Tag: Boomergeddon
-
Petersburg Backs Away from the Precipice
The City of Petersburg looks like it has finally dug out of its fiscal hole. City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides presented a $73 million budget to City Council last week that restores funding to schools and public safety even while building up the cash reserve by $950,000. Last year the city lurched from crisis to crisis…
-
Medicaid, Pensions Kneecapping State Budgets
Take heed Governor Ralph Northam! Take heed Virginia House and Senate budget negotiators! One in five tax dollars collected by state and local governments across the United States go to Medicaid and public-employee health and retirement costs. Of the $136 billion growth in inflation-adjusted taxes collected by state and local governments between 2008 and 2016, two-thirds…
-
Just a Reminder…
The national debt has passed the $21 trillion mark. It took only six months to get there from $20 trillion. Unlike the last time the U.S. racked up debt this rapidly, the economy is growing, not in a recession. Blame whomever you want — Boomergeddon is coming. It’s just a matter of time.
-
Working Longer Versus Saving More
One of the big decisions Americans must make as they plant their retirement is when to start collecting Social Security benefits. The popular wisdom is that each year you delay collecting Social Security translates into an 8% increase in annual benefits. The Social Security Administration can afford to goose the payout because (1) it pays…
-
Enjoy It While It Lasts
Woo hoo! Tax cuts and spending increases — it doesn’t get any better than this. The United States is about to enjoy its biggest fiscal stimulus since Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. All this spending and tax cutting is going to feel great for the next couple of years — especially…
-
The New Normal: Rising Interest Rates
The United States enjoyed a three-decade decline in interest rates, beginning with the early-1980s quashing of inflation by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volker and culminating with Ben Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing in the mid-2010s. Lower interest rates, which made equities look more favorable by comparison, helped drive stock market indices like the Dow Jones Industrial…
-
The GOP’s Hail Mary Pass
Faced with a chronically slow-growth economy, expanding deficits, mounting federal debt, and a looming funding crisis for the U.S. welfare state, Republican congressmen are, to borrow a football metaphor, throwing a hail Mary pass into the end zone in the desperate hope of scoring a winning touchdown. They are gambling that tax cuts combined with…
-
Bacon Bits: Film Flam, State Workers, Fun & Games with Chicago Debt
Film incentives a money loser for state. Incentives for producing films in Virginia doubled under the McAuliffe administration, reaching $14.3 million in 2015-2016 and totaling $43 million over five fiscal years. But Virginia’s film industry has returned about 20 cents for every dollar it received in tax credits and 30 cents for every dollar in grants over…
-
Entitlements, Fiscal Limits and the Looming Age of Rage
Now that Democrats are close to parity with Republicans in the House of Delegates, there is renewed talk of Medicaid expansion in Virginia. Meanwhile, in Washington, President Trump and Republicans are pushing a tax-cut plan that would spur economic growth but, even with stronger growth, would increase deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next ten…
-
How to Build Strong, Resilient Cities and Towns
Cities and counties across the United States are experiencing chronic fiscal stress, and the reason has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats and everything to do with what Chuck Marohn calls the “growth Ponzi scheme.” “Why are cities going broke?” he asked at a forum hosted by the Partnership for Smarter Growth, Coalition for…
-
Boomergeddon Watch: The Elderly Require Millions in Local Government Services
A decade or so ago when I worked for the Boomer Project, principals John Martin and Matt Thornhill warned that local governments in Virginia needed to prepare themselves for the age wave. The elderly have special needs, not all of which can be met by Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. People in the health care…
-
How Medicaid Is Cannibalizing Virginia’s Budget
Three big trends are worth noting from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission 2017 state spending update, a review of state spending over the previous 10 years. First, General Fund spending has been constrained by limited revenue growth resulting from Virginia’s weak economy. The increase in spending has averaged 2.0% per year. Adjusted for…
-
Disaster + Fiscal Insolvency = Puerto Rico
I can watch only so much CNN and MSNBC before I get nauseated, but I have seen enough the past day or two to be appalled at how the media are spinning the post-hurricane disaster of Puerto Rico: It’s another Katrina. The Trump administration hasn’t responded fast enough or aggressively enough to help the battered…
-
Uh, Oh, Look Who’s “City B”
The city of Richmond is “City B,” the unnamed locality, which, along with Petersburg, Bristol and two unnamed counties, was noted by the Auditor of Public Accounts as in severe fiscal stress, reports the Richmond Free Press. While State Auditor Martha S. Mavredes has not identified Richmond publicly, the city’s name is included in a…
-
Boomergeddon Watch: U.S. Virgin Islands
The borrowing window has slammed shut on the U.S. Virgin Islands, reports Reuters. With about 100,000 inhabitants, the U.S. protectorate, acquired from Denmark during World War I, owes more than $2 billion to bondholders and creditors — the biggest per capita debt load, about $19,000, for every man woman and child, in the country. And…