the first two years' performance indicate that costs were 

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reduced (1.9% in year one, 3.3% in year two) while quality increased, and the results were larger 

for groups that were in the AQC 10nger.17 This makes perfect sense since care innovations to 

improve care coordination and communication among teams of providers, patients with complex 

needs and their families - the essence of what payment reform is trying to incentivize - take time 

to implement and require adjustments by all concerned. The really good news is this program is 

expanding and now has 1,600 primary care physicians and 3,200 specialists involved. 

Two more non-profit Blues' plans' innovations that are designed to advance the goals of the 

triple aim while meeting providers where they are on the ground are worthy of note, partly 

because they are in very different places, California vs. the Chesapeake region (Maryland, DC, 

and Virginia). 

In 2009 Blue Shield of California (BSCA) signed an ACO-like arrangement with the Hill 

Physicians' Medical group (a large IPA with 3,800 affiliated physicians) and with the hospital 

system Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West) that uses a global budget for a 

designated set (41,000) of California Public Employees Retirement System (CaIPERS) enrollees 

living in or near Sacramento, California. As in the AQC, providers can share in savings if they 

materialize and if quality targets are met. CaiPERS was given an immediate "rebate" for these 

enrollees of$15.5 million, consistent with holding premium cost growth to zero, and this in tum 

both required and incentivized the plan, hospital system and physician group to cooperate so that 

they could save more than that to break even. In the first year, according to an internal analysis 

conducted for BSCA by Milliman, the Blue Shield ACO saved $20.5 million, so $5 million was 

distributed among the partners. Year two results were even better for all concerned, saving $22 

million more for CalPERS and $8 million more for the partners. Blue Shield has now expanded 

the program to seven more ACO-Iike arrangements serving 90,000 more enrollees.ls 

CareFirst, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan in the mid-Atlantic region serving Maryland, DC, 

and northern Virginia, launched a very ambitious patient centered medical home program in 

17 Song, Z. et ai, "The 'Alternative Quality Contract: Based on a Global Budget, Lowered Medical Spending and 

Improved Quality," Health Affairs 31(8): 1885-94 (Aug 2012). 

18 Markovic, P. HA Global Budget Pilot Project Among Provider Partners and Blue Shield of California Led to Savings 

in the First Two Years," Health Affairs 31(9):1969-76 (Sept 2012). 

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2011. 19 Early results are promising, the more so because the mid-Atlantic region, unlike 

California and Boston, has not had a history of care coordination and large multi-specialty 

groups (which are typically in a better position than small physician practices to adapt care 

processes to better manage the relatively seriously chronically ill). The CareFirst design is 

tailored to make it easy for previously isolated small practices to join the program, by supplying 

an information and care coordination infrastructure to facilitate participating practices' focus on 

the right patients, providing an upfront increase in FFS payment rates for participating in the 

program, and for sharing savings according to cost and quality performance but with no 

downside risk to the primary care physicians. As a consequence of these features, over 80% of 

CareFirst participating primary care providers (PCPs) have joined the program, until by now, 

nearly 3,600 PCPs treating over I million commercial (non-Medicare) patients are involved. 

According to internal CareFirst calculations and analyses, the program, net of PCP bonuses, 

saved CareFirst 1.5% total expected expenditure on (voluntarily) participating enrollees in year 

one and 2.7% in year two.20 Even before formal external evaluation results have been compiled, 

CareFirst is confident enough to expand the program to the Medicare population, and recently 

secured a CMMI grant and negotiated a cooperative agreement to do just that. 

Creative experiments in this vein are not confined to the private sector. Since 2006, 26 state 

Medicaid programs have also enabled and encouraged primary care practices to begin 

functioning as medical homes for Medicaid enrollees, through new or revised payment systems 

and reporting requirements.21 Indeed, Medicaid has been central to some key multi-payer 

initiatives of the CMMI, including the multi-payer advanced primary care practice demonstration 

and the comprehensive primary care initiative, which have engendered support and participation 

of over 3000 PCPs in 15 states .22 

19 In the interests of full disclosure, I am the Principal Investigator of a 5-year evaluation of Care First's PCMH 

program, leading a team centered at George Mason University. Two other evaluation teams, centered at Harvard 

and Westat, Inc., respectively, have also been retained by Care First to conduct independent evaluations of their 

program. All formal evaluations are just getting under way, so the results referenced in my testimony are from 

Care First's internal calculations and assessments that have been released to the public. 

20 CareFirst press releases. "CareFirst BlueCross Blue Shield Announces First Year Patient Centered Medical Home 

Results, June 7, 2012; "Patient Centered Medical Home Program Trims Expected Health Care Costs by $98 Million 

in Second Year," June 6, 2013. 

21 Takach, M "About Half of the States are Implementing Patient Centered Medical Homes for Their Medicaid 

Populations," Health Affairs 31(11):2432-2440 (Nov 2012). 

" http://innovation.cms.gov/Files/xlComprehensive-Primary-Care-Initiative-Frequently-Asked-Questions.pdf 

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A noteworthy and recent version of multi-payer payment reform was the Colorado Multi-payer 

Patient Centered Medical Home pilot coordinated by HealthTeamWorks, which ran from 2009-

2012, and included 16 small physician practices and seven health plans including United, Aetna, 

Cigna, Anthem-Wellpoint, Humana, CoverColorado (the state's high risk pool carrier) and 

Medicaid. Formal evaluation results have not yet been published, but preliminary findings 

indicate that the pilot significantly reduced emergency department visits and hospital 

admissions.23 In addition, most participating practices moved right into Colorado's successful 

application and implementation of the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative ofCMMI. The 

most useful part of this pilot may have been the wealth oflessons learned they have passed on to 

others, including how to (and how not to) sort through thorny data and payment change issues in 

mUlti-payer settings, especially when self-insured employers have control and (sometimes) less 

knowledge about new payment and incentive models' promise. Change takes time and 

concerted effort on multiple fronts, i.e., it is not easy, even though the potential payoff is large. 

Which brings me to what I think are the seven most important challenges to sustained cost 

growth reduction across our health care system. Three are more political than policy-specific, 

but precisely because of that you on this committee and in this Senate can do something about all 

of them, if you so choose. 

Challenge #1: Excess partisanship 

All politics is partly and unavoidably partisan, but surely we have set new records lately. The 

sad truth is our current state of partisanship mostly serves to divert focus from how the reform 

law and implementation process should and could be improved. Democrats are afraid to admit 

the law has flaws and Republicans are afraid to admit the law has some really good ideas and 

provisions, and just might work as advertised in some states. In addition, it appears to me that 

Republicans have no consensus among themselves for a viable alternative to the ACA, for if they 

did would they not have proposed and passed it in 2001-2006 when they controlled the White 

House and the Congress? To move forward toward solidifYing cost growth reduction, which I 

know both parties support, the charade of repeal and de-funding should stop and all of you 

" Harbrecht M. and latta, L "Colorado's Patient Centered Medical Home Pilot Has Met Numerous Obstacles, Yet 

Saw Results Such As Reduced Hospital Admissions," Health Affairs 31(9):2010-2017 (Sept 2012). 

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should get on with the serious business of working together to improve the existing law of the 

land so that more of our people will be better served. 

Some traditional Republican ideas that have more support on the Democratic side - and in the 

health system - than may be well-known include: malpractice refonn; more state flexibility (like 

Arkansas is undertaking through a waiver); and a budget failsafe which would reassure people 

who fear the long tenn budget consequences of the ACA by linking coverage expansion and 

generosity with savings perfonnance and financing alternatives. But these and a host of other 

legitimate design and implementation issues cannot be addressed under constant threat of total 

repeal. There is a long and distinguished tradition of bipartisanship on this and on the Finance 

Committee on which some of you also serve, and in the Senate generally,24 and our country and 

the legitimate pursuit of bipartisan health policy to support cost growth containment would be 

well-served if you could help resurrect that tradition sooner rather than later. 

Challenge #2: Tell the American people the truth. 

It is stunning to me how hard it is in the present day to move facts and logic to their proper 

places in the public mind. The truth is we can solve our current fiscal woes without abandoning 

our commitment to our most vulnerable citizens and to ourselves. Health care cost growth, our 

most serious long-run fiscal problem, is coming down and will stay down if we are smart and 

disciplined about it, and encourage and spread the kinds of programs and models I described 

above. This is not to say every payment model or application of it has to work or the whole 

enterprise of health refonn is doomed to saddle our children with unbearable debt. We can learn 

a lot from failures and mixed successes, indeed, we rarely learn enough any other way. Our 

country is large and diverse, and we will surely need different models in different parts of it, to 

reflect our differing values, if nothing else. Proponents of refonn are asking extremely hard 

working and dedicated health professionals to effectively re-design the airplane they are flying 

without landing the plane, because patients keep coming every second of every day, and we 

cannot change our payment and infonnation systems overnight. But the evidence is clearly 

building that we can achieve the triple aim in many cases and the number of those cases is 

24 Nichols, l. "Government Intervention in Health Care Markets is Practical, Necessary, and Morally Sound," 

Journal of Low, Medicine and Ethics, Fall 2012. 

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expanding every day, if we but free our imaginations and creativities (a bit more on this last 

point later) to pursue what is possible. 

Furthermore, we are the least taxed advanced nation on the planet. Our federal and state 

governments take TEN PERCENTAGE POINTS less of our GOP than the OECD average, and 

we have a larger military than all of them combined. The idea that our economy cannot tolerate 

reasonable tax increases and keep growing robustly is contradicted by so much evidence I do not 

know where to begin. We may yet choose to keep taxes below what they would have to be to 

support a decent social safety net in an aging society that must also invest in children and 

economic infrastructure and peace in a complex world, but that would still be a choice, not a 

necessity, and the debate should be more properly framed and conducted that way. 

Challenge #3: Be honest about what it costs to take care of the poor. 

Why do hospital associations uniformly support taking advantage of the Medicaid expansion 

provision in the ACA? Because they have to contend with our implicit but unstated policy of 

forcing them to partially make up for our collective Medicaid underpayment - and what it takes 

to take care of the uninsured - by charging private payers more than it costs to take care of their 

patients. We do this because we would apparently rather force hospitals to levy this implicit tax 

out of the public eye than to have an honest discussion about what it really costs to take care of 

the poor and what we are and are not willing to pay for that. 

Well, you might have heard this rumor, but private employers are tired of paying this implicit tax 

because their own health care costs too much even before the surcharge. Furthermore, hospitals 

know they have to become more efficient and invest in information systems and care 

coordination infrastructures that will enable them to thrive in the emerging payment 

environment, but they cannot invest to become more efficient when they have to spend so much 

energy and resources on the under- and uninsured. 

Interestingly, state chambers of commerce, like the one in Virginia, have done the math and have 

publicly endorsed the Medicaid expansion along with the local hospital association because the 

evidence is overwhelming that it would be good for the fiscal situation of the state government, 

good for the economy ofthe state, good for the local health care system, and good for the people 

of Virginia. They, and courageous governors like the ones in Arizona, Ohio, Florida, Nevada 

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and New Mexico have laid down their ideological opposition to the ACA and taken up the quest 

to have a more honest discussion about costs and benefits and priorities. Surely this discussion 

would be more widespread and impactful if the Senate Budget Committee started exploring the 

implications of Medicaid expansion vs. not in an intellectually rigorous environment, focused 

perhaps on economic and budget impacts. This would enable more public officials to deal more 

openly with the twin truths that Medicaid "costs too much" and that we pay less than it costs to 

treat the poor (under current sub-optimal care coordination conditions) in virtually every state in 

the nation. 

Challenge #4: Enable clinicians to lead the transformation we need. 

A major difference in the health care system today compared to 20 years ago, and possibly a 

reason the ACA passed and the Clinton Health Security Act did not, is that way more physicians, 

nurse leaders, hospital and health plan executives now know and admit we have to refonn our 

health care system because our society and our people increasingly cannot afford the system we 

have built. Many are quite eager to help re-shape it, but they are frustrated by many roadblocks 

which make the status quo seem like the only operational model, flawed though it is. In my 

view, all have essential parts to play, but physicians need to be in the front of the refonn bus, not 

in the back. 

For them to take the driver's seat, you must first remove the two major diversions that keep them 

from focusing completely on the task at hand: malpractice refonn and repeal of the SGR. I don't 

really care how, just do it. You would in those two strokes engender tremendous good will in the 

essential physician community. And I'm sure you know, SGR refonn is at an all-time bargain 

basement price right now, because of recent cost growth trends. Malpractice refonn is more 

complicated, but not beyond your capacities, I am quite confident. 

Next, for physicians to lead in system and incentive redesign, they have to have access to total 

cost of care data. I have cited examples of health plans willing to share total cost of care and 

quality data, and in some cases, to build infonnation and care coordination infrastructures to 

support better physician and patient choices. Unfortunately, not all health plans are similarly 

enlightened about sharing data, and in some cases the only way to ensure that clinicians and even 

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employer-payers have access to total cost of care data is through legally compelled all payer 

claims data bases (APCDs). Twelve states have those now. I would encourage you to give the 

other 38 states powerful incentives to follow suit within a very short time frame. Markets cannot 

work without transparent cost, price and quality data and signals. They never have, and they 

never will. We should give health markets the tools they need, over the objections of those who 

profit from our ignorance today. 

By the way, at the moment only three of those APCDs include Medicare data, yet Medicare is 

almost always the single more important buyer of health care services for many providers. This 

raises a general point about enabling Medicare to become more of a partner in private system 

reform. Some current law and internal interpretations of current law restrict CMS' ability to 

partner in ways that current and recent leadership (going back at least to the first President Bush) 

would like. Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers, and therefore the program, will surely gain if 

the entire health care system becomes more efficient through appropriate data sharing. CMS has 

recently taken welcome steps in this regard (the release ofMEDPAR hospital and physician 

pricing data is a salient a case in point), but many will acknowledge it could do much more. So I 

urge you to examine ways Medicare in particular and CMS in general could aid the cause of 

system redesign but is hampered today by statute, regulation, internal interpretation, or overly 

parsimonious administrative support budgets. 

In my view, CMMI overall has done a good job of launching many experiments we needed to 

test for delivery and payment reform. But given the urgency of the problem, amplified by the 

centrality of health care cost growth to our current budget debates, something more on the order 

ofthe Manhattan project may be in order. Like the project that developed an American atomic 

bomb before the Germans got one near the end of WWlI, we really cannot afford to fail here. 

The Health Care Innovation Challenge grant program (applications for round 2 of which are due 

August 15) is a creative way to tap the spirit of innovation in the private sector, but a more 

systematic sampling of private sector opinions, priorities and perceived impediments, including a 

frank discussion of why CMS is sometimes perceived as less than an ideal research partner 

today, could take the delivery and payment reform effort to a whole new level, where it needs to 

be, at least until more people are more confident that we have truly bent the cost curve for at 

least a generation. This probably needs to happen at the Secretarial level, or at least at the level 

14 
649 

ofthe CMS Administrator, for the proper focus to be brought to bear. The absolute key to 

bending the curve, in my opinion, is implementing realigned incentives that link clinician selfinterest to the social interest in the triple aim, with a special emphasis on cost containment, since 

if we cannot afford access and quality, we cannot sustain them. Clinicians must be involved in 

those incentive design discussions, and to do that all must share all relevant data. 

Challenge #5: Acknowledge that some local market power must be countered. 

I and others have written on this topic for years/s but the reality is that some plan, hospital, and 

physician service markets are not very competitive today, and when that is the case, it is 

impossible for market forces alone to drive us to the efficient state we need to reach. Antitrust 

law and policy can be helpful in some cases, but typically, at least in its current forms, antitrust is 

a rather blunt instrument not well suited for the fluid subtleties of evolving health service market 

competition and collaboration. As an economist, I am reluctant to "give up" and recommend 

unit price regulation when we have yet to seriously try price transparency and domestic medical 

tourism (some health plans now pay for travel to a center of excellence that is also typically 

cheaper than the local monopolist), but an openness to rate regulation as a last resort should 

probably be in our cost containment arsenal as well. 

Challenge #6: Engaging consumers and patients 

We have to overcome our fear oftelling consumers and patients that they have a huge and 

essential role to play in their own health and in enabling our system to afford good care for all. 

In my view the administration missed a major opportunity in the original ACO regulation by not 

enabling participating provider organizations to at least offer a positive incentive (a "carrot" like 

reduced Part B premium) to remain with the organization for a year. Signaling such a 

willingness to engage consumers would have made many providers much more comfortable 

about moving to a world in which their payment levels will be determined in part by how 

compliant patients are with their recommended regimens. Honest discussions of personal 

responsibility for health choices and financial responsibility could also help bridge some of our 

partisan divides. We have to be careful about it, of course, but if we do not get consumers 

25 Nichols, L., et al. "Are Market Forces Strong Enough To Delivery Efficient Health Care Systems? Confidence is 

Waning," Health Affairs 23(2):8-21 (March/April 2004). 

15 
650 

appropriately engaged, we are unlikely to be as successful in reducing costs as we need to be. 

Charging more in premiums for smoking and less for participation in wellness programs, as the 

ACA permits, is a good start, but enabling medical homes and ACOs to offer incentives for 

sticking with them and penalties for going "out of network" would also add useful tools and send 

appropriate "we are all in this together" signals at a critical time. 

Challenge # 7:Focus health policy more on communities and less on either the nation as a 

whole or on the individual states. 

Health care markets, like political markets, are ultimately local. In my experience these last few 

years of talking about health reform in virtually every state in the union, red, blue and purple, 

communities are the one geographic area where most people today are capable of putting aside 

their politics and focusing on what needs to be done to make their own health care system work 

where they live and work and play and pray. HHS and some states have done an amazing job 

lately making local data more available and user friendly than ever before, and I applaud them 

for that. I'm proud to say that the National Committee for Vital Health Statistics on which I 

serve has been learning to listen to communities and has produced reports about how 

communities are using data to promote local health improvements consistent with their own 

priorities.26 I can think of no better example of democracy in action than that.27 

Yet I have also learned that despite all the recent efforts, many communities have far more 

questions than answers, and often lack basic capacity to organize and use the data they do have 

in productive local conversations with all relevant stakeholders. Part of the barrier is the absence 

of cost data, and so I will refer back to the APCD discussion above. But I would sincerely urge 

you to ask HHS to think creatively and expansively about how to use existing governmental data 

and resources to empower communities to lead conversations about the health and health system 

improvements they want, rather than the ones well-intentioned reformers might imagine they 

want or should want, given the way the data look to experts. In the end, our political system is 

based on the principle that the people are the experts who matter most, at least about what they 

"National Committee for Vital Health Statistics, The Community as a Learning System: Using Local Data to 

Improve Lacal Health http://www.ncvhs.hhs.gov!111213chip.pdf 

"San Diego has done inspirational and translatable work in this area. 

http://www.sdcountv.ca.gov/hhsa/programs/phs!documents/CHS-EconomicBurdenofChronicDisease2010.pdf 

16 
651 

want that government mayor may not be able to facilitate. We should think more often about 

how government can help people inform and empower themselves. 

I thank you again for the opportunity to share thoughts with you today on our health care cost 

growth realities and prospects, and I would be glad to answer any questions my testimony may 

have engendered. 

17 
652 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Dr. PATEL. 

STATEMENT OF KAVITA K. PATEL, MD, MS, FELLOW AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENGELBERG CENTER FOR HEALTH CARE 

REFORM, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 

Dr. PATEL. Thank you. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to offer my thoughts on the recent progress as well as challenges ahead in containing health care costs. My name is Kavita 

Patel and I am currently a Fellow and Managing Director at The 

Brookings Institution as well as a practicing primary care physician. 

From 1965 to 2007, health care spending increased at an average 

rate of 4.4 percent per year. Over that same period of time, the 

Gross Domestic Product grew an average of about two percent per 

year. This disparity in the rate of increases in health care spending 

and increases in our Gross Domestic Product have created an untenable situation which has eroded our wage growth, diminished 

our ability to invest in our children’s education, and challenged our 

overall global competitiveness. In 1970, specifically, national health expenditures were $74.9 billion, or 7.2 percent of the GDP. In 1990, total spending increased 

tenfold to $724 billion, or 12.5 percent of our GDP. It is worth noting that in the mid- to late-1990s, there was a brief period of respite in cost growth when managed care exerted significant cost controls, primarily in the form of budget constraints. I bring that point 

up because those efforts were short-lived, as all of us will recall, 

primarily, as I posit, because we did not change the delivery system, a very important lesson that we should learn from as we 

think about how to move forward. 

In 2013, our health care costs, as both of you have said, consume 18 percent of our GDP at a $2.9 trillion price tag. But there are 

promising signs. Amidst rapidly escalating prices, the annual rate 

of cost growth has slowed in recent years. Since 2009, costs have 

escalated by just 3.9 percent each year and have been trending 

downward since prior to that, in 2002. Explanations are greatly debated. Unfortunately, this debate has broken down into absolutist 

arguments which take on a partisan orientation. However, in all 

likelihood, the decline is multi-factorial, as all things tend to be, 

part economy, part policy interventions, and then part private sector innovations which have taken place prior, during, and immediately after the Affordable Care Act passed. 

Given the relentless march of health care spending and our demographic trends, the fact that we have actually engaged in reforms with impact after four decades of little progress is a very important milestone and something that we should stop and acknowledge, which brings me to my first critical point. The key to the future of health care in the United States is not only how we budget 

for it, but how we change the delivery system itself to become more 

productive and more efficient. 

So I want to just highlight several Affordable Care Act provisions. I have written more of this in my testimony, but I did want 

to point out that there have been things that have been 
653 

potentiated, not just by what we have done in the Affordable Care 

Act, but by the private sector, which has been, as I had mentioned, 

not only matching the progress, but in some cases outpacing it. 

One is hospital readmissions. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, one in five Medicare beneficiaries discharged from a hospital is readmitted within 30 days. This 

amounts to about 2.6 million seniors and more than $26 billion in 

what could be avoided if simple interventions, such as coordinating 

care, were allowed right after a patient was discharged. 

One of the provisions within the Affordable Care Act set up a 

partnership with patients so that programs which reach out upon 

discharge and coordinate care with primary care doctors such as 

myself are strengthened, amplified, and are currently resulting in 

savings back to the Trust Fund in the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars and are on target for expansion to reach billions of 

dollars at the end of this decade. 

The next program that has been directly impacting patients has 

been around what was released from the White House yesterday as 

well as past reports around decreased premiums. Not only New 

York State, but 13 States in total have reported around the country 

that their average of their lowest cost plan’s premium is 20 percent 

lower than the Congressional Budget Office projections. We can all 

talk about whether or not this is sustainable and what the impact 

might be, but this really translates to dollars in patients’ pockets, 

and there is nothing more strong for our economy than actual 

translation of these dollars in a way that patients can spend. 

Point number two, all of these reforms lead me as not only a physician but someone who studies health reform to bring to you the 

fact that patients actually like having their care coordinated. They 

like it when their doctors talk to each other. They like it even more 

when they understand what has happened to them. Our ability to 

invest in infrastructure, such as health information technology and 

these coordination programs like Accountable Care Organizations 

and patient-centered medical homes, is of the utmost importance. 

So, as we look to the future, I wanted to highlight more opportunities. What is in front of the Senate Budget Committee is not only 

the fiscal responsibility for the budget, but the impact that that 

budget will have on the actual delivery of our care. We have a 

great number of opportunities in many sectors, and as we move— 

if you think about how a patient moves through the health care 

system, we start with what we know best, our primary care workforce, our Accountable Care Organizations, which should be and 

can be strengthened in order to help allow for more seniors to benefit from these programs. There is not an ACO in the State of Alabama and there should be, and we need to make sure that the program works so that that can happen. 

The second point is around inpatient care. We still have—as 

much progress as we have made with hospital readmissions, any 

of us who have had a personal member of our family or a loved one 

in the hospital understands that the system still could use improvement. These improvements can come in the form of better coordination between the inpatient sector and the post-acute sector, 

which, unfortunately, gets that label of post-acute but is everything 

from home health care all the way through hospice care, and with-
654 

in each of these places, the communities that our patients live in 

would like to see stronger reforms in these areas. 

And then a final area that I will touch on is around transparency 

and information. Information is power. That is a very basic consumer premise. But in health care, as Kenneth Arrow and other 

economists have pointed out, in health care, our information ability 

is misaligned and we do not have the basic information and transparency to give us the power we need as consumers. I would say 

as a caveat, though, giving and making the data transparent alone 

is not enough. We must make sure that these link back to the very 

reforms that I think have helped us in slowing down the cost 

growth. 

So my final point as you head to August recess, you are going 

to hear stories from people who are confused in moving through 

our chaotic health care system and you will also hear stories of success from the private sector and the public sector, as well as the 

invaluable workforce delivering this care. Our challenge ahead of 

us is to make sure that we can marry this and take this opportunity to put sensible policy forward. 

Thank you, and I welcome your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Patel follows:] 
655 

July 30, 2013 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel M.D, M.S. 

Fellow and Managing Director in Economic Studies 

The Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform 

The Brookings Institution 

Before the Committee on the Budget 

United States Senate 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and members of the Committee, thank you for the 

opportunity to offer my thoughts on the recent progress made in containing health care costs and 

the challenges that still lie ahead. Our nation has struggled with the burden of our health care 

costs and spending, approximately 18% of our GDP and rising, which has eroded wage growth, 

diminished our ability to invest in our children's education, and challenged our global 

competitiveness. There are promising signs that federal programs and policies, as well as 

aggressive private sector activities, have helped to curb cost growth in Medicare and overall 

health expenditures. However, even if we continue to reduce the growth of health care costs and 

improve overall value, demographic trends and constrained state and local budgets will drive 

health and retirement spending toward an even larger share of the economy. By 2030, one in five 

Americans will be over age 65, compared with only one in eight today, and per capita medical 

costs in a given year are approximately three times greater for those 65 and over than for 

younger individuals. We must make difficult decisions in the coming years to encourage 

system-wide cost containment and sustainable health care transformation. Today, I am honored 

to present some solutions from my work at the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at The 

Brookings Institution, as a Commissioner on the National Commission on Physician Payment 

Reform\ and perhaps most importantly, as a practicing internal medicine physician. 

1 Frist W, Schroeder S, et a!. Report of The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform. The National 

Commission on Physician Payment Reform. http·tlPhysjcianpqymentcommj$:;ion.orglwV· 

contenV'uPload~/2013/03Iphysiciqn payment re[Jortpd[. Accessed July 24, 2013. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 1 
656 

Overview of Healtb Care Cost Trends 

Health care costs have dramatically escalated over time, though the rate of that growth has 

slowed in recent years. In 1970, national health expenditures totaled 74.9 billion dollars, or 7.2 

percent of GOP. In 1990, total spending increased ten-fold and amounted to 724.3 billion dollars 

or 12.5 percent of GOP. Based on the most recent figures from the Centers for Medicare & 

Medicaid Services (CMS), as of2011, costs have ballooned to more than 2.7 trillion dollars and 

account for approximately 18 percent ofGOP.2 The Institute of Medicine (10M) estimates that 

almost 30 percent ofthese costs, or 765 billion dollars, are attributable to wasteful spending in 

poor care delivery, excessive administrative costs, unnecessarily high prices, and fraud. 3 

Amidst rapidly escalating prices, the annual rate of cost growth has slowed in recent years. Each 

year between 1980 and 1990, costs rose an average of II percent. From 2000-2007, annual 

costs grew by an average of7.6 percent. But since 2009, costs have escalated by just 3.9 percent 

each year4

,5, and have been trending downward since 2002. The reason for this recent decline is 

likely multi-factorial. Possible explanations include sustained unemployment and lower overall 

spending during the recession; structural improvements to the health care system codified in the 

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 20 I 0; and an increase in out-of-pocket spending 

due to less generous employer-provided insurance plans. 

In looking more closely at spending trends by payer, Figure 1 highlights how quickly 

expenditures in the public and private sectors have risen in recent years: 

• From 1970-2000, the costs of Medicare and Medicaid rose 217.1 billion dollars and 

2 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, Historic 

National Health Expenditure Data. http://www.cms.govlResearch-Statistics-Data-and-Systems!Statistics-Trendsand-ReportslNationalHealthExpendDataIDownloadsitables.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2013. 

'Institute of Medicine, The Healtheare Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes: Workshop Series 

Summary. http://www.iom.edulRepoTts/2011l-/mediaIFilesiwidgetIVSRTlhealthcare-waste.swf. Accessed July 24, 

2013. 

4 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, Historic 

National Health Expenditure Data. http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-SystemsIStatistics-Trendsand-ReportslNationalHealthExpendDatalDownloadsitables.pdf. Accessed July 24,2013. 

5 Hartman M, et al. National Health Spending in 2011: Overall growth remains low, but some payers and services 

show signs of acceleration. Health Affairs, 2013; 32: 87-99. 

Testimony afKavita K. Patel MD, MS 2 
657 

195.2 billion dollars, respectivell' 

From 2000-20 I L costs in Medicare increased 329.5 billion dollars and in Medicaid, 

207.2 billion dollars 

Private sector costs rose 443.8 billion dollars from 1970-2000 and 437.1 billion 

dollars from 2000-2011 7 

Based the data presented in Figure l. the increase in overall combined expenditures in the public 

and private sectors over the past eleven years are greater than the total expenditures during the 

preceding 30 years. Across all payers, Medicare spending has increased most drastically over 

that time. 

Figure 1: Change in overall national health care expenditures in billions of dollars over 

time range indicated 

500 

'" 450 • Medicaid =: 

:S 400 CMedicare 

CQ 

.5 350 II Private Insurance 

'" 1: 300 

E :a 250 

=: 

~ 200 

>< 

~ 150 

.5 

OJ 100 

gf 

~ 50 u 

o 

1970-1980 1980-1990 1990-2000 2000-2011 

Based on the current state of health care legislation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) 

estimates that the cost of the Medicare program will be approximately 6.4 trillion dollars from 

"Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, Historic 

Nationaillealth Expenditure Data. http://www.cl1ls.goviResearch-Statistics-Data-and-Svstems/Statistics-Trendsand=-ll&P2!:t~'NationaIHealthExpendDatalDo~nloads/tables.pdf. Accessed July 24. 2013. 

'Ibid. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 3 
658 

2013-2022.8 

Historical Trends of Health Care Expenditures Across Care Continuum 

Examining the variance of costs across the continuum of care is important for understanding 

where and how health care costs distribute. Table 1 provides longitudinal Medicare data on 

physician and clinical services (largely the outpatient setting), hospital care (inpatient), postacute care spending, spending on prescription drugs and medical products (durable medical 

equipment, and other non-durable medical products). Table 2 provides analogous data for the 

private sector. 

Table 1: Medicare Spending Across the Continuum ofCare'· 

Care Domain 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 

Amount in Billions of Dollars 

Physician and Clinical Sen ices 70.2 81.0 95.0 107.0 131.5 139.9 

Hospital Care 135.0 150.9 176.4 193.8 216.4 231.3 

Post-Acute Care and Other 25.2 31.7 42.2 53.1 64.8 75.6 

Pharmaceutical 2.4 2.5 3.9 46.0 54.6 63.7 

Durable Medical Equipment 4.5 6.0 6.4 7.0 7.5 7.7 

Other Non-Durable Medical 1.6 1.9 2.1 2.5 2.8 3.2 Equipment 

*Figures do not include administrative costs or the net cost ofhea1th insurance 

8 Congressional Budget Office. How Have CBO's Projections of Spending for Medicare and Medicaid Changed 

Since the August 2012 Baseline? February 21, 2013. http://www.cbo.gov/publicationl43947 

9 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, Nationa1 Health Statistics Group, Historic 

National Health Expenditure Data. http://www.cms.govlResearch-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trcndsand-ReportslNationalHealthExpendDataIDownloadsitables.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2013. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 4 
659 

Table 2: Private Sector Spending Across the Continuum of CarelO* 

Care Domain 2001 2003 2005 2007 200') 2011 

Amount in Billions of Dollars 

Physician and Clinical Services 166.3 196.6 222.5 245.3 262.6 275.8 

Hospital Care 154.0 185.6 217.5 249.4 281.1 306.9 

Post-Acute Care and Other 17.0 17.8 18.7 20.1 22.0 23.9 

Pharmaceutical 70.6 86.5 101.8 107.7 118.3 122.2 

Durable Medical Equipment 3.1 3.3 3.7 4.0 3.9 4.6 

Other Non-Durable Medical Products 

*Figures do not include administrative costs or the net cost of health insurance 

There are a couple of notable trends in spending across the continuum of care based on payer. 

First, Medicare's total expenditures are highest for inpatient hospital care, whereas outpatient 

care consumes the largest portion of private sector spending. However, the rate of growth is 

inverted-the growth rate of inpatient expenditures is greater in the private sector when 

compared to Medicare and the outpatient or ambulatory costs have risen at a greater rate in the 

public sector. Second, growth in pharmaceutical spending, while certainly explained by the 

introduction of Medicare Part D, continues to be a growing share in both the private and public 

sector. These trends illustrate both challenges and opportunities for savings-namely, that while 

attention is being paid to costly inpatient admissions, we must also look thoughtfully at 

innovations and utilization in the ambulatory setting in Medicare. Additionally, as inpatient 

costs decrease in Medicare, yet hospital bed growth is increasing in certain geographic areas, it 

will be important to understand the relationship between capacity and spending in both sectors. 

Regardless, mechanisms to coordinate care and extract inefficiencies across the continuum offer 

the greatest promise at curbing overall growth. 

10 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, Historic 

National Health Expenditure Data. http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trendsand-ReportslNationaIHealthExpendDataIDownloadsitables.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2013. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 5 
660 

The Affordable Care Act and Effects on Spending 

The Affordable Care Act includes a number of reforms that have transformed the health care 

system and decreased overall spending. Enhanced access to coverage, consumer protections, 

and payment reforms provide important direct and indirect economic benefits to millions of 

Americans and also extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by at least eight additional years. 

Increased coverage in the form of Medicaid expansions and Health Insurance Marketplaces 

translates to improvements in the labor market with more people working, working productively, 

and less job lock from those who fear losing access to health insurance when switching jobs. As 

a result of restrictions to the amount of money spent on administrative costs or marketing, 

Americans have received rebates totaling 1.1 billion dollars from insurers over the past two 

years. II With respect to payment reform and other changes to the delivery of care, I will 

highlight several provisions that have already demonstrated cost savings or offer great promise 

for continuing to curb cost growth in the Medicare program. In addition to direct consequences 

to the Medicare Trust Fund, programs and policies in the ACA have also had a significant effect 

within the private sector, which has partly contributed to the reduction in overall national health 

expenditures through care transformation. 

