MuniLand

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has published a letter to Congress’s new Joint Select Committee, aka the supercommittee, with the changes they would like to see made to the budget and tax code. The supercommittee’s brief is pretty broad; it will be looking at ways to balance the federal budget by raising taxes and/or reducing expenditures.

The Chamber, which represents business interests, strongly insists that the supercommittee slash entitlements and reform the tax code by lowering tax rates. From the Chamber letter:

The Chamber urges you to consider how the current tax laws act as an impediment to worldwide competitiveness, a deterrent to saving and investment, and an obstacle to innovation and entrepreneurship. Accordingly, the Chamber believes that the current code needs a comprehensive reform to lower overall marginal tax rates, to encourage saving and investment, to foster global competitiveness, increase capital accumulation, attract foreign investment, and drive job creation.

The problem with the Chamber’s argument about lowering tax rates to increase our global competitiveness is that the United States already has some of the lowest corporate tax rates in the western world. Here are corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP from the OECD. (Countries in dark green collect the lowest amount of taxes, countries in red collect the highest) In the Western Hemisphere only South American countries have lower corporate tax rates than the U.S.

Taxes on corporate income as a percentage of country GDP.

The fact is that the U.S. collects a lower amount of total taxes as a percentage of GDP than most of the western world. We are clearly competitive already on the basis of tax rates. Data source: OECD.

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“The great difficulty with politics is that there are no established principles.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Oh, America! It’s time to reinvent you. You are mired in a deep and prolonged slump. Economic activity keeps slowing. Our political class has been viciously testing the boundaries of their adversaries. We are faced with a lot of bills coming due and we are broke. What can be done?

I’ve been advocating a new type of effort involving the government and the private sector to rebuild and recharge America by creating a federal infrastructure bank funded by U.S. corporate offshore profits. These corporate profits would be repatriated at a 0% tax rate (current law requires their taxation at 35% if brought back to America).

A quick and dirty way to evaluate the credit quality of a borrower is to look at his debt load relative to revenues. It’s not a perfect measure — it doesn’t take into account whether that debt is repaid over many years or whether it’s all due at once, for instance — but it suggests why investors view some states as better risks than others. I’ve made a set of charts so we can compare debt loads and revenues for the states in a simple, visual way. The amount of debt load is indicated by the full height of the bar. (Please note the vertical scales of the charts vary. California is the highest borrower by far.)

I’ll do another series of charts that includes pension liabilities and other post-employment benefits, and I’m warning you now: that set will look scary. Here is a link to these data and charts in interactive format. Feel free to embed and use them elsewhere (crediting Reuters of course).

Tax collection data is from the U.S. Census Bureau and debt load data is from Standard and Poor’s.

Politicians start telling the truth

In response to Moody’s placing the state’s Aaa credit rating on review, Tennessee’s News Channel 5 filed this story and video, two very good examples of a state government reacting to a possible downgrade. In the video, municipal bond expert and Metro Councilmember Emily Evans says:

There is no getting away from the fact that we have engaged in debt practices that have been irresponsible and we are going to pay a price and we need to pony up and pay it.

Our massive debt load is a large issue overhanging America and a big bump in the road to economic recovery. Facing the facts and telling the truth are necessary to start the process of getting fiscal houses in order.

More alarms are ringing in muniland today. Moody’s issued a statement announcing that it was putting on review five states which have Aaa ratings. Aaa is Moody’s highest rating, and the agency is concerned that knock-on effects from the federal government could weaken the ratings of these states.

I made this chart detailing the specific rationale Moody’s used for each state from the statement they released today. Note that states which have a large dependence on federal jobs and contracts dominate the list. ————– Sensitivity to natl trends Fed workers as % of employment Fed contracts as % of state GDP Medicaid as high % of budget Low rainy day fund Maryland *** *** New Mexico *** *** *** South Carolina *** *** *** Tennessee *** *** *** *** Virginia *** *** *** ***

Kelly Nolan of the Wall Street Journal reported today that property-tax revenues have been off for two consecutive quarters. When you look at the numbers, though, you can see it’s not really off by that much, especially given the state of home prices. Here is the change in the data reported by the U.S. Census Bureau: Reporting period $ billions 2011 1st Quarter $ 113 2010 1st Quarter $ 115 2010 4th Quarter $ 177 2009 4th Quarter $ 182

These are not enormous drops in property-tax collections in light of the collapse of the housing market. The chart above is a plot of median home prices against property-tax collections. As you can see, tax collections continued climbing even as housing prices were falling off a cliff.

I think it’s safe to say that municipalities are doing quite well in collecting property taxes. Everybody and every public entity must tighten their belt; there is less and less to go around.

Minnesota reaches a deal

Minnesota agrees on a budget, ending a two week shutdown. But is it just accounting tricks? From the NewsObserver.com (emphasis mine):

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and top Republicans agreed Thursday to end a budget impasse that prompted the longest state government shutdown in recent history.

Dayton said the state government would be back in business “very soon,” but he didn’t say exactly when.

It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful name for a state than Minnesota, which comes from a Dakota Sioux word for “sky-tinted water.” Today the state is popularly known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” a nickname that conjures up images of primal forests, deep waterways and lots of summer mosquitoes.

The reasonable-looking man in the video above is Mark Dayton, the governor of Minnesota. Governor Dayton, a Democrat, has shut down the state government over an impasse with Republicans in the state legislature. Bloomberg reports:

The 12-day impasse is the longest of the nation’s six state government shutdowns since 2002 by four days, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It has idled about 23,000 state workers, closed agencies and stopped construction projects statewide.

“Unrelenting rigidity”

It feels as though American politics has become a war. The battle is not about civil rights or women’s suffrage; it’s a war about how large a role the government should play in the redistribution of income and the support of the people. There is plenty of room to disagree on these issues.

Throughout our history, there have been Americans who have suffered, and in the current faltering recovery, there are an exceptionally high number of people suffering. This makes the current war over reducing entitlements seem especially harsh.Unfortunately, Democrats and Republicans have taken rock-hard positions and have refused to come down from their pulpits. Minnesota has shut down the state government for seven days because the Democrats and Republicans refuse to even meet to discuss a compromise. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

In Minnesota, it remains uncertain whether results can be expected from an ad hoc budget group formed this week by former Republican Gov. Arne Carlson and former Vice President Walter Mondale, a Democrat.

State and local governments earn their “wages” primarily by collecting taxes, although states get significant “flow-throughs” from the federal government for Medicaid and other social entitlements. Every state varies in where they draw tax revenues from. For example, states that are highly dependent on tourism will see substantial revenues from hotel and sales taxes.

New York and New Jersey are two well-to do states that have historically relied on sharing in the largesse of their rich uncle from Wall Street. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published an interesting paper last year that talked about how these two states were heavily reliant on tax revenues from the financial sector and were especially affected by the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Wall Street revenues rebounded sharply in 2009 and 2010 but are now sputtering and projected to decline going forward due to financial reform and the slow pace of recovery.

One recommendation of the Federal Reserve’s research staff was to have a reduced reliance on personal-income taxes, which fluctuate with the economy, and a greater reliance on sales taxes, which tend to be more stable. Unfortunately, sales taxes tend to be regressive and place a heavier burden on the poor, who spend the bulk of their income on consumption.