The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2010 by Mark Whitehouse
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126255761275914079.html#printMode (requires registration; go to G:\Law School in the News\News Clips for article)
“We’ve moved closer to the precipice, and the precipice has moved closer to us,” Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley who has focused on U.S. government finances for about 15 years, said in an interview.
The New York Times, December 11, 2009 by Catherine Rampell
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/11vat.html?_r=1
“What really is the difference between prepared food versus nonprepared food?” said Alan J. Auerbach…. “You start having to split hairs, and that can become quite complicated.”
San Francisco Chronicle, November 30, 2009 by Carolyn Lochhead
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/30/MNHS1AQDKV.DTL&type=printable
Auerbach said one reason he signed the letter was his “fear that as timid as the Senate bill might be, it goes much more in the right direction than the House bill does. They could certainly do more, but my fear is they’ll do less. Simply expanding coverage when none of these even attempt to reduce costs would be very unfortunate.”
San Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 2009 by Wyatt Buchanan
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/22/MN2V1AO1D2.DTL&type=printable
UC Berkeley professor of economics and law Alan Auerbach said extending the tax increases is an obvious place for lawmakers to look for a solution. “But that is only part of the solution. Where the rest of it comes from who knows?” said Auerbach…. He predicted the Legislature would “muddle through” the problem with spending cuts and tax increases.
The New York Times, September 28, 2009 by Stephen Ohlemacher
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/28/us/politics/AP-US-Social-Security-Early-Retirements.html?_r=2
”A lot of people who in better times would have continued working are opting to retire,” said Alan J. Auerbach, an economics and law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. ”If they were younger, we would call them unemployed.”
SF Weekly, September 14, 2009 by Matt Smith
http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-09-16/news/obama-s-stimulus-money-will-increase-traffic-but-not-bridge-safety/
Economists disagree on many things, but not on the wisdom of raising the gas tax. “Given all the problems associated with gasoline consumption—congestion, global warming, national security, pollution, damage to roads—a sufficient tax on this activity is the most efficient way to cause people to take these costs into account,” said Alan Auerbach.
CNN Money, September 9, 2009 by Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/08/news/economy/fiscal_gap/?postversion=2009090819
While strong action is needed on health care, it cannot be sufficient, or even close to sufficient, to bring the nation’s books into balance. Significant further tax increases or spending cuts will need to be considered.
USA Today, September 3, 2009 by Tamara Lush
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2009-09-03-unemployment-benefits-running-out_N.htm
Unemployment benefits play an important part in stabilizing the economy because recipients tend to spend their weekly checks, rather than saving the money or paying down debt. “It’s definitely a valuable component of economic stimulus,” said Alan Auerbach, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2009 by David Lazarus
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus26-2009aug26,0,6090427,print.column
“I have problems with the way this whole reform thing is going,” said Alan Auerbach…. “I’d like to see a more explicit explanation of ways that medical costs are going to be controlled, and I’d like to see a more comprehensive way of paying for it. But if we don’t do anything at all, we’re clearly going to be worse off. The problems just get bigger if you don’t do anything.”
-The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2009 by Jon Hilsenrath
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125099227629751737.html#printMode
Large long-term deficits could cause “serious economic disruptions,” said economist Alan Auerbach of the University of California at Berkeley, who co-wrote a paper with William Gale of the Brookings Institution…. Over the next decade … the U.S. budget deficit will add up to $10 trillion, and possibly more. Credit markets, they added, have begun to signal a risk of U.S. government default, something unheard of a few years ago.
-Marketplace, August 25, 2009 by Tess Vigeland
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/08/25/pm-cbo-q/
If you look down the road to later years up to 2019, both the administration and CBO are projecting higher deficits. And the most important reason for that is that revenues are coming in slower and are going to be projected to come in slower than previously. And that means that the recovery is not going to generate as much revenue as they thought. So for the longer term the news is bad.
The Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2009 by David Wessel
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125070781745443839.html
The recession was more than a year old when Mr. Obama took office, the Fed already had cut interest rates to zero and the economy was still in free fall. “If ever there was a case for a fiscal stimulus, this was it,” says Alan Auerbach, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who will kick off an appraisal of the stimulus at this weekend’s Fed retreat.
The Christian Science Monitor, August 3, 2009 by Mark Trumbull
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/08/03/read-their-lips-mixed-signals-from-obama-team-on-taxes/
The federal deficit “is projected to average at least $1 trillion per year for the 10 years after 2009, even if the economy returns to full employment and the stimulus package is allowed to expire in two years,” economists William Gale of the Brookings Institution and Alan Auerbach of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded in a study earlier this year.
