Feldstein's Heresy on Fiscal Policy?

Here are a few reactions to Martin Feldstein's recent WSJ commentary on the effectiveness of the stimulus package. He says it wasn't cost effective because only around 10%-20% of it was spent on goods and services, and he uses this as evidence against Obama's proposed $1,000 tax rebate:

For the stimulus before he was against it, Free Exchange: Martin Feldstein wrote back in December of 2007 that a fiscal stimulus was needed, and that a good way to design said stimulus was in the form of uniform tax rebates. For once, Congress did just what an economist wanted it to do, introducing a tax rebate stimulus plan that sent cheques to millions of households in the second quarter of this year. Naturally Mr Feldstein is appreciative, no?

No. In today's Wall Street Journal, Mr Feldstein writes that of course the stimulus didn't work, and what's more, any old fool should have known it wouldn't. I believe this is what is known as a flip-flop.

Here are the facts. Tax rebates of $78 billion arrived in the second quarter of the year. The government's recent GDP figures show that the level of consumer outlays only rose by an extra $12 billion, or 15% of the lost revenue. The rest went into savings, including the paydown of debt....

The small rise in spending in response to these tax rebates is similar to what previous studies of one-time tax cuts found. It also corresponds to what both basic economic theory and common experience imply. Although someone who receives a permanent annual salary increase of $1,000 typically would increase his annual spending by an almost equally large amount, a $1,000 rise in wealth caused by a share price increase or a tax rebate would raise spending only gradually over a number of years.

This turnabout irks Alex Tabarrok, who adds:

The poor effects of the Bush tax rebate as fiscal stimulus, however, let Feldstein now attack the Obama plan for a $1000 tax rebate. Nothing wrong with that - McCain has nothing better however - but what Feldstein doesn't say is that if you follow the logic of his two op-eds (and this is not something I would necessarily buy into) the conclusion should actually be that fiscal stimulus would work better if it ran through government spending.

At this, I can actually hear Mark Thoma slapping his forehead. This—that if we really want the stimulus money to be spent, we should have the government spend it—is exactly what he has been saying from the beginning of this discussion, and rightly so. If we're going to adopt an interventionist fiscal policy, then we may as well ensure that it works.

And Mr Feldstein's brazen reversal aside, criticism of Mr Obama's tax rebate on these grounds is a little silly. The policy has not been pitched by the campaign as stimulus first and foremost, but rather as a means to cushion households against high energy costs, and it is to be financed by a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

There is plenty to argue against there—if Mr Obama is interested in this kind of Pigovian tax and redistribute scheme then the tax would be better placed on petrol consumption than on oil profits—but to attack its value as stimulus is odd. [Note: On the question of taxing profits versus taxing consumption, see here].

Economist Mom also weighs in:

Was the Tax Rebate a Flop?, Economist.mom: ...[A]n opinion piece by Martin Feldstein in today’s Wall Street Journal ... points to what he considers a disappointing effect of the stimulus checks on household spending...:

Recent government statistics show that only between 10% and 20% of the rebate dollars were spent. ... This experience confirms earlier studies showing that one-time tax rebates are not a cost-effective way to increase economic activity.

Feldstein cites recent aggregate (GDP) data as well as a household-level analysis by Christian Broda ... and Jonathan Parker..., all of which show that consumers don’t seem to be consuming that much.

Feldstein’s disappointment comes out of a narrow measure of fiscal policy “success”... [I]f consumption is encouraged, then saving is necessarily discouraged (at least temporarily). We can’t immediately increase both consumption and saving at the same time. Only through saving can we over the longer run increase consumption and saving at the same time (through higher incomes).

So how bad is it that only about 20% of the stimulus checks were immediately spent? ... First, Broda and Parker point out that the 20% is only within the first month after receipt and that their calculation does not include any potential multiplier effects... Second, this immediate response is similar, or maybe even slightly higher than, the experience with the 2001 tax rebates, which Broda and Parker point out “have been credited with helping end the 2001 recession”–and which over six months eventually produced additional spending that was about two-thirds of the rebate checks.

