Tag Archives: Politics

Reforming Social Security Benefits

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Excerpt from “Reforming Social Security Benefits,” Testimony Before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security.

In this testimony, I would like to focus on the need for Social Security benefit reform regardless of the current imbalances in the system or the taxes raised to support the system.

Why? Despite Social Security’s great success, its growth in lifetime benefits over time has been decreasingly targeted at its major goals. Even while programs for children and working families are being cut, combined lifetime benefits for couples turning 65 rise by an average of about $20,000 every year, so that couples in their mid-40s today are scheduled to get about $1.4 million in lifetime benefits, of which $700,000 is in Social Security. Continue reading →

When Policy Meets Statistics: The Reinhart and Rogoff Study on Excessive Debt

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Knowing how many of us economists toil away in obscurity on most research, I’m always intrigued by what catches the press’s and public’s attention. Take, for example, the significant attention paid to a 2010 study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that concluded that countries with debt levels above 90 percent of GDP began showing slower rates of growth. When Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, scholars at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, recently had trouble replicating Reinhart and Rogoff’s results, the debate played out in national news outlet.

Unfortunately, this discussion quickly devolved from substance to politics to arguments ad hominem. Without getting into the extent to which I or others can validate Reinhart and Rogoff’s (R&R’s) original findings, I offer six cautions for anyone witnessing this or a similar statistical debate with significant policy implications. Continue reading →

On Popes and Presidents, Curiae and Cabinets

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Our proclivities toward worshipping our leaders might not be genetic, but they can certainly be traced through the ages. We like our kings…for a while. We believe that if we could concentrate power in the hands of someone who understands us, the world, and maybe even the heavens above, someone who can crush the opposing tribe or -ism or evil, someone who can make things “right,” then we, too, will be all right.

I wonder how much this type of thinking sets up our popes and our presidents—our kings of today—for failure. It’s not simply that they are human and fallible, and, therefore, must disappoint our regal expectations. It’s that as chief administrators of vast bureaucracies, they fear delegating to others who, in failing, might threaten the trappings of the office Continue reading →

Violence in America: The Wider Conversation

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In the aftermath of Newtown and, by one estimate, 25 mass shootings since 2006, the country is engaged in an intense fight over assault-like weapons and the right of Americans to carry them. While I consider it downright stupid and outright dangerous to allow people to buy, sell, and carry around the equivalent of small machine guns—imagine how safe you would feel if all your loony neighbors touted one around—I wish we were engaged in a much wider and thoughtful discussion over violence in America and how to reduce it. Continue reading →

Creative Ways Around a Blunt Sequester

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I would like to offer two simple plans, one for Republicans and one for Democrats, to avoid a blunt, across-the-board sequester with no realistic assessment of priorities. Each plan gives both parties something they want without abandoning their core principles. Each also strengthens the party making the proposal by putting the other one on the spot if it fails to move toward a moderate compromise. Continue reading →

Education Presidents And Governors: Ain’t Gonna Happen

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In last week’s State of the Union speech, President Obama put great emphasis on expanding early childhood education. He’s not alone in recognizing the vital role of education as the launching pad for 21st century growth. George W. Bush wanted to be known as the “education president,” and so did his father, George H.W. Bush.

While I strongly support these types of effort, right now pro-education politicians are fighting a losing battle. Their new initiatives merely slow down their retreat against a health cost juggernaut. Continue reading →

Video on the Ways and Means Committee’s Hearing on Tax Reform and Charities

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U-stream has now posted at 2-part video of my testimony yesterday before the Ways and Means Committee on “Tax Reform and Charities.” In addition to my own testimony, the first panel heard presentations from Kevin Murphy, President of the Council on Foundations; David Wills, President of the National Christian Foundation; Brian Gallagher, President & CEO of United Way Worldwide; Roger Colinvaux, Professor of Catholic University DC Law School; Eugene Tempel, Dean of the Indiana University School of Philanthropy; and Jan Masaoka, CEO of California Association of Nonprofits. Continue reading →