I’ve decided to get serious about my health. Instead of the leisurely 10-12 blocks I walk most days, I’m going to put in a brisk four miles every day — starting in 2015. No more greasy foods, no more high-carb pasta or potato binges, either. They are strictly out — as of Jan. 1, 2019. And don’t say I am dragging my feet. Why, I am going to start taking a multi-vitamin every day, starting next year after Labor Day!
You can snicker at my transparent unwillingness to really change my lifestyle for better health. But announcing grand economic initiatives that delay any real action for many years seems to play well with voters. So why can’t I do it, too?
Barack Obama has a plan for resolving Social Security funding. He proposes a tax of 2 percent to 4 percent on earnings above $250,000. Right now, any income above $102,000 is exempt from Social Security taxation.
But Obama does not want this to start until a decade after he takes office. That is like me pledging to eschew my favorite Asian buffet — starting in 2019.
This sort of fudging is far from original with the Democratic candidate. It was at the core of the Bush tax cuts of 2001. This initiative lowered various income tax rates as well as the estate tax. However, these cuts made long-term projected deficits alarmingly large, enough that the measure violated the “Byrd Rule.” This is an internal Senate rule that makes it easier to block any measure that will significantly increase the budget deficit beyond a 10-year term.
The solution was to insert a provision that all the changed rates will revert back to their original levels as of 2011. The projected deficits were then small enough to escape invoking the rule. Problem solved.
While the Obama proposal and Bush tax reduction act pushed things a decade into the future, they at least involved action by the government itself. That is more honest than legislation that requires some other entity to perform some technical miracle to solve a problem.
Politicians from both parties are eager to solve pollution or oil dependency problems by requiring auto manufacturers to improve average gas mileage by some arbitrary annual percentage for some arbitrary number of years. They are unwilling to even discuss the measure most economists think is most effective at lowest cost: a fuel tax.
We could follow that pattern and solve increasing obesity by requiring all food makers to reduce the caloric content of every food product by 4 percent each year between now and 2020.
That would be nice for me; I wouldn’t have to eat less or exercise. The profit-hungry corporations that have been increasing my waistline for years would finally have to mend their evil ways.
Such fudging is most blatant in international climate-change agreements. These usually set goals decades into the future and completely ignore who is to do exactly what. Still, I assure you that by 2050, my body will weigh less than it did in 1990. It won’t be difficult to accomplish, as I’ll be long dead by then
© 2008 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.