But mostly, the bright side is that eventually, over even more than six months I mean, the stimulus checks will be spent, even if they’re immediately being saved. Spreading out the consumption made possible by the checks is not at all a bad thing for the economy in a broader-than-immediate-stimulus sense. What it means is that the stimulus checks were partly good for the short-term economy, and partly good for the longer-term economy.  In an economy that faces current problems that are clearly not just cyclical in nature, it seems quite prudent to diversify our policy portfolio among pro-growth (longer-term) as well as pro-consumption (shorter-term) fiscal policies. ...

To the extent that the stimulus checks “fail” to deliver immediate consumption, they “succeed” in providing some offsetting increase in personal saving (or decrease in personal indebtedness) and hence some increase in future consumption.  And no matter how they are used, the stimulus checks have provided a small boost to the incomes of tens of millions of American families who were surely made better off by them. In that sense the stimulus checks will probably prove to be worth the price of $100 billion in additional debt, especially if we’re convinced the policy hasn’t jeopardized our prospects for economic growth over the longer run. ...

Feldstein segues from his critique of the tax rebates to a critique of the Obama tax plans...

[It'd] an odd line of reasoning coming from Marty Feldstein... [I]t’s not clear that Senator Obama would define “success” in his $1,000 rebate proposal the same way that (supply-sider?) Feldstein would–whether Obama views the goal or purpose of the rebate as having households immediately spend the money, rather than just having households immediately have the money (to spend over time as they choose). Finally, opposing Obama’s proposals to increase taxes (or not extend tax cuts) on supply-side grounds is one thing that can be debated, but it’s more than a little surreal to see Feldstein suggest here that such tax increases would be bad for the economy on demand-side grounds because they would decrease consumption (i.e., increase national saving). ...

Finally, pgl at EconoSpeak:

Feldstein on the Tax Rebate – Life-cycle Model Vindicated, by pgl: When President Bush and some in Congress thought that their one-time tax rebate was just the right fiscal remedy for an economy about to enter a Keynesian slowdown, some of us wonder if Albert Ando and Franco Modigliani’s old life cycle model of consumption had it right – that people would save much of this one-time tax rebate. Martin Feldstein argues that they were correct:

Tax rebates of $78 billion arrived in the second quarter of the year. The government's recent GDP figures show that the level of consumer outlays only rose by an extra $12 billion, or 15% of the lost revenue. The rest went into savings, including the paydown of debt.

That’s right – very little bang for the buck. Feldstein takes this evidence and then turns on one of Obama’s proposals:

These conclusions are significant for evaluating the likely impact of Barack Obama's recent proposal to distribute $1,000 rebate checks to low- and middle-income workers at an estimated cost of approximately $65 billion. … All of the evidence on one-time tax rebates implies that the Obama plan to send $1,000 rebate checks would do little to raise consumer spending and stop the decline in employment. If the past is an indicator of what would happen, the $65 billion he proposes to spend on this plan would raise consumer spending by only about $10 billion, or less than one-tenth of 1% of GDP.

If Obama’s proposal was solely to boost consumption demand – it is even worse than this as it is a transfer of income from one household to another with the likely effect on aggregate consumption being zero if the households had similar marginal propensities to consume. But a lack of consumption is not what ails the US economy. Furthermore, Obama’s proposal is more designed to address income inequality and less about Keynesian demand stimulus. The fiscal stimulus part of the Obama plan would be from accelerating certain forms of public investment.

Feldstein closes on what I consider heresy:

The distinction between one-time tax rebates and permanent changes in net income is also important for the debate about Mr. Obama's proposal to raise income and payroll taxes. Because those tax increases would be permanent, they would cause a substantial reduction in consumer spending and aggregate demand.

Feldstein is well aware that we have a long-term fiscal imbalance with the current level of taxes being far below the current and projected level of government spending. Ricardian Equivalence types would mock at the idea that recognizing those deferred taxes into current taxes might curb aggregate demand. And even if one rejects Ricardian Equivalence, how can any economists with a supply-side orientation dismiss fiscal responsibility. After all, Keynesian maladies tend to be short-run affairs but the crowding-out of investment is something that lowers long-term growth. Feldstein knows this and usually preaches this. What on earth got him to close his WSJ oped with such heresy?

I haven't changed my view since this started. Monetary policy should be part of the stimulus policy package, but there's good reason to suspect it may not work in a crisis such as this, so we need to implement fiscal policy as well. And with fiscal policy, government spending has a larger and more certain impact on the economy than tax cuts, even more so when the tax cuts are temporary (and if you can use it on things like infrastructure spending, so much the better).

Update: Here are Andrew Samwick's comments:

Those of us who did not support this deficit spending thought it was bad public policy to take revenue from future taxpayers to give current consumers a temporary boost of confidence or cash. 

So, in the cold light of day, what happened with the rebates was that the government issued more debt than it would otherwise have issued, and consumers now hold less debt than they otherwise would have.  That looks like a shifting of liabilities from individual balance sheets to the government balance sheet.  In other words, it was a bailout of consumer debt.

While I am not happy for my share of that additional government debt, I am glad that households that received these rebates had the good sense to save them or pay down debt--it shows us some attention to future economic needs that were simply not present in the debt-laced consumption rampage of recent years.

To clarify Andrew's position, here's a bit from a Washington Post commentary of his from January:

[W]e can learn from this experience to have a better menu of fiscal policy options the next time around. Two changes to our budget policy would go a long way toward that goal.

First, we should rule out deficit spending to finance a consumption binge. As the economy slows, the deficit will widen even without changes in fiscal policy. But an honest budget policy would be calibrated to balance the budget over a complete business cycle. Years of cyclical deficits will be offset by years of cyclical surpluses. ...

Second, we can plan well in advance. The federal government has a critical role in maintaining and developing public infrastructure, whether in transportation, telecommunications or energy transmission projects. A sensible capital budget would include a prioritized list of projects that need attention. Some would be slated for this year, some for 2009 and so on, over the useful lives of the projects. When economic growth falters, the government would be in a position to move some of the projects from later years into the present year.

This approach to counter-cyclical fiscal policy has several advantages. Perhaps most obvious is that it forces the government to establish priorities for capital projects. It reduces overall expenditures by doing more of the work in times of economic slack, when costs are lower. It also abides by pay-go rules, since projects moved up to 2008 need not be done in 2009. With a little forethought, short-term economic concerns and long-term budget goals need not be in conflict.

I don't fully agree on the first point. Not the financing part, if you do stabilization policy correctly then the budget should be balanced over the business cycle, with deficits in bad times and surpluses when things improve, the disagreement is over whether there is ever any need for additional deficit spending to stimulate the economy. Sometimes that is needed, and I think the present crisis is an example, but as I noted above using tax cuts to stimulate consumer spending is not the most effective way to stabilize output and employment. That's where the second point comes in, which I think is a good idea, though I don't mean that government spending to stabilize the economy should be limited to infrastructure projects, only that infrastructure spending can be part of the portfolio of policies that address both short-run and longer-run needs.

Comments

[pgl]

Thanks for the links to what Alex and what Free Exchange had to say. Should have read this first before I offerred even the slightest praise for Feldstein.

[piglet]

"Tax rebates of $78 billion arrived in the second quarter of the year. The government's recent GDP figures show that the level of consumer outlays only rose by an extra $12 billion, or 15% of the lost revenue."

I think the tax rebate was a silly idea and one that only Americans could have dreamt up (sorry if I am stereotyping a bit but it's true). But Feldstein's counter-argument is also silly (apart from being a flip-flop). For one thing, it is quite possible that consumer spending would have fallen without the rebates, and that in fact much more than the 15% were spent. How can you measure that? Moreover, I don't trust GDP figures anyway.

[Winslow R.]

Mark wrote "I haven't changed my view since this started. Monetary policy should be part of the stimulus policy package, but there's good reason to suspect it may not work in a crisis such as this, so we need to ....."

We need to redesign monetary policy so that it works all the time. A small first step...... replace $1000 Obama rebate with $10,000 federal reserve loan at the current fed funds rate.

People need to explore their fear of debt.

Those without fear of debt-
Allow entrepreneurial Americans to take on more debt at lower interest rates through redesign of monetary policy to allow direct access to the Fed.

Those with fear of debt-
Redesign Fiscal policy to allow working Americans to take a minimum public job if they are unable to find a private one.

