How the 2009 Federal Budget Could Have Been Balanced.

Our government collected fewer taxes in FY2009 than it did in FY2000 – this can be said without adjusting for inflation. In 2000, the government took in 1.54 trillion dollars in on-budget taxes, but only took in 1.53 trillion in 2009.  This is despite spending twice as much money in 2009 than in 2000.   Tax receipts during the 90s grew fast.  That was partly do to higher taxes and also with a phenomenal increases in GDP and wealth.  Then came the 2000s.  Tax receipts languished from lower taxes, a recession, more tax cuts, another recession, a slow recovery, and then the Great Recession.  So as an academic exercise, let’s see where the budget deficit would be if tax revenue had grown instead of diminished during the 2000s.  You can see how revenue has slowly, but steadily, gone up during the 80s and 90s, but then went sideways during the 2000s.  I included the raw numbers, plus numbers that adjust for inflation.

(Click chart for larger image.  Click here for the numbers)

I always read some pundits claiming that the Clinton-era tax and GDP growth was unsustainable(see here for example).  Therefore, I calculated the tax revenue increases of 1993-2000.  The average growth was 8.78%.  However, since I’m adjusting for inflation now, I adjusted everything to 2009 dollars.  This yielded average growth of 6.01% in tax revenue from 1993 to 2000.  However, since people accuse that being unsustainable and unrealistic, I decided to chart out the slowest growth in tax revenue from the Clinton Era.  It was 5.9% if using non-adjusted numbers and 3.61% if using adjusted numbers.  Here’s what revenue would’ve been like if the 2000s had averaged the slowest rate of the 90s.

(Click chart for larger image.  Click here for the numbers)

Whether or not you adjust for inflation, it would’ve put on-budget revenue at approx 2.6 trillion$ in 2009 and 2.74 trillion in 2010.  What that means is that the on-budget deficit would’ve only been 400$ billion dollars in 2009 if our spending patterns had been exactly the same.   However, if you strip out all the spending that was done because of the great recession, but keeping stimulus spending, that would’ve been 397$ billion in spending cut.  The 2009 budget could’ve been balanced if revenue had grown at the slowest rate it grew in the Clinton Era, and there had been no Great Recession.  No other adjustments necessary.

Now let’s explore another scenario.  Let’s say that tax revenue had grown even slower than the slowest rate it did during Clinton’s presidency.  I decided to take a look at what the average growth rate for tax revenue has been since 1962.  When adjusting for inflation, the average growth rate from 1962-2000 was 3.16%.  However, if you exclude the Clinton era completely it’s even lower.  From 1962-1992, the average growth rate was 2.4%.  You can see my raw numbers and other statistics here.  I added to the graph what would’ve happened if the 2000s had maintained revenue growth in accordance to the historical averages.  This time I only included the adjust for inflation numbers.

(Click chart for larger image.  Click here for the numbers)

If 63-2000 average tax revenue increases had occurred in the 2000s, the 2009 revenue would’ve been about 2.55 trillion.  That means the 2009 budget would’ve only had a 50$ billion dollar deficit once you take away the Great Recession spending.  That probably would’ve been easily covered if you eliminated the 2009 stimulus spending.

If 63-1992 average tax revenue increases had occurred in the 200s, the 2009 revenue would’ve been about $2.38 trillion.  That would mean that the 2009 budget would have to have been about 620 billion dollars lighter.  If, once again, we assume no Great Recession and remove $400 billion, that still leaves 220$ billion to cut from spending.  Not an easy task, but much less daunting than the 1,500 billion dollars we actually had because of sideways revenue.

If there had been no recession, where would you cut that 220$ billion from the 2009 budget?  Remember – I already removed the direct costs of the recession(and only those costs).

Related posts:

1. Decreased Spending Alone Can’t Fix the Budget Deficit
2. The Cost of Dead-Beat Dads on the Federal Budget
3. Spending Increases from 2008 to 2009
4. The Federal Budget is Not Like Your Budget