Even before the pandemic spending increase, the budget deficit was approaching $1 trillion. The GOP has the chance to embrace fiscal sanity this time if they can find the political will.
When it comes to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, what's lacking is not ideas but the political will to act on them.
The president-elect’s record and campaign positions belie Elon Musk’s talk of spending cuts.
From taxes to special loans to price gouging, the Trump and Harris campaigns have engaged in a race to see who can pander hardest.
Harris' plan to extend at-home care to Medicare recipients is yet another example of wasteful spending.
As with Biden, you can count on Harris to expand government programs.
Healthcare promises always come with high costs.
As it stands, the program effectively redistributes money from younger and poorer people to richer people.
These policies may sound good on paper—but they would be disastrous in reality.
"Right now, we need to get ourselves at least to a balanced budget, and that involves cutting a lot of the third rails of American politics," the Libertarian presidential nominee tells Reason.
If the former president wins the 2024 race, the circumstances he would inherit are far more challenging, and several of his policy ideas are destructive.
Despite anti-immigrant rhetoric, the foreign-born account for nearly 20 percent less public health spending than those born in America.
Both campaigns represent variations on a theme of big, fiscally irresponsible, hyper-interventionist government.
The campaign promise from Donald Trump sounds nice, but it would be disastrous when considering the program is already racing toward insolvency.
The 2024 Libertarian Party presidential candidate speaks out about the Israel-Hamas war, the authoritarian impulses of both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and homophobia within his own party.
Facing an economic downturn in the 1990s, Japan racked up debt. America should not repeat that mistake.
Should we blame Biden and the politicians applauding him for their unwillingness to address our looming fiscal disaster?
We asked delegates at the Republican National Convention whether a second Trump term would address America's debt problem.
Opening night of the Republican National Convention programmed a central issue with a Trumpian twist: "Make America Wealthy Again."
Although former President Donald Trump's deregulatory agenda would make some positive changes, it's simply not enough.
The U.S. has successfully navigated past debt challenges, notably in the 1990s. Policymakers can fix this if they find the will to do so.
The candidate who grasps the gravity of this situation and proposes concrete steps to address it will demonstrate the leadership our nation now desperately needs. The stakes couldn't be higher.
The candidate makes the case against the two-party system.
Plus: A listener asks if there are any libertarian solutions to rising obesity rates.
We could grow our way out of our debt burden if politicians would limit spending increases to just below America's average yearly economic growth. But they won't even do that.
But will the government ever face repercussions for its role in the Adderall shortage?
Reasonable options include gradually raising the minimum retirement age, adjusting benefits to reflect longer life expectancies, and implementing fair means-testing to ensure benefits flow where they're actually needed.
Why aren't politicians on both sides more worried than they seem to be?
Social Security is expected to hit insolvency in 2035, while the portion of Medicare that pays for hospital visits and other medical care will be insolvent by 2036.
Despite their informal nature, those norms have historically constrained U.S. fiscal policy. But they're eroding.
Neither presidential candidate is willing to back the reforms necessary to close the gap between revenue and benefits.
The government needs to cut back on spending—and on the promises to special interests that fuel the spending.
"I'm concerned about a Trump-Biden rematch," argues Riedl. "You have two presidents with two of the worst fiscal records of the past 100 years."
The reality raises questions about the kind of future we want to leave for the next generation.
That's bad news for Americans.
The Copenhagen Consensus has long championed a cost-benefit approach for addressing the world's most critical environmental problems.
In the last 50 years, when the budget process has been in place, Congress has managed only four times to pass a budget on time.
Entitlement reform has long been considered a third rail in American politics, but that perspective might be changing.
Those sounding the loudest alarms about possible shutdowns are largely silent when Congress ignores its own budgetary rules. All that seems to matter is that government is metaphorically funded.
Medicare's new price-setting process for drug purchases is better than its current one if the result is lower government spending.
It's not the first time that has happened, but there are key differences about what happened this year.
Since Congress won't cut spending, an independent commission may be the only way to rein in the debt.
America’s biggest fiscal challenge lies in the unchecked growth of federal health care and old-age entitlement programs.
The lack of oversight and the general absence of a long-term vision is creating inefficiency, waste, and red ink as far as the eye can see.
Since Congress designed and implemented the last budget process in 1974, only on four occasions have all of the appropriations bills for discretionary spending been passed on time.
Many politicians offer a simplified view of the world—one in which government interventions are all benefits and no costs. That couldn't be further from the truth.
At a minimum, the national debt should be smaller than the size of the economy. A committed president just might be able to deliver.