[paine]

fealdstein in his scramble to knock barrack's plans
has failed to distinguish his own december plan
with its flow or rebate checks started and stopped by econo0my wide job market conditions
an idea good at least in form if not size
with the one time recession bonus check
uncle shipped out to lots of us
this spring and early summer

btw a wind fall profit tax
is not by definition
a new discovery investment killer

here's some streaming think nodes:

if it acts like an inventory profit tax
it might trigger a pumping strike
making prices soar...

oil in the ground un pumped
is not subject to the windfall tax
-- the earnings from it are "unrealized"---
so the tax avoider will leave it there
if the post tax net is higher

but then any repeat thought to be in the offing
would prolly cause
inventory to be run down faster extinguishing the price surge

whoops the thing is starting to fly up its own ass here

new node

a one time levy based on past wind fall earnings
has little predictive value
when planning for any future levy
that is
beyond this lesson

if we energu ats
rig up another temporary price surge/ profit gouge
we'll just get it raked away from us

so not taxing away the wind fall profits now
and maybe more then just the pure wind fall profits
to make it punitive ...may create ...... a moral hazard

[paine]

btw
if 80%
went toward paying down debt
what so wrong with a little debt relief
these days

[paine]

a tax rebate and gub deficit increas
only puts little guy debts onto uncle's
national tab

that's a sin ??

bailing out the big bulls and bears ain't ???

[spencer]

Roughly, we have about one and a half months data on what people did with the rebate. Since the earlier debate was over how much would get spent in six months isn't it a little too early to be drawing any strong conclusions?

[paine]

winslow
if i were u
i'd think bigger much bigger
i say refi the whole housing stock
with
80 k per household member loans
with 30 year balloon pay back
mandatory to use as pay down or off
of your existing mortgage

make it availible to every american household
regardless of credit history

for those with mortgages of less
then the value of their loan availibility
the balance is a line of credit
all at the fed's policy rate
butinterest not deductable

the fed of course can recycle a modest chunk
of this fiat liquidity
by selling t bills to help keep up
the policy rate to 2 %

hmmm
80k x 300 million folks...24 trillion
now that oughta create some stimulus

[kthomas]

Fire up those money presses!

says...

"if Mr Obama is interested in this kind of Pigovian tax ..."

to hell with this wind fall profit tax
as a pigou tax
this oughta be seen as
a "hey energy guy ...fuck u" tax

[save_the_rustbelt]

"because only around 10%-20% of it was spent on goods and services,..."

i have a great deal of trouble believing this. Can anyone shed any light on how this measurement might be screwy?

[pgl]

Andrew Samwick ends his post with what appears to be a vindication of Ricardian Equivalence. Which goes directly to counter Feldstein's little critique of Obama's fiscal responsibility. Like I said - Feldstein is committing economic heresy.

[Robinia]

To the extent that the stimulus checks “fail” to deliver immediate consumption, they “succeed” in providing some offsetting increase in personal saving (or decrease in personal indebtedness) and hence some increase in future consumption.

That is a cheerful view of the paying down of debt that does not really reflect current conditions. If much of that debt is made up of outrageously-high bank fees and usurious-rate credit card or payday-lender interest, a big chunk of the "stimulus" may be going directly from the public fisc to fat-cat rent-seekers' pockets, with only a brief sojourn between in the pockets of the people. This makes us better off how?

[paine]

Like I said - Feldstein is committing economic heresy.

pgl
marty is a clever goggle eyed
rentiers' whore

there's no way
to remain an orthodox priest
of the dismal religion
and unconditionally surrender
your services
to mr big

i say we
defrock him pgl
defrock him and chase him from the temple

[paine]

"Andrew Samwick ends his post with what appears to be a vindication of Ricardian Equivalence "
you write that pgl
like your reviewing the dance steps of a god

hey you're as smart as these tenured geefs

loosen your horse collar
un bend your knee
and let the good bile roll

[paine]

exhibit A

"an honest budget policy would be calibrated to balance the budget over a complete business cycle. Years of cyclical deficits will be offset by years of cyclical surpluses. ..."

absolute non sense

mark is right

the stabilization of the economy
its sustained full employment
requires episodic expenditure "injections "
funded by just the very spontaneously unrecycled dollars
that would otherwise create slack in the production system

conflating this social obligation
with school marmish home economics
lectures on balanced long run budgets
is a silly joke
when aimed at the tax empowered and money creating
center
of the economy

but then i'm being unfair
what can expect from this type of guy
but smug parson babbit sanctimony

[2slugbaits]

If the rebates work, then fine. But what's the downside if people just save the rebates? It may not accomplish much in terms of boosting aggregate demand, but doesn't it at least help to redistribute income? And if saved, then doesn't this dampen some of the concerns about national savings. Sure, public savings goes down but private savings goes up.

