Richard Gund - March 19, 2013

Keep up the good work and let’s get more young people exposed to ideas, values and principles that are proven to work. It’s disappointing to learn that only 60 members of Congress actually attended meetings in person. They should spend more time on Heritage sponsored events and less time with the people on “K” Street.

field retterer - March 19, 2013

I do not believe anyone is truly “reaching ” members of congress. The fact that “Obamacae” was never read by any member of congress that I know of, indicates complete irresponsibility. It also indicates that life is so good for these people that they are nearly oblivious to the theft they are perpetuating on Americans .We are quickly approaching the point where we will have to take physical action against members of congress and the federal bureaucracy. The Republican party is dead as long as people like Boehner and Mitchell are the “leaders” of the party.

John Buonocore - March 19, 2013

I guess someone who should pay more attention to your work should be the Speaker of the House. According to him we donot have a debt problem and of course he trust the POTUS——hello am I missing something here??

Ted Sherman - March 19, 2013

Could you establish a personalized session for Harry Reid? It is obvious that he is in critical need of training in the areas of history, logic, economics, and constitutional government.

Dr. Terence D. Micheal - March 20, 2013

Your efforts, although commendable, fall on deft ears. Our society has been corrupted by the statist public school system and all in power and the citizens of this country have been brainwashed with socialist ideology. It’s evidence is in the results of the last presidential election. It is evident in the stupidity of our politicians. It is evident is in our citizens that don’t know the constitution and historical political/economics.This brainwashing system has bee in effect since the 1930′s. Do you really think you can over power this system without changing the system completely and waiting another 80 years for it change?
I recommend that every family homeschool their children and educate them in the Uncle Eirc book series written by Richard Mayburry. The trend has already started with those that have been educated by this series since the 70′s. The youg people at CPAC this last weekend and those that have followed Congressman Ron Paul have gotten the message. The sad thing is that the numbers aren’t great enough.
Thank you!

Fred Belen - March 20, 2013

this outreach to the youth is wonderful..they should be studying things like the article from WSJ:

Wall Street Journal

13 March 2013

Escape From Spending Hell

by Daniel Henninger

The sequester proved that spending cuts aren’t a political third rail.

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So it looks like we’ve all been sentenced to spending at least two more years in budget hell with Barack Obama. Under the rules of budget hell set the past four years by the prince of Pennsylvania Avenue, you’re not allowed to do anything real about federal spending. You can only fight over federal spending. Forever.

Paul Ryan on Tuesday tossed his third House GOP budget into this void. He hopes to reduce long-term spending to an average of 19.5% of GDP. The Beltway press called it an opening “salvo.” Yesterday his Senate counterpart, new Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray, introduced the Democrats’ budget, teeing up what the Washington Post called a “budget duel.” Welcome to the Obama street-fighting army, Sen. Murray.

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All hope is not lost. Amid the sequester smackdown with the White House, Republicans did something off-script: They called the Obama bluff. They let the sequester’s spending cuts occur, and the apocalypse didn’t descend. The only thing that cracked was the president’s approval rating.

The sequester’s big discovery was that spending reduction isn’t a political third rail. But if the winds are starting to shift, Republicans are going to need all the help they can get to convince the American people that more cuts in spending will preserve and protect their economy.

Help is at hand—economist Alberto Alesina.

Mr. Alesina, a professor at Harvard University, may be the last economist that Democrats want to deal with at the moment Americans are finding sympathy for spending cuts.

Ever since Ronald Reagan legitimized the efficacy of tax cuts, Democrats have sought to discredit his idea and restore the New Deal theory of a Keynesian multiplier, which dates to 1931. It holds that more public spending will revive a struggling economy.

No president has believed more in the miracle of the multiplier than Barack Obama. Across four years he has led the country on a kind of Keynesian death march, pushing federal spending to 25% of GDP and producing weak growth. We’re looking at four more years before the Keynesian mast unless the Republicans can offer an intellectually respectable alternative.

Mr. Alesina has identified the alternative. His, and others’, work the past decade with how struggling economies revive suggests that the Obama spend-more solution is the opposite of what the U.S. should be doing.

