To those on this board who consider themselves economic conservatives, what changes do you want to make and why. What are your policy goals?
To those who don’t consider yourselves economic conservatives, please leave the straw and burlap sacks at home.
Thanks,
Rob
I want some sort of federal balanced budget amendment although it doesn’t have to be on a strict fiscal year basis. One of the most common criticisms of such amendments is that it would prevent the U.S. government from reacting to emergency circumstances and that is a valid complaint in some ways. However, every day is an emergency to some people and that needs to be reigned in.
You could have a balanced budget amendment that runs on a rolling 5 year basis for example. The normal budget would always need to be balanced but there could be some short-term deficit spending during true emergency situations. However, those deficits would have to be paid off very quickly (5 to 10 years) rather than sit as long-term national debt. That would be more like a payday loan for the federal government than a mortgage so the consequences of deficit spending would be felt very quickly and have to be dealt with directly by the same people that authorized them rather than pushing the problem down the road for future generations.
Some states have balanced budget amendments and do quite well with them. The main reason the federal government does not have one is that it fully intends to spend itself into the ground over time and doesn’t want anyone or anything interfering with that unspoken plan.
For me, the largest issue is health spending. Obama’s plan was targetted towards making sure that everyone is covered, not that health spending goes down. From looking at other nations, it’s pretty clear that you can have both of those things.
I would require that all insurance plans have a minimum level of care that they support, for free, without any ability to turn away customers. (Though the value of the minimum level would be relational to the number of people covered by paid plans, automatically rising or lower each month respectively.) I would require that insurance plans be an independent expense, not an employment perk. I would require that plans be given an Expected Years of Life Added rating, set by the FDA or some other independent group, and display this in their promotional material. I would add legislation to extend the length of patent protection for medicines to remove time that was spent performing mandated tests to validate drug safety. And I would look into adding tariffs on the export of medical technology that was developed in the US, which money would be routed to the NIH for research.
The other reason that I have read, for not supporting a balanced budget, is that basically the government has to answer to the people and so if the people want X, the politicos are going to give them X through whatever means it takes. For example, we wanted security against terrorists, so the Due Process required by the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution (the highest law in a land which requires rule by law) were lightly tossed out the window. Going back and looking at the bailouts that were initiated as part of the housing crisis, I don’t see any of them being stopped by any form of balanced budget amendment. What has happened in all of the states with a balanced budget amendment, is that they cheat and create shell corporations or whatever else, in order to move the expenses off the official budget. So technically, not much is different from before the budget amendment, except now the budget is harder to keep track of because it’s split across several entities that have to keep separate accounts.
I certainly think your first sentence is accurate. So is the second - but what do you think of the response that the ways that foreign health care is both universal and cheaper do not usually fall into what is considered as conservative economic principles? NHS is the most extreme example.
A die-hard libertarian would tend to be of the opinion that “you sleep in the bed you made”. If you didn’t set out a health plan, then you have no one to blame when an emergency happens.
Conservatives are a bit kinder, in that they think that even if the individual can’t help himself (because the emergency was greater than can reasonably be expected, he’s too young to have saved much, etc.), the burden should fall on his family or, failing that, on the local church and community to solve.
Personally, I’m more on the libertarian side of those two options. I think people should be able to plan and manage their own lives, without having to be reliant on family, church, or government. I support business-based solutions. And if someone hasn’t planned, well then tough.
But I do admit that there are practical situations where a person can’t afford his own care - yet might be a perfectly rational, pro-active, contributive member of society. I also admit that a majority of the country is going to quickly turn on any legislation which booted people from hospitals. So really my focus is on reducing cost and allowing those who do plan ahead to receive better care, and to be able to choose their care wisely.
Does that mean we can’t engage in debate, here, with those who do?
Fair enough but there has to be a way out of that. Those types of issues are the biggest reason I want it to be a well written amendment and not just an act. A well-written Constitutional amendment should be able to supersede the short-term will of both the people and Congress after it has been ratified. That is a good thing because it is human nature on both a large and small scale to spend more than you have and cover it up if the straightforward ways fail.
A broadly written amendment should be able to overcome those problems. After all, a poorly written and somewhat ambiguous amendment (the 2nd) has protected individual firearms rights since the country was founded. I can’t see any reason we couldn’t write one to truly prevent spending more money than available during normal times and provide circumstances and conditions when it is absolutely necessary.
