April 25, 2011
Robert Samuelson decided to lecture President Obama on being an adult today. He wants President Obama to take big steps to reduce the budget deficit. Interestingly, all of the ways that Samuelson suggests for reducing the budget deficit, such as cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits or raising gas taxes, hurt middle income people. Apparently, this is Samuelson’s view of what adults do.
Increased taxes on the rich are not on his list nor are taxes on financial speculation. These might seem obvious ways to reduce the deficit since the share of the wealthy in national income has increased by so much in the last decade as has the financial sector’s share of total output. But Samuelson apparently does not believe that adults tax rich people or the financial industry. It also doesn’t seem as though adults talk about cutting the military budget, since this doesn’t come up in Samuelson’s article either. Nor does constraining health care costs, which is by far the most important contributor to the country’s projected long-term deficit problem.
In criticizing President Obama for not doing anything about the deficit Samuelson apparently has not noticed that if President Obama’s health care reform is left in place it is projected to do a great deal to reduce future deficits. CBO’s extended baseline shows spending, measured as a share of GDP, increasing by roughly 15 percent over the next 25 years, not the one-third claimed by Samuelson. This extended baseline assumes that the law is followed.
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