After making news earlier this week for promising to make Social Security and Medicare reform a “central part” of his plan to curtail federal spending, President-elect Obama has pledged to hold a “fiscal responsibility” summit focusing on entitlement reform. Although the devil is in the details, facing up to the …
The bailout parade is continuing unabated in Washington this week. On the heels of a $25 billion bailout for the automotive industry, the Bush Administration agreed yesterday to a $4.3 billion bailout of Massachusetts’ out of control health care spending. Apparently when numbers like $700 billion are being thrown around, …
MINNEAPOLIS – Economic advisers from both Barack Obama and John McCain’s campaigns squared off in a panel on tax policy this afternoon, and the consensus among the non-partisan members of the panel was that no matter who wins, Americans should not expect any major changes in tax policy. After both …
Columbia University Business School dean Glenn Hubbard writes in the Wall Street Journal today: The spending shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare are large. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security and Medicare spending left unchecked would, after a generation, consume about 10 percentage points more of GDP than …
Earlier this month, Anheuser-Busch was bought by the Belgian brewer InBev for $50.3 billion. As symbolic as the purchase was for American beer drinkers, the deal will have an even bigger impact on Belgium’s economy. A gross domestic product (GDP) of $378.9 billion makes Belgium the 28th-largest economy in the world. Now …
If current trends continue, Social Security and Medicare spending will jump from 7.5% of GDP today to 13% by 2030. Entitlement spending at those levels will cripple the U.S. economy. The liberal/progressive answer to this problem is to push for government-run health care that will control the meteoric rise in …
