As promised, President Obama unveiled his 2014 budget today, albeit 2 months late. We discussed some of the proposed outlines on Monday, which you can find here. But in his public comments as reported by CNBC, Mr. Obama continues an approach which can only divide, not unify. Whether this is by design is only a […]
Archives
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President Obama’s 2014 Budget: To what end?
10 Apr 2013
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Our national debt is $16.75T, our unfunded liabilities are ~ $120T, and President Obama says we have no debt crisis. In a post last week on the national debt and deficits, I promised we’d discuss the morality of passing the debt burden on to our grand-kids. As is often the case, our moral senses are […]
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Sequestration Madness
27 Mar 2013
Left-leaning author and editorialist Bob Woodward ’s recent criticisms of the Obama administration’s role in precipitating the sequestration debacle resulted in a response from National Economic Council director Gene Sperling. While Woodward suggested on a television talk show that Sperling had threatened him in an email, subsequent revelations called that assertion into question. While Woodward […]
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Are deficits really good for our economy?
24 Mar 2013
They are; at least according to Charles DuBois in his letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. DuBois says, In brief, the near-term impact of deficit spending is for the private sector to incur one debit (to buy the bonds) and two credits—one for receiving the bonds and one for receiving the deficit […]
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In a comment to a post I made yesterday, Jeff Haymond asked “Can you speak to what the biblical vision would be and why Representative Ryan’s proposal has at least parts that fit that vision?“. I’d like to respond to Jeff’s first question by summarizing welfare reform architect Lawrence Mead’s From Prophecy to Charity: How […]
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On March 12, the House Budget Committee released its Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Resolution “The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible Balanced Budget”. A key provision in the proposal is the “Safety Net Strengthened” (p. 25). Using reform of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as a model when “Bipartisan efforts in the late 1990s […]
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President Obama: There Is No Debt Crisis!
14 Mar 2013
That’s the headline of this report from ABC News. Today, the U.S. National Debt is $16.7T, whereas our 2012 GDP was $15.6T, or our debt/GDP ratio is 107%. Economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff have shown that when debt levels are greater than 90% of GDP (for advanced economies), economic growth slows. EDIT Jun ’13: […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach