 Tax and spending reform for fiscal stability and economic growthJoseph Antos, Alan Viard (), Alex Brill () and Andrew Biggs () AEI Economic Perspectives, 2015 Abstract: Recognizing the unsustainable fiscal outlook facing the United States, the authors present a plan to constrain the growth of federal spending and reform the tax system to promote economic growth. The plan replaces the income tax system with a progressive consumption tax, eliminating the bias against savings and investment. The plan revamps Social Security to provide a flat, universal benefit that would virtually eliminate poverty in old age, making the program more effective in protecting low earners, more conducive to saving and longer work lives, and better aligned with the work and retirement conditions that will prevail in the coming decades. Additionally, the plan adopts health reforms that are intended to slow the growth of spending while maintaining access to high-quality health services, by shifting away from the defined-benefit approach that characterizes Medicare and Medicaid today to a defined-contribution philosophy. The plan also brings federal spending and revenue into closer alignment, sparing future generations from the explosive growth of federal debt. Keywords: Fiscal policy; tax reform; Health care policy; Social Security; US Economy; government spending; entitlement spending; AEI Economic Perspectives; What to Do: Policy Recommendations on Tax Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aei:journl:y:2015:id:843018 Access Statistics for this article More articles in AEI Economic Perspectives from American Enterprise Institute Contact information at EDIRC. |
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