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Stories tagged with “Bruce Bartlett”

Economy

Former Reagan Economist To GOP Candidates: Reagan Policies ‘Can’t And Shouldn’t Be Replicated Today’

By Travis Waldron on Feb 6, 2012 at 4:55 pm

There have been no shortage of Ronald Reagan mentions on the campaign trail, with Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum invoking the former president’s name at seemingly every turn. Each argues that only he is truly like Reagan, and that only his massive, budget-busting tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans is in the true spirit of Reagan’s legacy.

Today, on what would have been Reagan’s 101st birthday, his former economist published an editorial — titled “Why the GOP should stop invoking Reaganomics” — in the Washington Post telling the candidates to stop it with the name-dropping. Bruce Bartlett, who served under both Reagan and George H.W. Bush, outlined the differences between today’s economic circumstances and those of the Reagan years, positing that while curbing inflation was the biggest issue in the Reagan era, today’s economic policies must be focused on boosting demand.

The result of those differences, Bartlett wrote, is that Reagan’s policies “can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today”:

Judging from the candidates’ tax proposals, they seem to believe that the most Reagan-like candidate is the one with the biggest tax cut. But as the person who drafted the 1981 Reagan tax cut, I think Republicans misunderstand the premises upon which Reagan’s economic policies were based and why those policies can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today. [...]

All of the evidence tells us that the economy’s fundamental problem today is not on the supply side but the demand side. According to a recent study by Credit Suisse, two-thirds of the difference in growth at this point in the business cycle, compared with previous cycles, is due to slower consumer spending. And low inflation — as well as widespread unemployment, vast stocks of unsold houses, empty factories and other indicators — tells us that money is tight, not loose, as was the case in the late 1970s.

Bartlett isn’t the only one noting the weakness of the GOP’s plans to bolster the economic recovery. Multiple economics professors told Reuters that the Republican plans wouldn’t pass an Econ 101 class. The candidates’ economic proposals will explode the deficit, expand income inequality through massive tax breaks to the rich, and hurt the poor and middle classes if enacted, but the GOP continues to ignore evidence that today’s situation is different than Reagan’s.

“Economic conditions are entirely different today than they were in Reagan’s era, and different conditions demand different policies,” Bartlett concluded. “Those who say otherwise are simply engaging in cookie-cutter economics — proposing whatever was popular and seemed to work once, without regard to changing circumstances.”

Economy

Conservative Economist: ‘Regulatory Uncertainty Is A Canard Invented By Republicans’

By Pat Garofalo on Oct 4, 2011 at 7:05 pm

Former Reagan and Bush economist Bruce Bartlett

One of congressional Republicans’ favorite explanations for sluggish job growth is supposed “regulatory uncertainty” being caused by the Obama administration. “It’s really pretty straight-forward,” Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has said. “We need to reduce the regulatory burden and the regulatory uncertainty that’s coming out of Washington.” “By pursuing a steady repeal of job-destroying regulations, we can help lift the cloud of uncertainty hanging over small and large employers alike, empowering them to hire more workers,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).

However, Bruce Bartlett — a conservative economist who worked for both the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, as well as for former Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) — wrote today that this theory is just “a canard invented by Republicans“:

For some years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had a program that tracks mass layoffs. In 2007, the program was expanded, and businesses were asked their reasons for laying off workers. Among the reasons offered was “government regulations/intervention.” There is only partial data for 2007, but we have data since then through the second quarter of this year.

The table below presents the bureau’s data. As one can see, the number of layoffs nationwide caused by government regulation is minuscule and shows no evidence of getting worse during the Obama administration. Lack of demand for business products and services is vastly more important. [...]

In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.

As the Economic Policy Institute found, “a simple review of investment and employment trends — what businesses are actually doing — reveals that employers are not behaving according to the narrative described in the uncertainty story: Employment and investment trends are what one would expect (or better) given the trends in the overall growth of the economy.” As Bloomberg News put it in an editorial, “the charge of ‘creating uncertainty’ is a way to blame Obama for the U.S.’s economic trials without having to explain the connection.”

