“Reducing defense spending was one of the most popular options for cutting the national deficit,” the nonprofit AmericaSpeaks reported recently after tabulating the results of its June 26 “National Town Meeting” on the budget deficit (a project on which I was involved behind the scenes). Eighty-five percent of participants at the 19 primary town meeting …
“Washington’s traditional approach to balancing the budget,” former Reagan White House official Peter Ferrara writes in today’s Wall Street Journal, “is to negotiate an agreement on a package of benefit cuts and tax increases. President Obama’s deficit commission seems likely to recommend just this strategy in December. The problem is that it never works.” Wow, …
President Obama must decide this fall whether to confront not just congressional Republicans but a growing number of Democrats on a key matter of public policy – President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for those at the top. His decision will have enormous implications for fiscal policy, with hundreds of billions of dollars in potential …
As recent developments illustrate, we are in a vicious cycle of fiscal incoherence: our leaders speak cynically, if not dishonestly, about our fiscal problem, fueling public ignorance that presents more opportunity for our leaders to speak cynically and dishonestly, fueling even more public ignorance. Such ignorance can only impede efforts to convince Americans, in the …
Despite President Obama’s impressive first term on the domestic front, with the recent financial reform bill joining health reform and last year’s stimulus measure as major accomplishments, the shaky recovery and high unemployment continue to bolster Republican prospects in this fall’s mid-term elections. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman reminds us that, when it comes …
The G-20 summit marked what could prove a historic turning point in economic history – a moment when the United States and its allies split over the near-term direction of economic policy, with potentially huge implications for the future prosperity and living standards for people the world over. Arriving in Toronto, U.S. leaders argued for …
“This one is as clear as a bell,” Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of President Obama’s fiscal commission, told the National Governors Association on Sunday in describing the nation’s looming deficit and debt problem. Bowles was differentiating the fiscal challenge, which is plain for all to see, from the recent economic crisis of collapsing financial markets and …