CNN Money, July 30, 2009 by Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale
http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/30/news/economy/federal_budget_deficit/?postversion=2009073004
Things aren’t as likely to go as well as President Obama hopes. The economy has already performed worse than was assumed in the budget projections, and the projections are based on heroically optimistic assumptions about the political discipline Congress will impose on itself. And, of course, the problem will deepen, continually and inexorably, after 2019, as spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will grow rapidly.
NPR.org, July 21, 2009 by NPR staff and wire services
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106850202
These latest cuts come on top of billions already trimmed from the California budget earlier this year. “It’s a bit of a shell game,” said Alan Auerbach, a University of California, Berkeley economics professor. “Clearly, they are using some shifting of the timing of revenues” to make up some of the shortfall, “but there are some real, significant cuts here.”
-Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2009 by Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-auerbach8-2009jul08,0,7586160.story
Most economists accept the need to put aside concerns about fiscal balance as we address the recession. But soon enough we will face pressure to shift our focus from the short-term economic problem to our longer-term fiscal problem. And, unfortunately, poor policy choices in the past combined with the enormity of the recession make the second problem worse and reduce the time we will have to deal with it.
-The New York Times, July 8, 2009 by Peter S. Goodman
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/business/economy/08deficit.html?_r=1
“The budget outlook at every horizon is troubling,” declared Alan J. Auerbach, a finance expert at the University of California, Berkeley, and William G. Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution, in a recent paper. “The fiscal year 2009 budget is enormous; the 10-year projection is clearly unsustainable; and the long-term outlook is dire and increasingly urgent.”
-KCBS-AM, July 13, 2009 by Rebecca Corral
http://www.kcbs.com/pages/4794528.php
“If we were running a deficit like this in good times, it would be a catastrophe, really. But we’ve got other problems to worry about in the very short term…. We will have very big spending cuts and very big tax increases, and we will have them perhaps in the not-too-distant future or else the bad things that happen when countries accumulate unchecked national debt will happen to us, such as inflation, the very sharp decline of the dollar, increases in interest rates.”
Politico.com, June 28, 2009 by Victoria McGrane
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=1DDF0EDD-18FE-70B2-A8460AE0A23ED033
The California situation amounts to a person “holding a gun to his head and saying, ‘If you don’t do something, I’ll shoot myself,’” said Alan Auerbach, an economist and public finance professor at Berkeley. “On the one hand, California needs help; but on the other hand, it certainly wouldn’t be unreasonable for the federal government to insist that California help itself too.”
The Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2009 by Mark Whitehouse
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124509802628416217.html#printMode
With both the U.S. and the U.K. still digging their way out of recession, it’s too early to say exactly what choices they’ll make…. It includes cutting investment in infrastructure such as new hospitals, increasing retirement ages, rationing medical services, accepting long-term boosts in tax rates—and, on a smaller scale, figuring out how much the government should spend on matters of national pride such as the Olympics. “Are people going to be happy? No, but they have unrealistic expectations,” says Alan Auerbach, a professor and expert on fiscal policy.
Charlie Rose, June 10, 2009 by Charlie Rose
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10376
“What he’s proposed is actually a fairly modest change from the current policy. He would cut back on tax benefits for people with incomes over $250,000, that’s a start. He would raise money through the cap-and-trade proposal for energy, that is a second step. Of course we’ve been discussing the fact that congress is probably not going to pass them. Those two things together are really just a modest first step. They don’t represent even a small fraction of the adjustment to the tax system that we would need to make a serious effort at bringing our fiscal policy back into line.”
Forum with Michael Krasny, May 6, 2009 Host Michael Krasny
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R905060900
“We have this way of thinking of corporations as having a national identity: American corporations, German corporations, and so forth. But corporations can move or new corporations can chose where to locate, and what we are talking about here is raising the taxes on certain American corporations. And there are corporations that are based in other countries that will not be affected by this. So the corporations that have been expressing concern are thinking not only perhaps about moving themselves but also about losing their competitive edge to their competitors in other countries.”
Contra Costa Times, March 31, 2009 by John Simerman
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_12032567
The increase has little to do with monetary policy, said Alan Auerbach, a UC-Berkeley economics and law professor. “The state’s in a tough position. There are no good choices,” he said. Some people may hold off on big-ticket buys for a few years until the tax bump ends. Others may buy out of state or online, ignoring tax laws that require self-reporting. “It’s not just Nevada, it’s Amazon.com,” Auerbach said. “It’s going to have a negative impact.”