Accountable Care Organizations 

The Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model is an example of a delivery system reform 

that fosters greater coordination of care while concurrently aligning financial incentives to 

encourage organizations to deliver more efficient care. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid 

services (CMS) recently reported that organizations participating in the Pioneer ACO program 

achieved lower cost growth (0.3 percent) for their 669,000 beneficiaries than the growth 

observed (0.8 percent) for similar beneficiaries in the fee-for-service model during the same 

period. Of the 32 Pioneers, 13 Pioneers with significant savings generated gross savings of87.6 

million dollars in 2012. Ofthose gross savings, Medicare netted nearly 33 million dollars as the 

Trust Fund share of the ACO savings. Reduced hospital admissions and readmissions were 

II u.s. Department of Health and Human Services. Health care law saved an estimated $2.1 billion for consumers. 

http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/09/20120911a.html, Published September 2012. Accessed July 26, 2013. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 6 
661 

reportedly principal drivers of overall cost savings. 12 

Additionally, private sector accountable care contracts are becoming more commonplace, with 

some demonstrating early results through a shift from volume-based payment to a value-based 

financing mechanism. 13 Private sector ACO efforts are noteworthy for their direct engagement 

with providers to redesign workflows and impact care coordination at a population level. A joint 

partnership between United HealthCare and Tucson Medical Center (TMC) centered on 

accountable care has led to more investments in ways to test care coordination tools. As a result 

of ACO efforts, TMC and its affiliated physician groups created a management services 

organization (MSO) as a business entity to develop and test ACO-specific clinical and 

administrative tools. The MSO then engaged Optum-a subsidiary of United HealthCare--to 

contribute clinical, administrative, and technical support to the enterprise. 14 

Bundled Payments 

In order to achieve meaningful savings in the inpatient setting, the Center for Medicare & 

Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has introduced bundled paymentsl5 as a model for hospital 

payment and delivery reform. A bundled payment is a fixed payment for a comprehensive set of 

hospital and/or post-acute services, including services associated with readmissions. Moving 

from individual payments for different services to a bundled payment for a set of services across 

providers and care settings encourages integration and coordination of care that will raise care 

quality and reduce readmissions. Variants on bundled payments are being demonstrated and 

differ in the scope of services included in the bundle and whether payment is retrospectivebased on shared Medicare savings--or prospective, which intensifies the financial risk and return 

to investing in changes to the efficiency and quality of care. Currently, 467 health care 

12 Patel K and Lieberman S. Taking stock of initial year one results for Pioneer ACOs. Health Affairs Blog. 

http://healthaffairs.orglblog/20 13/07125/taking-stock-of-initial-year-one-results-for-pioneer-acos/. Published July 25, 

2013. Accessed July 26, 2013. 

"Markovich P. A Global Budget Pilot Project Among Provider Partners And Blue Shield of Califomia Led to 

Savings in First Two Years. Health Affairs. September 2012; 31(9): 1969-1976. 

http://content.healthaffairs.org/contentl31/9/1969.abstract. Accessed July 23, 2013. 

14Carluzzo K, Larson B, Van Cillers A, et al. Tucson Medical Center: A Community Hospital Aligning Stakeholders 

for Accountable Care. The Commonwealth Fund. 

http://www.commonwealthfund.orgJ-/mediaiFileslPublications/Case%2OStudy/20 I 2/JanlI 575 Carluzzo Tucson c 

ase%20study 01 12 2012.pdf. Published January 2012. Accessed July 23, 2013. 

15 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative. 

http://innovation.cms.gov/initiativeslbundled-payments/ 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 7 
662 

organizations across 46 states are engaged in the bundled payment initiative. 

Readmissions and Transitions in Care 

According to CMS, one in five Medicare beneficiaries discharged from a hospital is readmitted 

within 30 days. Annually, that amounts to 2.6 million seniors and a cost of more than 26 billion 

dollars. 16 It is likely that multiple factors along the care continuum, from discharge 

inefficiencies to post-acute care issues, affect readmission rates. The Affordable Care Act 

includes two major efforts to improve coordination and reduce the costly inefficiencies of care. 

October 1, 2012 marked the beginning of the Hospital Read~issions Reduction Program 

(HRRP), an effort to reduce the frequency ofre-hospitalization of Medicare patients. The 

program consists primarily of financial penalties levied against hospitals with readmission rates 

that are deemed to be excessive in several clinical areas such as congestive heart failure and 

pneumonia. According to CMS, approximately two thirds of U.S. hospitals will receive 

penalties consisting of up to I percent oftheir reimbursement for Medicare patients. These 

penalties will increase to 3 percent by 2015. CMS expects to recoup 280 million dollars from the 

2217 hospitals penalized in 2013 alone. 

Another effort at curbing the cost of care incurred by inefficient transitions is the CMMI 

Community-based Care Transitions Program (CCTP)17, which addresses the transition from the 

inpatient hospital setting to the post-acute care setting. The CCTP initiative is important because 

it is not a demonstration project or pilot, but instead reflects a change in payment. The 112 

participating organizations are paid an all-inclusive care management fee per eligible discharge 

that is based on the cost of providing care to the patient and implementing the systemic reforms 

at the hospital level. 

While these and many other provisions within the Affordable Care Act offer an important 

foundation for reducing overall spending in healthcare, additional opportunities exist to go 

further toward bending the cost curve. As we identifY in Table 3, it is important to look at the 

continuum of care and apply appropriate reforms that can have an impact within each sector. A 

16 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Community-based Care Transitions Program. 

17 Ibid. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 8 
663 

combination of financing refonns that move us away from fee-for-service, delivery refonns that 

improve coordination in the inpatient and outpatient setting, and structural refonns that can lower 

the purchasing price for the goods and supplies of health care offer significant opportunities for 

savings. 

These opportunities are neither partisan nor do they involve a radical redefinition of the 

Medicare benefit package. Rather, they build on lessons from the introduction of Medicare, the 

advent of capitation and managed care, physician hospital organizations (PHOs), state-based 

refonns, the implementation of the Medicare Part D program, and the aforementioned initiatives 

in the Affordable Care Act. 

Opportunities for Savings 

Within and across the continuum of care, there exist savings opportunities which can promote 

value, reduce cost and engage patients. These refonns will not only protect our nation's longtenn fiscal growth but will also improve the quality of care delivered to our patients. An 

important caveat is that although savings opportunities are presented by sector, it would be a 

mistake to assume that policies affecting each sector do not have a significant interaction effect 

with each other; in other words, policies affecting inpatient readmissions will affect outpatient 

care, post-acute care, etc. In fact, some of the strongest drivers of sector utilization are often the 

result of policies affecting other sectors. 

Ambulatory Care Savings 

The principal opportunity in the outpatient or ambulatory sector is the shift in physician payment 

from a volume-based fee-for-service system to one that would allow for better care coordination 

and shared financial risk outside traditional medical borders. While the cost of repealing the 

Sustainable Growth Rate is not insignificant, it reflects an opportunity for policymakers to place 

an investment in shifting care from the current siloed state to one that will help to enhance the 

important investments in coordination of care, such as patient-centered medical homes and 

accountable care organizations. Our work under the Merkin Initiative on Payment Refonn and 

Clinical Leadership and additional efforts at Brookings have identified opportunities for such 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 9 
664 

savings within physician paymentsI8,19. First, a set of services currently reimbursed for a 

particular episode of care or part of chronic care management are bundled together into a single 

payment to physicians as a case management payment. For example, in clinical oncology, a 

case management payment would include after hours phone care for breast cancer or a palliative 

care counselor for patients with lung cancer. This enables clinicians to focus less on volume and 

more on tighter coordination among providers and settings for patients. In addition, a proportion 

of FFS payments would become a fixed care coordination payment paid to physicians, which is 

built on concepts such as quality improvement and could qualifY physicians to meet 

requirements for the Physician Quality Reporting System and Meaningful Use. These fixed care 

coordination payments allow flexibility for physicians to invest in clinical practice 

transformations that maximize their ability to treat patients in clinically appropriate ways while 

not reducing their income due to the reductions in billable procedures that would otherwise occur 

The Accountable Care Organization model should also be modified to allow for primary care 

physicians and specialists to work together and care for a population of patients with chronic 

diseases in a differentiated manner; after all, one size does not fit all when it comes to care and 

there is certainly no exception to the ACO. The rule of attribution should be modified to allow 

for providers of all types (including mental health and behavioral health specialists) to work 

together to care for patients with chronic disease; members of this committee have also echoed 

this recommendation. 20 Additionally, financial benchmarks must also point towards a 

longitudinal budget, especially if we replace fee-for-service payments in Medicare. Currently, 

ACOs are financially assessed year-to-year despite the longer time trajectory that some savings 

efforts might take (enhanced prevention efforts, etc). Assessment at a longer interval as well as 

the ability to potentially benefit from first dollar savings (as opposed to savings accrued after a 

certain threshold) could strengthen overall impact and add even more savings back to the 

18 Statement of Kavita K. Patel on Physician Payment Reform Before the Senate 

Finance Committee. 14 May 2013. Full transcript available at: 

http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/medialdoc!Kavita%20K%20Patel%2OSenate%20Finance%20Testimony%20FI 

NAL.pdf 

19 Bending the Curve: Person-centered Health Care Reform: A Framework for Improving Care and Slowing Health 

Care Cost Growth. The Brookings Institution. April 20\3. 

http://www,brookings.edul-/medialresearchlfileslreports/2013/04/persono/020centered%20health%20care%20reform 

I~erson centered health care reform. pdf 

2 http://www.wyden.senate.gov/newslbloglpostiwyden-outlines-major-medicare-reforms-at-aco-summit 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 10 
665 

Medicare Trust Fund. Finally, as long as Medicare beneficiaries enjoy the ability to see any 

provider of their choosing, we must seek methods to actively engage patients to understand the 

promise ofPCMHs, ACOs and all of the other acronyms/nomenclature placed upon them. By 

doing so, we can ensure that beneficiary choice is protected while also allowing ACOs and other 

risk-bearing entities to have more certainty with regard to their patient populations. As 

illustrated in Table 3, experts have estimated that additional enhancements to the ACO model 

beyond what I have described could accrue billions of dollars in savings. 

Inpatient Savings 

There is no question that given the proportion of expenditures in the inpatientlhospital setting, 

any opportunity to increase efficiencies and gamer savings should be explored. The 

aforementioned experience with readmissions penalties can be built upon further. Currently the 

penalties apply to acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia, and heart failure. Expansion to a 

wider number of conditions will have a multiplicative impact on budgets as well as patient care. 

Thus far, we have seen significant investments in improved information flows at time of 

admission and discharge as well as increased vigilance to factors which drive readmissionsadherence to medications, poor follow-up after discharge, and lack of coordination between 

providers. In a similar vein, the bundled payment efforts hold great promise, but much like the 

Accountable Care Organization initiatives, will likely need modifications and flexibility in order 

to achieve full potential. Finally, a driver in the growth of hospital-based outpatient care has 

been the differential site of service payment within Medicare. Medicare payments for evaluation 

and management (E&M) were 80 percent higher in outpatient hospital settings than physician 

offices for same services. For example, Medicare pays $450 for an echo cardiogram done in a 

hospital and only $180 for the same procedure in a physician's office. As noted by the National 

Commission on Physician Payment Reform, this trend has only exacerbated cost growth and 

increased income differential between primary care and other specialties.21 ,22 Meaningful 

reforms must eliminate this differential and focus on how best to align financial incentives with 

21 MedPAC. Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy. March 2013. Page 48-49. 

22 Prist W, Schroeder S, et al. Report of The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform. The National 

Commission on Physician Payment Reform. http;Lfphysjcianvqymentcommissjon o[Jl,IWVcontent/upioad.\/2013,103/vhysjcian vayment revoavd[. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 11 
666 

the quality of care provided to patients. The site of care should take into account clinician 

judgment and patient preference and not the associated reimbursement. 

Post-Acute Care 

The term "post-acute care" is often a disservice to this extremely diverse and important sector. 

While the care is often delivered after an episode in the hospital (hence the label), it can take 

place in a variety of ways and in a variety of settings, everything from home health to hospice. 

Given the changing demographics of our population, care delivered in settings such as skilled 

nursing facilities or in the home will be a more common occurrence. As noted earlier, the 

proportion of post-acute care expenditures in Medicare is growing and care transformation in 

these settings will require the same degree of coordination, if not more. The expansion of 

payment bundles in Medicare to include more post-acute organizations as well as longer 

episodes can result in billions of dollars in savings and also ameliorate the vast cost differentials 

in this sector. A recent rOM study points to a great deal of variation in the post-acute setting, 

which supports payment reform in this sector as well.23 Another area that deserves more 

attention is hospice care. Half of Medicare's expenditures in hospice were for beneficiaries 

whose length of stay was over 180 days.24 At the other end, for many beneficiaries, admission 

into hospice is often too late--each situation is untenable, highlighting the need for meaningful 

payment reforms that are at least budget neutral and can allow for appropriate care to 

beneficiaries during an almost universally difficult time for patients and their loved ones. 

Additional Savings in Pharmaceuticals, Supplies and Administrative Simplification 

As highlighted in Table 3 there are additional opportunities to further simplifY our already lean 

Medicare administrative costs and thus hopefully have an effect on the private sector as well. 

Such reforms include standardization of claims forms, processing actions and electronic 

transactions (which becomes easier now that over half of providers are meaningful users of 

23 Institute of Medicine. Variation in Health Care Spending: Target Decision Making, Not Geography. 

http://www.iom.edul-/mediaiFileslReport<.1020Files/2013/Geographic-V ariation2/geovariation rh.pdf 

Accessed July 26, 2013 

24 Neuman K. and Sadownik S. MedPAC Presentation: Medicare Hospice Policy Issues. April 4, 2013. 

http://www.medpac.gov/transcriptslhospice April 2013 presentation.pdf 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 12 
667 

electronic health records). In keeping with the theme of building on current initiatives within 

Medicare, extension of competitive bidding beyond durable medical equipment for other 

supplies offers potential savings along with demonstrating the importance of providing CMS 

with flexible authorities and resources to implement a competitive program that will accrue 

savings to the Trust Fund and beneficiaries. Finally, many expert bodies and analysts have 

discussed the role of pharmaceuticals and savings within-everything from price negotiations to 

low-income subsidies. Two common themes have emerged: savings from the payment for 

physician-administered drugs such as oncolytics or immunologic drugs, and savings from 

reducing brand-name drug usage. While I illustrate the potential savings by decreasing the 

Average Sales Price (ASP) adjustment from ASP+6 to ASP+3, it is critical that the Committee 

pair this with a concomitant reform to physician payments and eliminate the fee-for-service 

payments that usually accompany the administration of such pharmaceuticals in the Part B 

Medicare program. Encouragement of therapeutic substitution also offers promise. Researchers 

recently estimated that up to 1.4 billion dollars would have been saved in 2008 alone if generic 

drug usage in the Medicare popUlation were equivalent to that of the Veterans Affairs System.25 

While I illustrated opportunities for savings in the Medicare program, there are a number of 

similar and related reforms that should be implemented in the Medicaid program and given the 

projected growth in Medicaid enrollment over the next decade, the Committee should also 

consider how best to align such opportunities. Our nation's economic prosperity will be 

intrinsically linked to our ability to benefit from alignment of Medicare and Medicaid while 

learning from the true pioneers in these areas- states such as Oregon, Washington, Colorado and 

New York are leading the way in identifying patient-centered efforts to improve delivery to our 

nation's poor and elderly. 

25 Gellad W.F., Donohue J.M., Zhao X., Mor M.K., Thorpe C.T., Smith J., Good C.B., Fine MJ., Morden N.E. 

Brand-Name Prescription Drug Use Among Veterans AfThirs and Medicare Part D Patients With Diabetes: A 

National Cohort Comparison. Annals oflntemal Medicine. 2013. http://annals.orglarticle.aspx?articleid-1696030 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 13 
668 

TABLE 3: Summary of Savings Opportunities by Sector 

Sector Savings Opportunity Potential Economic Impact 

Ambulatory Payment models that minimize fee-for-service Repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate 

Care care: (SGR) will cost approximately 139.1 

· Episodic payments for chronic conditionslcase billion dollars2

' 

management fees 

· Care coordination fees that replace portions of 

FFS 

Extending the ACO Model Experts have projected possible savings 

· Financial benchmark calculation of up to 192 billion dollars from 2014-

· Enhance ACO ability to manage care for 202328 through replacement of physician 

chronic conditions fee cuts with an inflation-based 

· Allow ACOs to accept increased adjustment and increased financial 

accountability and financial risk risk/accountability . 

· Improved patient engagement to avoid 

"leakage" 

Inpatient Care Extension of hospital readmissions penalties for a While it is not clear exactly how much 

broader number of conditions money would be saved, it is clear that the 

current program has genemted significant 

savings (280 million dollars in 2013 

alone), thus expansion would have a 

strong budgetary impact 

Elimination of site of service differential payments In 2011, Medicare and beneficiaries paid 

in Medicare for same services performed in 1.5 billion dollars more for E&M and 

hospital-based settings vs office-based settings. echocardiograms alone than they would 

have if payments had been equal across 

sites of care29 

Expansion of bundled payments to include more Bundles will likely drive down unit costs 

conditions and invo1ve more care settings of care (cost per bundle), however it is 

unclear if it will have a significant shift 

on the volume of overall care 

Post Acute Care Expansion of payment bundles for post-acute care Potential for an estimated 8.2 billion 

· Expand the number of post-acute care dollars in savings from 2014-202330 with 

organizations participating reforms in the post acute sector 

· Expand the episodes of care that are covered 

and length of episode 

Payment reforms within hospice MEDPAC estimates that such reforms 

· Encourage ACA authorized reform to replace would be budget neutral the first year 

per diem payment with a value-based payment 

to match intensity of services 

26 Congressional Budget Office. The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023. February 2013. 

Page 31. 

27 Lieberman SM.20 13. Reforming Medicare through 'Version 2.0' of Accountable Care. Health Affairs: 32(7): 

1258-1264. 

28 Ibid. 

29 MedPAC. Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy. March 2013. Page 48-49 

30 Office of Management and Budget. The White House. Fiscal Year 2014 Budget of the U.S. Government. April 

2013. Page 38, 197. 

Testimony ofKavita K. Patel MD, MS 14 
669 

Sector Savings Opportunity Potential Economic Impact 

Supplies Refine and expand competitive bidding to other Pilot program in DME competitive 

types of equipment beyond durable medical bidding saved Medicare 202 million 

equipment (DME)31 dollars in year one32 

. July 2013 expansion expected to save 

Medicare Part B Trust Fund 25.7 

billion dollars" and Medicare 

beneficiaries 17.1 billion dollars in 

lower coinsurance and premiums 

payments34 

Administrative Administrative simplification" Institute of Medicine estimates savings of 

· Shift to electronic transactions 181 billion dollars" 

· Implement common terms and approaches for 

insurance billing 

· Standardize claims forms and review 

processes 

Prescription ModifY payment for physician-administered Savings of approximately 20 billion 

Drugs medications37 dollars from 2014-2023" 

· Reduce pavment from ASP+6 to ASP+ 3 

Encourage therapeutic substitution where Savings in 2008 alone would have been 

clinically appropriate 1.4 billion dollars'9 

Looking Ahead 

Just as there are significant opportunities to deal with the challenging cost conundrum in 

healthcare, there are additional areas which could hold great promise. Notwithstanding, it is not 

entirely clear how best to enact these policies at the federal level and what effect they might have 

on the federal budget. One such area is transparency. 

As noted in previous hearings hosted by this Committee, there is a great deal ofinterest in 

'I Bipartisan Policy Center. A Bipartisan Rx for Patient-Centered Care and System-Wide Cost Containment. April 

2013. Pages 60-6\. 

12 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Press Release: Contract suppliers selected under Medicare 

competitive bidding program. April 9, 2013. 

JJ Ibid. 

"Ibid. 

J5 Institute of Medicine, The Healthcare Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes: Workshop Series 

Summary. http://www,iom.edulReportsl2011l-/medialFilesiwidgetlVSRTlhealthcare-waste.swf. Accessed July 24, 

2013. 

"Ibid. 

37 Office of Management and Budget. The White House. Fiscal Year 2014 Budget of the U.S. Government. April 

2013. Page 41. 

"Ibid. 

'9 Gellad W.F., Donohue J.M., Zhao X., Mor M.K., Thotpe C.T., Smith J .• Good C.B., Fine M.J., Morden N.E. 

Brand-Name Prescription Drug Use Among Veterans Affairs and Medicare Part D Patients With Diabetes: A 

National Cohort Comparison. Annals oflnternal Medicine. 2013. http://annals.org/articIe.aspx?articIeid=1696030 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 15 
670 

transparency initiatives and efforts to ensure that beneficiaries have the best ability to be a 

consumer of health care services. A basic psychological premise of consumerism is centered on 

the notion that information is power. The converse of this premise has been poignantly 

illustrated by recent analyses and commentary40,41 that have revealed that most patients and their 

physicians have little to no understanding of the true cost of care or pricing, often resulting in 

poorly informed decision-making. It is clear that as consumers face increased out of pocket 

spending and continue to bear more financial responsibility, there is a need for a systematic 

approach to increase transparency and then deal with the consequences of such transparency. 

Several solutions have been proposed for improving the transparency of pricing: 

• Anti-trust litigation to reduce the market power of certain insurance companies and 

providers to drive up prices and obscure them from consumers42 

• Incentivizing price transparency through legislation and regulatory action43 

• Market solutions such as making transparent and releasing data on quality and prices of 

providers to employers would enable them to demand lower-cost and higher quality 

health plans, hospitals and providers44 

These solutions are important to consider, but it is unclear what impact these reforms might have 

on the overall cost of care. Nevertheless, action is warranted-an initial important step would 

be to continue to expand ongoing efforts around transparency such as the CMS Hospital and 

Physician Compare Initiative. Additionally, as federally supported and facilitated health 

insurance marketplaces are implemented nationwide, we should have a better understanding of 

how transparency affects choice, price, and utilization and what lessons those hold for the 

Medicare and Medicaid programs. If information is power, we must make sure that patients 

have as much of it as possible, but simply making the information publicly available will likely 

not be enough. 

40 Brill S. Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us. Time. March 4, 2013. 

41 Reinhardt, U. The Culprit Behind High U.S. Health Care Prices. Economix Blog, New York Times. 

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.comi20 13106107Ithe-culprit-behind-high-u-s-health-care-pricesl? r9J 

Published June 7, 2013. Accessed July 26, 2013. 

42 Price Transparency in the Health Care Market. UCSF /UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science, and Health 

Policy. March 18,2013. 

http://ucsfconsortium.uchastings.edulresearchlpricetransparency/pricetransparency whitepaper 

4'lbid. 

"Ibid. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 16 
671 

In conclusion, as Congress recesses for the month of August, you will each hear directly from the 

most important witnesses to the ongoing cost challenges-patients. You will likely hear stories 

that highlight concerns over growing out of pocket costs, information asymmetry, and the sheer 

complexity of American healthcare. You will also hear stories of dedicated doctors, nurses, and 

health professionals who work to make sure that every patient receives the best care possible. 

You have the unique ability to translate these stories into policies that can build upon what is 

working and modify or eliminate anything that is not adding value to our care. By doing so, we 

will continue to slow cost growth and encourage greater economic security for our nation. 

Thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to your questions. 

Testimony of Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 17 
672 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. ANTOS. 

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH ANTOS, PH.D., WILSON H. TAYLOR 

SCHOLAR IN HEALTH CARE AND RETIREMENT POLICY, 

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 

Mr. ANTOS. Thank you, Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and other members of the committee, for this opportunity. I 

am the Wilson Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, but previously, I was an 

Assistant Director of the Congressional Budget Office and I am 

currently on the CBO’s Panel of Health Advisors. 

For the past 50 years, spending for health care has grown faster 

than the economy. In 1965, health was six percent of GDP. Today, 

it is 18 percent and it is still rising. This year, Federal spending 

for Medicare and Medicaid will be $860 billion. Over the next decade, Federal spending for those two programs plus the new subsidies offered on the insurance exchanges will exceed $13.3 trillion. 

Any sign that the growth in health spending is slowing would 

seem to be good news, but that depends on why the slowdown occurred. I will make three points. 

First, the recent slowdown in health spending is not likely to 

last. Most of the decline is due to deteriorating economic conditions, not structural changes in the health system. Private health 

plans have, indeed, made their own reforms in the way they pay 

providers and the way they deliver health care, but the poor economy dominates the past decade. 

Second, the Affordable Care Act, the ACA, did not materially 

help slow health spending over the past decade and its expansion 

of health insurance coverage will drive up spending in the future. 

Third, a responsible budget plan that begins to resolve the structural defects in Federal health programs is needed. If we do not 

take action, health spending will crowd out other policy priorities 

funded through the Federal budget. 

So, the health spending slowdown has, indeed, been remarkable. 

In 2002, national health spending was growing at 9.7 percent a 

year. By 2009, the rate had dropped to 3.9 percent and stayed at 

that level for three years. Does this mark a permanent structural 

change that will ease the burden of rising health care costs into the 

future? Probably not, unfortunately. When we finally return to a 

full-employment economy, health spending will bounce back. 

Now, poor economic performance at the beginning of the decade 

contributed to the initial slowdown. This is something that a lot of 

analysts tend to overlook. The deep recession that ended in 2009 

drove spending growth even lower. The slow economic recovery 

since then has prolonged this dampening of health spending. So, 

we have a decade of economic trouble and it shows up in health 

spending. Obviously, when people lose their jobs, they lose their 

health insurance and their ability to pay for health services out of 

their own pockets also declines. This is not how any of us want to 

get health spending under control. 

The ACA did not contribute to the slowdown in the past. The 

President’s health reform was enacted after most of the slowdown 

had occurred. Moreover, the ACA focused on expanding health in-
673 

surance coverage, not reducing health spending. Giving 25 million 

people heavily subsidized insurance may indeed be a good thing, 

but it will unquestionably increase health spending. 

The ACA includes provisions to reduce spending. I will highlight 

two. The largest savings were from substantial cuts in Medicare 

payment rates to providers. However, within a few years, hospitals 

and nursing homes will be paid less than Medicaid rates, which 

threatens seniors’ access to services. That cannot be sustained and 

Congress will eventually override these formula-driven reductions. 

Accountable Care Organizations attempt to replicate the success 

of integrated health systems like Geisinger Clinic in Pennsylvania 

and Intermountain Health Care in Utah. Decades of work and investment made those plans what they are today. Such capacity 

cannot be built overnight, and the departure of nine of the original 

32 pioneer ACOs from the program is evidence of that. 

On balance, the ACA will add about $500 billion to national 

health spending over the next decade. The impact on Federal 

health spending is even higher than that. This further strains our 

ability to finance existing health programs and have the resources 

available for other critical domestic and international policy priorities. 

Clearly, we need to rebalance our spending priorities. I would 

recommend that we start with Medicare. Obviously, we need to 

permanently resolve the SGR problem, but we also need to find 

$139 billion to cover the cost. We cannot stop there. Traditional 

Medicare should be modernized and simplified. Replace the complicated benefit structure with a single deductible and uniform copayment. Add catastrophic coverage, something that modern insurance offers to everyone. Medicare does not. Add catastrophic coverage to the benefit. 

Limit first dollar Medigap coverage that promotes excessive use 

of services that often are of little value to the patient. Develop new 

payment methods that reward better care, not more care. Many 

other changes are necessary, including proposals mentioned by Dr. 

Patel, in order to make traditional Medicare a more functional and 

less costly program. 

However, the key to putting Federal health spending on a sustainable path is market-based Medicare reform. We must change 

the financial incentives of fee-for-service payment if we are to bend 

Medicare’s cost curve. By promoting effective competition and informed consumer engagement, we can fulfill our obligation to ensure that Medicare will be there for future retirees without imposing a prohibitive tax burden on future workers. 

Thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Antos follows:] 
674 

A~ 

:J:l American Enterprise Institute 

for Public Policy Research 

Statement before the Senate Committee on the Budget 

Containing Health Care Costs: Recent Progress and Remaining 

Challenges 

Joseph R. Antos, Ph.D. 

Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy 

American Enterprise Institute 

July 30,2013 

The views expressed in this testimony are those of the author alone and do not necessarily 

represent those of the American Enterprise Institute. 
675 

Chairman Murray, Senator Sessions, and other members of the committee, thank you for 

the opportunity to testify today before the Senate Committee on the Budget. 

The recent slowdown in the growth of health spending has raised hopes that the health 

system may have shifted to a "new normal," with costs that are more affordable and sustainable 

for the future. Although private health plans and providers have adopted promising reforms over 

the past decade, the evidence strongly indicates that health spending growth will rebound as we 

return to a full-employment economy. Growth rates for health spending might not return to the 

high levels that we have seen in past decades, but they will rise substantially. 

Rising health care costs will have serious consequences for the federal budget. The 

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that entitlement spending will crowd out other 

budget priorities over the next decade and beyond, with growth in health programs outstripping 

other major categories of federal spending. l Health spending-Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and 

exchange subsidies-is projected to grow by 33 percent between 2012 and 2022 under current 

law. 2 Other programs (excluding Social Security) will see their budgets decline by 37 percent. 

Only interest on the federal debt will grow faster than health spending, increasing by about 80 

percent over the decade. 

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will substantially increase national health spending 

through new subsidies for Medicaid and insurance purchased on the exchanges. The law 

includes provisions to reduce Medicare payment rates to providers and Medicare Advantage 

plans, expand bundled payments in traditional Medicare, and introduce accountable care 

organizations (ACOs). It is too early to know how effective those measures will be in slowing 

program spending, but the ACO initiative has already suffered a setback with the departure of9 

Pioneer ACOs from the program. 

It is imperative that Congress develop a responsible budget plan that can begin to resolve 

the structural defects in federal health programs and subsidies for health insurance. The key to 

putting federal health spending on a sustainable path is market-based Medicare reform. By 

promoting effective competition and informed consumer engagement, we can fulfill our 

obligation to ensure that Medicare will be there for future retirees without imposing a prohibitive 

tax burden on future workers. 

Will the Health Spending Slowdown Last? 

With little fanfare until recently, the growth in national health spending has declined 

sharply over the past decade. Data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) 

shows that growth in national health expenditures peaked in 2002, growing 9.7 percent in a year 

1 CBO, The 2012 Long-Term Budget Outlook, June 2012, http://www.cbo.gov/publicationl43288. 

2 Author's calculation of the increase or decrease in the share of each year's GDP accounted for by each major 

program, based on Table 1-2 ofCBO's 2012 long-term budget outlook report, Extended Baseline Scenario. 
676 

Figure 1. Annual Growth Rates for National Health Spending and GDP 

12.0% 

10.0% 

NHE 8.0% 

6.5% 6.2% 

6.0% 

6.4% 6.5% 

3.9% 

4.0% 

4.0% 

3.5% 

2.0% 

0.0% 

2002 2003 2004 2005 2011 

-2.0% 

-4.0% 

Source: CMS National Expenditure Accounts, Table l, httrrJ!.I:".l"l:'~"'l1.~.gQ,yJSg,,,,-arch:St'!,t.i~ti£s.:.oJ!ta·a[l<!.: 

~ms!Statig.[,s-Trends-and-Repor~fl'!1!1l2!!illH~'llt.!J~xRe.n~_Q1!11l!ng.l:'!ll\cad§L\Jlhle.e..p,<lf. 

that saw the economy grow by only 3.5 percent (Figure 1).3 Health spending growth dropped to 

8.4 percent in 2003 and continued to decline until 2009 when the rate fell to 3.9 percent-and 

has remained at that rate for three consecutive years. 

The biggest single factor driving the recent slowdown is the economy. The severe 

recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009 had an immediate impact on 

health spending as workers lost their jobs and their health coverage. According to the eMS 

analysis, the decline in health insurance enrollment in 2009 was the largest one-year drop 

recorded in the National Health Accounts. The failure of the economy to bounce back as quickly 

as it has after past recessions has prolonged this dampening effect on health spending. 

How much of the slowdown in health spending can be attributed to a weakened economy 

is uncertain. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Altarum Institute concludes that 

77 percent of the recent decline in health spending growth can be explained by changes in the 

J Micah Hartman, Anne B. Martin, Joseph Benson, Aaron Catlin, and the National Health Expenditure Accounts 

Team, "National Health Spending In 20 II: Overall Growth Remains Low, But Some Payers And Services Show 

Signs Of Acceleration," Health Affairs. January 2013 32:87-99, !:mp;ii£Q!l1ffiLilealt~;!ffairs.orgicontent!32i1!87.full. 

2 
677 

broader economy, taking into account both changes in GDP growth and general price inflation. 4 

Cutler and Sahni find that the 2007-09 recession accounted for 37 percent of the slowdown 

between 2003 and 2012.5 

Holahan and McMorrow point out that narrowly focusing on the recession ignores the 

impact of the economy on the declining growth rates for health spending that occurred before 

2007.6 The early 2000s were a period of relatively slow economic growth compared to the 

1990s (illustrated in Figure 1), and declines in family incomes and insurance coverage probably 

contributed to slowing health expenditures that occurred in the years after 2002. This evidence 

supports the Kaiser-Altarum finding that economic declines rather than structural changes in the 

health sector are primarily responsible for the slowdown in health spending over the past decade. 

Slowing the growth of health spending because the economy is failing is obviously not 

desirable. Other factors also contributed to the decline, but they are clearly less significant and 

are not necessarily structural changes in the health system. 

Fuchs observes that "some of the reasons for the slow growth in the past 2 years ... are 

one-time gains, not alterations in such determinants oflong-term growth as new medical 

technology and the aging of the population."? For example, over the past two years, major drug 

companies have lost exclusive rights to many billion-dollar selling drugs. 8 The availability of 

lower-cost generic formulations reduces health spending, but does not change the fundamental 

drivers of health spending. 

Changes in the health sector may have more persistent impacts on spending. Ryu and 

colleagues found that health plans offered by large firms became less generous over the last five 

years, resulting in increasing out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries. 9 Not surprisingly, when 

employees are responsible for more of the cost of cost of health services, spending declines. 

Consumer-directed health insurance plans, which combine a high deductible with a health 

savings account and offer lower premiums than more traditional coverage, have gained a 

4 Kaiser Family Foundation, "Assessing the Effects of the Economy on the Recent Slowdown in Health Spending," 

April 22, 2013, http://kff.orglhealth-costs/issue-briefi'assessing-the-effects-of-the-economy-on-the-recent-slowdownin-health-spending-2/. 

, David M. Cutler and Nikhil R. Sahni, "If Slow Rate Of Health Care Spending Growth Persists, Projections May Be 

Off By $770 Billion," Health Affairs, May 2013 32:841-850, http://content.healthaffairs,orglcontentl3215/84I.full. 

6 John Holahan and Stacey McMorrow, "What Drove the Recent Slowdown in Health Spending Growth and Can It 

Continue?" Urban Institute, May 6, 2013, http://www.urban.orglurl.cfin?renderforprint~I&I~12814 

1 Victor R. Fuchs, "The Gross Domestic Product and Health Care Spending," New England Journal afMedicine. 

369:107-109, July 11,2013, http://www.nejm,orgidoilfulVI0.1056/NEJMpI305298. 

'Rick Mullin, "Beyond The Patent Cliff," Chemical & Engineering News, December 10,2012, 

http://cen.acs,orgiarticlesl90/i50IBeyond-Patent-Ciiff.html; Katie Moisse, "10 Top-Selling Drugs Coming Off 

Patent," ABC News, July 25, 2011, http://abcnews.go,comlHealthiDrugsiprescription-drug-pricesplummetistory?id~141520 14. 

9 Alexander J. Ryu, Teresa B. Gibson, M. Richard McKellar, and Michael E. Chernew, "The Slowdown In Health 

Care Spending In 2009--11 Reflected Factors Other Than The Weak Economy And Thus May Persist," Health 

Affairs. May 2013 32:835-840, http://content.healthaffairs.orglcontentl3215/835.full. 

3 
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growing share of the market in recent years. If this trend continues, that will help reduce the 

growth of health spending. 10 

Additional health system developments could also contribute to lower health spending 

growth into the future. The health care work force is changing, with more women becoming 

physicians and younger physicians seeking more stable work hours as employees of hospitals. 

The adoption of health information technology promises to reduce waste and improve care 

coordination, although that will only happen if payment and delivery systems change to take 

advantage of that potential. Care is beginning to move away from the doctor's office and into 

pharmacies, supermarkets, and shopping malls. Stronger competition among health plans, 

including those operating on the health insurance exchanges, will exert downward pressure on 

premiums. 

These changes are promising, but there is no evidence that our health spending crisis has 

been resolved. Moreover, what has slowed in the past decade is the growth in health care 

spending, not the level of spending. Adjusting for inflation, health spending has increased an 

average of$I,385 per person between 2002 and 2011. 11 National health spending has continued 

its upward climb, although at a slower rate than in the past. 

How Much Did the ACA Contribute to the Slowdown? 

The primary goal of the ACA was to increase health insurance coverage, not reduce 

health spending. Since the law was enacted years after the major decline in health spending 

growth, ACA provisions that could help to slow growth in the future had little impact on the 

reductions thus far. According to the CBO, the largest source of savings from reduced health 

spending is reductions in Medicare provider payment rates. Other proposals, including bundled 

payment and ACOs, intend to change the structure of the program in a more permanent way. 

Reductions in Medicare payment rates for hospitals and other providers generate 

impressive budget savings as scored by the CBO. Cuts in payment rates alone do not change the 

financial incentives that promote greater use of services and cannot be considered a structural 

reform. If implemented, this policy generates a series of one-time savings that increase every 

year. 

Congress is unlikely to allow the full amount of payment reductions for hospitals and 

other Part A providers required by the ACA to be implemented as scheduled. Medicare's Office 

of the Actuary reported that by 2019 those payment reductions would result in operating losses 

for 15 percent of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies. By 2030, 25 

percent of Part A providers would sustain losses, and by 2050 that number rises to 40 percent. 12 

10 Amelia M. Haviland, M. Susan Marquis, Roland D. McDevitt, and Neeraj Sood, "Growth Of Consumer-Directed 

Health Plans To One-Half Of All Employer-Sponsored Insurance Could Save $57 Billion Annually," Health Affairs, 

May 2012 31: 1009-10 152, http://content.healthaffairs.orglcontentl311511009.fuIL 

lJ Author's calculation using data from the National Health Accounts and the chained CPI to estimate the change in 

iTending deflated to 2002 dollars. 

1 John D. Shatto and M. Kem Clemens, "Projected Medicare Expenditures under IIlustrative Scenarios with 

Alternative Payment Updates to Medicare Providers," CMS Office of the Actuary, May 31, 2013, 

4 
679 

The severity of these cuts was emphasized by Medicare's chief actuary in the 2013 

Trustees report. 13 He stated: 

Medicare prices would be considerably below the current relative level of Medicaid 

prices, which have already led to access problems for Medicaid enrollees, and far below 

the levels paid by private health insurance. Well before that point, Congress would have 

to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the 

severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result. Overriding the 

productivity adjustments, as Congress has done repeatedly in the case of physician 

payment rates, would lead to substantially higher costs for Medicare in the long range 

than those projected under current law. 

Other Medicare provisions can properly be considered structural reforms that could yield 

continuing savings, but they are partial measures at best. Bundled payments would expand the 

boundaries ofinpatient payment to include hospital and associated physician and pre- and postacute services. Bundling provides incentives for providers to economize in treating patients 

requiring inpatient stays, perhaps by eliminating unnecessary tests or doing a better job 

coordinating the delivery of services. 

Bundling changes the unit of payment but it does not change fee-for-service incentives to 

expand volume. Any efficiencies that are gained are micro efficiencies, focused on the specific 

episode of care rather than on the entire spectrum of the patient's health care needs. The 

alternative is capitation, which pays a health plan a fixed amount for all the services provided to 

the patient. Under bundling Medicare would continue to pay on a piece rate basis, but with 

larger pieces. 

ACOs attempt to create integrated networks of hospitals, physicians, and other providers 

in the context of traditional fee-for-service Medicare. ACO providers would continue to be paid 

fee-for-service, but would keep halfofany savings compared with what the patient's care would 

have cost otherwise. High-performing ACOs would also be eligible for a bonus from CMS. 

Medicare beneficiaries would not formally enroll in an ACO, but their costs would be attributed 

to their primary physician if that doctor participates in an ACO. In that sense, an ACO is a 

virtual HMO that is intended to be invisible to the patient. 

Supporters of the ACO concept point to earlier integrated systems, such as Geisinger 

Health Care in Pennsylvania and Intermountain Health Care in Utah, as evidence that ACOs can 

provide effective lower-cost care. 14 That ignores the decades of development and innovation 

that made those health plans what they are today. Such capacity cannot be built overnight. 

http://www.cms.govlResearch-Statistics-Data-and-SystemsiStatistics-Trends-andReportsiReportsTrustFunds!Downloads/2013TRAltemativeScenario.pdf. 

lJ Paul Spitalnic, "Statement of Actuarial Opinion," Appendix J in The Boards of Trustees, The 2013 Annual Report 

of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital1nsurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust 

Funds, June II, 2013, http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-andReportslReportsTrustFundsIDownloadsITRZOI3.pdf. 

14 James Capretta, "The Predictable Failure of Medicare ACOs and a New Model That Would Actually Work," 

American Enterprise Institute, forthcoming. 

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To jumpstart the program, CMS created Pioneer ACOs for health care organizations and 

providers that were already operating as integrated systems. 15 The program began operation in 

2012 with 32 well-regarded organizations-including Partners Healthcare in Boston, Dartmouth 

Hitchcock in New Hampshire, and others-selected from a large applicant pool. 16 

On February 25, 2013, 30 of the Pioneer ACOs sent a letter to CMS complaining that 19 

ofthe 31 quality standards required by the Administration had insufficient data to support their 

use, raising questions about the plans further participation in the program.17 In an unusual move, 

the plans threatened to leave the ~rogram ifthis problem was not resolved. CMS agreed to a 

compromise, averting the crisis. I 

More bad news followed. On July 16,2013, CMS announced results of the first year of 

Pioneer ACO operation. 19 Only 13 ofthe Pioneers saved enough money to share those savings 

with Medicare, despite their experience as integrated health systems and additional investment in 

programs and staff to make the program work. Two Pioneer ACOs lost money, and owe the 

Medicare program $4 million. To avoid possible future losses, 9 of the 32 Pioneer ACOs will 

leave the program. 

The core problem was identified by Chas Roades, chief research officer at the Advisory 

Board Company, in a Kaiser Health News article. 2o He commented that "we should temper our 

expectations about how much money we're actually going to save through ACOs." From the 

viewpoint of the hospital, ACOs are an attempt to preserve the Medicare fee-for-service system 

and the ACO model only applies to a portion of their Medicare patients. Roades added that it is 

"really hard to run two disparate sets of books at the same time" with two different sets of 

financial incentives. 

Other elements ofthe ACA might slow health spending. Beginning in 2018, high-cost 

insurance plans offered by employers would pay a 40 percent tax on the value of the plan that 

exceeds a threshold amount-initially $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for family coverage. 

Although this policy is inferior to capping the tax exclusion on employer-sponsored coverage, it 

is likely to be effective in discouraging employers from offering "Cadillac" plans with very 

generous benefits. The shift to leaner plans with higher cost-sharing requirements would reduce 

15 CMS, "Pioneer ACO Model," undated (accessed July 28, 2013), http://innovation.cms.gov/initiativeslPioneerACO-Model/. 

"CMS, "Pioneer Accountable Care Organization Model: General Fact Sheet," September 12, 2012, 

http://innovation.cms.govlFiles/fact-sheetlPioneer-ACO-GeneraI-Fact-Sheet.pdf. 

17 Pioneer ACO plans, Letter to Rick Gilfillan on quality standards for Pioneer ACOs, February 25, 2013, 

http://www.washingtonpost.comlblogslwonkbloglfilesl2013/03/2013-Quality-Benchmarks.pdf; Jenny Gold, "A 

Bump In The Road To Accountable Care?" Kaiser Health News, March 8, 2013, 

http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org/1p~17632. 

18 Nathaniel Weixel, "No Delay in Quality Accountability for Pioneer ACOs, but Metrics Will Change," BNA 's 

Health Care Policy Report, April 29, 2013. 

19 CMS, "Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations succeed in improving care, lowering costs," July 16,2013, 

http://www.cms.govlNewsroom!MediaReleaseDatabaselPress-Releasesl20 13-Press-Releases-Items/20 13-07-

16.html. 

20 Jenny Gold, "9 Pioneer ACOs Jump Ship After First Year," Kaiser Health News, July 16, 2013, 

http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.orgl?p~20879. 

6 
681 

health care utilization, but the four-year delay in implementation suggests that the provision may 

never be implemented. 

These and other provisions intended to reduce federal health spending are secondary to 

expanding access to health insurance, the main objective of the ACA. Expanding Medicaid 

coverage and creating an insurance subsidy for those with incomes up to 400 percent of the 

federal poverty level could reduce the number of uninsured by 14 million next year, and by 2016 

that number could rise to 25 million. 21 About 10 percent of the under-65 population could 

become newly-insured as a result ofthe ACA-substantially adding to the demand for health 

services and driving up cost. 

Some analysts ar~ue that enhanced competition among health plans in the exchanges will 

reduce health spending.2 Enrollees are required to pay the full difference between the 

benchmark plan (which sets the individual's subsidy amount) and higher cost plans. That should 

lead to competition among the plans focused on price-the one element of health insurance that 

everyone can understand. 

That is certainly the incentive of fixed-subsidy systems, including the premium support 

model advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan. The problem with the ACA model is that it sets the bar too 

high for health plans, requiring that they provide far richer benefits than consumers would 

purchase on their own. Low-income consumers would probably buy lower cost plans than 

available on the exchange if they were given the federal subsidy to spend as they please, keeping 

any extra payment to cover other essential expenses. Competition on the exchanges would lower 

insurance costs, but only after ACA requirements raised the cost level by 25 percent or moreand perhaps as much as two to three times more expensive than plans available on the market 

today.23 

The Medicare chief actuary estimated that the ACA would increase national health 

spending by $311 billion between 2010 and 2019. 24 The estimate takes into account both the 

expansion of health coverage and the cost-reducing components of the ACA. 

The longer-term impact on health spending depends on state decisions to expand 

Medicaid and Congress's willingness to enforce cost-reducing provisions in the ACA. 

Accounting for those fuctors, we estimate that national health spending will increase by about 

$500 billion between 2014 and 2023 as a consequence of the law. Additional Federal health 

2l CBO, "Effects on Health Insurance and the Federal Budget for the Insurance Coverage Provisions in the 

Affordable Care Act-May 2013 Baseline," May 14,2013, http://www.cbo.gov/publicationl44190. 

22 Stephen Zuckerman and John Holahan, "Despite Criticism, The Affordable Care Act Does Much to Contain 

Health Care Costs," Urban Institute, October 2012, http://www.urban.org!UploadedPDF/412665-Despite-CriticismThe-Affordable-Care-Act-Does-Much-to-Contain-Health-Care-Cost.pdf. 

23 Louise Radnofsky, "Health-Insurance Costs Set for a Jolt," Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2013, 

http://online.wsj.comiarticIe/SB 1000 1424127887324251504578577760224985382.html; Joseph Antos, "Would 

You Buy Insurance From This Man?" Daily Colier, July 18,2013, http://dailycaller.comi2013/07/18/would-youbuy-insurance-from-this-manl. 

24 Richard S. Foster, "The Estimated Effect ofthe Affordable Care Act on Medicare and Medicaid Outlays and Total 

National Health Care Expenditures," Testimony before the House Committee on the Budget, January 26, 2011, 

http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/fostertestimony 12620 Il.pdf. 

7 
682 

spending will exceed that amount, which nets out lower spending for health care by individual 

consumers and employers. This higher level offederal spending caused by the ACA further 

strains government's ability to finance existing health programs and still have the resources to 

advance other domestic and international policy priorities. 

A Sustainable Budget 

The rising cost of entitlement programs will put increasing pressure on the budget unless 

action is taken. According to CBO long-term projections, federal spending for Medicare, 

Medicaid, CHIP, and exchange subsidies will increase 33 percent between 2012 and 2022 under 

current law.25 Social Security is projected to grow about 8 percent over that period. Other 

federal programs will shrink by about 38 percent. 

We clearly need to rebalance our spending priorities. Medicare is the place to start. 

Medicare spending will nearly double over the next decade, increasing from $586 billion 

this year to more than $1 trillion in 2023?6 The oldest members ofthe baby boom generation 

have reached age 65 and are enrolled in Medicare. Over the next two decades, some 76 million 

people will move out of the workforce, into retirement, and into Medicare. That will place an 

increasing burden on the budget and on younger generations whose taxes support the program. 

The uncapped entitlement and distorted fee-for- service structure of traditional Medicare 

are major causes of the rapid rise in program spending. Poorly targeted fee-for-service payments 

promote the use of more-and more expensive-services, delivered in a fragmented and 

uncoordinated environment. The result has been higher spending and poorer patient outcomes. 

Converting Medicare to a defined contribution model, with beneficiaries given a choice 

of competing health plans including traditional Medicare, would change the incentives that drive 

program spending. In general terms, this is the principle behind the ACA's subsidies in the 

health insurance exchanges. Seniors choosing a more expensive plan would pay any extra 

premium out of their own money. Informed consumer choice will create competition among the 

plans that will help to lower costs. 

For this competitive model to work, traditional Medicare must be modernized. The 

program's benefit structure is needlessly complicated and should be simplified. The separate 

deductibles for inpatient services under Part A and for physician and outpatient services under 

Part B should be combined. The confusing array of copayments, coinsurance, and limitations on 

payments for services should be replaced with an easily-understood schedule of cost-sharing 

requirements. Coverage for catastrophic expenses should be added as a core benefit. 

Medicare's physician payment system should be reformed. After a decade of overriding 

the reductions required by the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, it is time for Congress to 

25 Author's calculation of the increase or decrease in the share of each year's GDP accounted for by each major 

program, based on Table 1-2 ofCBO's 2012 long-term budget outlook report, Extended Baseline Scenario. See 

CBO, The 20/2 Long-Term Budget Out/oak 

26 Congressional Budget Office, Medicare·-May 20/3 Baseline, http://www.cbo.gov/publicationl44205. 

8 
683 

pennanently resolve this ongoing problem. Bipartisan legislation in the House would replace the 

25 percent payment rate reduction that would otherwise be imposed in January with annual 

payment increases of 0.5% until 2019. A new Physician Quality Reporting Program would 

reward high-perfonning physicians with bonuses. 

The CBO estimates that the cost of a penn anent SGR fix is $138 billion over the next 

decade. The House bill does not specify how the government would cover that cost, but payment 

offsets will be part of any legislation that is agreed to by Congress. The Medicare Payment 

Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has suggested a framework that strikes a balance between the 

total cost of repealing the SGR and the need to ensure beneficiary access to care. 27 That could be 

the starting point for reaching agreement on a long-overdue refonn. 

Congress will be tempted to stop its work on Medicare after it finds the savings to pay for 

the SGR fix. That would be a mistake. 

There is broad agreement that Medicare spending is on an unsustainable trajectory that 

threatens to crowd out other priorities elsewhere in the budget. There is broad agreement that 

Medicare's perfonnance in delivering services to older Americans can and should be improved. 

There is great controversy over how to ensure that seniors continue to receive high-value health 

care at a price that is affordable to them and to taxpayers. 

Small-bore policies, such as those recommended by MedPAC to pay for the SGR fix, 

yield scoreable budget savings. Those types of policies are the bread and butter ofthis 

Committee and its counterpart in the House. They are necessary, but they are not enough. 

If we want to bend Medicare's cost curve, we must change the financial incentives that 

drive program spending to increasingly unaffordable levels. A well-designed premium support 

program can take full advantage of market competition to drive out unnecessary spending and 

increase Medicare's value to beneficiaries. This is a safe and reasonable approach to lowering 

program costs over the long tenn without imposing undue sacrifice on seniors or taxpayers. It is 

also our best hope for real Medicare refonn. 

Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the 

American Enterprise Institute. He previously served as the Assistant Director for Health and 

Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office, and he is currently a member ofCBO's 

panel of health advisers. 

27 MedPAC, "Moving forward from the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) System," Appendix B in Report to the 

Congress: Medicare Payment Policy, March 2013, htlp:llwww.medpac.gov/chapterslMar13 AppB.pdf. 

9 
684 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much to all of our witnesses. 

I will begin, Dr. Nichols, asking you a question. In order to 

achieve scorable savings, there are a number of proposals that impose caps on how much the Federal Government’s expenditure on 

health care, Federal programs, can grow. Proponents of that argue 

that other changes in their plans will increase the efficiency of the 

market and lead to lower health care costs. 

I am concerned that if health care costs are not lowered and Federal spending reaches that specific cap, the savings will come at 

the expense of our States or seniors or most vulnerable Americans, 

and those are the people who are going to be left to pay more for 

health care because the Federal Government would be spending 

less. So, although our Budget Committee does not have direct control over Federal expenditures, we cannot lose sight—we do have 

direct control over Federal expenditures, we cannot lose sight of 

what happens to our families and communities with health care 

costs. 

So, I wanted to ask you to talk about the impact of caps on Federal health care programs and what would be the possible consequences for seniors and families and— 

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, Chairman Murray, I think you laid it out 

pretty well there, and the way I think about the impact of these 

kinds of proposals, I think every, I will just say, Medicare reform 

proposal has three elements we should focus on. One is, what is the 

level of benefit that is implicit in it? What is the rate of growth 

that you are assuming you are going to achieve or target? And 

what is your enforcement mechanism? 

Those three elements help you analyze, I think, every proposal 

on the table, and what you are describing is a set of proposals that 

typically have the level okay for a while but reduce the level significantly over time, impose a cap to achieve what Dr. Antos talked 

about, guaranteeing the Federal Government’s expenditure will not 

grow beyond X percent. But then the enforcement mechanism is, 

in Dr. Antos’ case and some of these proposals’ cases, the health 

plan basically saying that is all there is, so we will have to figure 

out what to do. 

To me, those proposals shift all the risk of failure to achieve the 

targets onto beneficiaries and providers, who, after all, are out 

there trying to basically serve patients they typically have been 

serving a very long time, and they do a lot of uncompensated care. 

So you are putting all the risk on those two. 

An alternative approach would be to say, look, we do not think 

health plans can be the enforcer here because they do not have 

enough market power in a world in which a lot of hospitals actually 

have more market power than plans do. That is why plans complain about hospital market power. I am sure you get to have those 

conversations. 

So, what other people think is what Dr. Patel was talking about. 

Let us get at the actual incentives underneath the system. Let us 

use Medicare buying power as one—in fact, the largest insurer in 

the country. And let us improve the incentives. And what is exciting is what I talked about in my written testimony. What is exciting to me is that the private sector payers have basically 

piggybacked onto that and now they are working in tandem to cre-
685 

ate the very incentives that enable the cost growth to be lowered 

over time, which reduces the risk. 

But the main thing, I would submit, to think about the alternative approach, the ACA approach, if you will, versus the fixed 

voucher approach, is that the risk is borne by the society as a 

whole, by the taxpayer. You would have to decide if we do not hit 

the growth targets. And, by the way, ever since the ACA has 

passed, Medicare has grown less than the targets that were put 

into the law. 

So if we do not hit those targets, then you have got to make a 

serious decision, and on the spot, your decision might be in some 

years, you know what, we are just going to shift those costs to 

beneficiaries because we cannot do anything else. Other years, you 

might say, we are going to raise taxes. Other years, you might say, 

you know what? What we are going to do is change the way we implement the incentive effects that are being developed around the 

country. 

I believe the fact that the private sector is doing so much like 

what the ACA has engendered suggests, just give it a little more 

time. Make the targets clear. Make it clear you intend to enforce 

that in the long run and the market will react. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. I just have a few seconds left, but Dr. 

Patel, I wanted to ask you, we do know there are some positive 

trends in the cost of health care. I mentioned them. Several of you 

did. But we have some efforts underway right now to change the 

way we deliver and finance health care. I mentioned several examples of initiatives from my State. You mentioned several. Is it more 

important to lock in some substantial budget savings from health 

care programs today or do we have some time to evaluate those efforts that are underway and expand those that the evidence shows 

are working? 

Dr. PATEL. I think it is very important to actually not only allow 

for time to evaluate so that we can actually, as Dr. Nichols mentioned, we can reiterate and improve, since all these programs are 

still kind of in flux and in practice. But it is appropriate right now 

to take what we know from the savings that we have seen thus far 

and actually apply those and reinvest those into the very reforms 

that we still need to try to think through and use the Centers on 

Medicare Innovation to work through. So it is a little bit of both, 

and that is what we have seen thus far. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. Thank you very much. 

Senator SESSIONS. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. I would yield to Senator Johnson. 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Madam Chair and Senator Sessions. 

I will quickly throw in my two cents’ worth in terms of what has 

caused the slowdown, because I bought health care for 31 years in 

my manufacturing plant. And certainly as I watched us go from 

zero deductibles to $100 deductibles to $250, $500, institution of 

HSAs, a higher deductible plan, which is what really insurance 

should be, we reconnected the consumer of the product with the 

payment of the product. We began that process. We brought free 

market competitive discipline back into the health care market. 
686 

That has constrained the cost explosion as well as a poor economy. 

So, let me first get that on the table. 

But I want to take a little bit different tack on this discussion. 

Dr. Patel, there are about 16 million people working in the health 

care industry. You work in the health care industry. That is a pretty good employer, right, I mean, from the highest skill level to 

some of the lowest. The health care industry creates jobs, correct? 

Dr. PATEL. Yes, Senator, that is correct. 

Senator JOHNSON. Dr. Nichols, I know we are all saying it is a 

huge problem that we spend 18 percent of our economy on health 

care. If we want to bring that down, what would be a better product or service that American consumers should consume versus the 

products and services that extend their life and create better 

health for them? So, I mean, would a snowmobile be better, or 

more beer? I mean, what would be a better share of our economy 

if you could control it all, which is what you want to do? 

Mr. NICHOLS. You know, it is a great question and I would answer it this way. The problem is not that, in fact, what we buy extends our lives. The problem is that we are paying too much for 

the value we are getting in health care— 

Senator JOHNSON. And my explanation for that is because government got involved in it. 

Let me go back to the root cause. I am a manufacturer. It is in 

my DNA. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Okay. 

Senator JOHNSON. In the 1940s, government instituted price controls on health care, and so unions rationally said, well, you know 

what? We cannot give increased wages. Let us give something else. 

They started providing health care. That began the separation of 

the consumer product from the payment of the product. Back in the 

1940s, in 1949, consumers paid 68 cents of every dollar spent on 

health care. Today, they spend 12 cents. 

So is that not really—if you really want to find a root cause in 

terms of why health care spending has dramatically increased, it 

is we have removed the free market out of it and in its place, unfortunately—public opinion ratings of Congress, which I say is of 

Washington, is about ten percent. It is probably too high. But that 

is 

because the public understands that Washington, D.C., the Federal Government, is not efficient, is not effective, and is not capable 

of controlling 50 percent of our health care spending. Is that not 

really the root cause? The reason this is a problem for the Federal 

Government is because the Federal Government has taken over 50 

percent of our health care industry and they are totally incapable 

of doing it. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, sir, I would point to the fact that, in essence, 

if you go back to 1960, when GDP—we took about six percent of 

GDP for health care, we did not cover over half of the elderly in 

our country and they basically depended upon the kindness of 

strangers, and some hospitals and doctors took care of them and 

a lot of them could not afford to. So, when you shifted resources 

to the Federal umbrella, what you did was you made it available 

to more people. 
687 

You are unambiguously correct that the incentives we imparted 

through third-party payment and some of our initial government 

programs were not the best. In fact, they led to cost growth. No 

question about that, sir. The question is, how do we get from where 

we are now to a better place, and— 

Senator JOHNSON. According to your testimony—let me just 

make a couple—quote you. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Okay. 

Senator JOHNSON. You said one of the reasons health care spending has decreased is because of the increase in private sector cost 

sharing. You said— 

Mr. NICHOLS. That is what you said, I believe. 

Senator JOHNSON. No, that is what you said. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, but I— 

Senator JOHNSON. You said— 

Mr. NICHOLS. We agree— 

Senator JOHNSON. —we need to tell the American people the 

truth. You said, we have to focus on communities, not on States. 

I would add, not the Federal Government. The solution lies in our 

communities. You said, HHS needs to have creative thinking. Do 

you think that is possible? And secondly, you said, people are the 

experts. 

So what you are arguing for in your statements is what I would 

argue for, what conservatives would argue for, is we need to reintroduce free market competitive principles. Reconnect the consumer of the product with the payment of the product. The Affordable Care Act does not reconnect that. The Affordable Care Act is 

going to have a total government takeover of the health care system to disastrous results, is that not true? 

Mr. NICHOLS. No. It is not true. It is not about taking over the 

health care system. It is about freeing the health care system to 

pursue the incentive realignments you are actually in favor of. We 

are not that far apart here. The question is, what is the impact of 

the law? What the law does is incentivize delivering better value 

care for patients and for payers, and what the law does is give us 

a bunch of tools, including transparency. 

Senator JOHNSON. Dictate— 

Mr. NICHOLS. You know as well as— 

Senator JOHNSON. Dictate— 

Mr. NICHOLS. You know better than I do— 

Senator JOHNSON. Dictated by the Secretary of Health and 

Human Services in a top-down approach, the Federal Government 

is going to tell people exactly what medical treatment they can 

qualify for through the IPAB Board. I mean, is that going to really 

work? Do you really believe that? 

Mr. NICHOLS. Look at how the exchanges are actually working. 

Look at the benefit package that the insurers are actually offering. 

They are precisely what was offered in the private market for— 

Senator JOHNSON. You think this implementation is working? 

James Hoffa, the National Treasury Employees Union, they are not 

quite agreeing with you on that. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, I would say that implementation takes time, 

and I would submit to you that, in fact, incentives are being improved. That is why health care cost growth has come down. That 
688 

is why so many private sector practitioners are actually excited 

about these payment reforms, because they would like to do the 

right thing— 

Senator JOHNSON. You know, when they enacted Medicare back in 1965, they projected it out 25 years, said it would cost $12 billion in 1990. In fact, it cost about $109 billion. I do not think the 

Federal Government is particularly good at predicting what this is 

going to be. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Wyden. 

Senator WYDEN. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam 

Chair, I am especially appreciative of the fact that you cited those 

numbers at the beginning of your opening comments because they 

are certainly encouraging and I think you cannot fudge those numbers. They are indisputable. I am glad you cited them. 

I also want to thank all our witnesses. I have had a chance to 

work with all three of them and it has been an excellent panel. 

Let me start with you, if I might, Mr. Nichols, because of your 

comments on transparency, and you noted the fact that Senator 

Grassley and I have introduced this legislation to, for the first 

time, open up the Medicare database so that all over this country, 

we could see, in effect, what Medicare was paying for various kinds 

of services and we could also learn a lot about claims, utilization 

rates, for example. Why does one area, in effect, bill more for MRIs 

or hip replacements than another? 

And my sense is that the day you publish the Medicare database 

in this country, you would have, in effect, a new baseline for health 

care in America. All over the country, if somebody held an employer health plan, for example, or had an HSA—Mr. Antos referenced that—people would look at what Medicare was paying in 

their area for those particular services and they would look at utilization and they would start making that comparison and saying, 

why is what I am getting out of sync in terms of costs or utilization? Is that pretty much your take of where you would like to go 

in terms of transparency? 

Mr. NICHOLS. You know, what is fascinating to me, Senator 

Wyden, is how similar, actually, your vision is from what Senator 

Johnson just described, and that is how do you make a market 

work, and I do not know how you make a market work without better transparency, and the Medicare data facts would be huge improvements over where we are today. 

I would also just add, what you really want to do is to bring the 

Medicare data together with the private sector data, and that is 

what some of these States are doing in these all payer claims databases, because then precisely you can compare what Medicare is 

paying. You can also look and see, what are we in this community 

spending more on? Are we out of whack with other places? No one 

knows that now, and you cannot know it without access to the 

data. So I am totally in favor of using data to add transparency. 

Senator WYDEN. Well, thank you, and I want to note apropos of 

the kind of coalition that is out there. Some of the most progressive 

voices in American health care want to do this, as do some of the 

most market-oriented individuals. I appreciate your making that 

point. 
689 

Dr. Patel, a question for you on chronic care, because you have 

really been one of the authorities on this with respect to primary 

care. I think the debate really starts, and it is a point that Senator 

Whitehouse has touched on with respect to the delivery system, is 

that Medicare in 2013 is very different than Medicare when it 

began in 1965. We have got a lot more cancer. We have got many 

more strokes. And we have a much higher rate of diabetes. This 

is essentially more than 80 percent of the Medicare spending in the 

country. 

So my question to you is—and Senator Isakson has been particularly helpful in this area, but there are a number of Democrats and 

Republicans who want to work on this—is it your view, apropos of 

care coordination, if the incentives were changed so that nurses, 

PAs, those who specialize in geriatric medicine, were paid to specialize in, in effect, coordinating chronic care, that that could help 

give us a downward push in terms of holding down Medicare costs 

while, as Senator Isakson says, beefing up the quality of care for 

those who are the most vulnerable, while reducing costs? Do you 

think that is plausible? 

Dr. PATEL. Thank you for that question, Senator. It is definitely 

plausible. It is even less complicated than that. You may not have 

to ask nurses or physicians assistants to specialize in this. This is 

actually what most of us are trained to do, but in our current feefor-service system, we actually cannot do this. If I want to coordinate care outside of seeing someone in my clinic, it is increasingly 

cumbersome, and, quite honestly, the incentives are not there to 

actually allow for that. 

So you are correct in that some way to coordinate care better for 

patients with chronic conditions and actually engaging—getting 

back to the point that both you and Senator Johnson made of allowing consumers to be true consumers in health care, it certainly 

applies to Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions. 

Most of my patients have four or more conditions and are on six 

or more prescriptions, but it should not be that I have to wait until 

they come into my office in order to start dealing with those problems. From the time of enrollment at Medicare, we should be engaging. And we started that in the Affordable Care Act with the 

‘‘Welcome to Medicare’’ visit, but we can certainly specialize that 

for patients with chronic conditions. 

Senator WYDEN. My time is up, but I am glad you made that 

point, and again, I think this is a unifying point. We just did a 

chart, an analysis to look at how much of the country, particularly 

rural areas, and Senator Sessions and I have talked about it, really 

has few, if any, doctors. So if we were to do what you are talking 

about with respect to chronic care, is build in that bigger role for 

the nurses and PAs, again, I think this would produce support 

across the political spectrum. 

Thank you, Chair Murray. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator SESSIONS. Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Dr. Antos, Dr. Patel mentioned the citation of lower premiums 

than CBO projected, but it appears that the White House has been 

using numbers of high-cost States. Other States would likely have 
690 

an increase under the ACA. Is that correct, and why would that be 

so? 

Mr. ANTOS. Well, yes, it is correct, Senator. The notable example, 

of course, is New York State. I am originally from New York State. 

It is the most regulated health insurance market in the country. 

It is also the most dysfunctional health insurance market in the 

country. When they implemented Guaranteed Issue and Full Community Rating, that went even further than the ACA in terms of 

community rating, what happened within a year was that most of 

the insurers who are offering plans on the individual market left. 

So that left, essentially, Blue Cross, and rates skyrocketed. In fact, 

for New York, there may well be a reduction in rates to the extent 

that the regulations from the Federal Government take precedence 

over the State regulations. But it will not be much, and I am suspicious of that. 

Other States, lower cost States, States that have less regulation, 

appropriate regulation but less regulation of that sort, will, of 

course, do worse. The common view in the health industry is that 

premiums will rise at least 25 percent, and there was a story in 

the Wall Street Journal that said possibly rates would go up two 

to three times what is now available in the market in some places. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, Dr. Nichols, today is the 48th anniversary of Medicare. 

Mr. NICHOLS. How about that. 

Senator SESSIONS. And it is the seventh consecutive year, unfortunately, that the Medicare Trustees were forced to issue a funding 

warning in their annual report. My predecessor, Judd Gregg, on 

this committee got language in that said if that happens, they have 

to issue that warning, the administration should lay out a legislative proposal to deal with it. Do you think that warning would provide a good opportunity for the Congress to participate with the 

President in confronting Medicare difficulties if he submitted that 

proposal to Congress? 

Mr. NICHOLS. Senator, I definitely believe that that warning was 

put there, as you said, by well intentioned— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, both parties— 

Mr. NICHOLS. Exactly, both parties, precisely to provoke that conversation. I do not know anything about what they are doing there 

in the White House, but I will just say I am pretty sure he would 

welcome a bipartisan group to come talk about serious Medicare reform. I do believe it has got to be done on a bipartisan basis. I do 

believe the time to do that is yesterday. And I do believe that that 

warning was put there for that precise purpose, to engender that. 

Yes sir. 

Senator SESSIONS. Dr. Antos, with regard to this decline in the 

increase in health care costs, is what we are talking about, from 

9.7 percent, according to the numbers I have, in 2002 to 3.9 percent 

today, is certainly good news in terms of the pocketbook. And the 

President indicated in his State of the Union Address earlier this 

year, already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the health 

care costs. 

Well, first, they have not slowed much since he has been in office 

for four years. Most of the decline began before that. But others 

have questioned that, including the National Journal. Do you think 
691 

it is unfair to claim that the Affordable Care Act is in any way responsible for the decline in the rate of rise of the health care costs? 

Mr. ANTOS. Well, Senator, of course, it has something to do with 

politics. I think the American people are not paying attention to 

much that is said on either side of this issue right now. The fact 

is that the exchanges do not begin operation until October 1, and 

so the theory that people are paying—that the public is really paying attention to this, I think, is wrong. 

Certainly, looking at the past is going to be pretty irrelevant. For 

the average person looking in October to buy insurance, somebody 

who is on the individual market, somebody who does not have insurance today, they are going to see, even with the subsidies, a premium that they do not expect to see. And for a lot of people, that 

is going to be very difficult to pay for. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam Chair. My time is up. I 

appreciate all the panel for all the valuable comments you have 

made. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Whitehouse. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Let me—I am going to ask about transparency and pricing and 

all of that, but before I do, let me make the point that I do think 

that although the consumer market is a concept of some utility in 

health care, it is a long way from being a complete answer. If you 

have had a stroke and you do not even know where you are, you 

are not a good consumer. If you are elderly and have seven conditions going on, you are not a good consumer. 

This is not like buying a bicycle, where you say, I like that. I 

know how it works. Here is how much it costs. I challenge anybody 

in this room to explain to me what is in their health insurance 

right now. If you want to have a market, you have got to have a 

product and you have got to have a price. I do not think anybody 

really understands what the product is. They kind of buy what 

other people go. They go by what has a good reputation and stuff 

like that, and nothing has a better reputation than Medicare. And 

then they go by price, and here is where I get to my question. 

Two members of my family recently had minor health episodes. 

One of them spent a night in the hospital for observation. The 

other one just had to have a bunch of tests. I do not have the billing sheet in front of me right now, but my recollection is that each 

billing sheet basically said, here are the charges. Here is what we 

paid. Here is what you owe. And for one, rough numbers, it was, 

like, $10,800. That was for the overnight in the hospital. What we 

paid was about $1,800, and what I owed was about $40. The other 

one was about a little under $4,000. What we paid was about $468. 

And what I owed was $20. So— 

Senator SESSIONS. Senator, what do you mean by what you owed 

and what you paid? I did not quite understand. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Well, here is my point. 

Senator SESSIONS. Yes. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. The first number, the $10,000-plus or the $4,000 was what the bill was. The insurance company paid 15 percent of it, and I had an extra little one or two percent that I was 

supposed to pay for myself. Where did the rest of it go? What is 

the price? We run a health care system in which nothing has a 
692 

price, as best I can tell. You bring your price with you depending 

on who you are. If you are broke and have no insurance, they will 

hunt you down for that $10,800. If you have insurance, they will 

take the $1,800 from your insurance company and say, super deal. 

You owe me $49. We are all done. And depending on what kind of 

insurance you have, that number moves around. 

But how do you get real market pricing into this system? Would 

it make sense to pick out a few things, one or two durable medical 

equipment pieces, one or two tests, one or two pharmaceuticals, 

and say, look, let us just see how it works if you put a real price 

on it, where one person does not have to pay ten times as much 

for the same thing as another person does and try to narrow that. 

What is your— how do you make this—how do you try to put a 

price into this cloud of nonsense that is now the pricing system in 

health care? 