There is general agreement on at least two things about the current U.S. economy. It is emerging from the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and its debt level is unsustainable. The path back to stronger growth, argues Mr. Alesina, is a combination of significant, permanent cuts in public spending and relatively small tax increases, if any.

This view isn’t born of “right-wing” ideology. Mr. Alesina is an Italian, as are many of his co-authors. As Europeans, Mr. Alesina and his colleagues were forced to confront the biggest challenge facing Western economies the past 40 years. Europe rose from the ashes of war, but how would it rise from the ashes of debt, as benevolent postwar spending programs outstripped revenue?

Mr. Alesina and his colleagues wanted to answer the most basic question: What works?

They sought the answer (which they published in an August 2012 paper on “fiscal consolidations” for the National Bureau of Economic Research) by analyzing an International Monetary Fund history of all the fiscal plans that 17 OECD governments enacted between 1978 and 2009, including the U.S., Canada and Japan. Together, these countries tried everything to grow—raise spending, cut spending, raise taxes or cut them, in endless combinations. What helped?

“Adjustments based upon spending cuts,” the economists concluded, “are much less costly in terms of output losses than tax-based ones. Spending-based adjustments”—that is, cuts—”have been associated with mild and short-lived recessions, in many cases with no recession at all. Tax-based adjustments”—tax increases—”have been associated with prolonged and deep recessions.”

The debate over “failed austerity” is misleading because it emphasizes spending cuts but rarely mentions tax increases. “Austerity” plans, the Alesina studies suggest, fail to revive growth when they too heavily rely on raising taxes on income and capital—as across Europe and now in the U.S.

There is no magic ride back to prosperity. The Alesina team is describing the least-bad antidote for the long-term poison of destructive national debt. Fiscal plans based on large, permanent spending cuts are associated with renewed growth more than any alternative policy mix that has been tried. Indeed, spending cuts without big tax increases look to be the only thing that really works. The leading example the past 15 years is . . . Canada. And just an observation: The Dow proceeded to its high after the sequester happened. The cuts were the first credible step in rebuilding private-sector confidence.

The Patty Murray budget: A $975 billion spending cut and a $975 billion tax increase.

The Paul Ryan budget: $4.6 trillion of spending cuts and no new taxes beyond the fiscal-cliff increases.

Neither budget is anything the world has never seen. The available record suggests which of the two is the road to perdition.

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Nina Clow - March 20, 2013

The comments I have read express the pessimism that is widespread throughout this country. However rooted in reality, I have decided to think more positively about our future and have seen glimmers of hope in people like Alex Cohen, Rand Paul, Dr. Benjamin Carson, and Marco Rubio. I cannot give up this grand country just yet. We need more of our children, like Alex, to bring the conservative message to more of our countrymen. So lets get it done!

Carol Carson - March 20, 2013

I was very dismayed one recent morning on Fox when I caught the end of a Republican representative stating that the Republican party more or less needs a fresh look, that we need to move into the times…..what he proposed was being more open about gay marriage, birth control (abortions), illegal aliens and Christianity(basically freedom for all other religions)…..Sounds like the liberal democratic party to me…if the Republican Party were to strive toward more liberal views in these areas…I truthfully could no longer support it. Could you tell me who this gentleman was? I believe there was a woman supporting him at the podium also.

Holly Chapo - March 25, 2013

Bravo for the Missouri high school student! Stories like that give me hope.
On the flip side, are the establishment Republicans who just do not get it. They have betrayed their oath, betrayed the American people, betrayed what they are doing in Washington as elected REPRESENTATIVES. They just do noit listen to us. And they are led by someone I see as a feckless coward – John Boehner, assisted by Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy. I am at a loss to know what it will take to get through to them about what we need to turn this country around, to restore our founding principles and to make America what it was intended to be – a land of liberty; free people pursuing life, liberty and happiness; self-governance; limited government and the prosperity that can come only via free market capitalism.
The Democrats are hopeless but we should not feel that way about our own.