Jonathan Day

The Impact of Legislative Term Limits on State Debt:  Increased Spending, Flat Revenue.

This article examines the effect of state legislative term limits on government debt levels. Past research has shown the influence of term limits on spending, but the effect of term limits on state debt is arguably more important in considering their desirability. We explain the relation between term limits and debt using the expected impact of changes in the composition, institutional dynamics, and behavior of state legislatures after term limits take effect. The hypothesis is that term limits will increase state government debt. Using regressions with panel corrected standard errors on data from the states between 1993 and 2008, the results empirically support the expectation that term-limited states have significantly higher debt than nonterm limited states. Term-limited states greatly increase spending while not increasing revenue levels and thus substantially increase debt. Since states with term limits have higher debt, we advise caution in adopting them.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00347.x/full

Politically, it was really the only strategy left for Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers. If all the Democrats don’t show up, then the Wisconsin Senate can’t make quorum. Just like the filibuster, it is one way that minorities can prevent majority tyranny. I can’t believe that some commentators are saying that the law makers are not doing their job representing their constituents. The law makers are doing their job by preventing a bill that their constituents do not want.

I also don’t understand why the lawmakers in Wisconsin are taking away collective bargaining?  Reforming the pension system has a direct impact on the budget and you can make a legitimate argument for reform.  But why would they propose to remove collective bargaining on everything except for pay and benefits?  There does not seem to be a legitimate argument for this type of reform.
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On another note, what happened to CNN’s stance on political correctness?They did away with crosshairs and targets, but they are okay with the word “kill”?   This was a picture from CNN’s coverage of Wisconsin today.
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I am pretty sure this violates CNN’s standards on political correctness.  Posting the phrase “Kill the Bill” – using a violent term to describe a political process.  True, this was a chant by teachers in Wisconsin, but I didn’t hear CNN criticize the teachers for chanting this.

“If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.” – President Barack Obama, State of the Union 2011

There are problems with this promise. Barack Obama can’t effectively veto these bills. If a bill comes to his desk that is entitled “Saving Our Children From Disease” and it has an earmark in it – how can he veto this? The American people would not understand why the president vetoed legislation to save children just because it had an earmark.

Second, what if a bill comes to his desk chalk full of earmarks. He can veto this, but it won’t matter because Congress will just override his veto. Bush vetoed an earmarked bill in 2007 and it was overridden.

Third, there is a loophole to this promise. An earmark is a specific way that congresspersons can bring home the pork (or to others – waste money).   Lettermarking and phonemarking are two ways congresspersons can get around this earmark ban.

How many days until this promise of not signing a bill with an earmark is broken? Time will tell. But even if the letter of the promise is kept, wasteful spending will definitely continue.

An interview took place an hour ago of Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Fox News. She said that we can’t cut the budget across the board because it would cut vital programs. She said we have to make ’smart cuts’. When pressed for an example of a smart cut, she responded “I haven’t spent some time going through [the budget]“. She’s been in Congress for five years and she doesn’t know of any wasteful spending? She is on the Committee on Appropriations and can’t name a single item that needs to be cut.

Paul Krugman recently wrote an opinion for the NY Times posted here.  In his opinion, he believes that it would be more fiscally risky for the tax cuts to be extended permanently, then politically risky for Obama to allow taxes to increase.  Krugman, however, creates a logical fallacy (i.e. false dichotomy).  He starts that false dichotomy with this quote, “Bear in mind that Republicans want to make those tax cuts permanent.”  There is a third alternative which is to extend all of the tax cuts temporarily.  It is a game that Obama cannot win.  If everyone concedes that raising tax cuts hurts the economy, then Obama’s chances of re-election decrease.  If he loses re-election, the Republicans will extend tax cuts.