President Obama will host a three-hour “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” at the White House Monday to “underscore how big the problems are.” Sixty members of the House and Senate, and representatives from various think-tanks and advocacy organizations from across the political spectrum will attend in an effort to sort out the nation’s fiscal woes. The basics of the long-term entitlement problem are generally agreed upon. In April of 2008 members of the politically diverse coalition know as the Heritage-Brookings Fiscal Seminar published the paper, “Taking Back Our Fiscal Future.” In it, …
Today, an authoritative and diverse group of scholars warned the American people: “If present trends continue, the nation’s deficit will reach unmanageable proportions, other vital public needs will be further squeezed, and/or taxes will have to rise continuously to levels that could restrict economic growth.” No, these scholars were not talking about defense spending. Instead the 16 federal budget experts from seven think tanks (including: American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Concord Coalition, Heritage Foundation, New America Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute, and Urban Institute) issued a paper concluding that automatic escalating …
