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Human Events...
Mitch Daniels Dares
GOP Candidates to Be Grown-ups
by Michael Barone
09/29/2011
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels did not attract as large a crowd when he
spoke at American Enterprise Institute (where I am a resident fellow)
earlier this week as he did when several months ago, before he
disappointed admirers by announcing that he wouldn’t run for president.
I saw no political reporters there -- though a few may have been
lurking in the back -- and he got only one question (from me) about
presidential politics. No, he said, he isn’t reconsidering his decision
not to run, and doesn’t think that Chris Christie is, either.
But Daniels’ message, based on his new book “Keeping the Republic,” was
important -- one that every presidential candidate should heed --
because it was about a looming issue that Barack Obama has so far
decided to duck but that one of them, if he is elected, may have to
confront.
We face, Daniels said, “a survival-level threat to the America we have
known.” The problem can be summed up as debt. The Obama Democrats have
put us on the path to double the national debt as a percentage of gross
domestic product, bringing it to levels that, as economists Kenneth
Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart have written in “This Time Is Different,”
have always proved unsustainable.
Daniels put it this way. Debt service will permanently stunt the growth
of the economy. And that will be followed by a loss of leadership in
the world, because “nobody follows a pauper.”
That growth in debt will continue to be driven by growth in programs
labeled entitlements -- though Daniels objects to that term. Congress,
after all, can vote to cancel entitlement programs and deny promised
benefits any time it wants, as the Supreme Court ruled in Flemming v.
Nestor in 1960.
Daniels favors changes in Social Security and Medicare for tomorrow’s
seniors that will give them choices and market incentives in building
retirement income and seeking medical care. He insists that “average
folks can make good consumerist decisions” and rejects the premise held
by liberals from the New Deal to today that they can’t be trusted to
navigate their way in our complex society.
This is quite a contrast with the Republicans out there running for
president, who have had little to say about the problem of
entitlements, in debates or in their platforms. Mitt Romney raises the
problem but hesitates to advance solutions, and then attacks Rick Perry
for intemperate comments about Social Security in his book “Fed Up!”
On defense, Perry points out the success of public employee pension
plans in three Texas counties that outperform Social Security. But
these programs are impossible to scale up in a society where most
employment is in the private sector, where most people will hold
multiple jobs over their working lifetimes and where many people move
from state to state (often, as Perry points out, to Texas)…
Read the rest of the column at Human
Events
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