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Right Wing and Ron Paul, Federal Budget
& More
Reason Alert
February 18, 2011
- Florida Governor Makes the Right Decision on Rail Project
- The Right Wing Tries to Figure Out Ron Paul
- This Federal Budget Is No Way to Win the Future
- The Medicaid Mess Is Even Worse Than You Think
- Did President Bush Set the Stage for Middle Eastern Democracy?
Florida Governor Makes the
Right Decision on High-Speed Rail Project
Since Florida Gov. Rick Scott turned down $2.4 billion in federal
funding for the proposed Orlando to Tampa high-speed rail project, one
of the more frequently asked questions has been why didn’t Florida just
take the billions from the feds and let the private sector build and
pay for the rest? Reason Foundation Director of Transportation Robert
Poole says the private sector isn’t at all convinced there is any money
to be made in operating the proposed system. Poole writes, “...the
private firms interested in building and operating the [California]
high-speed rail project are telling the California High-Speed Rail
Authority that they cannot get financing unless the state provides them
with ‘revenue guarantees.’ And what, precisely, is that? If the traffic
and revenue on the rail line are below the forecasts on which the
financing was based, the state would agree to make up the difference.
In other words, operating subsidies. If the private sector required
that protection in order to fund the California project, whose
ridership potential is far higher than that in Florida, there is no way
they would go unprotected in Florida. So Gov. Rick Scott was on firm
ground in judging that the risks to Florida taxpayers were simply too
great if this project went forward. He made the right decision.”
Reason’s January Analysis of the Orlando to Tampa Rail Plan
The Right Wing Tries to
Figure Out Ron Paul
Reason’s Brian Doherty says the right wing is having a hard time
figuring out Ron Paul. At CPAC, Donald Trump accused Paul of being
un-electable. But Paul won the CPAC straw poll, which prompted a radio
host to say libertarians are disrespectfully “hijacking” CPAC and that
“libertarians are the worst form of political affiliation in the
nation.” Doherty writes, “Any standard Republican or movement
conservative really can’t take Paul seriously without massive cognitive
dissonance. You mean, we really really have to obey the Constitution,
we really can’t keep borrowing and inflating forever? Signs like the
CPAC vote of a significant number of politically active youngsters
believing in Ron Paul are indeed a sign of an apocalypse of sorts for
the world that most politicians and pundits know. If Ron Paul is right,
then everything they know is wrong.”
Matt Welch Talks Ron Paul and the 2012 Presidential Election on MSNBC
Radley Balko: The ACLU and New Politics
John Stossel: Is Seasteading the Future?
This Federal Budget Is No
Way to Win the Future
“To great partisan applause, the president channeled the reality show
‘Survivor’ (slogan: ‘Outwit, Outplay, Outlast’) and proclaimed that the
United States needs to ‘out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the
rest of the world.’ With the release of his budget proposal for fiscal
year 2012, we now know exactly what the president meant: We need to
out-spend the world. Sure, the United States government is already
wracked with debt -- to the tune of about $9 trillion or 62 percent of
gross domestic product -- and government spending is at or near
post-World War II highs, about 25 percent of GDP using 2010 numbers.
Obama’s bold plan is to spend yet more without any ability to cover
such new largess. Far from winning the future, Obama has decided to
punt on first down. Instead of dealing with federal spending that has
ballooned by more than 60 percent in constant 2010 dollars over the
past decade -- spending pushed by Republicans and Democrats alike --
the president has decided to stick with a status quo that is leading us
to fiscal ruin. In the broadest outlines, Obama proposes spending $3.7
trillion in 2012 (about the same as this year). Over the course of the
coming decade, he claims that his spending plan would trim the deficit
by about $1.1 trillion, with about two-thirds of theoretical savings
coming from spending less than expected (such as a five-year freeze on
non-security-related discretionary spending) and one-third from tax
increases (on high-income earners). Another way of putting this is that
the president’s plan for the next decade does nothing to balance
spending and revenue; over 10 years, it adds about $8 trillion to the
national debt...If all goes according to plan, in 2021, debt held by
the public will equal a whopping 77 percent of GDP. Of course, to that
debt you have to add the money that the federal government has borrowed
to various trust funds, like Social Security and Medicare, and also the
trillions of dollars in unfunded promises made to the American people.”
- Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy writing at AOL News
More on the Budget:
Gillespie and de Rugy: The 19 Percent Solution
The Medicaid Mess Is Even
Worse Than You Think
In a column for The Wall Street Journal, Reason magazine’s Peter
Suderman examines the growing Medicaid problem and what states are
trying to do about it: “At roughly 21% of total state spending,
Medicaid is already the single largest item in state budgets, according
to the National Association of State Budget Officers. Between 2008 and
2009 (the latest year for which figures are available), annual spending
growth on the program nearly doubled, growing to 9% from 4.9%. Medicaid
currently covers 53 million people at an overall cost of $373.9 billion
(states are responsible for about half). But starting in 2014,
ObamaCare rules will add about 20 million more, according to Richard
Foster, the program’s chief actuary. Yet state budgets are already
being squeezed. Washington state, facing a $5.7 billion budget hole,
has ordered the Medicaid program to cut its budget by 6.3%. The state
cannot reduce eligibility to enroll without jeopardizing federal
funding altogether.”
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels Sets Out to Fix Health Care and Medicare
Did President Bush Set the
Stage for Middle Eastern Democracy?
Reason magazine’s Jacob Sullum writes, “The conflict between a
long-term vision of liberal democracies living in peace with each other
and the short-term fears of American politicians was evident in the
Obama administration’s timid response to the turmoil in Egypt. During
nearly three weeks of protests, the vice president declined to call
Mubarak a dictator, the secretary of state repeatedly recommended ‘an
orderly transition,’ and the president, despite his 2009 speech in
Cairo promising to ‘support [human rights] everywhere,’ never once said
Mubarak should resign. Mindful of democratic elections that have
empowered illiberal forces such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in
Lebanon, Obama, like Bush before him, worries that friendly autocrats
will be replaced by hostile populists. Let’s hope this fear, which
underlies the long history of desperate despot coddling that Bush
continued while condemning, does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Related:
Are the Right Dominoes Falling in the Middle East?
Democracy and Freedom Aren’t the Same Thing
Shikha Dalmia Discusses the Threat of Terrorism on Freedom Watch
Dalmia: China and Indian Take Different Growth Paths
Get Full Stories at Reason Foundation
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