Driving the conversation: President Obama released his deficit reduction plan on Monday, which would reduce the national debt by $3 trillion over ten years through a variety of tax hikes, superficial cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and by incorporating savings gleaned from drawing down America’s military presence in the Middle East. Taxes: As he is wont to do, Obama called on Congress – specifically, the supercommittee – to reform the tax code. The only tax changes included in the president’s plan are – surprise! – tax hikes. Those will include …
Last week’s presidential debate at the Reagan Library elevated Social Security as a national issue that could reshape the 2012 campaign. Candidates spent the week trading blows about the role of the 76-year-old social insurance program. Leaving aside the political rhetoric, one thing is certain: Social Security needs to be reformed or America will face a dismal future. As one of the three major entitlement programs — along with Medicare and Medicaid — Social Security is contributing to a very dire long-term budget outlook. Spending on the three entitlement programs …
Social Security took center stage at last night’s Republican presidential debate, emerging as a key issue among candidates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Not since President Bush’s ill-fated attempt to reform the social insurance program in 2005 have Republicans talked this much about Social Security. Of course, it’s hard to ignore. Social Security is the largest federal program. It pays out $700 billion to about 60 million Americans. Leaving aside the political attacks from last night’s debate, the candidates on stage at least agreed that Social Security …
Fifteen years ago today, after lengthy battles between a Republican-led Congress and a Democratic White House, President Bill Clinton signed into law the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, otherwise known as welfare reform. Among other changes, the act inserted work requirements and time limits into the nation’s largest cash assistance welfare program. As a result, five years after the reform, 3.5 million fewer individuals lived in poverty, and the poverty rate for black children dropped to its lowest level in the nation’s history. However, there have been …
Consider it a warning from the highest levels of the U.S. government. Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta held a joint press event in Washington in which they cautioned that U.S. debt is jeopardizing America’s ability to ensure national security and preserve its interests abroad. Under the Budget Control Act of 2011—the debt ceiling agreement enacted earlier this month—$350 billion in cuts to defense spending must be made over 10 years. But if Congress doesn’t reach an agreement on $1.5 trillion in deficit savings, $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts would …
Last night, the House of Representatives was set to vote on House Speaker John Boehner’s (R–OH) plan to raise the debt ceiling, as the projected August 2 deadline looms. Failing to round up enough votes to secure the bill’s passage, House Republicans closed up shop for the night and are scheduled to reconvene this morning, hoping to bring a bill back to the House floor with enough support to pass, as Politico reports. Inside baseball, last-minute vote wrangling aside, a much larger problem remains: Even if the Boehner bill passed …
Through the fog of the debt limit negotiations, President Obama has attempted to shift the blame for America’s deficit crisis to politicians at large, claiming that “neither party is blameless for the decisions that led to this problem.” Though the culture of overspending is endemic in Washington, don’t let the President fool you—some are a lot more guilty than others. The fact is that Obama’s budget would set America on a dangerous fiscal course that leads to massive deficits well into the future—hitting $1.2 trillion in 2012 and, after dipping …
Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities claims that the Boehner budget is a form of “class warfare.” He says that “if enacted, it would produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.” What Greenstein disingenuously fails to acknowledge is that President Obama has already presided over the greatest increase in means-tested welfare or anti-poverty spending in the history of the nation. At best, the Boehner plan calls for a modest, partial rollback of these massive spending increases. The …
President Obama and congressional leaders can’t seem to agree on any plan to avert a debt crisis. As the White House’s Aug. 2 deadline approaches, the House has adopted the Cut, Cap and Balance Act, while the Senate has floated a number of bad ideas. Earlier this year, The Heritage Foundation formulated its own plan called Saving the American Dream to fix America’s debt problem. It keeps spending low without raising taxes. Entitlement programs are the biggest driver of debt, so reforming them first will put us on a course to a …
AARP’s latest video opposing spending reductions in Social Security or Medicare once again pushes the flawed argument that cutting federal budget waste and loopholes would effectively address America’s unsustainable fiscal problems. A senior featured in the video asks, “With billions in waste and loopholes, how could they look at us?” Yes, there is substantial government waste that Congress can eliminate, but that shouldn’t be a substitute for real entitlement reform. Spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—the three main entitlement programs—represents more than half of the entire federal budget today and …
