–What is the purpose of the Congressional Budget Office?

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Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.
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What is the purpose of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)?

According to the CBO itself: “Each year, the agency’s economists and budget analysts produce dozens of reports and hundreds of cost estimates for proposed legislation.”

So, you may believe the CBO analyzes current and future taxes and spending plans, to help Congress determine current and future deficits.

And you would be right — but wrong.

I just read an article speculating that the Republicans will play games with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in an effort to appear conservative while spending more than is disclosed.

Here are a few excerpts:

Will The GOP Turn The CBO Into A Fantasy League?
By Howard Hill
(a former investment banker who created a number of groundbreaking deal structures and analytic techniques on Wall Street, and later helped manage a $100 billion portfolio. His book Finance Monsters was recently published.)
December 23, 2014

News that Doug Elmendorf will not be appointed to another term as head of the Congressional Budget Office bodes ill for future budget policy discussions.

The CBO is the official non-partisan scorekeeper for all things budgetary. The soon-to-be outgoing chief of that crucial office is held in high esteem by both parties for his fair-minded neutrality.

The CBO’s analysis of the likely 10-year effects of the Affordable Care Act is a prime example. Democrats seized on the overall deficit savings from Obamacare that came from several cost-control measures in the Act and new taxes on “Cadillac” employer-provided insurance plans.

For their part, Republicans got political talking points from the estimate that the workforce would shrink when middle-aged workers left jobs they held on to as the only way to maintain their health insurance.

No matter. The (D)s could trumpet the deficit cutting, and the (R)s could say it cost jobs.

Even current “rules” of CBO analyses are subject to partisan gaming. For example, when a bill increases deficits too much to be acceptable in the CBO’s standard 10-year analysis, the bills are often changed to make the expensive (but popular) aspects of the bill expire early.

With a wink and a nudge, the bill’s sponsors figure that Congress will extend the popular but expensive features when they are up for expiration.

Another example was the automatic sunsetting of the tax cuts put into place in 2001 and 2003. When they were originally set to expire in 2010, the country was still suffering the after-effects of the 2008 recession, so most of the cuts stayed in place. In political speak, not extending all the cuts was labeled “raising taxes.”

The latter example is especially significant if the new head of the CBO uses the dynamic scoring that radicals like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) want.

According to the supply-side devotees that want the new method of scoring, tax cuts always spur additional economic growth, effectively growing our way out of the revenue shortfalls that are inevitable when tax rates are cut.

Some of the trillion and a half dollars added to the national debt by the tax cuts comes back to the Treasury by virtue of the extra growth in the economy and employment.

The CBO estimated that our national debt from that relatively modest tax cut would grow by only $1.1 to $1.3 trillion with those positive feedback effects from the tax cuts.

Translation: Rather than projecting taxes and spending from current levels, “dynamic scoring” assumes that tax cuts cause increased personal income, which in turn causes increased spending, which actually increase tax receipts.

It used to be called the “Laffer curve.” The purpose is to cut taxes on the rich while demonstrating future fiscal prudence: Lower taxes and a reduced deficit.

As (Republican) Governor Sam Brownback said when he pushed Kansas to make drastic tax cuts, he was using the state as his “laboratory” — and he even hired supply-side guru Art Laffer to advise.

Kansas is bordered by four states with very similar economies. They didn’t duplicate his tax cuts. What better real-world experiment could we have?

Since the Brownback/Laffer policies were put into place, the Kansas economy grew slower and unemployment dropped less than in any of the bordering states.

This year, Kansas will probably finish depleting its rainy day fund, let its roads fall apart even more, close schools all over the state, and raid specific purpose funds to give them to the general fund.

That’s to plug the $279 million gap in this year’s budget that’s still left after last year’s budget cuts.

And the problem being pushed into next year is already expected to be more than twice as big ($648 million).

So maybe the incoming head of the CBO analysis should use this real data from the real world, where tax cuts seem to make an economy grow slower than no tax cuts.

Now that’s a plan! More unemployment, slower growth, and bigger deficits.

Howard Hill may or may not be a great investment banker, but clearly he doesn’t know squat about economics, specifically Monetary Sovereignty.

He doesn’t understand that:
1. The federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, never can run short of its sovereign currency, the dollar, and neither needs nor uses tax dollars to fund its spending.

2. Federal deficits not only are not a problem, but increased federal deficits are necessary to grow the U.S. economy. That is why deficit cuts inhibit economic growth.

3. The federal debt is nothing more than bank deposits — the total of deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank — and could be “paid off” simply by transferring the dollars in these accounts to the T-security owners’ checking accounts.

4. Kansas is monetarily non-sovereign, so it does need and use tax dollars to fund its spending. Using the Kansas experience as an example for the U.S. is like using a house on the moon as an example for a house on the sun.

In short, the politicians (at the behest of the rich) have made sure the Congressional Budget Office is unable to provide accurate predictions about current and future deficits, and even if the CBO could perform this task, the results would be useless.

The entire CBO mission is a charade, created by Congress and President Richard Nixon on July 12, 1974, as part of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act.

Ironically, three years earlier, President Nixon had invalidated the future CBO’s mission, when he took the U.S. off its gold standard, and made the government Monetarily Sovereign.

Not only was the CBO unable to predict deficits, but predicting deficits became a useless exercise.

Federal spending is not limited by taxes, deficits or by debt. It is limited only by an inflation that cannot be controlled with interest rate increases.

Because the CBO cannot predict deficits, and deficits do not limit spending or tax reduction, the CBO’s contribution to American economics merely is to track dollars coming in and dollars going out — much like your checkbook balance — a job that could be handled by a 3rd grade class.

Why the charade? The politicians have brainwashed the public into believing federal finances are like personal finances. For most people, their current spending is based on their current wealth plus predictions of their future income.

If your current wealth is $5,000, and you believe that next year you’ll earn $50,000, you would be unlikely to buy a $200 thousand car and a $10 million airplan. But if instead you had $5,000 and knew you were going to earn $20 million next year, you just might buy that airplane.

Federal finances are different. The federal government’s wealth is infinite (It creates dollars at will) and it’s future earnings also are infinite (Next year it again will create dollars at will). The federal government not only could buy that $10 million airplane, but a whole fleet of them — at $100 million each.

The CBO is a useless agency — actually a harmful agency — because it gives false meaning to the meaningless deficit.

The CBO however, does have one value: It employs people, thereby stimulating the economy.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Ten Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

The Ten Steps will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
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10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY