Tonight's Stossel on Fox Business Provides the Best, Most-Inclusive Discussion of Budget Issues Ever!

Nick Gillespie | May 26, 2011

Earlier this week, I taped an episode of John Stossel's great eponymous show on the Fox Business channel (it airs at 10PM ET on Thursdays; go here for details on the Battle of the Budgets). This week's show takes from another Fox product, American Idol, and features five different think tanks of wildly different perspectives (Demos, the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, and the Bipartisan Policy Center) talking about their fixes for the federal bottom line. (The whole show is taking off from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's challenge to those groups; the Center for American Progress declined to appear on Stossel, claiming the show excluded viewpoints such as its own [yeah, weak].) The plans are judged by the studio audience and three judges (a Dem, a centrist, and a libertarian) and by the studio audience. My small role is at the start of the show, where I lay out the depth of the federal budget's persistent deficits, the accumulation of massive debt, and the coming budgetpocalypse when entitlement spending, inflation, and/or interest rates all kick into high gear.

I won't tell you which think tank wins the show's competition (and gets to take home of Stossel's 19 Emmys as the grand prize), but I am happy to tell you that the program was absolutely fascinating and informative. In the best Stossel tradition, the host has a definite libertarian point of view but is also scrupulously honest and fair with his guests of whatever persuasion, all of whom present strong pitches for their ideas. If you care about government spending, watch this show. And be amazed at how interesting and intense the subject really can be.

Stossel airs tonight on Fox Business at 10PM ET.

Earlier this year, Mercatus economist Veronique de Rugy and I offered up a balanced budget plan we call "The 19 Percent Solution," which would balance the budget without raising taxes. Read it here. And watch this video about the plan:

Reason needs your support. Please donate today!

Try Reason's award-winning print edition today! Your first issue is FREE if you are not completely satisfied.

Stop NationalDebt|5.26.11 @ 2:12PM|#

There won't be change until the public truly gets how bad US finances are. The public yawns when it hears $trillions in debt thinking "big number, but its a big country". since they have no perspective. We need to rephrase the issue:

The federal government will need >$1 million per household to pay its IOUs!
> $116 trillion ="official" debt plus money short for future social security, medicare, etc
Even its "official debt" of $14.2 trillion is $123,754 per household!
Details at StopNationalDebt.com with links to contact congress & complain.

"POLL REVEALS: Americans Are Still In Deep Denial About The Deficit" http://read.bi/h6QDGR If they realized how bad it is politicians would need to act.

Be among the first to join the Facebook "event' "Balance the Budget NOW! Stop National Debt!"
http://www.facebook.com/event......5047809308 since if you don't spread the word, who will? We need to spread the word virally to educate non news-junkies. Its online&ongoing;.

proegg antichicken|5.26.11 @ 1:58PM|#

The exclamation mark makes the headline read like sarcasm. Or maybe it's a generational thing.

Fist of Etiquette|5.26.11 @ 2:24PM|#

Sarcasm. That's real helpful.

|5.26.11 @ 2:39PM|#

I bet you really think that.

Jim|5.26.11 @ 2:03PM|#

Great, two Stossel posts this morning. Now I'm going to have to check both tonight to see where the liveblog is. That is WAY too much effort to put into this.

Fist of Etiquette|5.26.11 @ 2:27PM|#

Team Stossel Liveblog is like a flash mob. No one knows where it will happen and no one wants it whenever it does show up.

Nick Gillespie|5.26.11 @ 2:09PM|#

No dark sarcasm in this classroom. My background is in teen mags! No, really!

Mango Punch|5.26.11 @ 2:53PM|#

Leather and cooking! If only Nick were actually Sallie James.

|5.26.11 @ 2:12PM|#

Stossel makes me fall asleep.

H man|5.26.11 @ 2:35PM|#

So if I have my ratios right it's like a household with $24,000.00 in aftertax income spending $38,000.00 every while already oweing $148,000.00

H man|5.26.11 @ 2:38PM|#

I'm saying if the government was like a household.

|5.26.11 @ 2:47PM|#

We need to eliminate entire agencies, departments and missions. None of these think tanks do that.

Amen to that.
Having a show on FBN is a waste of time though. You'd be better off doing it in your living room aon your own YouTube channel.

andrew|5.26.11 @ 2:52PM|#

I'm glad to know that I am not the only person who wears a leather jacket while preparing pork.

scarpe Nike Store|7.28.11 @ 5:11AM|#

is good

Reason.com