{"id":10968,"date":"2018-06-11T07:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10968"},"modified":"2018-06-10T12:28:16","modified_gmt":"2018-06-10T16:28:16","slug":"why-progressives-need-economic-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10968","title":{"rendered":"Why Progressives Need Economic Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

For progressives, few issues should be more important than the need for economic growth.\u00a0 Why do we say that?\u00a0 First, let\u2019s see what happens when there is no growth.<\/p>\n

We have previously written about what happened to the county budget during the Great Recession<\/a> but we may not have done it justice.\u00a0 During that time, the evaporation of revenue required the county to implement a series of huge cuts.\u00a0 Consider what happened to this sample of programs during the recession\u2019s three worst budget years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These programs are the very essence of the best of progressivism: protecting people from discrimination, funding arts and humanities, paying for community grants to non-profits, helping those with special needs and creating affordable housing.\u00a0 All were gutted during the recession.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, the above understates the impact of revenue absence.\u00a0 Consider county employees.\u00a0 Their collective bargaining agreements were broken and they went without raises for three straight years.\u00a0 In FY11, they were furloughed.\u00a0 In FY12, their benefits were cut.\u00a0 MCPS employees were not immune as the county cut its local contribution per pupil for three straight years.<\/p>\n

Perhaps cruelest of all was the county\u2019s cut in its local earned income tax credit (EITC).\u00a0 MoCo is one of the few counties in the U.S. that has its own EITC and it was once set to match the state\u2019s credit under county law.\u00a0 During the recession, the county changed its law to allow its EITC to vary and it was cut by almost a third<\/a>.\u00a0 How bad is it to cut a tax credit for the working poor during a recession?\u00a0 Your author\u2019s former employer, Council Member Hans Riemer, later introduced a bill to restore the EITC to its full amount.\u00a0 After a tremendous fight, he passed it.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t intend to criticize the County Executive or the County Council for making these cuts.\u00a0 The economy went south and they didn\u2019t have any money.\u00a0 That\u2019s the whole point here: without economic growth there is no money.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are no longer in a recession but revenue growth is not as strong as it once was.\u00a0 Consider the history of county revenue growth, excluding intergovernmental aid, since FY98.\u00a0 Red bars in the chart below refer to years in which tax increases were levied.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From FY98 through FY09, revenue growth excluding intergovernmental aid rose by an annual average of 6.1%.\u00a0 In the years since, it has grown by just 2.7% a year \u2013 and that includes the year in which the county implemented a 9% property tax hike.\u00a0 The County Executive\u2019s recommended FY19 budget includes a scant 1.3% growth in revenue excluding intergovernmental aid.\u00a0 How much more spending on progressive programs can be financed with that?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a coincidence that the slow years for revenue overlap with the years in which county employment has barely grown<\/a>, higher-paying wage and salary jobs are being replaced by lower-paying self-employment<\/a>, business formation has flat-lined<\/a> and taxpayer income outmigration has hit record levels<\/a>.\u00a0 Stagnant revenues are a result of a stagnant economy.<\/p>\n

This dynamic is playing out right now.\u00a0 Some on the County Council would like to expand pre-k education, a huge progressive priority and a great idea.\u00a0 The problem is that it would cost \u2013 at minimum \u2013 tens of millions of dollars to be meaningful.\u00a0 And when the county is already relying on tens of millions of dollars in employee and retiree health insurance money just to fund its current budget<\/a>, there is no way that\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n

Tax revenue is the fuel in the engine of progressivism.\u00a0 That\u2019s because nearly everything that progressives want to do costs money, like funding schools, colleges, youth programs, senior services, social workers, support for vulnerable people, affordable housing and the like.\u00a0 Conservatives don\u2019t have this problem.\u00a0 They think government is incompetent at best or evil at worst, so in their view, money given to government is bound to be wasted.\u00a0 Progressives actually need tax revenue from economic growth MORE than conservatives do because it is essential to the success of their policy agenda.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the bottom line: you can\u2019t say you\u2019re a progressive and then oppose the growth in tax base needed to pay for a progressive agenda.\u00a0 Any candidate with that position will be unable to implement progressive priorities if elected.<\/p>\n

Progressives need economic growth.\u00a0 Because without it, they can\u2019t be very progressive at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. For progressives, few issues should be more important than the need for economic growth.\u00a0 Why do we say that?\u00a0 First, let\u2019s see what happens when there is no growth. We have previously written about what happened to the county budget during the Great Recession but we may not have done it justice.\u00a0 … Continue reading Why Progressives Need Economic Growth<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,33,338],"tags":[1545,1368,1993],"class_list":["post-10968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-budget","category-economy","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-budget","tag-economy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2QU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10968"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10972,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10968\/revisions\/10972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}