In Case You Missed It...

This week on Off the Charts, we talked about the debt limit deal, the economy, and state taxes.

• On the debt limit deal, we refuted the claim that the congressional “supercommittee” it establishes can’t propose revenue increases to help reduce deficits.  Richard Kogan showed why House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s arguments on this issue are incorrect, and he detailed the across-the-board cuts that may occur under the deal.  Chuck Marr highlighted five reasons why the supercommittee must consider revenue increases.  Robert Greenstein explained that the debt limit deal is likely to lead to highly unbalanced results and deplored the precedent of conditioning debt-limit increases on large spending cuts.  He also appeared with Jared Bernstein on MSNBC to discuss the deal.  Nicholas Johnson showed that the legislation will lead to even more cuts in state programs that benefit families and communities.
• On the economy, Chad Stone presented several charts that provide context for the July jobs report.  Nicholas Johnson explained that state and local government job losses continue to slow the recovery.
• On state taxes, Robert Tannenwald debunked the myth that raising taxes causes residents to flee to lower-tax states.  He also explained why the “evidence” used to support this myth is deeply flawed.

In other news, we updated our backgrounder on unemployment insurance and our chartbook on the recession.  We released a statement on the debt limit deal and explained that the congressional “supercommittee” it establishes can consider revenue increases to help reduce deficits.  We showed that raising state taxes will not cause residents to leave, and we spelled out how the potential across-the-board cuts in the debt limit deal would occur. We also issued a statement on the July employment report.