Address Jobs Now and Deficits Later

In the February 24, 2010 Politico article "Address jobs now and deficits later," Lawrence Mishel and David M. Walker explain the role of economic growth in increasing government revenues and argue the U.S. may need to increase short-term deficits to promote long-term prosperity.

President Barack Obama is in a difficult position when it comes to deficits. Today's high deficits will have to go even higher to help address unemployment. At the same time, many Americans are increasingly concerned about escalating deficits and debt. What's a president to do?

The answer, from a policy perspective, is not that hard: A focus on jobs now is consistent with addressing our deficit problems ahead.

The difficulty is that many politicians and news organizations often cast deficit debates as a dichotomy: You either care about them or you don’t.

But this is rarely accurate. The fact that the two of us, who have philosophical differences on the proper role of government, find much to agree on about deficits is a testament to the importance of dropping this useless dichotomy and finally talking about deficits in a reasonable way.

As in every economic downturn, federal revenues have fallen steeply because individuals and corporations earn less in a recession. High unemployment also results in higher expenditures for safety net programs, like Medicaid, unemployment benefits and food stamps.

Not surprisingly then, a huge recession can yield a huge deficit. Efforts to put people back to work and help restore the economy, like the recovery package passed last February, can also increase short-term deficits.

Though a concern, most of the recent short-term rise in the deficit is understandable. Furthermore, public spending can help compensate for the fall in private spending, and help stem the pain of substantial job losses.

With more than a fifth of the work force expected to be unemployed or underemployed in 2010, there is an economic and a moral imperative to take action. Persistently high unemployment drives poverty up, makes it harder for families to find decent housing, increases family stress and, ultimately, harms children’s educational achievement. For young workers entering the workforce, the current jobs crisis reduces the amount they will earn over their lifetime.

In deep recessions, businesses tend to make fewer critical investments in research and development that can improve our economy’s productive capacity over the long term. Entrepreneurs usually find credit hard to obtain if they want to start a new business. These factors hurt U.S. global competitiveness and growth potential.

That’s why we agree that job creation must be a short-term priority. Job creation plans must be targeted so we can get the greatest return on investment. They must be timely, creating jobs this year and next. And they must be big enough to substantially fill the enormous jobs hole we’re in. They must also be temporary — affecting the deficit only in the next couple of years, without exacerbating our large and growing structural deficits in later years.

Funding key investment and infrastructure projects to promote economic growth and offering a job creation tax credit are among the policy ideas that meet all these standards. In addition, temporarily renewing extended unemployment benefits can lead to more jobs throughout the economy.

But these problems, and the resulting short-term deficits they cause, should not be confused with the primary deficit challenge facing our nation: structural deficits. These deficits are projected to exist in coming years — even when the country is at peace, even when the economy is growing, even when unemployment falls.

Specifically, the deficit could approach an already unsustainable 6 percent of gross domestic product 10 years from now, and will continue to rise thereafter.

While we address our short-term unemployment challenges, we must also immediately establish a path to address our large, and growing, structural deficits.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that after the economy has returned to full employment, spending will still substantially outstrip revenues. Over time, Medicare and Medicaid will be the key drivers of these structural deficits. This is primarily because these programs’ costs tend to mirror overall cost increases for health care, which have risen much faster than overall economic growth for decades, but also because of demographic changes.

Our nation's fiscal picture will darken further with the passage of time, especially if interest rates increase.

These structural deficits are too substantial to close the gap without addressing both sides of the ledger: spending and revenues.

In doing so, it is important to distinguish critical and effective programs and tax policies from outdated and ineffective ones.

We must be careful to maintain the type of public investments that can help fuel broad-based economic growth while strengthening the safety net for our most vulnerable populations. And we should take into account growing retirement insecurity as employer pension systems erode and personal savings falter.

People should be able to count on government benefits they are promised. It is, therefore, critical that federal benefit and funding levels be reconciled.

None of this will be easy — not the policy or the politics. It will require hard choices, and an extraordinary process to engage the American people and to make recommendations to the Congress on budget controls, spending cuts and revenue increases.

Getting the deficit under control cannot be accomplished by simply ending “waste, fraud and abuse,” stopping all foreign aid or exiting Iraq and Afghanistan. Substantial progress could be made though by ending the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, or paying for their extension through spending reductions. In the end, Congress must step up to the plate, not just with hearings, but with votes.

For all the disagreement in Washington, we both know that, like us, there are many who see the critical importance of addressing these challenges. We must accept higher deficits in the short-term in order to put people back to work.

At the same time, we must take immediate steps to agree on a path and a process for reducing the structural deficits that lie ahead.

In a town of division, this is one area where we need a real consensus now.

Lawrence Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute. David Walker is president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.