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, you have articulated the problem very well, 

but I think I would start with what some States, some hospital associations, and some insurers are doing, and that is basically allowing you to test ahead of time, I am going to have a baby, I am 

going to have knee surgery, I am going to have whatever, what is 

this going to cost me given my condition and how might it vary 

across the different providers that I have access to? That is how 

you make a market work. Those tools do exist, sir. You know. You 

invented some in Rhode Island. But the truth is, they are not everywhere. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. And you have to— 

Mr. NICHOLS. And the truth is, they are doing— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. You have to be able to bundle costs together in order to do that— 

Mr. NICHOLS. Exactly. Exactly. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. and that is a developing strategy— Mr. NICHOLS. And so some insurers, some plans. What ought to 

happen as we roll out these exchanges is that kind of cost calculator should be available on a broader basis. Again, some States 

are doing it and that would be a really smart thing. The— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. So bundling is a key step. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Bundling is a good thing, and letting consumers 

know ahead of time what different packages are going to enable 

you to do. And you can do that at the point of purchasing insurance, as well. In particular, when you sign up for a Medicare program, you know what drugs you are on. You know what drugs Dr. 

Patel has prescribed. You look and see which of these packages are 

better for me. We could do that. It does require information systems that are essentially connected and well developed and it is not 

in any way— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. That is a whole another saga and my time 

has just expired. But let me thank you, Chairman, for holding this 

hearing. When we are burning 18 percent of our GDP on health 

care and the least efficient country in the world that is competitive 

with us is only burning 12, we have a health care cost problem— 

Chairman MURRAY. Certainly. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. —and to masquerade it as a Medicare 

problem, I think, disserves the problem that we face and disserves 

the American public. 
693 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. 

Senator KAINE. Senator KAINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Thanks for the witnesses. Good testimony. And I am going to 

have a follow-up question for the record that I will get to at the 

end, but first, for my colleagues, we have a limited bandwidth, and 

in some more limited than others—I will talk about myself—and 

we are going to spend time on a lot of different issues. And so there 

is a finite chunk of our time that we are going to spend on this 

very important issue. It is my sincere hope that we do not use that 

finite chunk of our time for an endless battle for the 45th vote to 

repeal the Affordable Care Act because it is not going to happen. 

So let us be open to reforms and embrace reforms. 

During the votorama on the budget, I cast a vote for reform, 

which is to look for an alternative for the way to assess the medical 

device. I thought the medical device tax on gross receipts probably 

was not a good idea. 

And I am open to reforming the Affordable Care Act and I would 

hope everybody around the table would be open to reforming the 

ACA or Medicare or Medicaid or anything else. But if instead of 

talking about reforms we are going to be talking about repealing 

the Affordable Care Act, you know, we are wasting our time, because we are not going to repeal the Affordable Care Act and we 

should not repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

The Affordable Care Act has done a number of things very positive, and I know politically, everybody wants to say, if they did not 

like the ACA, it has had no effect. They are just wrong. We cannot 

over-claim its effects, but the 70,000 fewer hospital readmissions in 

2012 than 2011, the Affordable Care Act has played a major role 

in that. Millions of Americans getting rebate checks back because 

of that medical loss ratio, that is because of the Affordable Care 

Act and that is important. 

And I have told this story to my committee members before, but 

when I was a Senate candidate and for the first time in my life did 

not have a full-time job, I did not have insurance and we had to 

go out and buy insurance on the open market. And my wife tried 

to buy insurance and she was told by an insurance company that 

they would insure my wife and me and they would insure two of 

our three children, but they would not insure our third child because of a preexisting medical condition. Safety note: Do not tell 

my wife that they will only insure two of our three children. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KAINE. Do not do that. My wife called the HHS hotline. 

She has a different last name than me. Nobody knew who she was. 

She calls in and says, ‘‘I think this is against the law.’’ ‘‘Who did 

you talk to?’’ ‘‘Here is the name and number at the insurance company.’’ That person at the HHS 800 line called, and within half an 

hour, the insurance company called back and said, ‘‘You are right. 

We are wrong. We have to offer you an insurance policy on your 

entire family.’’ 

We are not going to repeal the Affordable Care Act, because if 

we did, we would be saying to all of those kids, hey, you are back 

at the mercy of this heartless preexisting insurance company practice that we are putting in the rearview mirror. So I hope that we 
694 

will embrace reforms, and I think we need to embrace reforms for 

all the reasons that have been said around the table. 

The question I want to ask—actually, what I would really like 

to do is ask it for the record, and we will put it on the record and 

I would love your responses back. The issue that troubles me the 

most in the broad scale on the cost is the cost growth rate of Medicare. Now, to pick up on Senator Johnson, some of the cost increase 

is for good news. It is not all bad news that we spend on health 

care. Health care is important. 

And the cost growth rate in Medicare is partly a good news 

thing. We are living longer. That is fantastic. The last I saw, Medicare costs go up by three percent a year, even if there is no inflation, and even if there is no increase in medical utilization, just because of increases in the eligibility. So that is a good thing, and yet 

it creates a serious cost problem, and it is the Medicare cost growth 

and the size of the budget that causes me the most concern. 

So, the question that I am going to submit by record to you is 

if you had to tackle giving us advice right now on smart ways, consistent with your own approaches to this, to start to deal more seriously with the cost growth on Medicare, what would you do, how 

soon you would do it. I think Dr. Patel said you may not want to 

do something right away. You want to see if what we are doing 

now in the ACA is having some effect and figure that out before 

you make suggestions. But I will direct that question to each of you 

on the record and I appreciate your testimony today. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Senator BALDWIN. Senator BALDWIN. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member, for holding this hearing. I really appreciate the opportunity to 

delve a little deeper in this topic. 

I also just wanted to add some commentary to, you know, the intangible costs of the political debate around implementation of all 

of this. They are not tangible, but I cannot but help but think that 

there is a real cost with the obstructionism we have seen, and I 

have to recall serving over in the other House, in the other body, 

during the debate on the Medicaid Modernization Act, and that 

was politically contentious and somewhat—I think that is an understatement—partisan. I did not end up supporting that for a 

wide range of reasons. But following the passage of that measure, 

I felt like the most important duty we all had was to work together 

across the party aisle and try to make this work for our constituents. And it involved building State-based insurance exchanges 

and, you know, trying to help our constituents understand some 

pretty complicated choices. But, in any event, we are here now. 

I want to also address this issue of transparency, data availability on cost and price and quality. There was some discussion of 

where the States are at in collecting and sharing this data. In Wisconsin, we have our attempt at an all payer claims database called 

the Wisconsin Health Information Organization, and so providers, 

payers, and State agencies subscribe to this database to help them 

assess and improve their performance. 

Right now, the organization holds about two-thirds of the claim 

data Statewide for Medicaid and private payers. However, current 
695 

law, very specific details in the ACA, did not allow this database 

access to the Medicare fee-for-service claims. 

Now, I know that our fellow committee members, Senator Grassley and Senator Wyden, have a rather large fix to this. I have been 

working with Senator Bennet on a very specific bill to make this 

more available by sort of amending the provisions of the Affordable 

Care Act. But this, I think, would get our State close to—we would 

be getting pretty close to full claims. 

And I guess I would ask why this is so important to the foundation, to provide a foundation for larger delivery system reforms, 

why you believe that the wider access to Medicare data is essential, 

and then I have a follow-on question, and Dr. Nichols, I would start 

with you. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, thank you, Senator, and I appreciate you 

mentioning Wisconsin’s experience there because they are, as you 

know, a leader in a lot of these areas. 

Senator BALDWIN. Right. Yes. 

Mr. NICHOLS. First, I would say that the fundamental reason you 

need Medicare in the picture is so that any given practice and any 

given hospital system, any given health care provider system, can 

look at the totality of what they are doing. You cannot analyze 

total cost of care unless you have total cost of care. And you need 

to see the difference between Medicare, private, Medicaid. You 

need to be able to say, okay, what if we incentivize the kinds of 

things Dr. Patel talked about? What if we incentivized paying for 

care coordination, which is not now paid for in most circumstances? 

We took a stream from here. You would have to have all the data 

to figure out how to make that business model work. 

What transparency is about is making models work, actually add 

up, and you cannot do it unless you have got everybody at the 

table, so that is why it is so important. 

Senator BALDWIN. Yes. Dr. Patel, do you have anything to add? 

Dr. PATEL. I will just briefly say, I can get more information 

about how many megabytes of data I used on my cell phone than 

I can about how much it cost my patients to get care under me in 

the last month. So I think having access to the claims data is just 

the first step. It is a huge and a very important step. These databases are hard. It is not easy to get these data claims together, and 

then on top of that, we just need to make sure that we add to these 

important all-payer claims databases a way to get the data back 

out to the very people, patients, providers, and payers, who are 

making decisions. 

And there seems to be a lot of concern about doing that, like, oh, 

if people can see how much it costs to see me versus him, then 

there is going to be a big problem. But that is actually exactly what 

we do need in our country. 

Senator BALDWIN. I think on that point, especially as data becomes accessible to providers on a larger scale, it is not just about 

price, obviously. This drives quality and this drives—it is decision 

maker support. You know, that is essential. It seems like we have 

come further, at least in my State, in figuring out how to drive 

quality with providers than we have what are useful ways to share 

this information with potential consumers. 
696 

And I am wondering, as we—and I realize I am running out of 

time—as we develop the marketplace that becomes available online 

October 1, what sort of complementary steps forward we can see 

for consumers that make this metadata really useful to them in 

purchasing quality as well as looking at cost. 

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, so we talked about setting up these cost calculators, where you can look at, fundamentally, what would it cost 

me. You can also put right there with the price the quality ranking 

for that institution, and there are lots of ways to do that and lots 

of, you know, methods. But those things are being done in the best 

places in the country. We just need to do in all the country what 

has been going on in the best places in our country. It can be done, 

absolutely. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Senator KING. 

Senator KING. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks for having 

this hearing. 

I want to start with a chart, and to me—I think I am going to 

have this chart tattooed on my forehead. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. I mean, this is the whole deal. I was watching a 

debate on the floor, and this chart actually belongs to Senator 

Hatch. He was talking about it. I saw it on the monitor and I said, 

I have got to have that chart. And my friend, Lauren—my colleague, Lauren, got it. 

But, basically, what it shows is the whole Federal debt and deficit problem is health care and we have just got to focus on that. 

And it is not the Federal expenditures on health care, it is health 

care generally, and that is what is important about this hearing. 

If we try to solve the Federal debt problem simply by saying, Medicare is going to pay less, Medicaid is going to pay less, all we are 

doing is shifting these costs to somebody else. 

Basically, what this shows is discretionary spending, Social Security, other mandatory, projected out, essentially flat. Health care is 

where all the expenditures are. So shifting costs is not the answer. 

We need to talk about, fundamentally, how to lower health care 

costs, and to say it cannot be done is ridiculous because we pay almost twice as much as anybody else in the world for results that 

are not that good. So that is where we have got to go. 

Now, that is my ridiculously big picture. The small picture is, Dr. 

Nichols, I believe in ACOs. We have got three of them in Maine. 

I like the idea of getting away from fee-for-service and I think that 

you change the incentives. I think that is a good deal. Here is what 

worries me, particularly in a rural State. You create an ACO. You 

have basically created a regional monopoly. Monopolies are not, 

historically, beneficent. How do we deal with the problem of an 

ACO inherently being a local monopoly? 

Mr. NICHOLS. You know, it is a great question. It is a problem 

not just in Maine, friend. It is a problem in California and lots of 

other places, as well. So, essentially, what I would observe is those 

hospitals that are the center of the ACOs you are talking about, 

they were kind of monopolies before. This is not really a change. 

What we have lost is an opportunity. 
697 

Two things I can think of in the short run. One is what I call 

domestic medical tourism. I know a surgeon, retired, Denver, 

worked for a long time in that area, knew a mining executive. After 

he retired, he called up the mining executive. He said, ‘‘You are 

paying too much for health care. I am bored. Let me help you.’’ He 

took the 15 most expensive conditions, found the best place for 

those things to be treated, all over the Upper Midwest, lowered 

PMPM— 

Senator KING. This is like Lowe’s sending all their heart patients— 

Mr. NICHOLS. Bingo. 

Senator KING. —to Cleveland. 

Mr. NICHOLS. The Cleveland Clinic. You can do that on a regional basis, and that— 

Senator KING. Because I think, in response to Senator Johnson, 

competition between insurers is not really the deal. To me, it is 

competition between providers. That is—there are only two ways to 

regulate price in our society. One is competition. The other is regulation. I think competition is better. 

Mr. NICHOLS. It certainly is, and it can work if you have good 

transparency. That is correct. 

Senator KING. Well, you know, we are the biggest health care 

purchaser, Medicare. I do not understand, Madam Chairman, why 

Medicare does not say, any hospital or provider that does not publish their data by July 1, 2014, we do not pay anymore. I mean, 

we have enormous market power as a customer, and I do not think 

we use it very effectively. 

The same thing with Electronic Medical Records. You know, we 

have been talking about Electronic Medical Records since the 

1990s, and we have got all these systems and they are incompatible. I mean, Medicare ought to say, if you do not have Electronic 

Medical Records that are interoperable by, you know, July 1, 2014, 

we do not pay you anymore. I mean, all of a sudden, it would concentrate the mind. 

The other thing, Mr. Antos—Dr. Antos—are you a doctor? 

Mr. ANTOS. I do not see patients. I see numbers. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. ANTOS. I do not want to—well, never mind. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. You are a free enterprise kind of guy. Is there any 

straightface argument for Medicare not bargaining for drugs? Does 

anybody in our society who buys things in bulk not get a deal? 

Mr. ANTOS. I spent eight years regulating hospital prices in 

Maryland. Maryland is the only State that does this. And over my 

eight years, we did not save anybody a dime. 

Senator KING. No, but I am talking about bulk purchases. Medicare buys all drugs by the gazillions. 

Mr. ANTOS. Well— 

Senator KING. You could not get a deal— 

Mr. ANTOS. So— 

Senator KING. —from a pharmaceutical company if you can bargain? Be serious. 

Mr. ANTOS. Well, here is the problem. Look at— 

Senator KING. You ever go to Sam’s Club? 
698 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. ANTOS. Sure. Look at what happened with Part D. Part D 

was set up pretty well except that there were certain drugs that 

people up here felt were very important, and those were the drugs 

whose prices have gone up the most. It is not too surprising. So if 

you have—if you—it is a question of competition. It is not a question of centralizing the purchasing. If it were simply centralizing 

the purchasing— 

Senator KING. Well, but— 

Mr. ANTOS. —then why do we not just eliminate all the drug 

companies— 

Senator KING. But it is already central. I mean, the VA gets a 

deal. They buy in bulk. Medicaid gets a deal. They buy in bulk. We 

have got this, to me, amazing law that says the biggest purchaser 

in the society cannot bargain, and I do not— 

Mr. ANTOS. Well, so— 

Senator KING. —understand why we do that. 

Mr. ANTOS. So if the Federal Government were capable of bargaining rather than mandating, I would begin, maybe, to agree 

with you. But we have seen what bargaining means with the Medicare program. It does not bargain. It dictates. And for that matter, 

you know, a lot of good ideas that we are now citing—you cited, 

is it Lowe’s or somebody— 

Senator KING. Right. 

Mr. ANTOS. —sending heart patients to the Cleveland Clinic. You 

know, the Medicare program had that. I ran that program and it 

was killed because it was too effective. So I am not confident— 

Senator KING. Well, I am not for— 

Mr. ANTOS. —I am not confident that the Federal Government 

is actually capable of following through on good ideas. I am much 

more confident that private plans with information, with appropriate regulation, can do the job. 

Senator KING. Well, I just—I think if you buy something in bulk, 

you can usually get a better deal, and it just strikes me as it does 

not pass the straightface test that we could not get a better deal 

on drugs that we are buying by the billions of dollars. 

Mr. ANTOS. So, Senator, why do we not start by allowing mail 

order pharmacy in Part D. That saves a lot of money. You do not 

have to walk into the drug store. It is convenient for a lot of people. 

Virtually everybody under the age of 65 gets their drugs through 

the mail. Medicare patients are not allowed to because Congress 

would not allow it. So there are lots of things we could do to improve what is going on here— 

Senator KING. And we should. I agree. 

I see I am out of time, Madam Chair. Huge set of issues here, 

but I think the government could be a lot better consumer and 

could help with a lot of these delivery processes. But I also agree 

with Senator Johnson that the public has to have a stake in the 

game, and if, for example, they want to go to a different hospital 

than the one that their insurance company has bargained—if a customer—if an insurance company has a deal with the Cleveland 

Clinic and it gets a good price and a consumer wants to go somewhere else, they should be allowed to, but they should pay the differential. And I think that would be a reform—in my State, for ex-
699 

ample, you have to offer every hospital, which means that insurance companies cannot effectively bargain with the hospitals. So 

there are all kinds of warping of the market here that I think we 

need to deal with, information, a lot of the things we have talked 

about. 

Great topic, Madam Chairman. Thank you for doing it. I hope we 

can talk about this more. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

I think this was a really good discussion and I want to thank all 

of our colleagues who participated today, and I want to especially 

thank our witnesses for coming, for your testimony today. 

As a reminder to all of my colleagues, additional statements or 

questions for any of the witnesses are due in by 6:00 p.m. today. 

With that, again, thank you all for coming and this hearing is 

closed. 

[Whereupon, at 12:17 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
700 

Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics 

College of Health and Human Services 

UNIVERSITY 4400 University Drive, MS 207, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 

Phone: 703-993-9490 Fax 703-993-1555 Web: chpre,gmu.edu 

Senate Budget Committee 

624 Dirksen Senate Office Building 

Washington. DC 20510 

Attention: Jennifer lIanson 

J enrljJ~rJli!'l'iQnli~13udl!cl"S.enat~ Gov 

(202) 224-6815 

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD FROM SENATORS SESSIONS. KAINE, 

AND KING. FOLLOWING HEARING ON JULY 30.2013 

Len Nichols' Answer to the Question trom Senator Scssions: 

The 1st ycar rcsults of the Pionccr ACO program reported accuratc Iy in your good question 

illustrate both the promise and the challengcs of incentive realignment in our health care system, 

The 32 intcgrated health systems or large multi-specialty physician groups that chose to become 

Pioneer ACOs are somc of the best health care organizations in our country, and they showed it as 

a group by reducing total Medicare spending on net after all shared saving payouts by $33 million 

last year while improving quality uniformly on 15 core measures. exactly what smart payment 

reform engendered by the ACA is supposed to achieve, Overall, costs for Medicare patients 

trcated by the Pioneers as a whole grew 0.5% slower than costs for Medicare benetlciaries outside 

the Pioneer program, Lowering cost growth while improving quality is the sine qua non of 

successful payment reform. and this performance is a success to celebrate and build on, 

Two provider organizations have dropped out altogether and seven more are switching to the less 

demanding (and less risky) Medicare Share Savings ACO program. The fact that 14 of the 32 did 

not meet target gnm1h reductions but only two dropped out altogether shows the commitment of 

the organizations involved to the concepts of accountable care and incentive realignment The fact 

that seven are switching to the MSSP version of an ACO also shows commitment to the general 

concept of an ACO, 

Of course the model is not perfect. and should be tweaked (not jettisoned) over time, in my view, 

The quality mctrie targets and future baseline targets should be constantly negotiated between 

buyers and sellers as more information and experience becomes available to alL Perhaps most 

importantly, the patient attribution rules should be changed to allow Pioneers (and other) ACOs to 

HI \J III Pl)1J(,\ --H","L \W H 

~,E[ll'" 
701 

Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics 

College of Health and Human Services 

UNIVERSITY 4400 University Drive, MS 207, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 

Phone: 703-993-9490 Fax: 703-993-1555 Web: chpre.gmu.edu 

incentivize beneficiaries to use ACO-affiliatcd clinicians. As I stated in my testimony on July 30, 

the administration missed a goldcn opportunity in the ACO regulations to make clear that patients 

have key roles to play in incentive realignment. They should not be treated as if their behavior is 

irrelevant to achieving better outcomcs in their or our taxpayers' names. Patient engagement 

stratcgies are key to long run success. and financial incentives can powerfully complement what 

the best provider groups are doing with other educational and motivational tools. 

The larger point is that incentive realignment is a complex and hard business, and no one model is 

likely to be sufficient for our entire large country. Different versions of ACOs are likely be pmi of 

our successful future. but so are patient centered medical homes and medical neighborhoods 

(which ineentivize willing specialists and hospitals along with primary care physicians without 

making them employees or formally aligned as in ACOs). The general direction we need to move 

is toward where provider selt~interest is linked to the social interest in lower cost growth, better 

health. and more consistently high quality perfonuance, and ACOs can be pm1 of that direction if 

adapted wisely and widely. 

Len Nichols' Answer to the Question from Senator Kaine: 

In addition to the ideas highlighted in my testimony, my favorite strategies to reduce Medicare and 

system-wide cost growth could all be implemented quickly, though some might take a while to 

play out. and they include: 

(I) Make crystal clear statutory and regulatory statements that there will be no reversion to the 

status quo ante-ACA. Many private healtheare stakeholders have invested considerably in the 

capacity to be rewarded based on outcomes and to internally manage and externally report 

information consistent with new incentive alignments. The single most important thing the 

Congress and CMS could do would be to validate these investments (and elicit them in the 

heretofore reluctant) and make even more clear that these directional changes in Medicare 

payment policy will continue until health care cost growth is truly under controL There should 

be no going back to out of control cost growth just because some sub-specialists prefer it to the 

social gains from inccnti ve realignment. 

(2) Rcquire all insurers, including Medicare, to use a common claims adjudication algorithm 

within 18 months. Give private plans 6 months to decide on a standard, force Medicare and 

Medicaid to use it as well, and then 12 months to implemcnt. Today, physician practices and 

hospitals combined spend as much as 6-14% of the revenue dollar getting paid. Insurers 

compete on this for 1-2% advantage over each other. So today we allow insurers to tax 

providers 6-7 times as much as they collect on net from variation in claims adjudication rules. 

11l,\lmPoLlq --HL"LI.I{{H 

~#;-:f!fH' 
702 

Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics 

College of Health and Human Services 

U N I V E R SIT Y 4400 University Drive, MS 207, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 

Phone: 703-993-9490 Fax: 703-993-1555 Web: chpre,gmu,edu 

There's a term for this in economics, it's called, ·'stupid," All ofthc savings from this can be 

poured into incentive payments to providers for better performance. The only thing holding us 

back is the mistaken belief that insurers cannot agree on change. They can, if you make clear 

that the alternative standard that WIL L be adopted by a date certain is Medicare's own. 

Congress has the power to unleash the disciplined crcativity of the private sector in this way. 

Pleasc do so. 

(3) Allow and then require Medicarc and Medicaid data to be joined with private sector data 

within All Payer Claims Databases (APCDs). and give states incentives to create and maintain 

them according to standards that could be set by the public-private All Payer Claims Database 

Council. if empowered by you to do so. Evcry community, at least as local as the county level 

(preferable smaller. e .. g, zipcodc) should be able to compare it's cost and quality performance 

on specifIc and frequent health conditions to that of other similar and dissimilar communities. 

Only then can communities identify and target areas of potential improvement that reflect their 

priorities and values. 

(4) Create an Office of Collaboration within HHS. and make the nation's Chief Health 

Collaborator equal to the Administrator of CMS, confirmed by the Senate and report directly 

to the Secretary. The Mission of the Office of Collaboration would be two-fold: (i) to create 

multi-payer payment reforms across the country; and (ii) to make Medicare. Medicaid, and the 

whole ofHHS better partners with the private sector in incentive realignment opportunities in 

general. Too often, federal law and policy is the impediment to incentives being made better 

in realtime. despite the fact providers and consumers on the ground can see what needs to be 

changed very clearly. More local autonomy for representatives of federal programs, like 

purchasing managers for multi-state and multi-national corporations have, within broad 

guidelines and reporting requirements and accountability rules, would do wonders for 

stakeholder acceptance and engagement of the incentive realignment paradigm. 

Len Nichols' Answer to the Question fi'om Senator King: 

The most promising payment model in development at the moment is what I call the "medical 

neighborhood:' which builds on the very good concept of a patient centered medical home 

(PCMH) and extends the incentives to reduce costs while improving health to willing specialists 

and hospitals. The ACO is one version of this. but that requires a degree of organization and 

financial control tbat some providers find a bridgc too far. Medical neighborhoods arc really 

seamless and tight provider networks that are committed to the patient centered triple aim and can 

be incentivized to help each other achieve it, if we but unleash our multi-payer imaginations and 

relax enough anti-trust fears (through state action immunity) to do so. Smart health plans are 

II,,'.! ill POUt, -BL"t'IHH 

~,I':rn'" 
703 

Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics 

College of Health and Human Services 

U N I V E R SIT Y 4400 University Drive, MS 207, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 

Phone: 703-993-9490 Fax 703-993-1555 Web: chpre.gmu.edu 

already thinking of ways to expand their PCMHs in this direction, and smart specialists and 

hospitals are looking for PCMH and plan partners to make it a reality. Some hospitals are even 

creating their own plans where willing plan partners do not exist. lncentivizing the entire 

neighborhood to improve patient health and outcomes and lower totul cost of care is the way to go, 

in my view. and avoids the zero sum games that some PCMITs with highly focused plan partners 

have hecome. 

II! \! fit PO!.H.' HL"\ \HCIl 

~.~ .. EllI'" 
704 

Questions for the Record 

Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 

Senate Budget Committee 

Senator Jeff Sessions 

Question: 

In light of the disappointing results of the Pioneer program, please provide comments on 

the lessons that can be learned from the early experience ofthis program. Given the news 

that nearly a third of the health systems chosen for the Pioneer program are leaving after 

the first year of the three-year program, what-if anything--does this say about the 

concept of ACOs , in general, or the Pioneer program specifically? With the early 

challenges faced by the Pioneer program, is it fair to doubt whether substantial savings for 

federal taxpayers will ever materialize from the provisions aimed at cost control in the new 

law? 

Response from Dr. Kavita Patel: 

Thank you for these important questions. Lowering costs and improving quality of health care 

does not come easily. It requires hard work, significant investment, and professional buy-in from 

an array of providers, beneficiaries, and health system administrators. As with any major 

program, there are kinks that need adjustment. Notwithstanding, I do believe that Accountable 

Care Organizations (ACOs) show promise in improving quality and lowering costs, and with a 

tune-up, will be an integral tool for health system reform. 

After the inaugural year ofthe Pioneer ACO program, 30 ofthe 32 organizations have decided to 

continue as Medicare ACOs. As of March 2013, physician groups, hospitals, and other 

organizations have formed 449 ACOs or ACO-like entities in order to improve quality and shift 

to coordinated value-based care over fragmented volume-based care. Furthermore, as I 

mentioned in my written testimony, private-sector ACOs appear to show promise. This indicates 

that the ACO model remains an attractive option for diverse providers and systems across the 

nation. 

As you mentioned, of the 32 inaugural Pioneer ACOs, seven elected to shift to the Medicare 

Shared Savings Program (MSSP), and two decided to leave the ACO program all together. There 

is substantial heterogeneity in the needs and operations of health systems across the United 

States. Even when ACOs become more ubiquitous, some systems may never fit the mold for 

programs like the Pioneer ACO program, and thus would be more effective operating in a 

1 
705 

framework like the MSSP. The hope is that as care coordination infrastructure builds and 

providers are more comfortable operating in the ACO framework over time, more systems will 

be able to handle increased financial risk, continue to improve quality, and see further reductions 

in spending. Additional time to allow these programs to build is essential. 

Accordingly, it is both too early to doubt and too early to promise that substantial savings will 

materialize from this program. The early results, though, suggest that significant savings may be 

achievable through ACOs. CMS reports Pioneer ACOs achieved lower cost growth (0.3 pe~cent) 

for their 669,000 beneficiaries than the growth observed (0.8 percent)for similar beneficiaries in 

fee-for-service during the same period. Of the 32 Pioneers, 18 achieved below budget spending, 

but 5 ofthe 18 saved less than the threshold used to exclude normal statistical variation. As a 

result, these 5 Pioneers did not qualifY for shared savings despite having below-target spending. 

In contrast, the 13 Pioneers with significant savings generated gross savings of $87.6 million in 

2012. Medicare netted nearly $33 million as the Trust Fund share of the ACO savings. Reduced 

hospital admissions and readmissions were reportedly principal drivers of overall cost savings. 

In contrast to the 18 Pioneers that achieved below budget spending, the remaining 14 Pioneer 

ACOs experienced above budget spending. Of the 14 Pioneer ACOs, 12 of them were within the 

threshold established to exclude normal statistical variation. As a result, only two Pioneers had 

statistically significant losses, totaling $4.5 million. 

Apart from the finances, as a practicing physician, one of the most promising aspects of this 

program to me is the robust evidence of quality improvement with ACOs. All 32 Pioneer ACOs 

outperformed industry benchmarks on 15 quality measures such as blood pressure control and 

lipid management in adult diabetics. These first year results should help alleviate concerns that 

the shared savings methodology would cause providers to "stint" on necessary care and 

undermine quality. 

In moving forward, all ACOs need to improve on actively engaging beneficiaries so they are not 

seeking care outside ofthe ACO network. Moving forward, it will also be important to continue 

providing ACOs with more tools to coordinate care and influence beneficiary behavior. Quality 

measures should continue to be honed to ensure evidence-based quality practices that are better 

coordinated across payers and are appropriately anchored. Finally, an alternative method for 

setting appropriate budgets needs to be developed. Over time, continuously requiring new 

savings (as previously achieved savings are incorporated into the rebased targets) will undermine 

ACOs, with the most successful ACOs "hitting the wall" fastest. 

To conclude, both financial and quality data point to the substantial benefits that ACOs can offer 

our health care system in improving health care quality and reducing spending. As with any 

program, changes take time. That time should be given to this program for the benefit of the 

health care system, and most importantly, the patients who these changes are ultimately designed 

to serve. 

2 
706 

Questions for the Record 

Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 

Senate Budget Committee 

Senator Angus King 

Question: 

You have previously stated that you believe the RUC structure of determining Medicare 

costs should be maintained but become more transparent. The Independent Payment 

Advisory Board (IPAB) implemented by the ACA is designed to be a transparent 

committee that makes price recommendations to CMS. Do you believe a RUC-IPAB hybrid 

would be an effective and transparent system for making price appropriate 

recommendations to CMS? 

Response from Dr. Patel: 

Senator King, thank you for this question. In my roles as a Commissioner on the National 

Commission on Physician Payment Refonni and as a practicing internal medicine physician, I 

have previously stated that the RUC structure for detennining Medicare reimbursement is flawed 

because of the composition of the RUC and its lack of transparency. The RUC is overseen by the 

American Medical Association and composed of 31 members theoretically representing the 

entirety of the medical profession. But currently, only nine seats represent specialties that consist 

of examination and patient management services such as family medicine, neurology, and 

pediatrics.ii Since the RUC is structurally skewed toward procedure-based specialties, there is 

expert concern that it undervalues cognitive specialties, overvalues technology-intensive 

specialties, and thus reimburses less for the health maintenance services that are shown to 

improve health and lower costs. Furthennore, most of the RUC meetings are closed to the public, 

individual voting records are not released, and transcripts of the meetings are never published. A 

body such as the RUC should make an effort to be transparent since CMS has historically 

adopted more than 90% of its recommendations.iii Nevertheless, the RUC has made positive 

strides in recent years. In 2012, the AMA added new primary care and geriatrics seats to the 

RUC and now requires that all vote totals be made publically available. Further work does need 

to continue in this direction. 

The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IP AB) will certainly aid in reducing some of the 

problems that currently exist in this system especially if (as designated in statute) there is a broad 

diversity of input on the IPAB and if there is important feedback and communication between 
707 

the RUe and other expert advisory bodies on payment. Particularly useful is the trigger of the 

IPAB after a certain point of Medicare cost growth. One concern for your consideration Senator, 

is the fact that under current and even projected Medicare growth, it is unlikely that the IPAB 

would be "triggered" into formation but it is worthwhile to consider how the IP AB might be 

modified in statute or in practice to do the work that is necessary to deal with the valuation of 

physician services. The purpose of the lPAB was never really to work in concert or in addition 

the Rue so there might need to be some modifications in order to derive the greatest benefit 

from the Board. 

; The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform. http://physicianpaymentcommission.org! 

;; RUC Members Effective April 28, 2013. American Medical Association. http://www.amaassn.org/resources/doc/rbrvs/ruc-members-current.pdf. Accessed 16 July 2013. 

m Laugesen MJ, Wada R, Chen EM. In setting doctors' Medicare fees, CM5 almost always accepts the Relative Value 

Update Panel's advice on work values. Health Affairs. 2012; 31(5):965-972. 
708 

Questions for the Record 

Kavita K. Patel MD, MS 

Senate Budget Committee 

Senator Tim Kaine 

Question: 

What refonns would each of you like to implement right now, in the short-tenn (1-10 years) and 

over the long-run (10+ years) to stabilize and reduce both Medicare and overall health care cost 

growth? 

Response from Dr. Patel: 

There are a number ofrefonns across the care continuum that show promise in curbing cost 

growth in both the Medicare program and overall health care expenditures. I will highlight 

several of them here, and for greater detail, I refer you to Table three in my written testimony 

(also included here). In the ambulatory and outpatient care setting, transitioning to new payment 

models that minimize fee-for-service reimbursement is essential. These innovative models would 

include paying doctors a case management fee for a set of services rendered in an episode of 

care-such as after-hours phone care for a breast cancer patient-and also a fixed care 

coordination payment that is built on concepts such as quality improvement and could qualify 

physicians to meet requirements for the Physician Quality Reporting System. This enables 

clinicians to focus less on volume and more on tighter coordination among providers and settings 

for patients. The Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model should also be modified and 

extended to allow ACOs to better manage patients with multiple chronic conditions, accept 

increased accountability and financial risk, and improve patient engagement. 

In the inpatient setting, similar opportunities exist: extending hospital readmissions penalties to 

include broader number of conditions; eliminating of site of service differential payments in 

Medicare so the same service provided in a physician's office and an ambulatory setting are 

reimbursed equally; and expanding bundled payments to include more conditions and more care 

settings. For post-acute care settings, there needs to be an expansion of payment bundles that 

include post-acute care services and payment refonns to the hospice system that include a valuebased payment to match the intensity of the services provided. For medical suppliers, refining 

and expanding competitive bidding for products beyond durable medical equipment also holds 

potential savings. Finally, administrative simplification would substantially reduce expenditures 

the health care system. This includes a shift to electronic transactions, implementing common 

tenns and approaches for insurance billing, and standardizing claims fonns and review 

processes. 
709 

To achieve longer-term reductions in spending growth, true reform in the physician payment 

system, away from fee-for-service compensation, must occur. In line with reports from the 

National Commission on Physician Payment Reformi, MEDPACii

, The Brookings Institutioniii, 

Simpson-Bowlesi

" and the Bipartisan Policy Center', my primary recommendation is to repeal 

Medicare's sustainable growth rate (SGR) and transition to payment models that reward high 

quality and high value care, and not high volume care. Though the cost of SGR repeal is not 

insignificant, this year is the best opportunity for Congress to make this transition. Elimination of 

the SGR and fee-for-service cannot happen overnight, and a five year transition period would 

allow CMS and private payers to transition to the care management fees, care coordination fees, 

and bundled payments that I previously mentioned. The care coordination fee being linked to 

quality outcomes would ensure continuous quality improvement over time. 

