Budgetpolitik som bön

Robert Samuelson, ekonomikommentator i Washington Post, är alltid mycket läsvärd. Idag avlossar han (ännu) en salva mot den amerikanska politiska elitens oförmåga att hantera statens budget. Jag har skrivit om detta tidigare och jag tror det är ett viktigt ämne trots att USA fortsatt åtnjuter ett stort förtroende på de finansiella marknaderna.

Samuelson beskriver den politiska oförmågan mycket väl och jag tycker hans formuleringar förtjänar studeras i originalversion:

Except in crises, which create their own logic, our political system requires the support or (at least) the acquiescence of public opinion to make major changes. The only way to cure chronic deficits is to cut someone’s benefits or raise someone’s taxes. But this requires an open debate to reshape public opinion. What is government’s proper role? Who deserves benefits? What taxes are effective and needed?

These are precisely the basic questions that political leaders of both parties evade, because the answers would offend much of the public. They would jeopardize the protected status of all of today’s benefits for the elderly. They would reveal that, even after plausible spending cuts, only higher taxes can balance the budget. Presidents and congressional leaders have judged this sort of candor to be a pointless exercise in political suicide.

Instead, they take refuge in “budget process” fixes. What we’ve learned after four decades is that, as policy, this is little better than prayer.

De 40 år han åsyftar är de decennier har gått sedan USA på pappret fick en formell ordning för hanteringen av statens finanser:

We are marking the 40th anniversary of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the granddaddy of process rules. Until the 1970s, Congress lacked a coherent budget process. Appropriations committees controlled spending; the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee oversaw taxes. Budgets simply resulted from their haphazard decisions. Reacting to this and to deficits, President Nixon resorted to “impoundments” by refusing to spend money Congress had appropriated. Congress was infuriated. To restore its power, Congress passed a budget law that was a model of rationality.

Men av denna rationalitet på papper har det i praktiken inte blivit något annat än vad Samuelson kallar en bön om rationalitet.