Potentially Good Budget News For NASA
Budget Deal To Ease Sequester, Boost Discretionary Spending For Two Years, AIP
“Congress approved a major bipartisan budget agreement, negotiated with the White House, that increases discretionary spending by $80 billion total in FY 2016 and FY 2017, creating room for boosts to spending at federal science agencies and offices starting this year. Early this morning, the Senate passed and sent the “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015″ to President Obama, concluding a major bipartisan effort between the White House and congressional leaders in both political parties that brings budget stability to the federal government for the next two years. The agreement, which the President has clearly indicated he will sign into law, lifts the federal debt ceiling through March 2017 and dials back for two years the federal budget sequester that has been in place since the passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011.”
Hmmm, election year?
Yep. Move over Greece, here comes another debt busting budget.
Greece doesn’t issue it’s own currency, the Euro countries are messed up because they accepted a common currency, with no fiscal union. The federal government can always pay it’s debts, the risk is not investing in the future and not having the real assets in terms of an educated workforce and technology innovation needed to maintain our standard of living. The Fed has pumped huge amounts of reserves into the banks, and the government has run up deficits over the past few years without any sign of inflation. If and/when we reach full employment which some think is down around 4% unemployment, and we do get significant inflation, then that would be the time to cut back on spending, but Japan has been running deficits for decades and they can’t generate inflation. Basically, if you run a current account deficit either the private of public sector is going to have to run a deficit, during the housing bubble it was the private sector, and during the great recession the public sector deficit is paying down the private sector debt.
Anyway, the government usually runs a deficit unless you’re a net exporter.
and THAT is Econ 101.
Interesting that service on the debt has not changed much of the years as a percent of spending or GDP. http://www.pewresearch.org/…
Richard Koo explains it best.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Goldman view on the same thing, The Sequester certainly hurt growth. http://www.businessinsider….
wasn’t the whole point? hurt growth so a republican would get elected?
I don’t know, Minsky believed the financial system to be inherently unstable with these booms and busts we see periodically Koo talks about. He proposed something called a job guarantee to replace welfare and unemployment insurance, a kind of minimum income job that would protect folks from the downturns and stabilize demand so the effects of the downturn are moderated. When times are good, private sector jobs absorb the folks from the minimum income jobs where they have maintained skills and work habits rather than being unemployed for long periods. Germany did something like this during the financial crisis. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/…
There is actually a law that covers this job guarantee idea, sec. 206. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Lots of good stuff there, James. Thank you. Seems like there’s no better way to give up your independence than to give up your currency. As far as the gubment paying it’s debts, think of all the technology innovation they could invest in if they didn’t have to shell out all that dough in interest payments. They’d have enough money to satisfy every space geek’s futuristic fantasy. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. As far as inflation goes, I’m just an old geezer living on what I’ve saved, and what the gubment (taxpayers) kick in. Praying for inflation would not be tops on my to do list. I’m too old to be lugging around suitcases full of million dollar bills just to pay for my daily six pack. 😉
There will always be debt to service. The trick is to stimulate growth, so that the debt as a percentage of GDP is kept low. Spend when you’re in a downturn, push for balanced budgets during growth periods.
I agree. Unfortunately this administration has done diddly squat to stimulate growth, unless it’s gubment growth. Just like FDR during the depression, every time the economy shows a spark of life, they think up another socialist blood sucking scheme to send it back to the grave.
At the risk of going off topic, it is worth noting that Ireland was, economically, in as bad shape as Greece around 2008. Like Greece, they were massively in debt and the recession caused the bottom to fall out. Unlike Greece, Ireland recovered well, because they had been borrowing money to build infrastructure rather than pensions, welfare and other direct benefits.
Also, I believe Ireland like Germany is a net exporter.
It’s more the final act of the grown-ups in Congress before they got chased from the room by the screaming toddlers. The new House leadership would be more than happy to shut down the gov’t during an election year to pander to their base. The more clear-headed types realize that that’s suicide – both at the party and national levels.
Perhaps they realized how much damage they were doing to the economy on the fiscal side.
Perhaps they just want to buy votes with pork barrel politics using other peoples money. Honestly, has no one taken Econ 101 in this entire country?
About time. Maybe we can get them to stop trying to underfund Planetary Science Research every year, and do a faster schedule of Discovery Program launches.
Maybe going into space is to dangerous?
Happy HALLOWEEN
http://m.space.com/30983-ha…
“The new budget legislation does not guarantee the science agencies will see spending increases in either FY 2016 or FY 2017, but it does provide a 5.2 percent increase in federal discretionary spending in FY 2016”
Does that mean that NASA will get almost $1 billion extra dollars to spend? If that is the case, then, NASA will be able to fully fund it’s Commercial Crew Program and many other science programs that wasn’t funded by the Senate and HOR.