Obama Kicks the Can Down the Road
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
Our leaders are so good at kicking the can that it's almost uncanny."The way we've dealt with it for most of the last decade," White House budget director Jack Lew said Monday afternoon as he laid out President Obama's new budget, "is simply to put the expense on our national credit card and to kick the can down the road. Well, this budget says we can't do that anymore."In case you didn't notice, that was a canned line.Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his version of it to Congress last week in testimony about the debt crisis:…
To Close Fiscal Deficit, Close Our Leadership Deficit
Sen. Tom Coburn
The President and Congress will never close our fiscal deficit until we close our leadership deficit. Our debt and deficit crisis cannot be solved without strong presidential leadership and this budget does not come close to reflecting the severity of the problems before us.The only way to solve this problem is for the president and Congress to first educate the American people about the urgency of the problem, and then outline the shared sacrifices and hard choices that will be necessary to put us on a sustainable path. Everything has to be on the table. No one can protect their sacred cows….
Americans Disagree With GOP on Deficit
Rep. Mike Honda, Roll Call
When Republicans made the federal deficit the centerpiece of their November 2010 campaigns, it was a rare convergence of smart policy meeting smart politics.Now that they have been forced to come in off the sidelines and govern, however, Republicans have quickly ditched the smart policy in favor of smart politics. Instead of attempting to construct a feasible, bipartisan, long-term solution to the deficit, they tried to fool the American people with infinitesimally small deficit reductions. Ditching smart policy in favor of Beltway politics, Republicans voted for huge (and unpaid-for) tax…
Don’t Cut Teach for America
Richard Cohen, NY Daily News
The Experience Economy
David Brooks, New York Times
Tyler Cowen’s e-book, “The Great Stagnation,” has become the most debated nonfiction book so far this year. Cowen’s core point is that up until sometime around 1974, the American economy was able to experience awesome growth by harvesting low-hanging fruit. There was cheap land to be exploited. There was the tremendous increase in education levels during the postwar world. There were technological revolutions occasioned by the spread of electricity, plastics and the car. David Brooks David Brooks and Gail Collins talk…