Another longer-term reduction opportunity is around the redesign of the Medicare benefit 

program to better care for chronic diseases and encourage the healthcare system to integrate 

services such as behavioral/mental health and end of life care as well as establishing a care plan 

at the onset of entry into Medicare. We know that if patients have information even from lay 

caregivers, that their ability to navigate the system as well as find providers who are high quality 

and also act as good financial stewards is absolutely possible, but there are aspects of the current 

Medicare program which make this model less achievable: 

• No direct benefit around conversations geared towards end of life preferences 

• Attribution model in accountable care organizations are limited 

• Care received outside cliniclhospital settings are not integrated into the fee schedule or 

most electronic records 

• Poor to little coordination with home health, spectrum of nursing homes, etc 

• The extent of behavioral health is largely relegated to carve-outs and care outside of 

primary care despite mental health parity and a great deal of behavioral health being 

treated or diagnosed in a primary care setting. 

I appreciate your question and the opportunity to speak with the Senate Budget Committee on 

curbing cost growth in our health care system. 
710 

TABLE 3: Summary of Savings Opportunities by Sector 

Sector Savings Opportunity Potential Economic Impact 

Ambulatory Payment models that minimize fee-for-service Repeal ofthe Sustainable Growth Rate 

Care care; (SGR) will cost approximately 139.1 

· Episodic payments for chronic conditions/case billion do llars 1 -

management fees 

· Care coordination fees that replace portions of 

FFS 

Extending the ACO Model Experts have projected possible savings 

· Financial benchmark calculation of up to 192 billion dollars from 2014-

· Enhance ACO ability to manage care for 2023' through replacement of physician 

chronic conditions fee cuts with an inflation-based 

· Allow ACOs to accept increased adjustment and increased financial 

accountability and financial risk risk/accountability. 

· Improved patient engagement to avoid 

"leakage" 

Inpatient Care Extension of hospital readmissions penalties for a While it is not clear exactly how much 

broader number of conditions money would be saved, it is clear that the 

current program has generated significant 

savings (280 million dollars in 2013 

alone), thus expansion would have a 

strong budgetary impact 

Elimination of site of service differential payments In 2011, Medicare and beneficiaries paid 

in Medicare for same services performed in 1.5 billion dollars more for E&M and 

hospital-based settings vs office-based settings. echocardiograms alone than they would 

have if payments had been equal across 

sites of care 4 

Expansion of bundled payments to include more Bundles will likely drive down unit costs 

conditions and involve more care settings of care (cost per bundle), however it is 

unclear if it will have a significant shift 

on the volume of overall care 

Post Acute Care Expansion of payment bundles for post-acute care Potential for an estimated 8.2 billion 

· Expand the number of post-acute care dollars in savings from 2014-2023' with 

organizations participating reforms in the post acute sector 

· Expand the episodes of care that are covered 

and length of episode 

Payment reforms within hospice MEDPAC estimates that such reforms 

1 Congressional Budget Office. The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023. February 2013. Page 

3l. 

, Lieberman SM.2013. Reforming Medicare through 'Version 2.0' of Accountable Care. Health Affairs: 32(7): 1258-

1264. 

'Ibid. 

, MedPAC. Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy. March 2013. Page 48-49 

5 Office of Management and Budget. The White House. Fiscal Year 2014 Budget of the U.S. Government. April 

2013. Page 38, 197. 
711 

· Encourage ACA authorized reform to replace would be budget neutral the first year 

per diem payment with a value-based payment 

to match intensity of services 

Supplies Refine and expand competitive bidding to other Pilot program in DME competitive 

types of equipment beyond durable medical bidding saved Medicare 202 million 

equipment (DME)' dollars in year one 7 

. July 2013 expansion expected to save 

Medicare Part B Trust Fund 25.7 

billion dollars' and Medicare 

beneficiaries 17.1 billion dollars in 

lower coinsurance and premiums 

payments' 

Administrative Administrative simplification W Institute of Medicine estimates savings of 

· Shift to electronic transactions J 8 J billion dollarsl! 

· Implement common terms and approaches for 

insurance billing 

· Standardize claims forms and review 

processes 

Prescription Modi/)' payment for physician-administered Savings of approximately 20 billion 

Drugs medications 12 dollars from 2014-2023" 

· Reduce payment from ASP+6 to ASP+ 3 

Encourage therapeutic substitution where Savings in 2008 alone would have been 

clinically appropriate 1.4 billion dollars" 

i Frist W, Schroeder S,et al. Report of The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform. The 

National Commission on Physician Payment Reform. http://physicianpaymentcommission.org{wpcontent{uploads{2013{03{physician payment report. pdf 

H Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. 

http://www.medpac.gov{documents{Mar12 EntireReport.pdf 

iii Antos J, Baicker K, McClellan M, et al. Bending the Curve: Person-Centered Health Care Reform. April 2013. 

http://www.brookings.edu{research{reports{2013{04{person-centered-health-care-reform 

6 Bipartisan Policy Center. A Bipartisan Rx for Patient-Centered Care and System-Wide Cost Containment. April 

2013. Pages 60-61. 

7 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Press Release: Contract suppliers selected under Medicare 

competitive bidding program. April 9, 2013. 

'Ibid. 

'Ibid. 

10 Institute of Medicine, The Healthcare Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes: Workshop Series 

Summary. http://www .iom.edu {Reports{20 11{~ {media{Files{widgetIVSRT {health care-waste .swf. Accessed July 

24,2013. 

"Ibid. 

12 Office of Management and Budget. The White House. Fiscal Year 2014 Budget of the U.S. Government. April 

2013. Page 41. 

"Ibid. 

14 Gellad W.F., Donohue J.M., Zhao X., Mor M.K., Thorpe C.T., Smith J., Good C.B., Fine M.J., Morden N.E. BrandName Prescription Drug Use Among Veterans Affairs and Medicare Part 0 Patients With Diabetes: A National 

Cohort Comparison. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2013. http://annals.org{article.aspx?articleid=1696030 
712 

;, Bowles E, Simpson A, et al. A Bipartisan Path Forward to Securing America's Future. Moment of Truth Project. 

April 2013. 

http://www.momentoftruthproject.org/sites/default/files/Fu11%20Plan%200f%20Securing%20America's%20Future 

J2Qf 

, Daschle T, Domenici P, Frist W, Rivlin A, et al. A Bipartisan Rx for Patient-Centered Care and System-Wide Cost 

Containment. Bipartisan Policy Center. April 2013 

http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/BPC%20Cost%20Containment%20Report.PDF 
713 

Senator King: 

Responses to Questions for the Record 

Joseph Antos, Ph.D. 

Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy 

American Enterprise Institute 

You raise several important issues with regard to Medicare, premium support, and seniors' ability to 

obtain affordable coverage. The premium support program discussed here is similar to proposals 

offered by Rep. Paul Ryan and others, but policy specifications may vary. 

First, how can we make it easier for seniors to choose from among their health plan choices? Under 

premium support, all beneficiaries would have a choice of traditional Medicare or private plans, and all 

plans would provide at least the standard Medicare benefits. Seniors have those options today, and 25 

percent of seniors choose a private plan under Medicare Advantage. We can and should do a better job 

of giving full information to seniors about their plan choices. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid 

Services (CMS) has a cumbersome website (medicare.gov) which helps seniors find available plans, but 

that site does not provide information about the cost of Medigap plans that many seniors purchase to 

fill in gaps in the standard benefit. Since the realistic choices for many seniors are either traditional 

Medicare plus Medigap or a Medicare Advantage plan, it is important to make them aware of the full 

cost of those alternatives as well as other features of the plans (such as extra benefits and the providers 

who participate in the plan's network). The CMS site also provides only limited information about 

access to low-income subSidies, including Medicaid. Making better information available on the web 

site, combined with providing access to personal assistance (such as that planned for the health 

insurance exchanges) would provide the assistance many seniors need. 

With better information, seniors are able to make good choices of plans. A recent study published in 

the American Economic Review (see http://www.aeaweb.org/articies.php?doi=10.1257/aer.l02.6.2639) 

shows that enrollees in Part D were able to save an average of nearly $300 in Part D by switching plans 

between their first and second years in the program. This demonstrates tha.t seniors can be smart 

shoppers if they have the information they need on their health plan alternaitves. 

Second, is there a safety net available to Medicare beneficiaries facing high health care costs? Currently, 

Medicare offers several levels of subsidies to low·income beneficiaries that can help pay for Medicare 

premiums and cost-sharing amounts (see http://www.medicare.gov!Your·medicare-costs/help-payingcosts/medicare-savings-program/medicare-savings-programs.html). Traditional Medicare does not 

provide coverage for catastrophic costs. However, a beneficiary enrolled in traditional Medicare may 

also be eligible for full Medicaid benefits or may be enrolled in a Medigap plan that provides 

catastrophic protection. Under premium support, the subsidy provided each beneficiary would be 

based on bids from the plans, with higher subsidies to individuals with lower incomes. As part of the 

reform, all plans (including traditional Medicare) would be required to provide catastrophic coverage. 

For beneficiaries who cannot pay for their share of the cost of services, a streamlined low-income 

subsidy program that better targets those in need would be available. 
714 

Third, is premium support plus a safety net low-income subsidy program double dipping? No. Properly 

designed, Medicare reform would target help to those most in need. The current program crudely 

redistributes the subsidy to favor the poor through the low-income subsidy and income-related 

premiums. A market-based reform would accomplish this goal more systematically. 

Fourth, how would premium support lower overall health spending without shifting costs to individuals? 

A well-designed Medicare reform centered on the principle of premium support would change the 

incentives driving up cost, not value. Traditional Medicare pays on a fee-for-service basis, which 

promotes greater use of services even when there is little or no need for them. Moreover, care 

delivered under traditional Medicare is uncoordinated, which wastes money and harms patients. By 

fixing the subsidy in a market to the second lowest bid (or some combination of low bids), plans will 

have an incentive to reduce unnecessary costs and improve care delivery. For example, under premium 

support, a plan might invest in non-traditional services that are not now covered by Medicare but that 

could save money and improve patient outcomes. It is true that beneficiaries choosing more expensive 

plans would pay the additional premium above the subsidy amount. Those plans will lose market share 

unless they are offering exceptional value that beneficiaries feel is worth the cost. Hence the 

competition is on the basis of both price and value. Moreover, there is an obvious limit to the ability of 

plans to "shift cost." Most Medicare beneficiaries live on fixed or slowly rising incomes, and many do 

not have the ability to substantially increase their incomes by taking a job. Health plans that raise their 

premiums excessively will quickly lose market share. Faced with a fixed per-person subsidy and a 

limited ability to increase premiums, the best strategy for health plans is to cut unnecessary costs and 

improve the patient's experience. 

Senator Kaine: 

You asked for reforms that can be implemented now, over the next decade, and over the longer term to 

stabilize and reduce the growth of Medicare and overall health spending. Sustainable reductions in 

health spending growth-including Medicare spending-require structural changes in our health 

financing and delivery systems to promote greater efficiency and smarter decision-making on the part of 

consumers, providers, and insurers. 

Changes should be made to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to make better use of taxpayer dollars and to 

avoid imposing permanent new requirements that drive up cost. Those changes include: 

Delay implementation of the exchanges until systems are available to properly determine 

individual eligibility for a subsidy (either through the exchanges or Medicaid). The recent oneyear delay in the employer mandate and associated reporting requirements combined with the 

announcement that the data "hub" will not be functional demonstrates the need for more time 

to implement the law. 

• Delay the individual mandate one year. This treats businesses and consumers equally and 

allows consumers more time to understand their insurance options without being rushed into a 

decision. 
715 

Revise the insurance regulations and mandate requirements to allow consumers more realistic 

choices and to ensure a stable insurance market. The essential benefits package coupled with 

the individual mandate is overly prescriptive and forces consumers to buy more coverage than 

they want. The medical loss ratio rule impedes the adoption of care management and 

coordination services that can save money and improve care. The employer mandate requires a 

level of information reporting that is unprecedented, requiring firms to spend money on 

administrative costs rather than on expanding.employment or increasing compensation for 

workers. 

Better target exchange subsidies to those who need the help. The current schedule provides 

subsidies to the middle class as well as the poor. A more modest upper income limit, such as 

250 percent of the federal poverty level, would be appropriate. 

Reforms of the Medicare program would slow federal spending and have sizeable spillover effects on 

private insurers, who often adopt policies that conform to Medicare rules. Reforms include: 

Restructure Medicare cost-sharing requirements to be more understandable and to foster 

greater cost awareness among beneficiaries. A single deductible and a simple copayment or 

coinsurance schedule should replace the current.complex set of requirements. 

• Restrict Medigap coverage as part of the cost-sharing reform. Limit both Medigap and retiree 

health plan coverage so that the beneficiary must pay the first several hundred dollars out of 

their own pockets. 

Develop new provider payment methods in traditional Medicare. The perverse incentives of 

fee-for-service payment can be reduced (but not eliminated) through bundled payment, pay for 

performance, competitive bidding for specific services, and partial capitation. 

Promote competition among plans in Medicare, including traditional Medicare, based on 

premium support or a defined contribution model. Full competitive bidding among health plans 

would give plans incentives to reduce unnecessary costs. Payment reforms that focus on 

specific services rather than all the care needed by a patient fail to recognize and promote 

synergy among health care providers that can reduce cost and improve quality. 

Make Medicare data on provider performance available to consumers and providers. 

Adopt the payment update recommendations made by the Medicare Payment Advisory 

Commission (MedPAC) in their March 2013 report, as well as their offset recommendations for 

a permanent physiCian payment fix. Proposals such as eliminating updates for one year 

produce short-term budget savings but do not address the underlying structural flaws of 

traditional Medicare. 

Promote greater coordination of ~ervices for dual eligibles, as recommended in MedPAC's 

March 2013 report. Special Needs Plans should be required to integrate Medicare and 

Medicaid benefits to meet the clinical needs of complex patients. 

Reduce payment differentials between the outpatient department and the physician's office. In 

addition to budget savings, this policy reduces beneficiary out-of-pocket spending and 

promotes the use of lower-cost delivery settings. 
716 

Reform the financing of Medicaid, principally by shifting from an uncapped matching grant to a defined 

contribution approach. Specific reforms include: 

Convert Medicaid to a block grant to the states with fixed per capita subsidies. This largely 

eliminates the use of tax and other schemes to increase federal payments with little or no cost 

to the state. 

• Create an all-inclusive waiver for states wishing to more fully control their own Medicaid 

programs, in exchange for a long-term block grant to control federal spending. 

Require states to develop premium assistance programs for Medicaid patients. Such programs 

give patients and their families greater involvement in care and care decisions. 

Other critical reforms address flaws in our tax subsidies for insurance and other system-wide problems. 

They include: 

Reform the tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance. Replace the "Cadillac tax" on high· 

cost health plans with a phased-in cap on the amount of employer and employee premium 

contributions that can be made on a tax-free basis. 

Raise the maximum amount that may be contributed to a health savings account. Greater use 

of high-deductible insurance coupled with an HSA increase consumer awareness of cost. 

Malpractice reform that goes beyond caps on awards. Creating an administrative system to 

hear patient complaints and adjudicate most cases before going to trial would reduce 

administrative costs, provide more equitable treatment for injured patients, and reduce the 

incentive of the current system to over-test, over-prescribe, and over-treat. 

Although there is much that federal policy can do to promote an efficient, effective, and affordable 

health care system, the private sector is the source of the changes that bring that result about. Health 

plans, providers, and other private sector innovators respond to market competition, consumer 

demand, and federal regulation to craft workable solutions. Federal policy should promote that 

innovation, not tie it up in bureaucratic red tape. 

I did not attempt to classify these proposals as immediate, near term, or long-term. Some of these 

reforms (such as reducing Medicare payment rates without making other changes) could be 

implemented immediately but do not change the forces driving health spending growth. Structural 

reforms would yield results over the long term, but they also require more time for development and 

implementation. Given the seriousness of our long-term fiscal problem, the country cannot afford 

lengthy delays before Congress takes up more ambitious proposals. 

Senator Sessions: 

You asked about the outlook for savings from the accountable care organization (ACO) program in light 

of the disappointing results in its first year. The program faced serious challenges from the outset, a 

consequence of a flawed model, excessive top-down controls, and a failure to appreciate how difficult it 

is to change the culture of medicine. 
717 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a controversial proposed rule on April 7, 

2011, which set out the parameters of the ACO program. Provider groups were critical of the rule, many 

of whose requirements remain today 

(http://www.americanbar.org/newsletter/publications/aba health esource home/aba health law es 

ource 1108 aco rawlings.html). The lack of an enrollment process means that ACOs are unable to 

identify and effectively manage the care of patients, who could continue to use any provider accepting 

Medicare whether or not they were part of the ACO. CMS would micromanage ACOs by requiring that 

they satisfy 65 quality measures. CMS also proposed to take their share of any savings off the top, 

rather than allowing savings to be shared on a "first dollar" basis. (That provision was later reversed.) 

As the CEO of Scripps Health observed, "Frankly, I was surprised. I thought there would be more carrots, 

not so much stick" (http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/impact-analysis/265335). 

CMS had written the rules to start up new business ventures without accepting its fair share of the risk. 

Even though some of those requirements were later modified, the fundamental problems of ACOs 

remain. They are stealth health plans that do not give patients the right to opt in or out. Neither the 

patient nor the provider is allowed to know in advance who they are dealing with, making it difficult for 

providers to be truly accountable. 

Problems have continued for the ACO program. CMS jumpstarted the program by naming 32 provider 

groups Pioneer ACOs, which began operation in 2012. On February 2S, 2013, 30 of the Pioneer ACOs 

sent a letter to CMS complaining that 19 of the 31 quality standards required by the Administration had 

insufficient data to support their use, raising questions about the plans further participation in the 

program (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/03/2013-QualityBenchmarks.pdf). In an unusual move, the plans threatened to leave the program if this problem was 

not resolved. CMS agreed to a compromise, averting the crisis. 

More bad news followed. On July 16, 2013, CMS announced results of the first year of Pioneer ACO 

operation (http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Press-Releases/2013-PressReleases-ltems/2013-07-16.htm). Only 13 ofthe Pioneers saved enough money to share those savings 

with Medicare, despite their experience as integrated health systems and additional investment in 

programs and staff to make the program work. Two Pioneer ACOs lost money, and owe the Medicare 

program $4 million. To avoid possible future losses, 9 of the 32 Pioneer ACOs will leave the program. 

Chas Roades, chief research officer at the Advisory Board Company, commented that savings are likely 

to be modest under ACOs (http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.orgl?p=20879). From the viewpoint ofthe 

hospital, ACOs are an attempt to preserve the Medicare fee-for-service system and the ACO model only 

applies to a portion oftheir Medicare patients. Roades noted that it is "really hard to run two disparate 

sets of books at the same time" with two different sets of financial incentives. 

Supporters of the ACO concept point to earlier integrated systems, such as Geisinger Health ~are in 

Pennsylvania and Intermountain Health Care in Utah, as evidence that ACOs can provide effective lowercost care. Unlike ACOs, those systems enroll their patients and are able to manage all of their care from 

day 1. Unlike ACOs, those systems are fully integrated with a shared culture of economy and excellence. 
718 

Unlike ACOs, those systems have had many years to develop their models and implement delivery 

system innovations that make those health plans what they are today. Such capacity cannot be built 

overnight, but that is what ACOs need to do to succeed. The odds are very much against that 

happening. 
719 

THE IMPACT OF POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY 

ON JOBS AND THE ECONOMY 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:36 p.m., in Room 

SD–608, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patty Murray, chairman of the committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Murray, Nelson, Whitehouse, Merkley, Baldwin, Kaine, Sessions, and Portman. 

Staff Present: Evan T. Schatz, Majority Staff Director; and Eric 

M. Ueland, Minority Staff Director. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MURRAY 

Chairman MURRAY. Good afternoon. This hearing will now come 

to order, and I want to start by thanking my Ranking Member, 

Senator Sessions, and all of our colleagues who will be joining us 

here today. 

I also want to welcome and thank our witnesses, Dr. Mark 

Zandi, who is the Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics; Dr. Chad 

Stone, he is the Chief Economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Dr. Allan Meltzer, Professor of Political Economy 

at Carnegie Mellon University. We are all very glad to have you 

here today to talk about the ways that uncertainty in Federal policy making, especially when it comes to our budget, has impacted 

job creation and economic growth. 

Five years ago this month, our country was in the middle of a 

growing financial crisis. Lehman Brothers had just filed for bankruptcy protection. Our economy was spiraling downwards, taking 

along hundreds of thousands of American jobs and financial security. In September 2008 alone, we lost 459,000 jobs across the 

country and, as we all remember, the losses grew from there. 

Over the last few years, thankfully, our economy has begun to 

rebuild. Many people are getting back to work. Crucial sectors of 

our economy are regaining some strength. And even though the 

long-term fiscal challenges remain, the short-term deficit picture 

has improved significantly and we are now on stronger footing. 

But, as we will discuss here today, the recovery is still fragile 

and not nearly as widely felt as it should be. Although hiring has 

picked up, far too many Americans are still looking or stuck in lowpaying jobs that offer little short-term or long-term economic security and even less opportunity to get ahead. New Census data 

shows that the middle 60 percent of American income earners actually have lost ground since the recession ended. Real income for 

this group declined 1.2 percent over the recovery, while the top five 

percent of earners gained five percent. So, even though we have 

come a long way, there is still a lot we need to do to ensure American families recover from the impact of the Great Recession and 
720 

to ensure strong middle class growth and economic security in the 

future. 

Families across the country are very focused on these issues. 

Here in Congress, we should be focusing on them, too. That is why 

what we have seen recently from a minority of extreme Republicans is really deeply disappointing and harmful. Again and again, 

some of the Tea Party Republicans have chosen gridlock over compromise, brinkmanship over solving problems, and partisan games 

over economic recovery. 

They held the economy hostage over the debt ceiling in 2011 in 

an effort to, as Speaker Boehner admitted, create enough chaos to 

force their ideological agenda through Congress. During that debate, job growth and consumer confidence tanked. The Dow 

dropped more than 2,000 points, and the debacle ultimately led to 

sequestration, which, while doing relatively little to improve our 

long-term fiscal condition, has imposed brutal cuts that slowed 

growth. It has weakened our national defense and it has slashed 

crucial programs that families and seniors and our future economic 

competitiveness depend on. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that ending sequestrating through the end of next fiscal year could add up to 1.6 million jobs. This is one of the many reasons that Democrats have 

been trying to start a bipartisan budget conference for the past six 

months now, since the Senate and the House passed their budgets. 

A bipartisan budget conference would have offered an opportunity 

for us to work together to replace the harmful automatic cuts with 

more responsible deficit reduction. But, rather than coming to the 

table, as we now know, some of the Tea Party Republicans have 

stood up and blocked these bipartisan negotiations between the 

House and the Senate each of the 18 times we have now asked to 

get them started, even though I know that many other Republicans 

agreed with us that we should at least sit down together and try 

to get a deal. 

Many of us on both sides of the aisle wanted to get to work before we were up against a deadline. We wanted to avoid the uncertainty and governing by crisis that Americans are rightly sick of. 

But just like in 2011, Tea Party Republicans thought they would 

have more leverage in a crisis, and so now, here we are today, days 

away from a possible government shutdown which could affect hundreds of thousands of workers’ jobs and disrupt basic services, from 

Social Security payments to small business loans, all because some 

Tea Party Republicans have decided once again to try to defend the 

Affordable Care Act, a law, by the way, that has already helped 

millions of Americans and is on track to help many more. 

If that is not enough, those same Republicans are, to quote 

Speaker Boehner, ‘‘trying to pick a whale of a fight over the debt 

ceiling,’’ even though economists warn that an unprecedented default on U.S. obligations could throw us back into a recession and 

devastate the global economy. The bottom line is that when we 

should be thinking about how to create jobs and how we can encourage growth, some Republicans are letting the Tea Party minority push us from one crisis to the next and their brinkmanship has 

very serious consequences for our country. 
721 

Uncertainty about government policies has increased in the last 

two years. In fact, the 2011 debate over raising the debt ceiling created even more uncertainty in the economy than the 2008 collapse 

of Lehman Brothers. Economists and experts have been very clear 

that we cannot afford more of this. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben 

Bernanke said last week that current Federal fiscal policy is, quote, 

‘‘an important restraint on growth.’’ The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which, by the way, does not often side with Democrats on 

fiscal issues, even sent a letter to the House urging them to end 

their campaign to defund health care reform, pass a continuing resolution to keep our government running, and raise the debt ceiling 

in a timely manner. 

Many Republicans are sending the same message to their party. 

Senator Burr has said repeatedly that trying to defund the Affordable Care Act in the continuing resolution is the dumbest idea he 

has ever heard. Senator McCain called Republican debt ceiling 

threats, quote, ‘‘shenanigans,’’ and we agree. 

We want to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government 

running and then let us get to work on a long- term budget deal 

that puts jobs and the economy first, that replaces sequestration 

fairly and responsibly, that does make smart reductions in Federal 

spending and asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to do their fair share, as well. 

We on our side continue to be ready to work with anyone who 

will come to the table, willing to make some tough choices. But as 

the President has made clear, we are not going to negotiate over 

the debt ceiling and we are not going to accept bizarre demands 

like defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act. All that would 

do is create more uncertainty for families across the country, and 

believe me, they have had enough. 

Americans have been fighting hard the last several years to get 

back on their feet, to rebuild their retirement savings, to find new 

jobs and restore their own financial security. The last thing they 

need right now is Republicans putting our economic growth, and 

with it Americans’ jobs and retirement and security, at risk. 

You know, it really should go without saying that instead of 

making it harder for families to find work or pay off their debts or 

send their kids to school, to do the kinds of things that we know 

strengthen our economy now and over the longer term, we should 

be doing everything here in Congress to encourage continued and 

stronger growth. 

So, I really hope that Speaker Boehner and the rest of his Republican leadership will stand up to the extremists on the Tea 

Party minority that just seem to be committed to crisis and stop 

the hostage taking, stop the political games that are really threatening our fragile economic recovery. And again, we extend the olive 

branch to sit down and work with us to find a bipartisan balanced 

budget deal and move this economy forward. And once we can do 

that, I am confident we can work towards that bipartisan deal that 

the American people expect. 

So, I am really looking forward to this discussion today. It is an 

important topic. We want to hear from our witnesses about what 

our priorities should be as we look at the needs of the economy and 

middle class families, and again, I want to thank all of our wit-
722 

nesses and our colleagues who are here today for this important 

discussion. 

With that, Senator Sessions, I will turn it over to you for an 

opening remark. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SESSIONS 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you. We do have a good panel, 

Madam Chair. I would note that getting along and trying to have 

a good positive agreement in the face of your opening remarks, 

which are capable of being written by David Axelrod during the 

height of a political campaign. 

We have got a lot of problems in this country and we need to be 

dealing with the fundamental problems in this country, and this recovery is not a recovery at all. It is a very, very weak recovery. 

Things are not going well with the American people. The growth 

every year falls below what CBO and what the Fed has projected 

that it would be. Why is this happening? 

I suggest it is too many taxes, too much regulation, too much 

Obamacare, and too much government. We need to have growth in 

the private sector, and debt itself is pulling down growth. I would 

just note, of the jobs that have been so touted this year, since January, 77 percent of those jobs were less than full-time, were not fulltime jobs. That is clearly a direct result of the Obamacare. And 

until we deal with these massive government programs and regulations, we are not going to get this economy growing in the right 

way. 

Well, we are here because we have not resolved the large, nagging policy differences that stand in the way of fiscal improvements. The state of middle- and lower-income Americans is worsening on every front. The slow growth of the economy, the slowest 

economic recovery since World War II, is restraining the normal 

upward movement and income that previous generations have experienced, even after recessions. If you do not have a job, you are 

twice as likely to only find part-time as full-time work, if you can 

find any work at all. Middle-class incomes have stagnated— actually, fallen—and that means that savings for college and retirement are at all-time lows. Even after the recession, in this recovery 

period, these numbers are still out there. 

Young people are not marrying as early as they want due to bad 

economic prospects. That means families are launching later in life, 

which gives couples fewer years to pay down their mortgage, create 

savings, and raise their children. Too many of our public schools 

waste taxpayers’ dollars while consistently failing the children of 

hard- working parents. 

Indeed, we are quietly downsizing the American dream. The new 

normal really refers to the increasingly modest dreams hard-working families allow themselves. It may be education after high 

school, it may be retirement, it may be a paid-up home and car 

when you stop working, but increasingly, not certain and perhaps 

even likely. 

The rapid growth of government debt has slowed the economy— 

is slowing it now—as has the mounting concern that Washington 

will ever bring its fiscal house in order. There is a concern we are 

never going to get it into order. The real uncertainty in the finan-
723 

cial markets deal with our capacity to address our short- and longterm fiscal and economic policy problems—solving them, not just 

passing a CR as if that is going to fix anything. 

Businesses have been slow to expand their operations, thus further weakening middle- and lower-income families. Fewer people 

are working than in 2007. Get this. Just before the recession hit 

in December of 2007, about 62.7 percent of the population age 16 

and above who were looking for a job were working. If that same 

percentage were working today, we would have 154 million jobs, 

but we do not. We have only 144 million jobs and only 58 percent 

of the population is working. I think that is the lowest since 1975. 

In short, we are missing 9.9 million jobs when we compare this 

economy to the one in 2007, so we need to ask some questions here. 

Here is another way to look at the problems in our job market. 

In 2007, we had 363,000 discouraged workers, people who had 

given up looking for work but had not yet disappeared from view 

by the Employment Security offices. Today, we have 866,000. That 

is an increase of 140 percent. 

Here is another barometer of the middle-class anxiety. We have 

1,988,000 fewer full-time jobs today than in 2007. We have 

3,627,000 more in the total job population on part- time work than 

we had in 2007—3.6 million. Our economy appears to be much better at producing part-time jobs than full-time, which is definitely 

worrisome. 

Resolving this jobs crisis for working families will take more 

than just passing a so-called continuing resolution or a new process 

for adjusting the debt ceiling— just borrow more, as some have 

suggested. We need a comprehensive review of our economic policies, and, I might add, even our welfare policies. Obviously, our 

economic policies are not working very well. Perhaps our welfare 

policies are exacerbating the trend, also. Tax more, borrow more, 

spend more, regulate more, more health care from the Federal Government side is not improving our situation. QE3 at the Fed—has 

it really produced growth that we normally see after the recession? 

It has not. Their projections have been continually off. 

So, let us take this period, this three-month period, to debate the 

spending priorities and set some much-needed reforms in motion 

that will actually deal with the problems of growth in America and 

job creation. What will work to create jobs? Tax more? Spend more? 

Borrow more? Regulate more? Is that going to create jobs? I suggest to you it will never create jobs. It is a guaranteed plan for failure. 

If we can come out of these debates with evidence that we have 

actually been fixing broken programs, confronting our rising debt, 

investors will thank us by infusing the private sector with new capital, and that is when working families might begin to see some 

economic light at the end of a very long tunnel. 

I was United States Attorney when President Reagan was President. The government was shut down in the early 1980s. It is still 

here today, I understand. They shut it down in the 1990s. I think 

there were two or three shutdowns when Reagan was President, 

some a little longer than others, some short, and we are still here. 

So, we do not need to be panicked about the difficulties that are 

facing us, the need to reach an accord between our parties that will 
724 

actually create policies that create growth and jobs, and we are not 

doing that now and the trends are not good. 

So, this is a good panel. I know we will have some disagreements—we already have—but we have got to work on these things. 

We have a difference of a view about, I think, how to make this 

country better, and maybe we can learn something today. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

With that, we are going to turn to our witnesses, and Dr. Zandi, 

we will begin with you. And again, thank you to all of you for being 

here today. 

STATEMENT OF MARK ZANDI, PH.D., CHIEF ECONOMIST, 

MOODY’S ANALYTICS 

Mr. ZANDI. Thank you, Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and other members of the committee, for the opportunity to 

be here today. I am an employee of the Moody’s Corporation, but 

the views I express today are my own, my own views. 

I would like to make three points in my oral remarks. The first 

one is that political uncertainty has been a significant weight on 

the economic recovery. Political uncertainty is generated by brinkmanship here in Washington over the budget, over the debt ceiling, 

over policy and regulation. All those things combined have weighed 

heavily on economic activity. 

I think that is most evident in terms of the decision making of 

businesses, most clearly in terms of hiring. I have a chart, see 

chart 1 of my written testimony. 

insert zandi chart 1 here.This shows the number of hires month 

by month back to 2001, when the data begins. This is data from 

the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And you will note that hiring collapsed during the recession, has made something of a comeback 

during the recovery, but remains very, very low by historical standards. Current hiring rates on a monthly basis are somewhere between four and four-and-a-half million. In a reasonably well functioning economy, it should be five to five-and-a-half million. You 

can see that if you go back to the previous recovery or the one before that. So, the political uncertainty, I think, is key to the lack 

of hiring, the unwillingness of businesses to take a risk. 

It is also evident in entrepreneurship, which is also critical to 

economic growth, short- and long-term, and you can see that in the 

next slide, which shows job gains at new establishments. And here, 

too, you can see the shortfall. It is quite significant. Of all the 

things that I worry about with regard to the economy—and I agree, 

the recovery has been very subpar—this is it. Entrepreneurship is 

key to our long-term economic growth. It is what makes our economy tick and why it is such a dynamic economy, the most dynamic 

economy on the planet. So, this picture has to change, and I think 

the reason it is so depressed is, in large part, due to the political 

uncertainty. 

Just to give you further context, based on some work I have 

done, since the uncertainty, political uncertainty rose significantly 

with the Stimulus Act in early 2009, it has shaved about $150 billion from real GDP, which translates into a little over a million 

jobs and has increased unemployment by seven-tenths of a percent-
725 

age point. So if political uncertainty had not risen to the degree 

that it has, the unemployment rate today would still be high, uncomfortably high, but at 6.6 percent—we are currently at 7.3, it 

would be at 6.6—that would make a meaningful difference to our 

economy’s performance. 

So, point number one is political uncertainty has been a very significant weight on economic activity during the recovery. 

The second point is that, at minimum, I think it is key during 

the current budget battle that policy makers come to terms in a 

timely way on funding the government—funding runs out at the 

end of this week—and raising the debt ceiling. Just to give you a 

sense of the impact here, if the government shuts down for several 

days, four or five days, no big deal. If it is a month, it will shave 

about a point and a half off of GDP growth in Q4, which means 

growth will come to a standstill in the fourth quarter. 

If it goes on for six or eight weeks, that means that debt limit 

is in play. We will probably breach it. In my view, breaching the 

debt limit would be cataclysmic. It would mean higher mortgage 

rates, higher borrowing costs for businesses, lower stock prices, 

lower house prices, a full- blown recession, and there would be no 

reasonable policy response to it. The Federal Reserve would not 

know how to respond, and, of course, by definition, fiscal policy 

makers would not be responding. It would be a very, very dark scenario. So, it is critical that you come to terms on this in a timely 

way. 

Finally, my third point is while I think it is entirely appropriate 

and desirable for you to address our long-term fiscal challenges, 

and they are quite significant and there is a lot of hard work to 

do on entitlement reform and tax reform, I would not add to the 

near-term fiscal austerity. Under current law, if policy makers do 

nothing, that is quite significant. We do not need to add to it. The 

economy is still quite fragile. 

Thank you for the opportunity, again. I appreciate it. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Zandi follows:] 
726 

Written Testimony of Mark Zandi 

Chief Economist and Co-Founder Moody's Analytics 

Before the Senate Budget Committee 

"The Impact of Political Uncertainty on Jobs and the Economy" 

September 24, 2013 

The U.S. economy remains frustratingly far from full employment. While there are 

many reasons for this, political brinkmanship around the federal budget and Treasury 

debt ceiling has been a significant contributing factor. Much progress has been made 

since the Great Recession, and the economy's prospects are improving, but this will 

continue only if policymakers can resolve their differences in a timely way. 

Harsh political vitriol, threats of shutting down the government, and the possibility of 

not fulfilling the government's financial obligations have weighed heavily on the 

collective psyche. This has significant economic consequences. Businesses are more 

reluctant to invest and hire, and entrepreneurs are less likely to attempt startups. Financial 

institutions are more circumspect about lending and households are more cautious about 

spending. While many factors are at work here, Washington's heated budget battles are a 

significant contributor. 

