This week's IGM European Economic Experts Panel statements:
A) The fiscal rules of the European Union should give more flexibility to member countries.
B) The Italian budget for 2019 that the European Commission rejected in October would have increased Italy’s risk of fiscal insolvency substantially.
C) If France runs a 2019 budget deficit of around 3.4% of GDP, as announced by President Macron’s government, France’s risk of fiscal insolvency will increase substantially.
Keyword: fiscal deficits
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This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel Statements:
A) If the US enacts a tax bill similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate— and assuming no other changes in tax or spending policy — US GDP will be substantially higher a decade from now than under the status quo.
B) If the US enacts a tax bill similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate— and assuming no other changes in tax or spending policy — the US debt-to-GDP ratio will be substantially higher a decade from now than under the status quo.
This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel Statements:
A) Amending the Constitution to require that the federal government end each fiscal year without a deficit would substantially reduce output variability in the United States.
B) Amending the Constitution to require that the federal government end each fiscal year without a deficit would substantially lower the cost of borrowing for the federal government.
This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:
A) Since 1980, whenever substantial growth effects have been required to make a tax reform plan revenue neutral, the actual outcome has invariably been a fall in tax revenue as a share of GDP.
B) The tax reform plan proposed by President Trump this week would likely pay for itself through higher economic growth.
This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:
Because all federal spending and taxes must be approved by both houses of Congress and the executive branch, a separate debt ceiling that has to be increased periodically creates unneeded uncertainty and can potentially lead to worse fiscal outcomes.
This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:
A: Because federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid will continue to grow under current policy beyond the 10-year window of most political budget debates, it is easy for a politician to devise a budget plan that would reduce federal deficits over the next decade without really making the U.S. fiscally sustainable.
B: Comparing two plans that would reduce federal budget deficits by identical amounts in each of the next 10 years, one that did so partly by reducing significantly the long-term growth rate of Medicare and Medicaid spending would do more to make the U.S. budget fiscally sustainable than one that did not lower the growth of these spending programs.
This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:
If the fiscal changes that are planned under current US law take place next year — including Bush era tax cuts expiring, Medicare payment rates to doctors being cut, the AMT applying to many more taxpayers, and automatic cuts in defense and non-defense discretionary spending kicking in — then US real GDP growth in 2013 will be lower than it would be under the CBO's alternative fiscal scenario, in which the above changes do not occur.
This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel poll statements:
A) Eliminating tax deductions for non-investment personal interest expenses (e.g., on mortgages), with reductions in personal tax rates that are both budget neutral and keep the burden of taxes by income group the same, would lead to more efficient financing decisions by individuals.
B) Reducing the deductibility of interest expenses for non-financial businesses to equalize the overall tax cost of debt and equity financing, while using the extra revenue to reduce personal and corporate tax rates in a budget neutral fashion that also keeps the burden of taxes the same, would lead to more efficient financing decisions by firms.
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