The GOP is almost certainly not going to stop using the “regulatory uncertainty” talking point. But, as the research shows, the public and media should not take it seriously.

NEWS FLASH

Reagan And H.W. Bush Economist: ‘Stop Obsessing About Debt’ | Former Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration economic official Bruce Bartlett wrote in the New York Times today, “The right policy can be debated, but the important thing is for policy makers to stop obsessing about debt and focus instead on raising aggregate demand. As Bill Gross of the investment firm Pimco put it recently: ‘While our debt crisis is real and promises to grow to Frankenstein proportions in future years, debt is not the disease — it is a symptom. Lack of aggregate demand or, to put it simply, insufficient consumption and investment is the disease.’”

NEWS FLASH

Republican Economist: Abolish The Debt Limit | Former Reagan and Bush economist Bruce Bartlett called for the abolition of the debt ceiling in a blog post at the New York Times Monday, saying its use as a political tool only increases the potential for economic disaster. Bartlett: “It is nothing but grandstanding for members of both parties to vote routinely for legislation they know create deficits and then profess shock and horror that the debt limit must be increased as a consequence.” Bartlett writes that there is “not one iota of evidence” to show the limit acts as a constraint on government debt, concluding that abolition of the limit, while unlikely, is necessary. “The only way to avoid disaster in this sort of game,” Bartlett writes, “is not to play.”

Economy

Republican Economist: Obama Has Constitutional Authority To Ignore Debt Limit

By Judd Legum on Jul 6, 2011 at 11:55 am

Former Reagan and Bush economist Bruce Bartlett

The GOP is attempting to leverage the threat of default and an economic catastrophe to secure draconian spending cuts while protecting the wealthy and corporations from any tax increases. But according to Bruce Bartlett, a top economic adviser to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, they may have less leverage than they think.

Bartlett asserts that President Obama has the constitutional authority to ensure the validity of the U.S. debt by disregarding the debt limit even if Congress fails to approve an increase:

The essence of the argument involves section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

In my view and that of Prof. Epps, this means that the president would have constitutional authority to take extraordinary measures to protect the public credit and prevent a debt default even if it means disregarding the debt limit, which is statutory law subordinate to the Constitution.

Since my article appeared, I have had the opportunity to do further research on this topic and now feel even more strongly that the Fourteenth Amendment trumps the debt limit.

You can read Bartlett’s full piece, which includes a detailed legal analysis, here.

Bartlett has plenty of company. The same theory has been advanced by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) and hinted at by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Yglesias

The Apostasy of Bruce Bartlett

By Matthew Yglesias on May 17, 2009 at 11:28 am

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I never totally understood why Bruce Bartlett caught so much flack from his fellow conservatives for writing Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. It’s true that the book was harshly critical of George W. Bush and his policies, but it was critical from a very orthodox conservative point of view.

This new book, though, seems like the real deal in terms of apostasy. Instead of a subtitle complaining that modern conservatives have betrayed the Reagan Legacy, it’s got a subtitle suggesting that abandoning the Reagan Legacy would be a smart idea: The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward Here’s a summary:

As a domestic policy advisor to Ronald Reagan, Bruce Bartlett was one of the originators of Reaganomics, the supply-side economic theory that conservatives have clung to for decades. In The Next Economics, Bartlett goes back to the economic roots that made Impostor a bestseller and abandons the conservative dogma in favor of a policy strongly based on what’s worked in the past. Marshalling compelling history and economics, he explains how economic theories that may be perfectly valid at one moment in time under one set of circumstances tend to lose validity over time because they are misapplied under different circumstances. Bartlett makes a compelling, historically-based case for large tax increases, once anathema to him and his economic allies. In The Next Economics, Bartlett seeks to clarify a compelling and way forward for the American economy.

Sounds interesting. I’m looking forward to it.