While the current budget battle will be difficult, it is generally expected that 

lawmakers will come to terms in time to avoid a government shutdown or a breach of the 

debt ceiling. They have shown an ability to come together at the last minute in other 

recent fiscal battles, including the showdowns over the debt ceiling in summer 2011 and 

the fiscal cliff earlier this year. 

As such, the budget battle should have little adverse effect on businesspeople, 

consumers or investors, provided it is resolved in time. But policymakers should not take 

solace in this. Ifthey botch it and the government shuts down or fails to meet all its 

obligations, investor and consumer psychology will be undermined, and the economy 

will suffer serious harm. 

To resolve the current budget impasse, policymakers should not add to the significant 

fiscal austerity already in place and set to last through mid-decade. Tax increases and 

government spending cuts over the past three years have put a substantial drag on 

economic growth. In 2013 the fiscal drag is as large as it has been since the defense 

drawdown after World War II. 

Page 1 
727 

Moreover, because of fiscal austerity and the economic recovery, the federal 

government's fiscal situation has improved markedly. The budget deficit this year will be 

less than half its size at the recession's deepest point in 2009. Under current law and 

using reasonable economic assumptions, the deficit will continue to narrow through middecade, causing the debt-to-GDP ratio to stabilize. 

As part of any budget deal, lawmakers should reverse the sequester. The second year 

of budget sequestration will likely have greater consequences than the first, affecting 

many government programs in ways that nearly all agree are not desirable. A sizable 

share of the sequestration cuts to date has been one-off adjustments, but future cuts will 

have to come from lasting reductions in operational budgets. 

It would, of course, also be desirable for lawmakers to address the nation's daunting 

long-term fiscal challenges. While the fiscal situation should be stable through the end of 

this decade, the long-term fiscal outlook remains disconcerting. If Congress does not 

make significant changes to the entitlement programs and tax code, rising healthcare 

costs and an aging population will swamp the budget in the 2020s and 2030s. 80th cuts 

in government spending and increases in tax revenues will be necessary to reasonably 

solve these long-term fiscal problems. 

A grand bargain with comprehensive entitlement and tax reform is likely too much to 

hope for, but lawmakers can do some things now to address our long-term fiscal issues 

and help resolve the current impasse. 

Revenue-neutral corporate tax reform that scales back tax expenditures in exchange 

for a lower top marginal corporate tax rate would also be a significant policy 

achievement. This would significantly improve the competitiveness of U.S. businesses 

and the economy's long-term growth. Much of the hard intellectual work necessary to 

accomplish this has been done, and there is general agreement among economists that 

this would provide a meaningful boost. As part of corporate tax reform, multinationals 

could be encouraged to repatriate their overseas profits with a temporarily lower tax rate. 

The resulting onetime boost to tax revenues could be used to finance infrastructure 

development here at home, also improving U.S. competitiveness and long-term growth. 

New budget rules that recognize the magnitude of our long-term problems and 

encourage solutions would be especially helpful. These could include incorporating 

fiscal-gap and generational accounting in the budget process, and significantly extending 

the current IO-year budget horizon to facilitate entitlement and tax reform. 

Congress should also use this opportunity to eliminate the statutory debt ceiling. It is 

an idiosyncratic, anachronistic and, as has been demonstrated, potentially destructive rule 

that is detrimental to sound economic policy. Absent repeal, an alternative would be to 

require debt-ceiling increases when spending, taxation and appropriations bills are 

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728 

passed. Doing so would restore the fundamental economic relationship between 

budgeting and borrowing, and reduce the risk that political brinkmanship could damage 

the full faith and credit of the United States or the stability of world financial markets. 

Political uncertainty 

The U.S. economy has made significant strides since the Great Recession, but the 

recovery has been lackluster and the economy remains far from full employment. Since 

the recovery began four years ago, real GDP growth has been stuck near a tepid 2% and 

unemployment is a still-high 7.3%, despite falling labor force participation. 

Behind the disappointing recovery is the reluctance of businesses to hire and invest. 

They have yet to experience the entrepreneurial "Field of Dreams" moment-"build it 

and they will come"-that sparks stronger economic growth in every recovery. In past 

recoveries, managers eventually realized they could not continue to increase profits by 

cutting costs; they needed to invest even in uncertain revenue opportunities. That has yet 

to happen in the current recovery. 

Businesses are not laying off workers-the layoff rate is at a record low and initial 

unemployment insurance claims are trending down-but they are not hiring many, either. 

Nationwide, about 4.4 million workers are being hired per month, about I million fewer 

than at the peak of the economic expansion a decade ago. 

Hiring is tepid in nearly every industry. In construction and manufacturing, hiring has 

picked up little since the Great Recession. The only substantive acceleration has occurred 

in energy, and to a lesser degree, healthcare. 

Firms have increased the number of posted job openings, almost back to prerecession 

levels. Yet companies are not filling these jobs (see Chart I). The ratio of job openings to 

hiring is about as high as it has been in the available data back to 2000. In some cases, 

open jobs go begging because businesses cannot find qualified workers. Yet firms also 

appear to have grown more picky, refusing to make an offer unless they believe they have 

a perfect candidate. 

Page 3 
729 

Chart 1: Businesss Are Reluctant to Hire 

% of labor force 

5.0 ,-------------------, 

3,0 

2,5 +---------- "·~,,---__::_x_,"F'-'-__l 

2,0 -Job openings rate 

1.5 1---t---I---+---+--+---t----ir---t--.J 

0. 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 

Sourl;elil: BLS JOLTS, "" oady's Allilytics 

Businesses are also shy about investing in physical capital. Spending on everything 

from computer equipment to R&D to warehouses has essentially not risen at all over the 

past year, and remains not much above its prerecession peak; excluding the energy sector, 

such spending has actually fallen. Real investment is up only because of declines in 

equipment prices, which largely reflect the impact of technological improvements. 

The tepid pace ofinvestment is surprising because businesses are as profitable as they 

have ever been. Corporate profit margins, measured as the ratio of after-tax profits to 

output, is at double the average level since World War II. Balance sheets are also sturdy, 

as businesses are flush with cash and debt loads are light. Credit for new investment is 

ample and cheap, with banks anxious to make commercial and industrial loans and bond 

investors lustily buying corporate debt. 

Excess capacity in some manufacturing industries and too much vacant office space is 

probably crimping investment a bit. But manufacturing capacity is lower today than 

before the recession and commercial construction as a share ofGDP is about as low as it 

has ever been. 

The shortfall in hiring and investment appears to stem partly from a drop in 

entrepreneurial activity. New establishments created close to 3 million jobs in 2012 (the 

latest data), not much more than during the recession. This compares with 3.6 million 

jobs in 2007, the year before the recession, and 5 million jobs in 1999 at the height ofthe 

technology boom (see Chart 2). 

Page 4 
730 

Chart 2: Where Are the Startups? 

Job gains at new establishments, ths. 4~qtr moving sum 

5,500 

5,000 

4,500 +---------'=..-----------1 

4,000 +-------" ---..'-"""------' 

3,500 

3,000 

2 ,50 a +-+-+-+-+-+-I---'I---'_--+--+--+-+-+-+--+-....;-J 

95 00 05 10 

Startups that can expand quickly~nce dubbed "gazelles"---such as Facebook and 

Twitter, are especially important to economic growth, sparking lots of job creation and 

investment. Indeed, while many analysts have called attention to the plight of small 

businesses in recent years, it is more precisely the scarcity of gazelles that has 

constrained growth. 

The falloff in entrepreneurship is difficult to explain. Theories abound: The pace of 

technological change has moderated since the burst of internet-powered innovation 

around the turn of the century. Fewer Americans are in their 30s, an age when people are 

most likely to start firms, and high student loan debt holds many ofthese people back. 

The high cost of health insurance encourages workers to stick with employers who 

provide coverage. The flow offoreign immigrants, who are by definition risk-takers, is 

down. 

All these factors likely have some impact. But also important is the nightmare ofthe 

Great Recession, which has been difficult to shake, particularly given a seemingly neverending series of uncertainties and unfortunate events. From the European debt crisis to 

financial regulation and healthcare reform to Washington's budget battles, there has been 

much to be nervous about. And the uncertainty continues: One-half of CEOs in the 

Business Roundtable's 3Ql3 CEO outlook survey "indicated that the ongoing 

disagreement in Washington over the 2014 budget and debt ceiling is having a negative 

impact on their plans for hiring additional employees over the next six months." Shaky 

nerves stifle the risk-taking and entrepreneurism that is key to stronger growth. 

What goes on in Washington is often a source of uncertainty, but according to the 

Moody's Analytics index, political uncertainty is currently very high.l It rose 

significantly during the heated debate over the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Page 5 
731 

Act-the $830 billion fiscal stimulus legislation-in early 2009, surged during the budget 

debate in early 201 0, and rose to a record high during the Treasury debt-ceiling 

showdown in the summer of2011 (see Chart 3). Uncertainty also increased as the fiscal 

cliff approached in late 2012, and it has been rising in recent weeks as angst over the 

current fiscal impasse mounts. 

Chart 3: Political Uncertainty Remains High 

Fiscal policy uncertainty index, 2007Q 4=<0 

250 ,-------------------, 

200 

150 +--------

100 ARRA 

50 

·50 +----I----;-----!----I----+----i-----' 

07 08 09 10 11 12 13 

Source' MOi;ldy'. A.n.lytic. 

Political uncertainty constrains business investment, especially on R&D, and reduces 

hiring and slows GOP growth. Based on a statistical analysis, the increase in political 

uncertainty since the recession hit in 2008 has reduced real GOP by close to $150 billion, 

lowered employment by 1.1 million jobs, and increased unemployment by 0.7 percentage 

point.2 Ifpolitical uncertainty had simply remained unchanged from its 2007 level, the 

unemployment rate today would be 6.6% instead ofits actual 7.3%.3 This is still 

uncomfortably high, but if not for the logjam in Washington the economy would now be 

much closer to full employment.4 

No government shutdown 

Congress' first order of business is appropriating funds for the fast-approaching 2014 

fiscal year. lflawmakers fail to act by October 1, the federal government will partially 

shut down. At a minimum, lawmakers must pass a continuing resolution to extend current 

spending authority, which expires at the end of this month. 

A shutdown that lasts only three or four days would have modest economic 

consequences, costing the economy approximately 0.2 percentage point of annualized 

real GOP growth in the fourth quarter.sA briefshutdown would have limited economic 

impact because it would affect only discretionary spending, the one-third of the budget 

Page 6 
732 

funded through congressional appropriations. Mandatory spending would not be affected. 

Some appropriated spending would also likely be considered essential and not cut, in 

such areas as national security, air traffic control, law enforcement, and the processing of 

benefit payments. Using the 1995 government shutdown as a guide, approximately half 

of all government employees would not be able to go to work. Moreover, most 

government spending would be delayed and not canceled in a brief shutdown. Federal 

employees would lose pay, but most other activity would be made up later. 

However, shutting the government down for three or four weeks would do significant 

economic damage, reducing real GDP by 1.4 percentage points in the fourth quarter. And 

this likely understates the economic fallout, as it does not fully account for the impact of 

such a lengthy shutdown on consumer, business and investor psychology. Any 

interruption much longer than a month would cause GDP to fall over the quarter, and one 

longer than two months would likely precipitate another recession. 

For context, the longest government shutdown on record, in late 1995 and early 1996, 

lasted about three weeks. The economy's growth slowed sharply as a result (see Chart 4). 

Chart 4: 1995·'96 Government Shutdown Hurt Growth 

Real GOP growth, % change yr ago 

4.5 .,----------------;---, 

4.0 

3.5 +-,r---------'\_ 

3.0 +---------\:--

2.5 +--- ----;.""--...... 

2.0 +--+--t-+--+--t-+---+--I---+--+-I---+-~ 

94 95 95 

Sourcn: seA, M 00(ly'5 An.lytics 

Raise the Treasury debt ceiling 

Lawmakers must increase the $16.7 trillion Treasury debt ceiling before mid-October. 

According to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, that is when the "extraordinary measures" the 

Treasury has been using since May to stay under the limit will no longer work.6 At that 

point, the government would be able to pay bills with only the cash it has on hand, about 

$50 billion on any given day. 

Page 7 
733 

It is impossible to know precisely when the Treasury will run out of ways to avoid the 

ceiling. The key uncertainty is revenues: Quarterly corporate income taxes were due 

September 16, giving the Treasury some leeway, but the Treasury must issue a large 

amount of nonmarketable debt to the entitlement-related trust funds on October I, 

reducing its flexibility. Timing will become clearer after that, but the Treasury will likely 

be out of options by the end of October, when a large interest payment on Treasury 

securities is due. 

Operationally, the Treasury might be able to prioritize interest payments on U.S. 

government securities, as those payments are handled by a different computer system 

than other government obligations. But practically that would be difficult; it would entail 

paying bond investors before Social Security recipients, for example. Prioritizing other 

payments would likely not be possible, as the Treasury might not be able to sort through 

the blizzard of payments due each month to decide which to pay. 

More likely, the Treasury would delay payments as officials suggested in a 2012 

inspector general's report. The Treasury could also wait until it received enough cash to 

pay a specific day's bills. Initially, the resulting delays would be short, but they would 

increase over time. For example, if the Treasury hit its borrowing authority on October 

18, payments to Medicare and Medicaid providers due that day would be delayed one 

business day, to October 21. But checks to be issued on November I for Social Security, 

veterans benefits, and active-duty military pay would not go out until November 13. 

It has become typical for Congress to run down the clock, but in the end it has never 

failed to come through. The motivation is clear: Any delay in raising the debt ceiling 

would have dire economic consequences. Consumer, business and investor confidence 

would be hit hard, putting stock, bond and other financial markets into turmoil. 

This was clearly evident in the near-debacle that occurred in summer 20 II, when 

lawmakers raised the debt ceiling at the very last minute. Brinkmanship nevertheless 

undermined consumer confidence, sent stock prices reeling, and caused credit default 

swap spreads on U.S. Treasury debt to widen sharply (see Chart 5). The bitter showdown 

led Standard & Poor's to cut its rating on Treasury debt from AAA to AA+. Although 

policymakers acted before the debt ceiling was reached, the fallout nearly caused the 

fragile economic recovery to stall. 

Page 8 
734 

Chart 5: Debt~Ceiling Debate Undermined Confidence 

CO!'lsumer confide!'lce index, Oct 2001=100 

120 

100 

Great 

90 Recession 

begins 

eo 

70 

Recovery 

60 Ac1 debacle 

50 

06 07 oe 09 10 11 12 13 

Sourc!!s: Rasmus6!!!" Public Opinion Research, Moody's Analytics 

Another such confrontation would also effectively shut the government, which would 

have authority to spend but would not have the cash to pay for it. The Treasury would 

have no choice but to eliminate its cash deficit, which will run as high as $130 billion in 

November. This is about 9% of GOP (annualized). The economy would quickly fall into 

another severe recession. 

Given the serious consequences of not raising the debt ceiling in a timely way, it is 

widely expected that Congress will do so. After several rounds of fiscal brinkmanship 

over the last few years, financial markets have become increasingly desensitized to the 

headlines coming out of Washington. However, lawmakers should not become 

complacent, thinking that breaching the debt limit is somehow all right. It is not. There 

will be a violent reaction in financial markets ifpolicymakers fail to act in time. 

No additional near-term fiscal austerity 

In any agreement to increase the debt ceiling or extend funding for the federal 

government, lawmakers should avoid adding to the fiscal austerity in place through middecade. Congress has been appropriately focused on reducing the government's large 

budget deficits, but recent tax increases and government spending cuts have put a 

significant constraint on growth. Under current law, fiscal headwinds will continue to 

blow hard in 2014 and 2015. It would be wise not to add to those headwinds, and allow 

the private economy to gather momentum. 

While the U.S. economy has begun its fifth year of recovery from the debilitating 

Great Recession, it remains fragile. Growth has been modest, with real GOP expanding 

close to 2% per year since the recovery began, and payrolls are still nearly 2 million jobs 

Page 9 
735 

shy of their prerecession peak. The nation's 7.3% unemployment rate remains well above 

most estimates of full employment, which is closer to 5.5%. And this understates the 

stress in the job market given the large number of potential workers who have left the 

labor force because of a lack of perceived job opportunities. 

The private economy has made significant strides since the recession. American 

companies have strong balance sheets with low debt and lots of cash, and they have done 

an excellent job reducing their costs. By most measures, they are highly competitive. The 

financial system is much better capitalized and liquid, and increasingly willing and able 

to extend credit. Households have also significantly reduced their debt loads, which are 

now about as low as they have ever been. Higher house prices and stock values are also 

supporting households' better financial condition. 

But the strengthening private economy is not evident in the nation's overall 

performance because of fiscal austerity. In calendar year 2013, the drag on the economy 

from federal tax increases and spending cuts will amount to \.5 percentage points of real 

GDP growth. That is, if fiscal policy were simply neutral with respect to the economy, 

real GDP growth this year would be closer to a strong 3.5% (2 percentage points in actual 

real GDP growth plus 1.5 percentage points from the elimination of the fiscal drag). The 

fiscal drag will reach its apex in the current quarter, and over the year is greater than in 

any other year since the defense drawdown that followed World War II (see Chart 6).7 

Chart 6: Fiscal Headwinds Are Blowing Hard 

Real GOP growth impact offederal fiscal policy, fiscal yr, ppt 

3.5 .--------------::---.,-,---, 

3.0 

2.5 

2.0 

1.5 +--1------.-..... 

1.0 

0.5 

0.0 

~O,5 

~1.0 

-1.5 +.---.--- .2.0 .1-_________________ -' 

60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 00 05 10 

SctlHCI! f,!aody'sAnalytles 

The federal government's improved fiscal situation also provides lawmakers with 

some leeway. Tax revenues are rising at a double-digit pace and government spending is 

falling. The budget deficit for fiscal 2013 is set to come in well below $700 billion. 

Page 10 
736 

This is still large, but it is half of what it was at its peak in fiscal 2009. Under current 

law and assuming the economic recovery stays intact. the deficit will continue to narrow 

through mid-decade. The nation's debt-to-GDP ratio, while uncomfortably high at more 

than 70%, will stabilize. 

Given the still-fragile economic recovery, the austerity already in place, and a better 

near-term federal budget situation, policymakers should not add to the fiscal burden on 

the economy through mid-decade. This will help the private economy kick into higher 

gear, hasten a self-sustaining economic expansion, and promote a quicker return to full 

employment. 

Replace the sequester 

Policymakers should replace the cuts scheduled for the coming year as part of the 

sequester with other budget savings. 

The impact ofthe current year's sequester, which began in March, is becoming more 

visible in the economic data. Hiring freezes announced early this year appear to have 

accelerated the decline in federal government employment. There has been an even larger 

impact on hours worked and personal income. Federal furloughs caused government 

wages and salaries to decline by half a percent in August alone. Cuts in procurement 

spending are also reducing support for private sector jobs, particularly among defense 

contractors, although the impact of the sequester on private employment is occurring 

gradually, with a significant lag. 

A second year of sequestration will have greater consequences for the economy. The 

cuts will be larger and will start immediately, rather than beginning six months into the 

fiscal year as occurred this year. Because of lags between budgeting and actual spending, 

and between federal spending and its impact on thejob market. the fallout from this year's 

cuts will carry over into 2014. A sizable share of the fiscal 2013 sequestration cuts was 

also made through one-off adjustments such as temporary furloughs or zeroing-out 

unobligated funds that were authorized but not spent. With this low-hanging fruit now 

gone, future cuts will have to come more from reductions in operational budgets. Given 

the indiscriminate nature of sequestration, this will be especially disruptive to government 

programs. 

Continuing the sequester would have particular implications for the Pentagon. While 

in fiscal 20 13 sequestration cuts were divided evenly between security spending--on 

defense, homeland security and international affairs--and non-security spending, in 2014 

and beyond the split will be between defense and nondefense, requiring that a greater 

share of cuts comes from the Pentagon's budget. The Defense Department also paid for a 

Page 11 
737 

substantial portion of its 2013 cuts by eliminating unobligated balances and, without that 

cushion this year, will be forced to make deeper cuts from payrolls and operations. The 

potential for an escalation in military operations in Syria could increase the overseas 

contingency operations budget, which is not exempt. 

Enact budget reforms 

The statutory debt ceiling is an anachronistic law that ifnot repealed should be 

refonned so that it can no longer lead to a voluntary default on U.S. government 

obligations. Fiscal-gap and intergenerational accounting should also be adopted in the 

budget process. 

Using the threat of a default on U.s. government obligations as a tool in fiscal policy 

negotiations has meaningful economic costs. Short of a repeal of the debt ceiling, 

policymakers should consider strengthening the link between borrowing, tax and 

spending policy, by requiring "ability to pay" language in any legislation that adds to 

future deficits. Ability to pay is defined as sufficient projected tax revenue and borrowing 

authority to cover the current Congressional Budget Office deficit forecast. This 

requirement would be applied to all direct spending, taxation and annual appropriations 

bills. Any discrepancies that result from changes in the CBO forecast could be reconciled 

in the annual budget process. 

The debt ceiling would still force lawmakers to think about the long-tenn fiscal 

impact of any legislation, but it would do so in the context of the spending and taxation 

bills that create the need for that debt. This proposal makes use of current CBO budget 

projections and scoring practices, and thus should cause no new compliance costs. 

Policymakers should also adopt the INFORM Act, which would require the CBO and 

General Accounting Office to adopt fiscal-gap and generational accounting. 8 This 

provides a more accurate calculation ofthe nation's long-tenn fiscal obligations and thus 

would create the basis for sounder budgeting and fiscal decision-making. 

The fiscal gap describes the difference between the present value of projected 

government expenditures, including interest and principal payments on outstanding 

federal debt, and taxes and other receipts, including income accruing from the 

government's ownership of financial assets. Generational accounting measures the burden 

of closing the fiscal gap on today's and tomorrow's children, assuming they must do so on 

their own and that the burden on each generation is proportional to its labor earnings. 

Page 12 
738 

Fiscal-gap and generational accounting are comprehensive and forward-looking, and 

determine the sustainability of fiscal policy and the burden of that policy on future 

generations. Fiscal-gap accounting has already been adopted by the Social Security 

Trustees and Medicare Trustees and is becoming more widely used in other countries. 

Pass corporate tax reform 

To break the budget impasse, policymakers should consider adopting revenue-neutral 

corporate tax reform. Reform that resulted in a lower marginal corporate tax rate would 

also help the competitiveness of U.S. companies and thus support stronger long-term 

economic growth. 

Corporate tax reform, which involves reducing or eliminating tax expenditures in the 

corporate tax code and using the resulting additional revenues to reduce marginal rates 

for businesses, would also be a positive economic step. U.S. marginal corporate tax rates 

are high by international standards, even after accounting for exemptions, deductions and 

credits that result in lower effective tax rates. All the loopholes also make the tax code 

complex and inefficient. Permanently lowering marginal corporate tax rates would 

improve the competitiveness of U.S. companies and thus long-term economic growth. 

As part of corporate tax reform, multinational corporations would be encouraged to 

repatriate their sizable overseas profits through a temporarily lower tax rate. This would 

give a onetime boost to tax revenues that could be used to finance needed infrastructure 

development in the U.S. This too would help the competitiveness of U.S. companies and 

thus long-term economic growth. 

Conclusions 

Washington's recent budget battles have been painful to watch and harmful to the 

economy. Political brinkmanship creates significant uncertainty and anxiety among 

consumers, businesses and investors, weighing on their willingness to spend, hire and 

invest. 

Despite this, the economic recovery is four years old and counting, and the private 

economy has made enormous strides in righting the wrongs that triggered the Great 

Recession. Business balance sheets are about as strong as they have ever been, the 

Page 13 
739 

banking system is well-capitalized, and households have significantly reduced their debt 

loads. The private economy is on the verge of stronger growth, more jobs and lower 

unemployment. 

The key missing ingredient is Congress' willingness to fund the government after the 

end of this fiscal year and to raise the Treasury debt ceiling. Ifpolicymakers can find a 

way to do these things in a timely way, almost regardless of how ungainly the process is, 

then the still-fragile recovery will quickly evolve into a sturdy self-sustaining economic 

expansion. 

We are close to finally breaking free from the black hole ofthe Great Recession. All 

it will take is for Washington to come together over the next few weeks. 

Page 14 
740 

I The Moody's Analytics political uncertainty index is based on the credit default swap-implied 

expected default frequency for five-year Treasury bonds, the present value of future expiring tax 

provisions, and the share of businesses that cite legal and regulatory issues as their biggest 

problem in the Moody's Analytics weekly business survey. The index is set equal to 0 in 2007, 

the year before the recession. The higher the index, the greater the uncertainty. Other measures of 

uncertainty, such as the Baker-Bloom policy uncertainty index, have a similar historical pattern. 

This index is available at http://www.policyuncertainty.com/ 

2 These results are based on a structural vector autoregressive model of the U.S. economy. The 

model is used to estimate the extent to which surprise changes in political uncertainty produce 

changes in GDP, unemployment, the hiring rate, investment, jobs, and several other economic 

variables. 

3 The impact on unemployment is smaller than that found by Leduc and Liu. They concluded that 

without increased policy uncertainty, the unemployment rate would be 1.3 percentage points 

lower today. See Leduc, S. and Liu, Z., "Uncertainty and the Slow Labor Market." Federal 

Reserve Board o/San Francisco Economic Letter, July 22, 2013. http://www.frbsf.orgleconomicresearch/publications! economic-letter120 13/jul y/us-Iabor -market-uncertainty -sl ow-recovery/ 

4 It is difficult to statistically distinguish between political uncertainty and policy uncertainty. 

Political uncertainty pertains to the uncertainty created by the political brinkmanship and 

dysfunction in government. Policy uncertainty pertains to the uncertainty created by potential 

changes in government spending, tax and regulatory policy. The 2011 showdown over the 

Treasury debt limit was especially hard on the economy as it created a great deal of political 

uncertainty, but also involved large changes to spending and tax policy. The current government 

funding and debt limit debates may have less of an economic impact, as it appears to involve 

more political than policy uncertainty. Despite current legislative efforts to defund Obamacare, 

such a defunding seems very unlikely to happen, and no other major policy changes are being 

debated, at least so far. Also mitigating the economic impact of the current debate is that 

businesspeople, consumers and investors appear to be increasingly desensitized to the political 

vitriol with each budget battle. 

S A thorough analysis of the causes, processes and effects of federal government shutdowns, 

including potential issues for Congress, can be found in "Shutdown of the Federal Government: 

Causes, Processes and Effect." Congressional Research Service Report/or Congress. August 6, 

2013. http://www.fas.orglsgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf 

6 Secretary Lew's letter to Congress can be found at 

http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/documentsl082613%20debt%201imit%201etter%20to%20con 

gress.pdf) 

7 lffiscal austerity measures had not been implemented since early 2011, making federal fiscal 

policy neutral with respect to the economy, then real GDP would be nearly $300 billion greater, 

there would be almost 2 million more jobs, and the unemployment rate would be more than a 

percentage point lower. This is based on a simulation of the Moody's Analytics structural model 

of the U.S. economy. The simulation assumes that monetary policy would not have changed; that 

is, the Federal Reserve would have engaged in the same amount of quantitative easing despite the 

stronger economy. 

8 The INFORM Act is described in detail at http://www.theinformact.orglcontentltext-bill 

Page 15 
741 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. STONE. 

STATEMENT OF CHAD STONE, PH.D., CHIEF ECONOMIST, 

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 

Mr. STONE. Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and 

other members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to 

testify today on the effect of political uncertainty on jobs and the 

economy. 

Businesses and households, of course, deal with uncertainty of all 

kinds all the time in a dynamic market economy, and politics ain’t 

beanbag, so we should not be surprised that people fight hard for 

their preferred policies. But political gridlock over economic and 

budget policy, combined with brinkmanship over must-pass legislation, has hurt economic performance and job creation. Unfortunately, things seem to be getting worse rather than better as we 

face yet another threat to the economic recovery generated purely 

by politics and not by economic events, per se. 

I make two overarching points in my written testimony. First, 

make no mistake, while a government shutdown would be disruptive to the economy, a debt ceiling crisis that ends up with a failure 

of the Federal Government to honor financial obligations that it 

has already incurred, whether to bond holders, government contractors, veterans, or a host of other businesses and households, 

could be disastrous. Evidence from the 2011 debt ceiling crisis suggests that debt ceiling brinkmanship is costly, even if a last-minute 

deal is struck. 

Second, resolving budget issues to avoid a government shutdown 

or debt default is only half the battle. The specific measures taken 

matter just as much. In particular, a budget deal that hurts economic growth and job creation in the short run, increases poverty 

or hardship, or savagely cuts important government programs 

should not be acceptable. 

Moreover, a stop-gap deal, or one that both sides are not committed to seeing enforced, merely postpones the next showdown. In 

2011, hard decisions to address the challenge of achieving longerterm fiscal stabilization were assigned to a special committee. Sequestration was supposedly so unpalatable to both sides that it 

would guarantee an agreement. But, here we are, with sequestration, a possible government shutdown, and a debt ceiling crisis. 

There is a broader lesson here. Commissions or super committees 

and budget rules cannot force unwilling policy makers to make 

choices they see as unpalatable or to bridge fundamental policy differences that leave little room for compromise. We are a long way 

from the 1990s, when a strong economy and policy makers’ willingness to stick to realistic discretionary caps and pay-go produced a 

balanced budget and a declining debt. 

In my written testimony, I discuss the broad recognition among 

economists—broad, not universal but broad—that the main factor 

holding back the economic recovery is weak aggregate demand. If 

businesses were more confident of future sales and households 

were more confident that they could expect to see their incomes 

growing along with the economy and that finding or changing jobs 

would be easier, we would see faster economic growth and job cre-
742 

ation. But we are stuck in a low-demand trap where economic 

growth is too slow and unemployment remains too high. 

The economy has generated plenty of uncertainty on its own in 

recent years, but policy squabbles over how fast to implement needed long-term deficit reduction without harming the economic recovery and over the appropriate mix between spending restraint and 

revenue increases has exacerbated the situation. Businesses, 

households, and financial markets had to deal with uncertainty 

over policy decisions in the run-up to critical fiscal decisions in 

each of the past several years—2010, 2011, the big one, the 2012 

fiscal cliff—but the greatest uncertainty surrounded the showdown 

over raising the debt limit in 2011 and how that would be resolved. 

Evidence suggests that businesses, households, and financial 

markets experience heightened uncertainty during such times and 

that greater uncertainty acts as anti- stimulus, weakening aggregate demand. Failure to resolve the underlying issues or implementing policies that themselves restrain aggregate demand continues the uncertainty and the drag on the recovery. 

But resolving the budget crisis with policies that have the same 

impact or worse is no solution. Sequestration is the poster child of 

misguided fiscal restraint. But, overall, the pursuit of fiscal austerity policies at the expense of policies aimed at stimulating immediate increases in economic activity and job creation in a weak 

economy has held back the recovery. 

The International Monetary Fund gets it right when they say, 

′′deficit reduction in 2013 has been excessively rapid and ill designed. Sequestration exerts a heavy toll on growth. And indiscriminate reductions in education, science, and infrastructure 

spending could also reduce medium-term potential growth. These 

cuts should be replaced with a back-loaded mix of entitlement savings and new revenues along the lines of the administration’s budget proposal. A slower pace of deficit reduction would help the recovery at a time when monetary policy has limited room to support 

it further.′′ That is the IMF in its latest reassessment of fiscal policy in advanced economies and its mission to the United States, its 

consultation with United States policy makers. 

My final words, raise, r-a-I-s-e, the debt ceiling, and do it soon 

and cleanly. As I say in my testimony, do it like the Danes and 

raise it so high that it is no longer a bone of political contention. 

They are the only other country that has anything like our debt 

ceiling, and they make sure politics does not get involved. 

Better yet, raze, r-a-z-e, the debt ceiling by getting rid of it entirely. It has nothing to do with the normal budget process, and the 

ratio of cost to benefits associated with having a debt ceiling is almost infinite. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stone follows:] 
743 

Centeron 

Budget 

and Policy 

Priori 

Testimony of Chad Stone 

'i2l) hr,,[ ::>t'l'd .... L, "UH~' SlU 

\\ <t ... hingtoll, DC 20002 

I d; 202~'~W~~ IOHO 

Fa;-.;: 20)~~OH-to.'l6 

Chief Economist, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 

Before the Senate Committee on Finance 

September 24, 2013 

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and other members of the Commitree. Thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today on the effect of political uncertainty on jobs and the economy. 

Businesses and households of course deal with uncertainty of all kinds all the time. That's the nature 

of a dynamic market economy. And politics ain't beanbag. So we shouldn't be surprised that 

people fight hard for their preferred policies. But political gridlock over economic and budget 

policy combined with brinksmanship over must-pass legislation has hurt economic performance and 

job creation as the economic recovery continues to struggle to gain ttaction more than four years 

after the formal end of the recession in June 2009. 

Unfortunately, things seem to be getting worse rather than better as we face yet another threat to the 

economic recovery generated purely by politics and not by economic events per se. I want to make 

two overarching points in my testimony. 

First, make no mistake: while a government shutdown would be disruptive to the economy, 

a failure of the federal government to honor financial obligations that it has already 

incurred-whether to bondholders, government conttactors, or veterans-would be 

disastrous. Evidence from the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis suggests that debt-ceiling 

brinksmanship is cosdy even if a last-minute deal is struck. 

Second, resolving budget issues to avoid a government shutdown or debt default is only half 

the ballie. The specific measures taken matter just as much. Moreover, a stopgap deal or 

one that both sides are not committed to seeing enforced merely postpones the next 

showdown. That's what happened in 2011. Hard decisions to address the challenge of 

achieving longer-term fiscal stabilization were assigned to a special committee and a budget 

enforcement mechanism was put in place that was supposedly so unpalatable to both sides 

that it would guarantee an agreement. But here we are with sequestration, a possible 

government shutdown, and a debt-ceiling crisis. 

There's a broader lesson here. Commissions (or super committees) and budget rules don't work 

without policymakers who are committed to the goal of fiscal stabilization and willing to make 

compromises in the interest of avoiding serious harm to the economy and in the interest of sound 
744 

budgeting. Discretionary caps and PA YGO rules helped policymakers adhere to the 1990 and 1993 

budget agreements, which together with a strong economy led to budget surpluses and declining 

debt by the end of the 1990s. But budget rules and deficit-control measures cannot force unwilling 

policymakers to make choices they see as unpalatable or bridge fundamental policy differences that 

leave little room for compromise. 

The problem is even more difficult in a weak economy where larger deficits are appropriate in the 

short-term to support an economic recovery, but policymakers must also demonstrate a 

commitroentto longer-term deficit reduction. 

The Effect of Uncertainty and Budget Restraint In a Weak Economy 

The legacy of the gut-wrenching financial crisis of 2008 and the confidence-sapping "escent into the 

Great Recession is an economy that is still operating well-below its full potential to supply goods 

and services. Employment is well below what it woUld be in a normal job market, due to a 

combination of high official unemployment and low labor force participation. 

Besides the 11.3 million people officially counted as unemployed, there are many people who want a 

job and would likely find one in a stronger job market but remain sidelined until job prospects 

improve. Many among the employed would like to be working full-time but have only been able to 

find part-time work. Altogether about 22 million people are unemployed or underemployed. 

It is widely, although I'll admit not universally, accepted among economists that the major factor 

holding back economic growth and job creation is weak overall demand for goods and services. 

Businesses have the capacity to hire more people and produce more but they are held back from 

doing so by weak sales. At the same time, high unemployment and slow-to-nonexistent growth in 

wages and income hold down household spending, especially if households are rebuilding their 

balance sheets after earlier financial losses. Something needs to happen to get the economy out of 

this self-reinforcing low-demand trap. 

