debt

It seems that every generation or two, fundamental economic ideas are questioned and challenged.

Heartland’s Donald Kendal, and Justin Haskins are joined by Isaac Orr, Policy Fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, in episode #181 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s episode features work from the Illinois Policy Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the Manhattan Institute, and the Foundation for Economic Education.

Almost all Americans agree that the process to pass a federal budget has become more difficult than scaling Mt. Everest.

It has been said that economists have predicted “nine of the last five recessions,” or words to that effect, suggesting that the “dismal science” can’t be trusted.

How debt is shaping up to be our undoing.

In case you have missed them since the early years of the Obama administration, the $1 trillion-a-year federal budget deficits are coming back, beginning with Uncle Sam’s new fiscal year for 2019, which starts on October 1, 2018. And they might not be going away anytime soon.

Greece is on the verge of settling the repayment of its bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund, European banks and other creditors.

In Homer’s Odyssey, sailors are lured to the rocky shores of an island by an irresistible siren song. To prevent his ship from succumbing to the song, Odysseus orders his sailors to fill their ears with wax and tie him to the ship’s mast.

Since 2005, the Congressional Budget Office has published an annual report on the long-term sustainability of U.S. fiscal policies.

President Donald Trump has proposed a trillion-dollar plan for infrastructure investment. 

Since February 2017, the federal deficit has grown by more than $500 billion, to over $20 trillion. The average debt owed per person is now estimated to be greater than $62,000.

The free enterprise, or capitalist, system has done more to improve the material condition of humanity than any other economic arrangement of human cooperation in all of recorded history.

A Grand Bargain would be a restoration of the balance between the federal government, the states, and the people, as it was envisioned in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.