Yglesias

Republicans About to Lie in Tax Cut Bed of Their Own Devising

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 23, 2009 at 10:58 am

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Over email, Bruce Bartlett observes:

According to press reports, in his budget Obama will allow many of the Bush tax cuts to expire next year. Republicans charge that this constitutes the largest tax increase in history. I think it is important to remember that the reason the Bush tax cuts are expiring is because that’s the way Republicans wrote the legislation. If anyone is responsible for increasing taxes, they are.

I believe that Republicans could have had permanent tax cuts which would have been better for the economy in the first place. But they would have had to negotiate with the Democrats. They preferred not to do so, believing that they could just extend their temporary tax cuts forever. I warned for years that this was a stupid strategy, but was ignored. Now the chickens have come home to roost.

Indeed. Recall that the purpose of writing the sunsets into law was to bring the “ten-year cost” of the cuts down. Basically, they wrote a tax cut bill that was too expensive to pass. Then instead of actually moderating the scale of their agenda, they made the cost appear smaller by arbitrarily phasing the cuts out under the theory that they could then turn around and accuse adversaries of implementing a huge tax increase if they refused to make the cuts permanent. What I guess they didn’t count on in this game of legislative chicken was that huge electoral gains for the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 have now made it easy to let the law operate as written and phase the cuts out. In an alternate reality, the Bush administration could have struck a deal with Democratic leaders for a smaller, less regressive, but permanent tax cut whose actual cost would have been in the neighborhood of the fake cost of the Bush tax cuts. That wouldn’t have made me smile, but it would have been better in line with supply-side theory (whose logic requires the tax cuts to be permanent) and better advanced long-term conservative policy goals. Unfortunately for them—but at the end of the day, also unfortunately for the country—many Republican political leaders have chosen to take advice primarily from stupid people. And a certain number of other smart people have been more interested in being team players than in telling said political leaders the truth.

Yglesias

Bruce Bartlett Struggles in Vain Against Stupidity

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 17, 2009 at 1:49 pm

Bruce Bartlett is, I assure you, a bona fide right-winger who believes in low taxes and lax regulation. But he’s not out of touch with reality, which is how he came to write this column arguing that some New Deal policies impeded recovery, but as far as deficit spending goes the problem was that deficits were too small not that he spent too much.

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This prompted Jim Powell to offer a non-responsive Corner post arguing that some New Deal policies were bad. To which Bartlett essentially replied that’s what I said the first time but still, New Deal deficits should have been bigger. Jonah Goldberg then also didn’t respond to Bartlett’s point but did say, contra congressional conservatives, that stimulus was necessary a position he describes as “sort of in-between” the Bartlett and Powell views. Then he follows-up by assuring us that Republicans were right to vote “no” on the stimulus and “it was very nice to see them man-up.”

Yglesias

Don’t Knock the Post Office

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 17, 2009 at 12:12 pm

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This article from Bruce Bartlett about the case for an Investment Tax Credit is pretty interesting. But this is a pet peeve of mine:

Historically, government-directed investment has been very inefficient. That’s why Amtrak and the Post Office don’t work very well and why there was a privatization movement in the 1980s and 1990s, which led governments everywhere to sell their state-owned enterprises.

As for Amtrak, if you compare passenger rail in the US to passenger rail in Europe and Japan it’s pretty clear that the difference isn’t that government-directed investment doesn’t work, it’s that Europe and Japan have decided to invest a lot in passenger rail and we haven’t. As for the US Postal Service, at the end of the day it does a pretty darn good job. Want to send a letter somewhere? Put it in an envelop and stick it in a box, and it’ll go where you wanted it to go. They’ll pick the letter up from your house if you want it, and hand-deliver it to the destination. For not much money! Anywhere in the country!What you can say about the Postal Service is that in the modern day it’s not clearly necessary to have a public agency guaranteeing the availability of this service in the way that it was before phones and email. But for quite a long time this was a really mission-critical element in our communications infrastructure and it still works just fine.

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