Fiscal stimulus is one way to do that. It is generally, although once again not universally, accepted 

among economists that changes in taxes and government spending have a larger effect on economic 

activity and employment when there is substantial economic slack (an "output gap" between what is 

actually being produced and what could be produced with normal levels of demand and 

employment). That effect is even stronger when the use of traditional monetary policy is 

constrained by very low interest rates (the so called "zero lower bound"). That's certainly the 

conclusion of a recent International Monetary Fund reassessment of fiscal policy after the crisis: 

While debate continues, the evidence seems stronger than before the crisis that fiscal policy 

can, under today's special circumstances, have powerful effects on the economy in the short 

run. In particular, there is even stronger evidence than before that fiscal multipliers are larger 

when monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest 

rates, the financial sector is weak, or the economy is in a slump. A number of studies have also 

questioned the earlier evidence of negative fiscal multipliers associated with expansionary 

fiscal contractions.' 

I IMF Policy Paper, "R ... ssessing the Role and Modalities of Fiscal Policy in Advanced Economies," International 

Monetary Fund, September 2013. htt:p;liwww.imf.org/extcr1lal/np/~013/072II3.pdf 

2 
745 

In other words, what the IMF is saying in its restrained and technocratic way is that under the 

conditions prevailing in the United States in recent years, the idea that cutting government spending 

in hopes of stimulating economic activity---5o called "expansionary austerity" -is invalid. Cutting 

spending in a weak economy reduces output and employment--and the effects are powerful. 

Conversely, as the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out in its assessments of the effect of 

the Economic Recovery Act on output and employment, each dollar spent in a weak economy on 

government purchases of goods and services or transfer payments to low-and moderate-income 

individuals through programs like unemployment insurance and SNAP - payments they are likely 

to spend rapidly - can generate well over a dollar of additional economic activity, creating jobs and 

lowering unemployment.' 

CBO reports a range of estimates of the impact of the Recovery Act. The IMP analysis suggests the 

effect was at the high end of those estimates. According to CBO, at its peak impact in 2010, ARRA 

boosted real (in£lation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 4.1 percent above 

what it otherwise would have been and created as many as 4.7 million additional full-time-equivalent 

jobs. 

The economy has generated plenty of uncertainty on its own in recent years, but policy squabbles 

over how fast to implement needed long-term deficit reduction without harming the economic 

recovery and the appropriate mix between spending restraint and revenue increases has exacerbated 

the situation. Businesses, households, and financial markets had to deal with uncertainty over policy 

decisions in the run-up to critical decisions about expiring tax cuts and stimulus measures like 

emergency unemployment insurance at the end of 2010, 2011, and the big one, the 2012 "fiscal 

cliff." The greatest uncertainty surrounded how the showdown over raising the debt limit in 2011 

would be resolved. 

Evidence suggests that businesses, households, and financial markets experience heightened 

uncertainty during such times and that that greater uncertainty acts as "anti-stimulus," weakening 

aggregate demand. Failure to resolve the underlying issues or implementing policies that themselves 

restrain aggregate demand continues the uncertainty and the drag on the recovery. 

A 2012 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco' finds evidence, for example, that 

... uncertainty harms economic activity, with effects similar to a decline in aggregate demand. 

The private sector responds to rising uncertainty by cutting back spending, leading to a rise in 

unemployment and reductions in both output and inflation. We also show that monetary 

policymakers typically try to mitigate uncertainty's adverse effects the same way they respond 

to a fall in aggregate demand, by lowering nominal short-term interest rates. 

2 Congressional Budget 0 flice, "Estimated Impact of the Amen= Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment 

and Economic Output from October 2012 Through December 2012," Table 2, CBO, February 2013. 

'Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu, "Uncertainty, Unemployment, and Inllation," Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco 

Economic Letter 2012-28, September 17,2012. hnp:/Iwww.frbsf.oq,/economic-rese-.w:h/publicallOns/economi<> 

letter 12012/scptember/uncertainty-unemployment ~lOt1arion/ 

3 
746 

The study concludes, however, that in the recent recession and recovery, 

... nominal interest rates have been near zero and couldn't be lowered further. Consequently, 

uncertainty has reduced economic activity more than in previous recessions. Higher 

uncertainty is estimated to have lifted the U.S. unemployment rate by at least one percentage 

point since early 2008. 

In short, when the economy is weak and interest rates are very low, heightened uncertainty reduces 

demand for goods and services and the Fed is less able to provide an offsetting boost. The resulting 

net reduction in private spending leads to less job creation and higher unemployment. 

Deficit-reduction policies have a similar effect. With respect to sequestration, for example, the 

Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that if the automatic spending reductions in effect in 

2013 were cancelled in August and none of the reductions scheduled for 2014 were implemented, 

real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) would be 0.7 percent higher in the third 

quarter of 2014 (the end of fiscal year 2014) and there would be about 900,000 more jobs than the 

levels CBO was projecting with sequestration in place. 

Those are CBO's central estimates; CBO provides a range for the estimated impacts. If the evidence 

that fiscal multipliers are particularly high under current conditions is correct, those gains from 

eliminating sequestration are toward the high end of CBO's range: 1.2 percent higher GDP and 1.6 

million more jobs. 

The remainder of my testimony focuses on the importance of removing the debt ceiling as a source 

of brinksmanship and policy uncertainty, principles for achieving a sound budget deal, and a brief 

note on why the individual mandate is a critical piece of the Affordable Care Act and not something 

that can be bargained away in return for an increase in the debt ceiling. 

Raze the Debt Ceiling 

Congress should not be using the debt limit as a political football. In fact, the Uttited States should 

not even have a debt limit. 

The 2011 debt-limit showdown was not pretty, and even though a default was averted, the economy 

and the budget did not escape unharmed. As Urban Institute Fellow Donald Marron, a former 

acting CBO director and a member of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, 

testified last week before the Joint Economic Committee, "brinksmanship does not come free." 

First, through accident or miscalculation, games of chicken can sometimes end in a crash, and the 

costs to the Uttited States of actually defaulting on its financial obligations could be very high. 

Default means the Treasury says to someone, or as Marron says perhaps millions of someones, 

"Softy you aren't getting paid." There's no way to decide who gets paid in a way that does not 

damage the economy. If prolonged, a situation in which the Treasury is required to match payments 

to available cash would have an economic effect like sequestration plus the fiscal cliff on steroids 

and would likely plunge the economy back into recession. The difference berween default and a 

government shutdown, sequestration, or the fiscal cliff is that even if the debt limit were 

subsequen tly raised, the damage to U.S. credit rating could not be reversed. 

4 
747 

Second, the mere risk of default is likely to raise Treasury borrowing costs while a debt-ceiling 

showdown plays out. Marron cites the 2012 report by the Government Accountability Office 

(GAO), estimating that delays in raising the debt limit in 2011 raised fiscal year 2011 Treasury 

borrowing costs by $1.3 billion4 and the report by the Bipartisan Policy Center estimating that those 

costs would total $18.9 billion over the full maturity of the securities issued.5 

Third, the 2011 debt-ceiling showdown produced a marked spike in various measures of uncertainty 

and a marked decline in consumer confidence. The chart below, for example shows the Index of 

Economic Policy Uncertainty developed by economists Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven 

J. Davis.6 The spike associated with the debt ceiling crisis is substantially larger than those 

associated with the fiscal cliff or the Lehman bankruptcy and the financial stabilization legislation 

(TARP). 

Figure 1: Index of Economic Policy Uncertainty 

(Jan 1\165- Mar 2013) 

a 

oN Biack 

Monda, 

Debt 

Ongoing 

Banking 

Cnsls 

Election 

In light of the evidence linking increases in uncertainty to the economy, it is reasonable to infer 

some economic harm. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bill McNabb, Chairman and CEO of the 

4 GAO, "Debt Limit: Analysis of2011·2012 Actions Taken and Effect of Delayed Increase on Borrowing Costs," 

Government Accountability Office,July 2012. J)lW~ j~{2iL}2,p11i 

5 Bipartisan Policy Center, "Debt Limit ,\nalysis," September 2013. 

file:,., Deb!", 2{)J 

, Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, Davis, "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty, May 19, 2013. 

5 
748 

Vanguard Group, reports that economists there estimate that the spike in policy uncertainty 

surrounding the debt-ceiling debate cost the economy $112 billion in lost output and likely many 

hundreds of thousands of jobs in the ensuing two years. 7 Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin 

Wolfers also point to evidence that employers probably held back on hiring.s While the U.S. and 

European debt crises are paired in the chart, Stevenson and Wolfers observe that the real trouble in 

Europe came after consumer confidence and employment in the U.S. were recovering. 

Finally, the 2011 crisis damaged the United States' financial reputation. As Marron points out, 

"Debating intentional default contributes to the perception that the United States does not know 

how to govern itself." Stevenson and Wolfers point out that "The sense that the U.S. political 

system could no longer credibly commit to paying its debts led the credit-rating company Standard 

& Poor's to remove the U.S. government from its list of risk-free borrowers with gold-standard 

AAA ratings." 

We at CBPP think this time looks even worse.9 Congress on occasion in recent decades has attached 

both fiscal and non-fiscal items to debt limit legislation. But, on those occasions, the parties in 

question generally agreed that defaulting on the debt was not the desired outcome if they didn't get 

their way. They sought to attach their proposals to what they probably regarded as must-pass 

legislation - sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they failed - and Congress then raised the 

debt limit to avoid a default. 

The same thing could ultimately happen this year. But, increasingly, this year's unfolding drama 

seems fundamentally different. The tactic of threatening to withhold votes on raising the debt limit 

unless the legislation includes a delay or repeal of health reform isn't just about trying to attach 

favored legislative items to a bill that's certain to pass anyway; it's about holding the debt limit bill 

hostage and actually defaulting unless Congress adds policy changes that otherwise cannot be 

enacted on their own. 

Nor should policymakers fool themselves into thinking that directing the Treasury to pay 

bondholders and Social Security recipients first if there's a prolonged standoff over raising the debt 

ceiling is not simply default by another name.10 This "debt prioritization" is extremely dangerous, 

and is probably not even be feasible, as Mark Zandi has testified at this hearing. By appearing to 

make defaulting on the debt legitimate and manageable, it would heighten the risk that a default will 

actually occur. 

In reality, debt prioritization would make things worse for the millions of people and businesses 

who count on timely federal payments. Protecting bondholders and Social Security beneficiaries 

7 Bill McNabb, "Uncertainty Is the Enemy of Recovery:' Wall Street Joumal, April 28, 2013. 

h!!p:ffonline.wsl comianjclefSBIQ()Q14241278873237827l!4578443431277882520.html 

• Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, "Debt Ceiling Deja vu Could Smk the &onomy, Bloomberg.com, May 28, 2012 

h!!p:lfwww.bloomberg.cominews/2012·Q5·28idcbt·~·skia·vu;<:ould.sinkeconomy.html 

'Robert Greenstein, "Don't Be Fooled: This Year's Debt Limit Fight Is Frighteningly Different, Center on Budget and 

Policy Priorities, September 20, 2013. http://www.offthechartsb\qg.org/dont·be·fooled-dus·ycars.dcbt·limitfightis. 

fug!lreningly·differentl 

to PauL N. Van de Water, "'Debt-Prioritization' Is Simply Default By .\nother Name," Center on Budget and Policy 

Priorities, September 19, 2013. http://www.offthechartsblog,org/skbtpriontizarion-is-simply ·default ·by another· 

na=L 

6 
749 

would leave even less cash on hand to pay veterans, doctors and hospitals who treat Medicare 

patients, soldiers, state and local governments, private contractors, and recipients of unemployment 

insurance, SNAP, and Supplemental Security Income. 

The Treasury makes roughly 80 million separate payments each month, so deciding which bills to 

pay would be extremely difficult. And, domestic and foreign lenders would hardly be reassured at 

the sight of a cash-strapped superpower picking which bills it could afford to pay. 

One rating agency explicidy warned in January that honoring interest and principal payments but 

delaying payment on other obligations would trigger a review and hence a possible downgrade. The 

Eronomist called failing to raise the debt limit - or attempting to prioritize payments - an 

"instrument of mass financial destruction." 

We should never get to the point of default - or even ronsidergetting to it. We should not legitimize 

the idea of a default. We should consider the possibility beyond the pale. The potential costs to the 

economy, to U.S. and global markets, and to America's standing in the world are simply too great. 

Ideally, policymakers would abolish the debt limit, eliminating all risk that the government won't pay 

its bills on time. To my knowledge, only one other developed country, Denmark, has a statutory 

debt limit anything like ours. Both have put a dollar limit on how much debt the government can 

issue. There's a crucial difference, however, between our debt limit and Denmark's: the Danes do 

not play politics with theirs, as Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International 

Economics explains:1l 

The Danish fixed nominal debt limit -legislatively outside the annual budget process - was 

created solely in response to an administrative reorganization among the institutions of 

government in Denmark and the requirements of the Danish Constitution. It was never 

intended to play any role in day-to-day politics. 

When the financial crisis caused a shatp increase in government debt in 2008-2009, the Danes raised 

their debt ceiling - a lot. The 2010 increase doubled the existing ceiling, which was already well 

above the actual debt, to nearly three times the debt at the time. As Kirkegaard reports, "The explicit 

intent of this move - supported incidentally by all the major parties in the Danish parliament - was 

to ensure that the Danish debt ceiling remained far in excess of outstanding debt and would never 

playa role in day-to-day politics." 

The Constitution gives Congress power over federal borrowing, which it has exercised for decades 

through the statutory limit on federal debt. But the government is also legally bound to honor its 

financial obligations. Holding the debt limit hostage risks provoking a governance crisis in which 

the President is forced to choose between breaking the law by ignoring the debt ceiling or breaking 

the law by not paying government obligations in a timely manner. In terms of economic damage, 

the former is by far the better choice. 

\I Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, "Can a Debt Ceiling Be Sensible? The Case of Demnark II, Peterson Institute for 

International Economics, July 28, 2011. hnp-l!www.piie.cQm/bIQgs/n;a!time/?P .. 2292 

7 
750 

A Bad Deal to Avoid Default Would Hurt the Economy 

The last debt-ceiling crisis produced an outcome nobody was supposed to want-sequestrationbecause of political gridlock over a long-term solution. CBPP has developed four criteria for 

evaluating any deal that emerges as we head toward zero hour for authorizing government spending 

for fiscal year 2014 and raising the debt ceiling, or as part oflater negotiations after any temporary 

stopgap measures:" 

1) Does it strengthen or weaken the economic recovery? 

The Federal Reserve's monetary-policy-making committee decided last week that the economic 

recovery is not solid enough to start phasing down any of the measures it's been using to stimulate 

economic activity. One factor influencing the Fed's decision was surely a\concem with the damage 

to the recovery that a government shutdown, or worse, a debt default would cause. 

That damage would come on top of the drag on economic growth from fiscal tightening at the 

federal and state and local levels that's been underway since the stimulus from the 2009 Recovery 

Act peaked in 2010, including sequestration. 

An ideal budget plan would replace sequestration with sizeable deficit-reduction measures that take 

effect gradually as the economy and labor market strengthen as well as temporary, up-front 

measures to boost job creation now. Such a policy would both strengthen the economy in the short 

term and produce more tora! deficit reduction and a better long-run debt trajectory than 

sequestration beyond the first decade. 

Such a solution is fully consistent with the IMF analysis cited earlier13 of what we have learned about 

fiscal policy in the wake of the financial crisis: 

The design of fiscal adjustment programs, and particularly the merit of frondoading, has 

returned to the forefront of the policy debate. Given the nonlinear costs of excessive 

frondoading or delay, countries that are not under market pressure can proceed with fiscal 

adjustment at a moderate pace and within a medium-term adjustment plan to enhance 

credibility. Frondoading is more justifiable in countries under market pressure, though even 

these countries face "speed limits" that govern the desirable pace of adjustment. The proper 

mix of expenditure and revenue measures is likely to vary, depending on the initial ratio of 

government spending to GDP, and must take into account equity considerations. 

The United States is not under market pressure and hence has no need to pursue short-term deficit 

reduction aggressively. In fact, given the IMF's assessment of fiscal multipliers in a weak economy 

with very low interest rates and inflation, such a policy would be counterproductive. Issues of equity 

and the proper mix of expenditure and revenue measures deserve careful evaluation. 

12 Sharon Parrott, Richard Kogan, and Robert Greenstein, "Averting a Budget Crisis Is Not Enough: Criteria for 

Evaluaring Budget Proposals," September 10,2013. htt;p:llwww.clmP.or,g/cms/indcx.cfm'fa-view&id -4Q1O 

13 IMF, "Reassessing the Role of Fiscal Poll btt;p:llwwwimf.or,g/external/np/pp/eng/2013/072113.pdf 

8 
751 

The IMF was very pointed about this following its latest annual consultation mission with U.S. 

policymakers: 

On the fiscal front, the deficit reduction in 2013 has been excessively rapid and illdesigned. In particular, the automatic spending cuts ("sequester") not only exert a heavy toll 

on growth in the short term, but the indiscriminate reductions in education, science, and 

infrastructure spending could also reduce medium-term potential growth. These cuts should 

be replaced with a back-loaded mix of entidement savings and new revenues, along the lines 

of the Administration's budget proposal. At the same time, the expiration of the payroll tax 

cut and the increase in high-end marginal tax rates also imply some further drag on economic 

activity. A slower pace of deficit reduction would help the recovery at a time when monetary 

policy has limited room to support it further." 

2) Does it protect low-income Americans and avoid increasing poverty and hardship? 

In deficit-reduction efforts in 1990, 1993 and 1997, leaders of both parties embraced the principle 

that any deal should not increase poverty or impose additional hardship on low-income 

Americans. Fiscal commission co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles embraced the same 

principle in their plan. 

Last week's Census Bureau report on income, poverty, and health insurance suggests that any 

upcoming budget deal should adhere to the same principle. As CBPP President Roben Greenstein 

noted, "the new Census figures demonstrate that the painfully slow and uneven economic recovery 

has yet to produce significant gains for Americans in the bottom and middle of the economic scale." 

3) Does it adequately fund public services? 

Yielding to Republicans' demands for more large immediate spending cuts would not only threaten 

the recovery but also savage important government services. The House-passed budget resolution 

of this spring would set overall discretionary (non-entidement) funding at the post-sequestration 

level but shift tens of billions of dollars from non-defense programs to defense. That would require 

programs in the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education be cut 18.6 

percent below their 2013 post-sequestration levels. 

Discretionary funding would shrink even without such large cuts. The cuts required under the 

Budget Control Act that President Obama and Congress enacted after their last debt-ceiling 

showdown would, by 2017, reduce non-defense discretionary spending - even without 

sequestration - to its lowest level on record as a percent of GDP, with data going back to 1962. 

4) Does it strike a reasonable balance between spending and revenues and between 

defense and non-defense? 

Deficit-reduction efforts since 2010 have tilted heavily toward spending cuts. Excluding 

sequestration, roughly 70 percent of the policy savings have come from program cuts and 30 percent 

from revenue increases. If sequestration continues, the ratio will move closer to 80-20. Revenues 

14 International Monetary Fund, "Concluding Statement of the 2013 Article N Mission to The United States of 

America," IMF,june 14,2013. hnp:llwww.imf.org/externaJ/op/ms/2013/0614I3.htm 

9 
752 

should account for a larger portion of future policy savings if we are to avoid savage cuts to 

important government services, anti-poverty programs and key entitlement benefits - and, thus to 

avoid exacerbating inequality and consttaining opportunity. 

Policymakers designed sequesttation to pressure both parties to reach a budget deal by requiting that 

cuts come half from defense and half from non-defense programs, thus giving'both conservatives 

and liberals a reason to replace sequesttation with a more thoughtful approach. Efforts to shield 

defense and put all of the burden on non-defense would reduce conservative incentives to 

compromise. 

To repeat, resolving budget issues to avoid a government shutdown or debt default is only half the 

battle. The specific meaSures taken matter just as much. . 

A Note on Why the Individual Mandate Is An Essential Feature of the Affordable Care Act 

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health reform legislation want to see it repealed or 

crippled, and their ardent desire to see it used as a bargaining chip in the debt-ceiling debate 

introduces a major element of uncertainty. It is important to recognize, however, that the individual 

mandate requiring everyone to acquire health insurance as long as it's affordable is critically 

important for enabling health reform to achieve its goals of increasing coverage and controlling 

costs. It is much more significant than responsibilities placed on businesses to offer health 

insurance. 

As my CBPP colleague Edwin Park explains,15 starting in 2014 the ACA prohibits insurers from 

denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging sick people higher premiums. 

Without the individual mandate, those reforms would encourage older, sicker people to buy 

insurance but would give younger, healthier people an incentive not to do so until they became sick. 

Premiums would rise as the pool of insured people became older, sicker, and smaller. As Park 

reports: 

Specifically, a one-year delay of the individual mandate would raise the number of uninsured 

Americans by about 11 mi/lion in 2014, relative to current law, and would reduce the expected 

coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by nearly 85 percent, according to a new 

[Congressional Budget Office] estimate. Delaying the individual mandate also would raise 

premiums for health insurance purchased in the individual market in 2014, CBO finds. 

Proponents of delaying the individual mandate draw a false analogy between it and the Obama 

administtation's delay in implementing the law's employer responsibility requirement for a year. As 

my CBPP colleague Judy Solomon has pointed out, ,. the vast majority of large employers - the only 

companies that are subject to the requirement to offer coverage and the related penalty if they don't 

- already offer health coverage and are unlikely to stop. Moreover, as Solomon says: 

15 Edwin Park, ''Delaymg the Individual Mandate Would Result in Millions More Uninsured and Higher Premiums," 

Center 00 Budget and Policy Priorities, September 12, 2013, !l,-tp:LLIDli1¥..&bpp.&rgi£l1l§j!ml~,·!;...fintfu:~II<iQ=±!l!l 

16 Judy Solomon, "Delay Won't Keep People from Obtaining Health Coverage," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 

Off the Charts blog, July 3, 2013. http' IIWWW.Qffthechartsbl~ org/delay'wom·kec:p·peopldrom Qbtaining'health: 

~ 

10 
753 

What's key is that the delay won't affect a core component of health reform: in 2014, workers 

who do not get coverage through their jobs will be able to get good coverage in the new 

marketplaces, with subsidies available to those with low and moderate incomes. 

11 
754 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Dr. MELTZER. 

STATEMENT OF ALLAN H. MELTZER, PH.D., CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 

TEPPER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS 

Mr. MELTZER. Thank you, Madam Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, Senators. I am pleased once again to respond to questions from 

the Senate committee about the reasons for the slow recovery. 

The facts about the slow recovery are not in doubt, so I will not 

dwell on them. We understand them. You both spoke about them. 

We see unemployment is high. Poverty remains higher. Failed efforts to lower the spread between upper incomes and lower incomes 

have done the reverse. Policy has really not achieved the nice 

things that people would like it to achieve. Forecasts have been 

overly optimistic. Deficit projections become more pessimistic. The 

debt-to-GDP ratio in the long term, according to CBO, reaches 200 

percent. Long before that happens, we will be in crisis. 

Why so much stimulus and so little recovery? Well, there are lots 

of reasons. The Fed pumps out money, but the problems are mainly 

non-monetary. My colleagues have talked about uncertainty, and I 

certainly agree with them that uncertainty is a problem. Uncertainty about the deficit and the debt ceiling are problems. They are 

a problem. They are not, in my opinion, the problem. The problem 

is the longer-term position of how the United States gets back on 

the growth path, which has been left since the Reagan and Clinton 

years to produce growth, jobs, standards of living, incomes, and all 

that. 

There are two overriding problems. One is unsustainable budget 

deficits, especially underfunded entitlements. You all know about 

that. 

Second are the demands for higher tax rates, and decisions to increase regulation raise current and expected future costs and 

heighten uncertainty. Uncertainty is the enemy of investment, and 

that is the main reason, in my opinion, why the long-term growth 

rate is down. 

There is no valid economic theory, no theory of any kind, that advises short-term stimulus to consumer spending. John Maynard 

Keynes is usually invoked. He always favored investment. He 

never favored consumption. You could read his work, as I have 

done, from beginning to end. You will not find him in favor of consumption spending. He favored investment, investment spending. 

Keynes’ idea of stimulus is the Kennedy-Johnson permanent tax 

cuts or the Reagan tax cuts. While he favored deficit spending to 

finance investments in recessions, he actively opposed permanent 

deficits, and I have a quotation in my paper that I will not read. 

In summary, there is no valid basis in economics for the policies 

we have followed and they have not ended the recession in almost 

five years, not surprisingly, and most forecasts that I have seen 

call for subpar growth in the next few years. We can do better. We 

should do better. And if we are going to achieve the America that 

we want, we have to do better. 

In searching through past recessions, there is only one with slow 

investment and sluggish growth of employment similar to the one. 
755 

That is 1938 to 1940. You can see Table 6 in the paper in my testimony. What President Roosevelt did is similar to what President 

Obama has done. He called the businessmen economic royalists. He 

tried to pack the Supreme Court. He passed an excess profits tax. 

He ginned up the Antitrust Division to go after businessmen. He 

got Congress to establish the Temporary National Economic Commission, which was very anti-business. He did a whole lot of things. 

He did them until the war. He was a populist until the war. When 

the war came, the businessmen that he was so despising of, he appointed Knudsen of General Motors to be his economic czar. Populism ended. The war was his triumph. 

That is what we need to do now. We need to adopt policies which 

look at the long-term objective of getting the economy back on a 

stable growth path. 

Let me read to you, not from econometric analysis but from what 

real businessmen say. Professors Porter and Rivken of the Harvard 

Business School asked 10,000 Harvard Business School alumni—as 

you know, they run many of the major corporations—about their 

decisions to locate plants. The respondents cited a couple as problems—the U.S. tax code, an ineffective political system, a weak 

public education system, poor macroeconomic policies, convoluted 

regulation, deteriorating infrastructure, and a lack of skilled 

labor—as reasons for not investing in the United States. Most of 

the decisions were to move investment out of the United States. 

That tells us something, I think, which is critical. 

Here is one example, one of many, many examples of regulation 

which hurts our economy. Before Sarbanes-Oxley, half of the 

world’s new issues for corporations were made in the U.S. market, 

namely, New York. After Sarbanes-Oxley, one in 12 instead of one 

in two. Brokers in London have the pictures of Senator Sarbanes 

and Congressman Oxley in their office. That tells you something 

about what regulation is doing to us. We are over-regulated. You 

may think that there are good things or bad things about the regulation. One can differ about that. But regulation at the present 

time and high tax rates impede growth and recovery. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Meltzer follows:] 
756 

Why the Recovery is Slow: What Should Be Done? 

By Allan H. Meltzer 

The Allan H. Meltzer University Professor, 

Carnegie Mellon University and 

Distinguished Visiting Fellow, the Hoover Institution 

Senate Budget Committee 

September 24, 2013 
757 

Sept. 2013 

Mr. Chainnan, Mr. Ranking Member, Members: I appreciate the opportunity to respond 

to the questions, Why Is the Recovery Slow; What Would Speed Recovery? 

In the fifth year of recovery from a serious recession, the unemployment rate remains 

distressingly high at 7.3 percent. Much of the decline from the peak is at least as discouraging as 

the many discouraged workers who have left the labor force. An unusually large part ofthe slow 

job increase is for part-time work, not pennanent employment. Despite the administration's 

expressed concern for the widening spread is the distribution of income, the spread has widened. 

And the recently released data on poverty shows that 46.5 million people are impoverished, 15 

percent of the population. In sum, a miserable set of failed policies. 

Private forecasts remain more optimistic than outcomes. Less optimistic, indeed 

downright pessimistic, are forecasts for government budget deficits and debt. The latest CBO 

estimate show budget deficits rising from 3.3 percent in 2023 to over 6 percent in 2035 and 

higher still in later years. Government debt reaches 100 percent ofGDP in 2038 and 200 percent 

in 2075. Long before these numbers are reached, we will be in crisis. Unsustainable policies 

end that way. 

, believe current and recent policies bear most of the blame for slow recovery. The 

administration and the Federal Reserve rely too heavily on short-tenn palliatives that have little 

long-tenn benefit for the economy. The Fed's major error is refusal to recognize that our 

problems are not monetary. The Fed's past actions assure that there is no shortage of money or 

liquidity; banks hold $2 trillion of excess reserves, so they can make loans to any qualified 

borrower at the lowest interest rates in our history, if only more would borrow. 

Much of the Fed's stimulus helped banks rebuild their capital and repay the loans that 

helped many banks survive. Now large banks pay dividends and bonuses from the earnings the 

Fed's interest rate policies allow them to earn. The effect on unemployment is modest at best. 

2 
758 

We need stable, pro-growth policies, not more of the same. Our economic problems are mainly 

real, not monetary. The Federal Reserve's huge expansion has had only a small effect. 

Some console themselves by forecasting improved recovery. Maybe, but users should 

know that forecasters have been consistently too optimistic. This recovery has remained 

persistently weaker than forecast. 

It is not unusual for forecasts to be wrong. Economics is not the science that gives high 

quality quarterly forecasts with low errors. There is no such science. 

But a string of persistent errors always overestimating the rate of recovery calls for an 

explanation. I believe the principal explanation is the mistaken, often perverse government 

policies that discourage investment and employment. We saw this outcome once before. The 

administration is repeating the error last seen in 1938-1940. 

Good policy is based on the best validated theory representing the accumulated 

professional knowledge. At the start ofthe Obama presidency, his chief adviser said that policy 

actions should be "timely, targeted, and temporary." That is a strange mixture that lacks any 

analytic foundation. Modem economic theory teaches us to make penn anent, not temporary, 

changes and to encourage not discourage investment incentives. What analytic basis do we have 

for the administration's targeted actions? None. Do we know how to manipulate relative 

responses to increase the size of the response? 1 believe not. 

We have two overriding problems. First, unsustainable structural budget deficits, 

especially unfunded spending for entitlements creates uncertainty that clouds the future. Second, 

greatly increased regulation of business also heightens uncertainty and raises current and future 

costs. 

Uncertainty is the enemy of investment. Uncertainty about future tax rates, spending, and 

regulation is the main reason that investment is low and that much investment goes to robotics, 

programs and other labor-saving investments. 

John Maynard Keynes is frequently cited as the intellectual father of short-tenn policies 

to restore growth by increasing government spending to stimulate private consumption. The 

2009 stimulus implemented that policy by offering sizeable temporary tax reduction to middle 

income taxpayers and temporary payments to state and local governments. (As recipients of 

social security, my wife and I received checks.) 

3 
759 

To write my book on Keynes's work, I read most of his books and papers. Keynes 

believed that the 19th century problem of raising living standards was too little saving. The 20th 

century problem, he said, was too little investment, in part a result of uncertainty. In his General 

Theory. he gave an economist's explanation. 

No one who has read Keynes's work carefully can find him favoring policies to boost 

consumer spending. He opposed them throughout his life. As late as 1943, he wrote to his 

Cambridge colleague, James Meade, disagreeing with Meade's proposals to encourage consumer 

spending by giving temporary tax relief. A return of taxes on which people could only rely for 

an indefinitely short period, he said, would have very limited effects in stimulating consumption. 

Milton Friedman and Franco Modigliani later earned Nobel prizes in part for independently 

developing this theme. 

In his 1921 Treatise on Probability, Keynes highlighted uncertainty, the "unknown 

unknowns" long before Secretary Rumsfeld used the term. He never changed his mind about 

uncertainty as a reason for changes in investment spending and economic activity. As early as 

the 1928 election in Britain, Keynes argued that in periods of recession and slow growth, policy 

should encourage capital spending. In his words, "Generally speaking, the indirect employment 

which schemes of capital expenditure would entail is far larger than the direct employment.. .the 

greater part of the employment they provide would be spread far and wide over the industries of 

the country ... IT]he greater trade activity would make for further trade activity; for the forces of 

prosperity like those oftrade depression work with a cumulative effect. . .In the economic world, 

'coming events case their shadow before'." He never said the same about consumer spending. 

Keynes would have eagerly endorsed the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts or the Reagan tax 

cuts that permanently reduced corporate and high marginal personal rates. They changed 

incentives and reduced uncertainty about future tax rates and thereby increased business 

investment. And he warned the proponents oflarge, persistent budget deficits not to favor 

persistent deficits. His student, protege and later colleague, Richard Kahn, wrote that Keynes's 

General Theory advocates deficit finance in only one place and only if other means fail. Keynes 

favored temporary deficits to replace private investment, but he opposed permanent deficits. 

Uncertainty is always with us, but Obama administration policies and statements heighten 

the problems that businesses see. The president used anti-business rhetoric in his election 

campaign, campaigns for higher tax rates usually without mentioning specific rates, and raised 

4 
760 

health care, energy and other costs without limiting the increases. Generations of managers 

learned to choose investments by estimating the value of future costs and revenues have no idea 

what the costs will be. They wait, holding on to cash. Uncertainty reduces investment, as 

Keynes believed. And much of the U.S. private sector investment in this recovery adds laborsaving equipment and computer programs to increase output by increasing worker productivity 

without much new hiring. High unemployment continues. 

1 do not claim that the stimulus policies were useless. But it must be obvious that they 

are inadequate. My main criticism is that we have long-term problems that require implementing 

the kind of consistently stable, expansive policies that reduce uncertainty about spending, taxes 

and regulations. I am sure from what they say that some see benefits in higher tax rates and 

increased regulation. They should not ignore the heavy costs of prolonged high unemployment 

and growing despair that uncertainty about taxes and regulation engender. 

An Earlier Sluggish Recovery 

Historical comparisons are never precisely accurate descriptions. Yet the current 

recovery has several similarities to the very sluggish recovery from the deep pre-war 1937-38 

recession. Like President Obama, President Roosevelt chastised businessmen, in his case, he 

called them "economic royalists." He tried to pack the Supreme Court. He began anti-trust 

proceedings against several industries and companies and introduced an unpopular excess profits 

tax and a minimum wage among other programs that many businesses regarded as hostile or 

counter-productive. Reported unemployment rates rose. By 1940, at 14.6 percent, they were 

still slightly above the rate in 1937, when the recession began. Now as in 1938-40 investments 

and unemployment lagged and recovery was slow. 

See Table 1 

President Roosevelt's anti-business rhetoric and action ended with the war. War brought 

an overriding goal and an end to political infighting that united the country. 

Business men are not always right, of course, but we have learned that attitudes and 

expectations matter greatly. Short-term policy actions that heighten uncertainty will not restore 

output to its long-term growth path. It is past time for a bi-partisan policy to increase business 

investment spending and a long-term program to reduce future deficits. The slow recovery and 

inept policies reinforce rampant pessimism and prolong high unemployment. A better future 

5 
761 

depends on leadership on both sides that looks well beyond the election. To service our large 

foreign debt, we must export more of our output and import less. To increase exports, future 

consumer spending must grow more slowly than in the past 

Table 1 

Investment and Employment in Two Slow Recoveries 

Year 1937-41 

Gross 

Private Total Wage 

Domestic and Salary 

Investment' Workersb 

1937 11.8 31,026 

1938 65 29,209 

1939 93 30,618 

1940 13.1 32,376 

1941 17.9 36,554 .. aim bllhons. Economic Report, Jan. 1967, p. 225 

b/in thousands. Economic Report, Jan. 1967, p. 242 

clin billions. Economic Report, March 2013, p. 346 

dlin thousands. Economic Report, March 2013, p. 378 

Year 2008-12 

Private 

Fixed 

Investment' 

2008 2128.7 

2009 1703.5 

2010 1679.0 

2011 18183 

2012 2000.9 

Total Private 

Employmentd 

114,342 

108,321 

107,427 

109,411 

111,826 

Almost every current CEO, CFO, or business manager learned as part of his or her MBA 

to base investment decisions on discounted future cash flows. Current uncertainty about tax 

rates, health care costs, labor regulations, energy costs and finance preclude correct calculation of 

future costs and cash flows. Most firms hold extraordinary amounts of cash waiting for reduced 

uncertainty. We cannot eliminate all uncertainty about the future, but we can and should reduce 

the additional uncertainty created by tax and regulatory policies. 

