Word: budgets
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Anyone believing the global economic crisis to be over should have taken a look around Europe this week. Desperate to revive his country's feeble economy, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan promised $6 billion worth of savings in a budget aimed at taming the country's stubborn deficit. The plan is his second budget this year, and Ireland's harshest in decades. In a mini-budget announced a couple of hours earlier, Britain's Alistair Darling unveiled his government's latest plan to fix the U.K.'s broken economy, including a punitive tax on bankers' bonuses, a rise in social...
...take "courageous" steps to tackle the crisis. Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, part of the socialist government that won power in the country last October, duly pledged to do "whatever is required" to shore up the country's finances. Key to the recovery plan: slashing Greece's budget deficit next year from 12.7% - more than four times the level allowed under E.U. rules...
...CLASS Act - which would begin collecting premiums in 2011 but wouldn't begin payouts until 2016 - appears to generate $72.5 billion in savings between 2010 and 2019. On paper, these savings are used to offset spending in the bill, which even CLASS Act supporters admit has the appearance of budget gimmickry...
...opponents are just as guilty of fiscal shenanigans. It's true, as Thune pointed out, that the CBO says the CLASS Act will increase budget deficits in the long term, but that's only because of the peculiar way the deficit is calculated. Premiums collected would be invested in federal securities, and when the interest earned is transferred back to the CLASS Act trust fund, the transaction would be recorded as an increase in the deficit. The Senate bill also requires that the CLASS Act trust fund be solvent over a 75-year period, and the bill would give...
Paul Van de Water, a longtime CBO analyst and now senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, says the CLASS Act doesn't have strong enough work requirements, which are intended to be a proxy for physical fitness. Americans who perform only seasonal work, for example, could qualify for the program. He adds that penalties for letting premium payments lapse are not strong enough. "The criticisms are absolutely true, but you design things the best you can. If we only did [legislation] that entailed no risk, I don't think we'd ever do much of anything...