An American Promise
● A Balanced-Budget Amendment to the Constitution, with appropriate exceptions for times of war and recession.
● A line-item veto, to give the President a fighting chance to eliminate pork and earmarks.
● A limitation on federal spending, to 20% of GDP.-
*** About We Elected You ***
Have Your Say!
- John Lumbard on Problems With a Balanced Budget Amendment?
- Chris Curley on Problems With a Balanced Budget Amendment?
- John Lumbard on How to Fix the Health Care Mess
- Did Government Agencies “Raid” Social Security “Coffers”? « Joejolly’s Weblog on “The Debt The Government Owes Itself For Raiding Social Security”
- John Lumbard on The Antidote
- Gen Y on The Keepers of the Flame
- Chuck Bailey on Amendment Filed. Call Your Congressman!
- Phoebe Addington on Party On!
- FaGaurlwal on Incentives Rule!
- James Schaefer on The ENTIRE Government Runs on Borrowed Money
Topics
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entitlements Archive
The Cost of Promises
By James Schaefer.
CalPERS, California's massive state employee retirement fund, has $227 billion invested in the stock and bond markets to guarantee the future promises that have been made to the state's workers.
Those investments generate earnings, and CalPERS has to guess at the rate of return they'll produce to know whether...
Read More Speech On Boston Common
By John Lumbard.
"In the last 75 years there's been a dramatic change in our nation's Congress. Our legislators used to say and believe that they represented the interests of all Americans, and were working to do what what’s best for the nation as a whole. Now they say that...
Read More This Week In Fiscal Irresponsibility
By John Lumbard.
This is shaping up to be a big week for debt and deficits. The U.S. Senate is deep in discussions and negotiations regarding Senate Joint Resolutions 3,4,5, and 10. The President is going to deliver a speech Wednesday afternoon at George Washington University (apparently without TV coverage) that...
Read More The Milton Friedman Moment
By James Schaefer
"There's no such thing as a free lunch." Fifty years ago most Americans believed those words, and they were used by Milton Friedman in a 1975 book of that title.
Jenny Fisher-Sullivan elaborated in the Wall Street Journal (March 3, 2011):
The Fed works for our bankrupt federal government and...
Read More The Keepers of the Flame
By James Schaefer.
At long last, the topic of entitlement reform -- "the topic" -- has been broached (see Weekend Interview with Paul Ryan).
These entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Prescription Drug Benefit -- are the promises that politicians have made to American citizens for decades. We think of them...
Read More The Scott Adams Challenge
By James Schaefer.
Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, recently had a feature article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "How to Tax the Rich", and he asked readers to think up incentives that might allow our biggest taxpayers to feel a bit better about dropping hundred-thousand-dollar checks into the ravenous maw...
Read More A New Year’s Resolution of Thanksgiving
by John Lumbard.
“A growing body of research suggests that maintaining an attitude of gratitude can improve psychological, emotional and physical well-being. Adults who frequently feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections and more happiness than those who do not, according to studies conducted over the past...
Read More The ENTIRE Government Runs on Borrowed Money
By Ron Olive.
(To the Editor of the Wall Street Journal)
Sir:
In “Revenues Are Rising” (Review & Outlook, January 12th), you tell us that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, federal receipts “have climbed by $44 billion, or nearly 9%, to $531 billion” during the first quarter of fiscal...
Read More Incentives Rule!
By John Lumbard.
In December the Boston Globe ran a front-page story on the “dangerous incentives” created by a program that offers cash to the parents of children taking psychotropic drugs for ADHD and other behavioral conditions. The number of children on these drugs has predictably swelled, and a program...
Read More Three Cheers for the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility!
By John Lumbard.
The President's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility will release its findings on December 1, but recently the two chairmen--Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles---took the extraordinary step of releasing a "draft" of the "Co-Chair's proposal". It's an end-run around the dissenting voices in the commission, and a clear statement that...
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