Conclusion 

The United States has long-standing real problems that require policy procedures very 

different from the policies we have. Current policies aim at near-tenn change. Little if any 

thought is given to the longer-tenn consequences. The accumulation of neglect of those 

6 
762 

consequences and uncertainty about current and future policies is the main reason the recovery is 

slow. 

Economic analysis shows us how to work out of our problems over time. I argue that 

there is no analytic basis for the policies we have. It is a misreading or probably non-reading of 

Keynes to claim his work as the model for short-run problems. 

Our policies are driven by hope and political pressures, not economic analysis. Some 

claim that economics has failed. A more correct statement is that policy has been politicized so 

much that it has lost sight of the economic principles that made America great. Those policies 

would work well again if applied as part of a constant long-term plan for growth. 

7 
763 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you very much to all three of you. 

Dr. Zandi, let me start with you. You stated that you expect lawmakers to come together at the last minute because the failure to 

do so would, and I quote, have dire economic consequences, and I 

think that is a very sensible and rational position for anybody to 

assume that those of us who are in elected office and sent here to 

do everything we can to avoid inflicting harm on our economy and 

on our constituents would do everything we could to do that. But 

I just—I worry because there seems to be a lot of dysfunction and 

unwillingness to compromise here today, and I think many people 

need to really understand what the impacts of that is. 

And I wanted to ask you, really, the question that was posed by 

this hearing, to talk about the uncertainty that we create here, how 

it impacts people. So let us start with the debt limit and what it 

would mean for the United States to default, and for all of our 

viewers who are watching at home here today, maybe if you could 

describe for them what a default on our debt would mean to them 

and their families and what they would see at home. 

Mr. ZANDI. Sure. If we breach the debt limit, and that looks like, 

under reasonable assumptions, it will be in the second half of October, in all likelihood, the Treasury would continue to pay on the 

debt. They have the mechanism for doing that and I would be surprised if they did not. 

However, that would mean that the Treasury could not meet all 

its other bills, and they are quite substantive. I will give you an 

example. On November 1, there is a very large Social Security payment that is due. The government would not have enough cash on 

hand to make that payment. So, in all likelihood, the Treasury 

would wait for a day, two, three, five, six, seven days, whatever it 

took to raise the cash sufficient to make the full payment to Social 

Security recipients. And over time, if this would continue, the lag 

between the bills that are coming in and the checks that are being 

cut would increase. 

Well, I think if we got into that kind of situation, I think, immediately, there would be panic and bedlam. If Social Security recipients are not going to get their checks, I just think it would be cataclysmic. And, moreover, even global investors who the Treasury 

said they are going to pay would rightfully question whether that 

will continue. I mean, are we going to pay global investors, half of 

whom are foreign investors, before we pay Social Security recipients? Legitimate questions that an investor would ask themselves. 

So financial markets would be sent into turmoil. 

What does this mean for the average American? Well, it means 

it would be very difficult to get a mortgage. Mortgage rates would 

rise. It would mean businesses, small businesses, big businesses, 

would have trouble raising money to fund their activities. The cost 

of funding would increase and become much less available. It 

would mean house prices would decline. It would mean stock prices 

would decline. And it would very quickly mean layoffs and unemployment would surge. 

And as I said in my oral remarks, there is no policy response to 

that, none, as we all realize the Federal Reserve is at the end of 

its rope. How would it respond? And, by definition, you all would 

not be responding, by definition. So it would be an incredibly dark 
764 

situation and on par with the Great Recession, maybe even worse, 

depending on how things played out. 

So, we just cannot go down that path. It is opening an economic 

Pandora’s box, literally. 

Chairman MURRAY. Okay. Thank you very much for helping us 

understand that. 

The debt limit crisis is the most recent and perhaps the most obvious example of uncertainty, but it is not the only one. Over the 

last few years, Congress has repeatedly taken the nation from one 

crisis to the next with brinkmanship. I mean, the best example I 

have is the budget we passed out of here in the Senate and the 

House passed their budget and we have been waiting for almost six 

months now to be able to go to conference to let the country know 

where our investments are going to be made and what our priorities are and how we are going to manage our budget. 

I have to say that some of our Republican colleagues here in the 

Senate have been pretty clear about why they are blocking that. 

They oppose any compromise. They have said it on the floor. They 

say they do not want to compromise even with the House Republicans and they wanted this brinkmanship that we have today on 

the budget and raising the debt limit. They seem to believe that 

solving some problem by pulling the government and the economy 

from one crisis to another is the way to go. 

But I wanted to ask any one of you—Dr. Stone, let me start with 

you—is not the problem Congress and sort of the one-two punch of 

brinkmanship and austerity that threatens our economy and economic recovery and jobs and global position? 

Mr. STONE. Well, Congress has the power of the purse. They 

have responsibility over the debt, over government borrowing, and 

over spending and taxes, and so they are the ones who have to 

make the decisions. And if the process is not working, it is Congress that needs to make the decisions initially. The President obviously has to go along, but it starts with Congress. 

Chairman MURRAY. Does anybody else want to comment? 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes. You may be happy to hear, I do not blame 

the Congress. You are elected by your constituents. What we see— 

the division that we see in the country is a division in the country. 

You are sent here, perhaps, to represent the voters in Washington 

who want one thing. The others, the Tea Party people are sent to 

represent people who want something very different. And you know 

that your fate as an elector, as a legislator, depends upon major 

issues, doing things that your voters—that is where the split is. 

The split is in the public. Neither side has been able to convince 

the public that they have the truth. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, Dr. Meltzer, I would not disagree that 

we come from different constituents. But my constituents tell me 

consistently that they expect me to come here to sit down with others who disagree with me and find solutions, and that really is why 

I am so frustrated, is because I cannot do that. I am not allowed 

to by a few who are holding the budget hostage. So I think that 

is— 

Mr. MELTZER. I certainly— 

Chairman MURRAY. That is one of the reasons we are where we 

are. 
765 

Mr. MELTZER. I certainly agree with you that compromise—you 

know, I have been coming here, testifying before various committees since about 1959, before many of the people in this room were 

born. So I am familiar with governments which have been governments of compromise and governments which fear compromise. In 

my opinion, that depends on leadership. 

Chairman MURRAY. Right. 

Mr. MELTZER. The President is the leader of the country. It is up 

to him to push for compromise. He does not do that. That leaves 

the problem where it is. 

I would like to say one other thing. I do not agree with Mr. Zandi 

about the dire consequences of a default. The consequences will depend on the size of—there will be consequences, but the consequences will depend upon how long the default goes on. It is not 

going to go on forever, and it probably will arouse enough reaction 

from the public that we will, if we do not get the agreement before, 

we will get it after. And if you look at the previous examples— 

Chairman MURRAY. My time is running short and I do want to 

give Dr. Zandi a quick second to respond. Even the discussion 

around, we may default, will that have an impact on our economy? 

Mr. ZANDI. Sure. It already is. You know, just to be a little bit 

esoteric here, looking at credit default swap spreads on U.S. Treasuries, they jumped yesterday to 32 basis points. For context, a 

week ago, they were at five basis points. At the height of the 

July—August 12 shutdown, they were at 80 basis points. So we are 

already on our way. 

And I disagree incredibly strongly with the notion that breaching 

the debt ceiling would not have major catastrophic consequences. 

We had one technical default on Treasury debt back in 1979. It was 

a mistake. It centered around a budget debate, but it was a mistake. Some individual investors did not get their money on time. 

The academic research clearly shows that that has cost us tens of 

billions of dollars, that one little mistake, and they got paid right 

back with interest and were made whole. But because of that, it 

raised the interest costs. So we are playing with real fire and it 

would not only do damage to the economy, it would be very counterproductive for the budget long-run, not just next year, but for 

decades to come. 

Chairman MURRAY. I have gone way over my time limit. I need 

to turn it over to Senator Sessions. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you. 

Well, we have had these crises before and we bounced back rather rapidly, Dr. Zandi. And I would note with regard to debates, 

maybe Dr. Meltzer would recall, but it seems to me that a showdown over the debt ceiling resulted in Gramm-Rudman being 

passed. It resulted in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. It resulted 

in the Budget Control Act of 2011, all of which, I think, had, over 

the long term, positive results for the American economy. 

And there are a lot of reasons out there that we have uncertainty 

in our economy, and it is not because we refuse to change—some 

of us want to change the debt course we are on. That is not the 

only thing that is hurting the economy. 
766 

Dr. Meltzer, is it not true that the uncertainty over the 

Obamacare health care thing is impacting employment and businesses in a rather significant way in America today? 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes. I mean, even the labor unions have indicated 

that Obamacare is hurting the 40-hour week as it is. I mean, as 

you pointed out in your opening remarks, a great part of the jobs 

that are created are temporary jobs. One of my children, a chef, 

was fired. Her employer said to her, ‘‘We like your work, we think 

you are great, but you are going to put us over the ceiling, so we 

have to get rid of you so that we will be below the ceiling.’’ That 

is just one example. It is happening every day to people in the real 

world. 

Senator SESSIONS. Last week, the Environmental Protection 

Agency announced dramatic new CO2 regulations that have been 

interpreted to be the death of coal. Does that create uncertainty, 

Dr. Meltzer? 

Mr. MELTZER. And cost. It creates cost. The administration does 

things that they believe are probably good things to do, but that 

they increase the power of labor unions. That is a no-no for businessmen. They may be right or wrong, but it has an effect on the 

attitudes that they have. 

I read you the list of things that the Harvard Business School 

graduates who are in positions to make these decisions, what they 

listed. They listed regulation as one of the main things, uncertainty 

about tax rates. I mean, all those things are—and the poor education system in the United States. Those are things which we 

really need to do something about and we do not do it. 

Senator SESSIONS. Dr. Meltzer, in your long and very distin- guished career, do you think that the $1 trillion extraordinary deficits we have been running for the last four, five years are creating 

economic uncertainty? 

Mr. MELTZER. Oh, of course. I mean, there may have been a time 

in the past when people thought that deficits would be self-financing in the longer term, but that time is long past. So now, people 

see $1 trillion deficits, higher tax rates, higher tax rates that fall 

on those people who have to invest. And that is what was lacking 

in 1938 to 1940. That is what is lacking now. It is the investment 

part of the economy that is the slowest part of the economy. And 

to add to that, when they invest, they invest in robotics, labor-saving technologies like computing. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you. 

Dr. Zandi, the uncertainty out there, I know, has some basis in 

fact and we need to work our way through the difficulties that we 

have without breaching the debt ceiling and without having to extend the CR, if it is at all possible. But sometimes these events provide the only opportunity to get a discussion going and to make 

changes of a significant nature. 

We thought we had a real opportunity to fix long-term entitlements in the 2011 Budget Control Act process. It did not occur. But 

we did get, over ten years, a reduction in the growth of spending 

from growing $10 trillion to growing $8 trillion, approximately, and 

I think that was long-term positive for the country. 

This chart up there is Stanford University’s daily news-based 

economic policy uncertainty moving average, and if you look to the 
767 

far right, where we are today, it is right at the normal level, at 100 

on that chart. We have had spikes repeatedly, but it seems to come 

back down. So we have had some spike and down and spike and 

down. It is preferable that we reach an agreement and that we 

make some compromises. 

And, Chairman Murray, I would just note that the President has 

said he will not even discuss changing one tittle in his health care 

law, and you can do anything—we can cut the—Congress can fail 

to fund it and he will veto it. He will not accept it. He will not talk 

about anything to avoid the debt ceiling when, in the past, we 

made historic reforms leading up to the debt ceiling. It seems to 

me that the President ought to be leading, as Dr. Meltzer said, and 

helping us to reach an accord on some of these issues where we can 

make some improvements. 

And everybody knows the health care bill is a train wreck. It is 

not working. It is not going to work. We cannot even discuss, have 

votes in the Senate, have our colleagues vote on how to make it 

better to deal with at least some of the problems? Slam the door. 

Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, none. And so if there is a problem, I suggest it is on both sides. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, thank you, Senator Sessions. I would 

disagree. The President has made it clear that he will work with 

us on the law to make it better, but he is not going to repeal it 

or not fund it. 

Senator KAINE. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, he has not— 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Just for the witnesses, I kind of want to start with a couple of 

what I think are simple questions. Maybe they will not be quite so 

simple, but if I could just get each of you to answer them quickly. 

Regardless of the magnitude of the harm, would a government 

shutdown, under current circumstances, be harmful to the economy? 

Mr. ZANDI. Yes. Obviously, the longer the shutdown ensues, the 

greater the damage. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. Stone? 

Mr. STONE. Yes. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. Meltzer? 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes, but if you look at the chart that was up there 

a moment ago, you see the uncertainty goes up and it comes down 

again very quickly. So if it is a short period, the damage will be 

slight. If it is a long period, the damage will be serious. 

Senator KAINE. You have all indicated that—again, you can 

argue about the magnitude of the harm, but that a shutdown 

under current circumstances would be harmful. 

Mr. MELTZER. Of course. 

Senator KAINE. Is threatening a shutdown also harmful? 

Mr. MELTZER. Not very. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. Zandi? 

Mr. ZANDI. Yes. I think it adds to the uncertain economic environment and it impedes hiring, investment decisions, and it is a 

weight, a corrosive—I call it a corrosive on economic growth, yes. 

Senator KAINE. And Dr. Stone? 
768 

Mr. STONE. It is not as—it is harmful. It is not as harmful as 

uncertainty leading up to a debt default. The biggest spike in the 

chart is the debt discussions in 2011. And just as a shutdown only 

going on for a little while, most of the damage can be undone, a 

debt default, you cannot undo the damage to the credit rating of 

the United States. 

Senator KAINE. I want to get to debt default in a minute, but just 

on government shutdown, you all agree that it would be harmful 

under current circumstances, to some degree, and two of the three 

of you agree that even threatening a shutdown has some potential 

for harm. 

So, let me go to default. Would a default on the Federal debt 

under current circumstances, regardless of the magnitude, be 

harmful to the economy? Dr. Zandi? 

Mr. ZANDI. That would be cataclysmic to the economy and to our 

fiscal situation. 

Senator KAINE. Dr. Stone? 

Mr. STONE. Absolutely. 

Senator KAINE. And Dr. Meltzer? 

Mr. MELTZER. Of course, but, you know, you and I both know 

that major negotiations, people never reveal their favored or willing 

position until the very end. 

Senator KAINE. Well, let me get to that, actually, as the second 

part of the question. So, if a default would be harmful, how about 

threatening default, threatening default on our debts? Does that 

have some harm to the economy? Dr. Zandi? 

Mr. ZANDI. Significant negative consequences. I think it already 

is having an impact. It has had an impact. 

Senator KAINE. And Dr. Stone? 

Mr. STONE. Yes. Estimates of the economic damage from the 

2011 episode show a magnitude of possible damage equivalent to 

estimates for what sequester is doing. 

Senator KAINE. And Dr. Meltzer? 

Mr. MELTZER. As you know better than I, the public does not 

have a high opinion of the Congress— 

Senator KAINE. I do know that. 

Mr. MELTZER. —so this would just be one other example of the 

malfunctioning of the legislative process. 

Senator KAINE. And would you agree that lack of confidence in 

an institution like Congress is going to have a negative economic 

effect? 

Mr. MELTZER. Long-term, yes. But if you looked at the chart, you 

see it has not appeared yet. 

Senator KAINE. Finally— 

Mr. ZANDI. Could I just make a quick point? 

Senator KAINE. Yes. 

Mr. ZANDI. Look, I think it is reasonable to have debates about 

lots of things, but the one thing we cannot debate, that is sacrosanct, is we pay our debt on time. I mean, this was established 

by Alexander Hamilton on day one of the country and it has reaped 

enormous benefits for us. If that becomes questioned in any way, 

that will cost us dearly for generations to come. That has got to be 

rock solid. 
769 

Senator KAINE. So, all three of you agree that the default would 

have harm on the economy— 

Mr. MELTZER. Absolutely. 

Senator KAINE. —magnitude depending upon the time, and that 

two of the three of you agree that even threatening default has a 

negative economic consequence. 

The last thing I will ask you is, is the absence of a budget deal 

in Congress between the two houses something that has a negative 

economic effect? Dr. Zandi? 

Mr. ZANDI. Yes. Anything that adds to the uncertain economic 

environment, and this would qualify, is a weight. It is not something that matters in any given day, week, or month, but over a 

period of time, certainly over the four years of this economic recovery, it has added up to real dollars and cents and real jobs and unemployment. 

Senator KAINE. And Dr. Stone? 

Mr. STONE. It is certainly a symptom. It is not showing up in interest rates right at the moment, but it is a symptom. It is a 

longer-run problem. It is not an immediate crisis. 

Senator KAINE. And, Dr. Meltzer, absence of a budget deal hurting the economy? 

Mr. MELTZER. Absence of a long-term return to a stable budget 

path. The current crisis is one thing. The longer- term problem is 

the major problem facing the United States. 

Senator KAINE. Okay. 

Mr. MELTZER. That is what we should be dealing with. 

Senator KAINE. Well, Madam Chair, then, just to conclude, I 

want to be mindful of the Ranking Member’s opening comments 

and try not to be finger pointing in my conclusion, so let me say 

it this way. 

I do not know of a single Democratic member of the Senate or 

House who either wants to shut down government or is advocating 

or threatening a shutdown of government. I do not know of a single 

Democratic member of the Senate or House who either wants to default on America’s debt or is advocating or threatening a default on 

America’s debt. And I do not know of a single Democratic member 

of the Senate or House who has blocked us from going to a budget 

conference, which we have been trying to go to for six months ago 

yesterday. 

And I will yield back. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Portman. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair, and appreciate the 

witnesses today. 

We have talked a lot about uncertainty and I concur totally. In 

fact, I have been all over the State of Ohio in the last couple 

months because of the August work period, talking to people about 

uncertainty, and they talk about Obamacare a lot, as you can imagine. They also talk about the national debt and whether we are 

going to get this thing under control. I think it is a wet blanket 

on the economy. They talk about the proposals the President has 

for tax increases, and they do not know if it will happen or not, 

but they are concerned about additional tax increases, particularly 

on pass-through entities. 
770 

And, of course, they talk about—in Ohio, particularly- -about 

what is going on with the EPA because of the substantial new costs 

we are going to have in terms of energy in our State. We are a 

State that depends on coal for our electricity. 

And, of course, uncertainty about the Fed. You know, is QE3 

going to continue or not, and what are interest rates going to be, 

and we have seen that with the market gyrations. 

But I have another question for you and it is about something 

maybe worse than uncertainty, which is the certainty of something 

bad, and that can also have a negative impact on the economy. 

And, again, I go back to the debt. We are asking once again for 

Congress to vote on this debt limit, and I know a bunch of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle think we should not have that 

vote, that there just should be an automatic increase in the debt 

limit. 

And I would just make the observation that if we look back over 

the past few decades, the only time Congress has ever made any 

substantial progress on the debt or deficit—I found one exception, 

it was for about $30 billion—but has come in the context of a debt 

limit. And it is interesting. I mean, and the Ranking Member 

talked about the—Senator Sessions talked about Gramm-Rudman. 

Dr. Meltzer, it sounds like you were probably there as a senior 

member of the economic team. But, I mean, this is all that has 

worked, really. I think about the 1990 deal. I was at the Bush 

White House then. That was a debt limit discussion, the Andrews 

Air Force Base discussion. 

So, this notion that the President has that he refuses to negotiate on the debt limit, I mean, it is not about negotiating, it is 

about getting the votes for something that is unpopular. Our constituents do not like the idea that we keep raising the debt limit 

because they get it. It is like a credit card to them and we have 

overspent on the credit card and what are you going to do about 

it? We have to do something on the underlying problem. And so I 

just think it is irresponsible for the administration to take this position that we are not even going to talk to Congress about dealing 

with raising the debt limit to historic levels. 

Anyway, it seems to me the certainty is as much a problem as 

the uncertainty, and the certainty is, if we do not do something 

about it, that we will find ourselves, as Erskine Bowles said at that 

very table, in the most predictable financial crisis that we have 

ever faced. 

Let me ask you this. If Congress were to raise the debt limit 

without—without—addressing the underlying problem of spending, 

doing nothing on it, which is what a lot of folks are recommending, 

including the President, would that make businesses more or less 

confident about hiring and investing? 

Mr. MELTZER. Less. 

Senator PORTMAN. Doctor? 

Mr. MELTZER. What people want, what businessmen want, what 

intelligent consumers want, is a long-term return to the growth 

path, the stable growth path that we had, say, very nicely from 

1985 to about 2003 and 2004. We met, by the way, at the Hoover 

Institution. It is nice to see you. 
771 

Senator PORTMAN. Oh, yes. Nice to see you again. You asked me 

a tough question there, so I get to ask you a tough one. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MELTZER. That is fair enough. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, look, I think—and I want to hear Dr. 

Stone and Mr. Zandi on this, too, but I think that is the question 

that we are kind of facing here on the debt limit. Are we going to 

do anything? You know, it is not whether we are going to do Simpson-Bowles. Unfortunately, we are beyond that now. We are not 

looking at a grand bargain, but at least a bargain or an agreement 

or something on the spending side— 

Mr. MELTZER. That moves you in the right direction. 

Senator PORTMAN. Moves us in the right direction, and we are 

living through the weakest economic recovery, really since the 

1920s, if you look at it in terms of GDP or jobs. I know there are 

lots of reasons for that that have to do with the global economy, 

but one of the reasons, in my view, is we are not addressing this 

problem. 

But, Dr. Zandi and Dr. Stone, do you want to address that question? If we did nothing on spending but simply extended the debt 

limit again for a year or two years, would that make businesses 

more or less interested in investing and creating jobs? 

Mr. STONE. I do not think raising the debt ceiling with no conditions attached would be more disruptive than continuing to squabble over it. Congress has enacted— 

Senator PORTMAN. That is not the choice I gave you, though. It 

is, do you do something on spending or not when you raise the debt 

limit? Which would be better for the business environment? 

Mr. STONE. Raising the debt limit. 

Senator PORTMAN. And not doing anything on spending? 

Mr. STONE. If that is the choice, yes. 

Senator PORTMAN. So you would not see any reductions in spending as appropriate in the context of a $17 trillion- - 

Mr. STONE. Well, I thought the choice was raising— 

Senator PORTMAN. CBO has sat at that very table and told us 

that the health care entitlements alone are going to go up 100 percent in the next ten years, a hundred percent. Is that sustainable? 

Mr. STONE. I agree completely that we need to address our longterm fiscal challenges, but they are not the issue right now. The 

uncertainty around the debt ceiling— 

Senator PORTMAN. So does S&P, by the way, and when we had 

the downgrade, what did they say? They said, you guys have to 

deal with this. They said mid-term, but they also are concerned 

about the long-term, obviously. But we have got to do something 

about the underlying problem. And they indicated most recently, 

and Fitch indicated, in the absence of an agreed and credible midterm deficit reduction plan that would be consistent with economic 

growth, the current negative outlook is likely to be resolved with 

a downgrade later this year, even if the debt ceiling— 

Mr. STONE. A deficit reduction— 

Senator PORTMAN. —even if the debt ceiling is averted. That is 

Fitch. 
772 

Mr. STONE. A deficit reduction plan. But you did not give me any 

deficit reduction plan. You gave me an ‘‘only cut spending’’ deficit 

reduction plan— 

Senator PORTMAN. Yes. I said— 

Mr. STONE. —and that is what you have to do, and— 

Senator PORTMAN. I said, reducing spending. 

Mr. STONE. Well, that is—the deficit reduction could also include 

increasing revenues judiciously, and that is what the IMF was— 

Senator PORTMAN. Let me quote Mark Zandi on that in his testimony today. Tax increases and government spending cuts over the 

past three years have put a substantial drag on economic growth. 

So, look, we have just raised taxes over $600 billion. We also have 

another trillion in Obamacare. And if we do not deal with the 

spending problem, look, it is not ideology, it is math, and CBO, 

again, has sat at this very table and talked to us about this. We 

know that spending as a percent of GDP continues to go up dramatically. We also know that taxes as a percent of GDP levels off 

just above the historic average, 19 percent. 

So, anyway, thank you, gentlemen. I am over my time. 

Chairman MURRAY. Senator Whitehouse. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you. This is a lively hearing with 

very different views being expressed. 

I have to, I think, push back at the Ranking Member’s suggestion that everybody knows the health care bill is a train wreck. I 

can assure you that if you are a parent of a child who is coming 

up on 26 and is able to stay on your health care and not be out 

there uncovered, that is no train wreck for you. If you are a parent 

of a child who has got a preexisting condition and you either could 

not get insurance for them or you could never move your job, because as soon as you move, they would become uninsurable and 

you would have to make them a ward of the State or spend down 

to Medicaid in order to do that, for a family like that, this is no 

train wreck at all. For a senior who has saved, on average, over 

$1,000 by closing up the doughnut hole, that is no train wreck for 

the seniors. 

And, frankly, I think that when we get the insurance exchanges 

up and going, that is just stuff that we usually agree on, unless you 

put the name Obamacare on it. Then, suddenly, it is controversial. 

But if you took the name off, we agree on real markets. We agree 

on real prices in real markets. We agree that the product should 

be transparent. We agree that you should not get special deals. You 

should be able to sign up for what is there. That is what this does. 

It creates an open, transparent market in which you have to post 

your real price, in which a small business can get the same deal 

as a big business and it is not all done in the back room at the 

insurance company. If you did not call that Obamacare, everybody 

in this country would think that was a good idea. 

So, I have to dispute the proposition that at least everybody 

knows the health care bill is a train wreck. I think— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, you responded. That was the statement 

of the Democratic Chairman of the Finance Committee, who 

worked with the bill. He is calling it a train wreck. And I would 

just note that with regard to your view that it is moderate reform, 

Harry Reid just recently said, the Majority Leader, that this is the 
773 

beginning of a single payer for health care in America, and it is a 

big deal and the American people do not favor it. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Well, I am a fellow who would like to go 

to single payer, so that comes as no threat. But this is not that. 

The single payer that we have now is the Veterans Administration. 

We take the people we care the most about in this country, we take 

the people who have put their lives at risk for us, who have worn 

this country’s uniform, who have gone under arms under its flag 

and we give them the best we have to offer, and guess what it is. 

It is single-payer government-run health care. That is the best— 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I think it is good that you have acknowledged that. The President, of course, has yet to acknowledge that. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. So, I do not think there is any shame in 

a government-run health care program. I think we give it to our 

best. 

I also think it is a little bit unfair to say that we do not want 

to do anything about the debt when we have put $2 trillion of 

spending reductions into law—$2 trillion of spending reductions 

into law—and on the other side of the aisle, people are still defending, on the revenue side, letting hedge fund billionaires pay lower 

tax rates than brick masons, letting oil companies get away with 

huge multi-billion dollar subsidies that they visibly do not need because they are the most profitable companies in the history of the 

planet, letting companies still get tax benefits for offshoring jobs 

outside of our country, and letting people at high incomes not contribute into Social Security and Medicare the way regular families 

do. 

So, you know, I think you have got to be a little bit cautious 

about saying that we do not want to do anything about it. I think 

we have given and given and given and given again and find it 

hard to understand some of the things that the Republicans will 

not put on the table. 

Dr. Stone, you said that—in your testimony, and I think we have 

sort of addressed this—experience from the 2011 debt ceiling crisis 

suggests that debt ceiling brinkmanship is costly, even if a lastminute deal is struck. By that, you mean that once you take the 

debt ceiling hostage, there is harm in just doing that. You do not 

actually have to shoot the hostage. It is obviously worse if you 

shoot the hostage, but just taking the debt ceiling hostage is bad, 

correct? 

Mr. STONE. Yes. A hostage crisis creates the problem. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. And you say, also, the idea that cutting 

government spending in hopes of stimulating economic activity, according to the IMF, so-called, what you called ‘‘expansionary austerity,’’ is invalid. Cutting spending in a weak economy reduces 

output employment and the effects are powerful. Could you—that 

is your own testimony, but could you put it in the light of what we 

are seeing in Europe, where austerity was applied, and in the light 

of the fiscal multipliers that we have seen recently that show substantial economic expansion beyond just the amount of the immediate spending. 

Mr. STONE. Right. The statement that you quoted is from the 

International Monetary Fund and it was talking about how, looking at what has actually happened—we had a debate a few years 
774 

ago about whether cutting the budget deficit in the short-run was 

going to be good for the economic recovery because of claims that 

uncertainty over the debt was the most important thing rather 

than weak demand in the economy. And the IMF’s reassessment, 

based on the European experience, which is even worse than ours, 

and on our experience, is that the expansionary austerity argument 

in the context of countries like the United States and the major 

European countries is—I think the technical term would be ‘‘bunk.’’ 

I said ‘‘invalid’’ to be polite in the testimony. 

And so in both cases, you have a problem with the monetary authority not being able to do very much because interest rates are 

so low, and, therefore, the multipliers are larger in a positive and 

a negative direction. When you cut government spending, the ripple effect through the economy is bigger than in an economy with 

fuller employment or an economy in which the Fed could cut interest rates to offset the effect. It is worse in Europe, but it was bad 

here. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

Senator BALDWIN. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I am very pleased that you are having this hearing and apologize 

for my tardiness. One of the responsibilities of a first-year Senator 

is to preside from time to time on the floor and that is what kept 

me from hearing your opening remarks. But a very similar debate, 

at least among the Senators, was beginning to unfold on the floor 

of the Senate earlier today as I was presiding and the debate on 

the continuing funding resolution was beginning. 

And, as I mentioned, I am a first-year Senator, so I just got off 

a campaign trail in the last year, and I remarked over and over 

again during that time in the State of Wisconsin about just how 

hard the people in my State are working to recover from the devastating recession, deep recession, and how much harder they have 

to work because of these manufactured fiscal crises, you know, so 

many working two jobs, so many happy to have gainful employment at all, but it is not what they were making before the recession hit. I mean, it is incredible grit that I am seeing, and I wanted 

to come here and see us in the Congress match that grit with a 

commitment to get out of these situations like the one that is unfolding right now. 

You know, I think certainty and predictability and responsibility 

are also American values that we have got to return to, and so 

against that backdrop and against the commitment that I made to 

fight to strengthen the middle class, regrow the middle class who 

has taken such a battering in recent years, I wonder if you can talk 

a little bit—if you feel expert enough to talk about how this impacts—this uncertainty, the prospect of a shutdown, the prospect 

of a default, the continuing weight of the sequester—impacts the 

middle class, perhaps as distinct from the top one percent and the 

working poor. Especially, I just ask that in light of seeing how hard 

my constituents are working to recover from such a difficult economic situation. 

Why do we not go from right to left and start with you. 
775 

Mr. MELTZER. Thank you, Senator. You know, it is not hard to 

see how a compromise could be reached. The President would have 

to give up tax increase. The Tea Party would have to give up the 

end of Obamacare. That would be the beginning of a compromise. 

That is not so hard to realize. 

Senator BALDWIN. I guess I want to know, in terms of the impact 

of a shutdown or a default, how it affects especially our struggling 

middle class. 

Mr. MELTZER. Not terribly, if it is short. 

Senator BALDWIN. Mr. Stone. 

Mr. STONE. It weakens an economic recovery that has already 

been weak and is not delivering for the people you are asking 

about. 

Mr. ZANDI. Just to be specific, if the government shuts down, you 

cannot get an FHA loan. Many middle-income households are very 

reliant on the FHA in the current context to get a loan. You cannot 

do it if the government is shut down. You cannot get a student 

loan. Many middle-income households are desperately reliant on 

student loans to send their kids to college. You cannot do that. You 

cannot get an SBA loan, a small business loan, and many middle 

Americans own small businesses, right? In Wisconsin, many small 

businesses are key to the middle class. Courts would be disrupted. 

Travel and tourism destinations would be disrupted. 

You know, in the grand scheme of things, it is no big deal. But 

in the context of the hardship that these folks have been struggling 

with, it adds up, right. I think the uncertainty hurts so much in 

the current context because we have been through the wringer, 

right? I mean, the recession has been debilitating psychologically 

on everybody and we are nervous and we are scared and we get 

spooked by even the little things. 

And so if we start talking about defaulting on the debt, if we 

start contemplating the possibility of not making Social Security 

payments, Medicare, Medicaid payments, even if it is not going to 

happen—and I cannot imagine you would allow that to happen, I 

just cannot see that—that hurts. That scares people. And, again, 

you know, because they have been put through so much. So why 

go down that path when, at the end of the day, we know what you 

are going to have to do? You are going to have to raise the debt 

limit and fund the government. There is no other option. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, thank you very much. 

I want to thank all of our colleagues who participated today, but 

I especially want to thank our witnesses for your testimony and 

your responses. I cannot think of a more important topic, and as 

I said at the outset, we have to end this constant uncertainty and 

governing by crisis. It really is putting our economy at risk and our 

families and our businesses and our communities, as you have outlined. So, thank you to all of you for your testimony today, and— 

Senator SESSIONS. Madam Chair, could I ask one question of Dr. 

Meltzer on a slightly different subject? 

Chairman MURRAY. If you can do it fairly quickly. 

Senator SESSIONS. Dr. Meltzer, I believe we have a chart on the 

Federal Reserve. You have written about the Federal Reserve. You 

have been a student of it for longer than— 
776 

Mr. MELTZER. Forever. 

Senator SESSIONS. —any other person. I notice that their projections—this was in the Wall Street Journal. It is something I have 

looked at with regard to the Congressional Budget Office. They 

have overestimated growth. Here, this chart shows that for every 

single report from the Fed beginning in April of 2011, and then 

they projected an average of 3.9 percent growth for 2013, each 

year, they had to reduce downward their projection for 2013 

growth, and just September 18, they came in at 2.15, almost half 

what they have projected. 

I guess I will ask you two things. We in the Congress are a bit 

intimidated by the Fed. We tend to accept everything. People tell 

us we have to accept what they say is— 

Mr. MELTZER. Do not do it. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator SESSIONS. Do not accept everything they say. 

Mr. MELTZER. The Constitution gives Congress, that is, the 

right—the concern for monetary policy. Article I, Section 8 makes 

you. They are your agent. You are the principal. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, and this chart, in 2011, April, I mean, 

they studied the consequences. They knew what their policies 

would be. They knew we were passing a stimulus bill and so forth. 

But they missed it dramatically. They missed—they were inaccurate. What— 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes— 

Senator SESSIONS. That causes me to wonder if they are as smart 

as they pretend to be sometimes. 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes. Briefly, I have written for many years, and 

my presidential address to one of the associations, economic associations, is all about the fact that economics is not the science that 

gives you good and quarterly forecasts. There is no such science. 

We do not know how to do that. Just as weather forecasters do not 

know how to tell you what the weather will be with great accuracy, 

doctors do not know how to tell you who is going to get the flu, 

economists cannot tell you what the next quarter is going to be 

with any great accuracy. The Fed is about as good as anybody else, 

but nobody is very good. The average error over time is about equal 

to the average growth rate. 

Chairman MURRAY. Dr. Zandi, do you want to respond? 

Mr. ZANDI. No. He is a legend. I am not going to respond. 

Chairman MURRAY. All right. We will let it end with that. All 

right. 

Mr. MELTZER. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. Well, as a reminder to all of our colleagues, 

additional statements and/or questions for any of the witnesses 

from today’s hearing are due in by 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, to be submitted to the Chief Clerk. 

And again, thank you to our witnesses for participating. 

Mr. MELTZER. Thank you. 

Chairman MURRAY. The hearing is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 

3:53 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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