Very Powerful Real-World Evidence For Spending Caps

US national debt piles up next to the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., where no one has the political courage to rise to the challenge of staving off the coming crisis.

A few days ago, I cited some research by an economics professor at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!), who calculated that we would have a big budget surplus today if Washington lawmakers had simply maintained Bill Clinton’s final budget, adjusting it only for inflation plus population growth.

My purpose was to show that some sort of long-run spending cap (such as limiting outlays so they can’t grow faster than population plus inflation) is the best way of achieving good fiscal outcomes.

And I cited similar hypothetical examples when writing about fiscal policy in Canada and also when sharing some good analysis from Investor’s Business Daily.

I think these examples are persuasive, but some people aren’t overly impressed by arguments that aren’t based on real-world evidence. So I also make sure to show how good things happen in those rare instances that politicians can be convinced to restrain spending.

A review of data for 16 nations reveals that multi-year periods of spending restraint lead to lower fiscal burdens and less red ink.

Between 2009 and 2014, a de facto spending freeze at the federal level dramatically reduced burden of spending in the United States.

Thanks to a constitutional spending cap, Switzerland has shrunk the public sector, balanced its budget and reduced government debt.

Now we have another real-world example to add to our list.

Check out these excerpts from a New York Times story.

A year after Colorado became the first state to allow recreational marijuana sales, millions of tax dollars are rolling in… But a legal snarl may force the state to hand that money back to marijuana consumers, growers and the public — and lawmakers do not want to.

Hmmm…I can understand lawmakers wanting to hold on to other people’s money, but what is meant by “legal snarl”?

Well, it turns out that this is just a way of describing Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), which imposes caps on how fast the state’s fiscal burden can increase. The reporter from the New York Times writes that this is a “problem,” but taxpayers obviously have a different perspective.

The problem is a strict anti-spending provision in the state Constitution… Technical tripwires in that voter-approved provision, known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, may require Colorado to refund nearly $60 million…because it collected more than it had anticipated in taxes last year across the board — including construction, oil and gas and other sections of the state’s booming economy. …The complex measure, first approved by voters in 1992, essentially requires that when Colorado collects more money than it had anticipated, it has to give some back to taxpayers.

In other words, the state is collecting plenty of money in taxes, but the politicians are irked they can’t raise spending beyond what’s allowed by TABOR.

And that irks the pro-spending crowd.

Blame lies with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, said Tim Hoover, a spokesman for the Colorado Fiscal Institute, which tracks budget issues in the state. …“It has its own malevolent programming that is really hard to override,” he said.

I obviously don’t agree with Mr. Hoover’s philosophy, but his quote is very powerful evidence that a well-designed spending cap can be effective.

Which is why I cited Colorado’s TABOR back in 2013 as being the best role model in the United States for those who want to genuinely constrain government.

Heck, even the International Monetary Fund now acknowledges that spending caps are the only effective fiscal policy.

By the way, there’s also a Laffer Curve lesson in this story. Echoing what I wrote earlier this year, marijuana tax revenues have been below estimates because the tax rate is too high.

“It’s not that the pot tax came in too high,” said State Senator Pat Steadman, a Democrat who has been trying to write a law that would provide a solution. “It’s that every other revenue came in high.” …Miguel Lopez, who organizes Denver’s annual 4/20 rally — intended to be a giant feel-good festival — said he was sick of what he called high taxes on recreational marijuana. He said they were hurting small stores and helping to keep the black market alive.

Not that we should be surprised. Politicians routinely over-tax tobacco.

And other so-called sin taxes also get set too high, which is a point I made when commenting about a proposed tax on strip clubs in Florida.

“You get a bigger underground economy with high tax rates, which means less revenue than anticipated, and also openings for organized crime and other bad guys,” he said. “Regarding the proposal, I have to imagine that a $25 cover charge, combined with record-keeping, will kill off most strip clubs, so I don’t think they’ll get much money,” Mitchell said. “Customers, presumably, will gravitate to substitute forms of entertainment.”

In the case of Colorado’s pot tax, the “substitute form of entertainment” is simply buying pot in the underground economy.

So the moral of the story, whether looking at spending caps or tax rates, is that politicians are too greedy for their own good.

P.S. What’s the opposite of a spending cap? There are probably a couple of possible answers, but I would pick Obama’s proposed tax-increase “trigger.” Here’s some of what I wrote about that scheme.

Called a “debt failsafe trigger,” Obama’s scheme would automatically raise taxes if politicians spend too much. …Let’s ponder what this means. If politicians in Washington spend too much and cause more red ink, which happens on a routine basis, Obama wants a provision that automatically would raise taxes on the American people.

Fortunately, this was such an awful idea that even gullible GOPers said no. Now if we can keep Republicans from getting seduced into counterproductive tax-hike budget deals, we may actually make some progress!

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