And why the hidden assumption that the $1000 tax rebate somehow precludes us from also doing infrastructure investments?

[Dirk van Dijk]

Yes, this was in large part a transfer of debt from the consumer balance sheet to the gov't balance sheet. Is that a good or a bad thing? Well the gov't is paying about 4% on that debt, while the consumer is paying 15% on his credit card. Sounds like a pretty good net gain to me.

Also, there is the counter factual of what would have consumer spending have been absent the rebate checks. Seems to me that consumer spending might have fallen off the cliff, rather than been flat as implicitly assumed by Feldstien. Still a good chance that happens in the second half as the stimulus checks wear off (although less so if people really did save it).

[Winslow R.]

"winslow
if i were u
i'd think bigger much bigger
i say refi the whole housing stock
with
80 k per household member loans"

Perhaps because not everyone would take advantage of access to Fed loans and the new monetary channel. These loans are not inflationary in and of themselves. Federal bailouts of banks are inflationary as is deficit fiscal stimulus.

Why are the dysfunctional monetary channels beyond question of rechanneling? Why focus on only re-regulating monetary flows through existing channels that have proven time and again to be defective?

Feldstein ignores the debt/savings imbalances.

Too many Americans have excessive private debt which reduces private spending as private foreign/domestic savers save rather than spend interest and principal payments. Excessive saving in 2008 rather than the excessive taxation in 2000 is leading to a faltering economy, bankruptcy, foreclosures and job loss.

Obama would fiscally channel $1000 to make a payment on or a reduction of that private debt, increasing public debt. All fine and dandy but unless the payments reduce private debt the imbalance remains hence Feldstein's dilemma on how to restore purchasing power.

On the other note...
Economists don't like federal windfall taxes because they distort an economy even if those new distortions actually help straighten out crooks like the allocation of commodity ownership.

[Julio]

paine:

80 k per household member loans
...
now that oughta create some stimulus

Nine months. It's all I need...

[Winslow R.]

Julio wrote:

"Nine months. It's all I need..."

That and 18 years of support before they can get access. How much is that worth? $250k in and get 80k out.

Easier to create a baby $700 corporation or for higher return create bank with $10 million in and $100 million out at 10x leverage.

Wake up!

[don]

So, fiscal stimulus through tax rebates is win-win - reduce private debt or spur private consumption. Exchange dear private debt for cheap public debt. And you forgot to mention that the public debt is probably financed by foreign lenders. So, why stop with the picaune fiscal stimulus package we had?
1) The current account deficit will respond to the stimulus, both naturally and unnaturally (official intervention abroad). We are pouring money into a leaky bucket.
2) The credibility of the national debt is not unassailable. If it fails, the result could be much more catastrophic than the mild downturn we now seem to face.
I disagree with Mark. It is not a good idea to spur U.S. demand even more as a solution to the current slowdown when U.S. demand already outpaces U.S. income by such a large margin. Better try to reduce the imbalances that cause demand for U.S. output to lack even as the U.S. spends substantially more than it earns.

[Ryan]

While I am empathetic to Don's point that more Demand isn't the solution, and never was the solution, I am also on board with Winslow in allowing everyone access to the same low rates Banks have access to. If we are going to be a debt society, we might as well have the lowest interest rates and no intermediaries essentially profiting off of special access to the Fed Window.

[bakho]

One problem that could be addressed is state budgets during recessions. Most states cannot run a deficit. Therefore they have to collect more taxes than necessary during good times to create a rainy day fund. The rainy day funds underutilize taxes and are prime targets for yahoos with unsustainable programs to spend some of the rainy day money during good times.

If the Feds could bail out the states during downturns, to be paid back during good times (or the Feds just collect revenue at a higher rate) then it could help keep the states from cutting back on projects and eliminating jobs which many of them have to do during recessions. It could also reduce the need to carry rainy day funds. I don't know how a formula would work but it would address a number of issues.

[Robinia]

Agree with Bakho about what would be oh so much better. David Paterson, Governor of NY, was just recently in DC speaking about this idea at the National Press Club. Video available at http://www.ny.gov/governor/ (July 31).

