entitlements

Taxing the rich has seemed to be one of the Band-Aid solutions for California’s budget, but that’s dangerous as seventy percent of the General Fund is already provided by personal taxes on just five percent of the population.

In these trying times coping with the Coronavirus, and its huge impact on businesses and employment, the younger generations have been set up to pick up some the costs of the defined benefits that their parents and grandparents voted in for themselves.

By reforming government-run entitlement programs, lawmakers can start reversing a decades-long trend of trapping people in poverty — causing harm in the name of providing help. States are already leading the way.

In his inaugural address in January, President Donald Trump promised “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer . . . the time for empty talk is over, now arrives the hour of action.”

As Republicans contemplate repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “ObamaCare”)—seriously, not just as a political gesture—alarms are sounding about millions of individuals losing coverage.

With John out of the office, Donny is joined by Jesse Hathaway, research fellow and managing editor of Budget & Tax News, in episode #64 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the Commonwealth Foundation, the Tax Foundation, and the Mercatus Center.

On January 5, Compact for America Education Foundation President & Executive Director Nick Dranias was a guest on Michigan’s Frank Beckmann show. Sitting in for Frank Beckmann and conducting the interview was M. L. Elrick. Dranias discussed his organization Compact for America and their plan to fix the national debt crisis.

“Government is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else,” wrote the celebrated French legislator, economist, and political theorist Frederic Bastiat 165 years ago. With recent reports out of the Census Bureau indicating nearly half of all Americans are receiving some form of direct government subsidy – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits, housing assistance, veterans’ benefits, etc. – can there be any doubt he was right?

The American Dream is one of the driving concepts in our country’s national story, one that occupies a special place in the national discourse. It is a sort of national ethos, born out of various statements of the Founding Fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson’s in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Conservatives need to wake up and start thinking past the rapidly passing age of Obama.

The goals of limited government, fiscal responsibility, traditional values, and strong defense have been an ever-present litany of bullet points from Republican politicians – but talking about limited government and actually delivering on it are two very different things.

Rather than lie about inflation, people in government should declare the truth: The government cannot sustain these entitlement programs as they are structured, so they’re going to be cut.

I’m scanning headlines on the Internet. I see President Obama has announced he’ll agree to cut Social Security and other benefit programs in exchange for higher taxes. I think, “Take…