It has become a cliché to say that Europe, which is locked in a futile battle with the reality that its social welfare states are unsustainable, is a “cautionary tale” for the United States. Unlike most clichés, this is one that should be repeated as often as possible. (more)
I’ve always found it interesting that our society denies children the vote even though they’re the ones with the most at stake in our elections. After all, they have the longest left to live. (more)
As young people head home for the holidays, they’re bracing for unsolicited advice and stories from their elders about how life used to require hard work and how young generations have an entitlement mentality. (more)
I rarely write about my experiences as a political consultant, largely because I’m loathe to throw the people who pay my bills under, say, a large black campaign tour bus, but I’d like you to indulge me just this once. I returned this month from a job running a national campaign in a country associated with mangoes and destination weddings. I arrived to a tropical paradise, full of sunburns and over-priced Caesar salads. But when I looked beyond the all-inclusive resorts, I found a very real country, complete with its own political issues, crises and imbroglios. (more)
Recently, 120 college student leaders, representing the voices of some 2 million college students across America, wrote the president and congressional leaders, urging them to raise the debt limit. They, along with many Americans, believe we must pay our debts and are concerned about how the fallout from a default would affect their futures. (more)
Wall Street is downgrading America’s sovereign credit rating because political gridlock means that Washington won’t be able to solve our financial problems any time soon. It’s all thanks to the transformation of one of our two political parties, a transformation that has paralyzed Congress and made the country’s entire balance sheet hostage to an uncompromising and unrealistic ideological fringe element. (more)
The debt ceiling deal is only hours old, and it will be some time before the winners become clear (though I wouldn’t be surprised to see Barack Obama at the top of the list on November 7, 2012). But it’s very clear that the losers are the American people. (more)
On Monday, The Washington Post reprinted a graph comparing the deficit impact of policies signed into law by President Bush with those signed by President Obama. (more)
Despite the hand-wringing by the usual tut-tutting journalists and administration friends (but I repeat myself), there’s about as much chance that the U.S. will default on its bonds as there is of Columbo remaining stumped at the end of an episode. (more)
In June 2002, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report on the federal government’s long-term budget outlook. The report predicted that federal spending, which had hovered around 20% of GDP since World War II, would reach 23.8% of GDP in 2040, 30% of GDP in the late 2050s and 40% of GDP — double the postwar average — around 2075. (more)
Bill Clinton’s favorite undergraduate professor at Georgetown was a man named Carroll Quigley. A noted author, historian and political theorist, Dr. Quigley was best known in his day for writing “The Evolution of Civilizations,” a scientific analysis of how civilizations rise and fall dependent upon “instruments of growth,” the degree to which a given civilization can productively provide for its citizens and allow for expansion. (more)
Republicans framed the debt limit issue properly with “Cut, Cap and Balance,” which died today in the Senate. Now, they need a debt ceiling bill that showcases how they would change things if given an opportunity in the next election. (more)
There is no small amount of irony that Washington swelters in hell-like temperatures as leaders sweat out the devils in the details of the debt-ceiling deal. And while Washington seems to have finally grasped the notion that the United States cannot afford default, leaders seem to be ignoring Standard & Poor’s warnings that even if the U.S. raises the debt ceiling, there could be a downgrade in early August if lawmakers don’t agree to a credible debt-reduction deal. (more)
Despite ongoing federal deficits of more than $1 trillion a year, many liberals are calling for more government spending to “create jobs.” At the same time, liberals are opposing budget cuts because that would supposedly hurt the economic recovery. And then there is the perennial problem of Democrats and Republicans defending spending on their particular favored programs. (more)
Behind closed doors, congressional leaders and the White House are discussing budget savings to tie to the upcoming vote on the federal debt limit. Republicans have promised that spending cuts must be at least as large as the debt-increase amount. Thus, if the debt limit is increased by $2 trillion to get the government through the end of 2012, policymakers need to agree on $2 trillion in cuts, probably measured over 10 years. (more)
So this is how it begins. Paul Ryan, one of today’s most consequential national politicians, finds his proposed entitlement reform plan under fire from the ambitious, the confused, and the naïve. Symbolizing the ambitious is Democrat Kathy Hochul, whose special-election victory last week in a conservative upstate New York Congressional district illuminated the path to victory for the Democratic Party: delegitimize the very notion of Medicare reform by insisting that you are fighting against conservative avarice, while you calculate that the blame for America’s coming fiscal meltdown, which you have made inevitable, will fall on other shoulders. Hochul’s victory has become a moment of revealed truth in our politics. (more)
President Obama could learn a lesson from this fable about a great ship. (more)
When Paul Ryan released his plan to reform Medicare, Democrats and Republicans praised him for engaging the country in a serious debate about entitlement reform. This is a debate that everyone knows we must have because entitlements like Medicare are going broke and bankrupting our country in the process. But now, only weeks later, political cowardice and political opportunism are threatening to end the entitlement debate before it even gets started. (more)
I was always told that parents want their children to have better lives than they have, that each generation will strive to make things better for the generation that follows. But as our politicians in Washington debate spending cuts, the debt limit, and whether there will be a government shutdown this week, I’m starting to see something very different: that our elders are instead passing off their debt to us, and ensuring we won’t have any future at all. And nobody in my generation seems to care. (more)
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