[jim]

Borrowing to spend got us here. How could more borrowing to spend get us out?

[Winslow R.]

jim wrote "Borrowing to spend got us here. How could more borrowing to spend get us out?"

I put you in the 'worker' rather than 'entrepreneurial' column since you express a fear of debt.

FYI, bank deposits are created with offsetting bank loans.

FYI, paper dollars have future tax liabilities.

You may never get over your fear of debt, but don't believe the modern economy could work without it as it is the source of all monetary transactions.

What got us here was Saudi Arabia regaining marginal monopoly supplier position on oil largely through excessive growth rates of emerging economies. Pegging their currencies at rates that allowed GDP growth of 15%/yr has created an imbalance that needs to be corrected by dropping their growth rates to the high single digits while the U.S. is allowed to continue to grow.

[anon]

"You may never get over your fear of debt, but don't believe the modern economy could work without it as it is the source of all monetary transactions."

perceptive insight

[Gegner]

The 'debt driven' model isn't the 'only game in town'. In my honest opinion, all debt should be illegal. None of us were born to be someone else's 'income stream'.

Geez, let's suppose for a minute that this could work. That we could possibly have an 'economy' that doesn't charge everyone for everything!

We could start with Mother Nature's cash register...does anyone know where she hides it?

I'm pointing out that 'resources' are 'free' to the 'owner'...and that 'labor' is an 'income stream'.

I'm sure none of you would argue with the fact that without a customer, there wouldn't be any 'business'.

Well, who, at the end of the day, do we all 'work' for?

Short answer, society.

And who, at the end of the day, pays us for our labor?

Same answer.

Simply put good citizen, we need to cut out the 'middle man'.

The worker knows what needs to be done and does it for a paycheck...he doesn't do it 'because' the boss is shoving a hot poker up his backside but 'despite' that. He has responsibilities and obligations to meet and he needs that paycheck. Torturing them doesn't make them work harder, it only makes them resentful.

So we would all 'work' for society...and society would cut us a paycheck. End of story.

Who would get your money when you spent it? Nobody, your money is for you.

Where would money come from? The same place it does now, when the worker 'creates' wealth (a consumable)

Would money be 'transferable' between individuals? NO! Your money is for you! All 'representative' forms of money would be outlawed.

The only way to obtain money is to work for it and the only place to spend it is through a 'social distribution point' (currently called a 'store')

Who 'owns' the store? nobody, the store belongs to society, just as industry belongs to society, both exist to improve the 'lot' of mankind, not the self-obsessed 'owner'.

Oh so this is a 'commie plot'?

No, there is no 'state'. Nobody 'owns' means exactly that.

Better, there are absolutely no taxes and all 'services' are free. Society pays 'providers' to do what they do so there's no need for you to pay them too.

The big mistake of capitalism was to separate 'profitable' labor from necessary but 'unprofitable' work when all (socially necessary) work is profitable to society as a whole.

It all starts with one simple law, the human 'anti-exploitation' law which makes the employer/employee relationship illegal.

Um, to get back 'on topic' I find it deeply disturbing that our 'government' finds it necessary to give us 'money' that we should be earning for ourselves bu our 'owner/employers' are too cheap to pay us...

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

[acerimusdux]

Martin Feldstein says:

"Because those tax increases would be permanent, they would cause a substantial reduction in consumer spending and aggregate demand."

Uh, no.

Obama is allowing temporary income tax cuts to expire, not adding any new permanent taxes. If you buy that temporary changes have little effect, then since the cuts were temporary, there will have been no substantial demand increase while they were in effect, and therefore will be no substantial decrease when they are not.

[Andrew Samwick]

Mark and Paine,

What I wrote on the blog and in the Post doesn't preclude tax rebates like we had this year, provided that the budget is modified in the very near future to adhere to the "budget balance over the business cycle" target.

The following sentence from the op-ed is a casualty of the ellipsis in your excerpt:

"As a corollary, we must not waive pay-as-you-go rules that require spending that increases the current deficit to be offset later, when the economy is stronger."

If the legislation in January had been accompanied by a provision to increase taxes in 2009 or 2010 to replace the $150 billion in lower revenues this year, then I would not have critiqued it as fiscally irresponsible. I would still have critiqued it as a less effective form of stimulus than shifting forward planned infrastructure spending.

Thanks for the link and the comments.