Politics and government links

The conservatives' case for campaign finance reform

Fix It First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third: A New Strategy for America’s Highways

It’s Time to Face the Fiscal Illusion

Fiscal policy debates often focus on technocratic questions about how much money the government should spend and when, yet the actual course of events depends not on the experts but on politics. The more that our government runs up unfunded obligations and debt, the more we are setting a trap for ourselves. 

James M. Buchanan, a Nobel laureate in economics — and my former colleague and now professor emeritus at George Mason University — argued that deficit spending would evolve into a permanent disconnect between spending and revenue, precisely because it brings short-term gains. We end up institutionalizing irresponsibility in the federal government, the largest and most central institution in our society. As we fail to make progress on entitlement reform with each passing year, Professor Buchanan’s essentially moral critique of deficit spending looks more prophetic. 

We are fooling ourselves most of all. United States government debt in public hands is now more than $9 trillion, but most people still don’t realize what it will take to pay that off.

The Right Kind of Spending Can Fuel Real Growth

Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages

A Reagan Republican Makes A Case Against The War -- And His Own Party

5 Worst Countries for Women

Taxpayers caught in the middle of costly Fannie lawsuit

What could be worse than taxpayers paying more than $100 million to defend a shareholder-owned company and its former executives in a private lawsuit? 

Losing that lawsuit. 

When the government seized Fannie Mae during the financial crisis, it was clear it was taking control of a big, deeply troubled mortgage company that was hemorrhaging money on bad loans made during the housing bubble.

Paul Ryan Uses This Chilling Presentation In The Push For Budget Cuts

Libya Chairs Human Rights Committee, Domestic Equivalent

The Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget and the Concord Coalition have bestowed a "Fiscy Award" upon, in addition to two others, Paul Ryan for his "frequent efforts to promote fiscal discipline and leadership to restore fiscal health," 

Let us examine those efforts. It's true that Ryan talks about the deficit a lot. It's also true that he has a plan that, though increasing the deficit over the next decade, would decrease it over a very long period of time so long as unspecified, draconian limits on the domestic discretionary spending budget held in place and old people didn't force Congress to do anything about the fact that their Medicare benefits were being cut by 76%.  

While we're waiting for Ryan's plan to never be enacted, he has an actual voting record. He voted for all the Bush tax cuts. He favors making them permanent. He opposed the Affordable Care Act and now favors repealing it, at considerable cost to the deficit. He has helped change the House budget rules in order to make it far easier to increase the deficit. He opposes any cuts at all to defense spending. 

If this is what counts as "frequent efforts to promote fiscal discipline," I think the country would benefit from less frequency.

Turning a Blind Eye to the Obvious