Irrelevant, Mr Elmendorf suggested on his own blog on March 23rd: the level of GDP matters more than its growth rate in determining the level of the deficit and on that front the CBO is more optimistic than the private sector.
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It was not tax cuts or even spending increases that caused most of the deficit, but the appallingly low rate of economic growth over the past 10 years.
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The GOP opposition to any kind of tax rate increase has stalled deficit negotiations for two years and led to unusual political drama, such as McConnell recently filibustering a proposal he introduced and Thursday night's rebuff by House Republicans of the alternative tax plan pushed by Boehner, their leader.
Reducing the budget deficit would increase the rate of growth in the economy, increase corporate profits, buttress the stock market.
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Because the government is a major provider of health care, slowing the growth rate of health care costs would lower the deficit and thus raise public saving.
Those of us over age 50 remember that the outbreak of inflation in the 1970s led to record high interest rates and a wrenching recession that saw a four percentage point increase in the unemployment rate and a tripling of the federal budget deficit between 1979 and 1982.
Drop the fiscal-cliff sequestration of spending and expand discretionary spending by the rate of inflation: Raises the five-year deficit by another trillion dollars.
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Real GDP grew 218% over those 28 years, more than double the 97% growth rate seen in the recent 28 years of chronic deficit spending.
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These kinds of meetings are likely to become increasingly common in the years ahead as the federal government seeks to pare a budget deficit currently running at the rate of about a billion dollars every six hours.
The country achieved a single digit inflation rate of 8.6% and the lowest fiscal deficit to GDP ratio of 4.8% in decades, according to figures from the Minister of Finance.
And as the President promised, millionaires and billionaires will also begin doing more to help pay down the deficit through a combination of permanent tax rate increases and reduced tax benefits.
Five years ago Russia had a big budget deficit, a fixed exchange rate and a lot of high-coupon debt.
Slowing the growth rate of health care costs will prevent disastrous increases in the Federal budget deficit.
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Instead of reduction, the deficit actually grew at double the expected rate for 2012.
All our steps to rein in the deficit will be for naught if we do not reduce the rate of health care cost growth over time.
By always scoring tax rate reductions as losing huge amounts of revenues and tax increases as automatically lowering the deficit, the Beltway rules are stacked against sound tax policy.
Mr Osborne said the Conservatives would set out further details of how they would cut Britain's deficit at a faster rate than Labour before the general election, adding that they would place more emphasis on spending cuts than tax rises.
If the economy had continued the 3.4% growth rate of the 1990s during the 2000s, unemployment would have remained low and the federal deficit would have remained manageable.
Assuming an average flow rate of about 1.5 million homes per year, you can eyeball the stock deficit by comparing the mass above and below the zero on the following graph.
Their study, published by the prestigious American Economic Review, focused on tax changes meant to either increase the rate of economic growth (not simply offset a recession) or to reduce the budget deficit.
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With a deficit of about 9% of GDP last year, an unemployment rate surpassing 25% and a protest movement that is showing flashes of violence, some worry that Spain is being sucked into a Greek-style death spiral.
In spite of what they believe is an obvious connection between the currency exchange rate and the trade deficit with China, the empirical evidence does not support such a connection.
So I think this is a long process that will involve stakeholders at all levels with both political parties weighing in on their ideas about how we meet the goal of reforming the way corporate taxes are done, lowering that rate, but keeping it deficit neutral.
As Tim Lee of pi Economics points out, the Turkish lira is as strong against the euro as it was in 2002, even though its current-account deficit is running at around 7% of economic output and its inflation rate has been significantly higher than that of the euro zone over the past five years.
If we just increased the growth rate by one percentage point, that would drastically bring down the long-term projections of the deficit, because people are paying more into the coffers and fewer people are drawing unemployment insurance.
An inflation rate of 20.4% in 1990 is down to 2.2%, and a budget deficit equal to a staggering 29% of GDP is now a manageable 1.5%.
Mr Obama proposes to cut the deficit by returning the top marginal income-tax rate to the 39.6% level of the late 1990s.
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Marginal tax rate cuts might bring needed new stimulus to the economy, but in most cases probably at the expense of deficit reduction.
There is no problem running a deficit so long as it is lower (as a percent of GDP) than our rate of nominal GDP growth.
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However, much of the surge in debt was the combined result of the government's deficit and the high interest rates needed to defend an overvalued exchange rate.
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