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.”

National Review, January 29, 2009 by Alan Reynolds
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YzVhZmI5MDAxMDEyZGIzMWVlZTUzZWU1ZDY2ZjExNTQ=

Alan Auerbach of the University of California at Berkeley surveyed that topic in 2002, concluding that there is “little evidence these effects [of fiscal policy] have provided a significant contribution to economic stabilization, if in fact they have worked in the right direction at all.”