Healthcare: I want a system de-coupled from business (let everyone have the tax advantage of spending, etc. regardless of income level). I want a system where I have the ability to purchase concierge care if I so choose. I accept the need for a governmental system that makes it possible for anyone to purchase care. My personal proposal has been a Federal system that would replace Medicare, Medicaid, VA / TriCare and whatever plan all US government employees are on. Then I would all other citizens to participate, with cost based on a sliding scale by income level. Plenty of other reform issues (uncapping the number of physicians, some tort reform, allowing doctors to switch states easier, etc.).
Spending: I would prefer that the Federal government does less, and that the State governments do more. I agree with around 60% of what CATO puts here: http://www.downsizinggovernment.org
Taxes: I would reduce the corporate tax so that there is less incentive to park profits overseas. I would flatten the income tax as well and reduce the deductions. In a perfect world, everytime a spending bill was proposed, Congress would have to report that this would require an increase of X% of the flat tax rate. I like the flat tax with a dedication per Hall and Rabushka: The Flat Tax | Hoover Institution The Flat Tax
I read this as, “you can engage in the discussion so long as you don’t use straw man arguments,” which is arguably redundant given the forum.
The global problem isn’t with young people getting screwed by not having health care to deal with unexpected emergencies (which is bad enough) - it is that those pursuing a rationally self-interested health care purchase strategy will wait to get health coverage until the cost equals the expected benefit plus some guard band.
The 25 year old without coverage is not being irresponsible, at least not economically.
I didn’t respond to you not letting insurance companies turn away customers - that solves the pre-existing condition problem but I don’t see how it is libertarian in the slightest, since it goes against the business interests of insurers.
But my real question is about how the only examples we have of more and better coverage for less money seem to be non-libertarian (and non-conservative.) If your major interest is in reducing costs - which I think we all will endorse - why not go with what works?
[ul]
[li]End the War on Drugs[/li][li]End the War on Terror (activities in Afghanistan and Iraq)[/li][li]Massively reduce entitlements. Drastically cut social security. Top to bottom housecleaning and downsizing of the BATFE, EPA, and Dept of Education.[/li][li]Move away from farm subsidies[/li][li]Have the government run on an accrual based accounting system, and require an independent audit[/li][li]Severely restrict the use of eminent domain[/li][/ul]
I agree with all of those with the possible exception of social security and that is only because it is both harder to do what has been done over many decades and I have yet to hear someone present a better plan. I agree that eminent domain abuses have to go as well if property rights are supposed to actually mean anything. I am not sure if that is an economic conservative argument though, it is more of an individual philosophy argument.
I think one issue is that it is easy for the legislature to escape scrutiny - either by settling the blame across the whole party or blaming the other side. Other problems are that it’s unclear who is to take the legislature to court for being overly “creative” in how they balance the budget, and what the proper length of time over which the budget should be balanced is. If you have a 20 year recession, then you would expect leeway for 20 years, not some subset of 5.
My thought would be to give the President a new power, of setting a “balance target” every year, stating how many years ahead or behind the budget should take into account to consider itself balanced. Having set the expectation, it would then be on him to review the budget and hold it to the standard he had set and to veto it if he thought the legislature was just hiding money randomly to get around his mandate. This way there’s one person accountable for the whole thing, and someone in place to make a reasonable decision on how long the budget cycle is, or if we care at all that year.
Interesting that no one has mentioned pork barrel politics (except farm subsidies).
Feh, pork makes the system run and is a very small part of the overall problem.
Anyway, you guys are being too literally minded. Here’s some policy changes that would be economically conservative and has - in my opinion - a positive impact.
A 10-year plan to balance the budget.
Reforming of entitlements to make them solvent going forward.
Overhaul of federal bureaucracy.
Tax capital gains 35% and income 15% (reward productive income)
Replace Obamacare with a market-based program centered on increasing competition
I’d like to see the deficit reduced. Preferably down to nothing. I’m serious enough about this that I’d favor a mix of raising taxes and cutting spending to do it.
Farm subsidies should at least be rationalized if not eliminated outright. They’re currently just being used as a form of corporate welfare. Why are taxpayers subsidizing Cargill?
I’d cut back on federal law enforcement. There are federal agencies doing work that would be better left to local law enforcement.
I’d work on eliminating redundant services in the armed forces. There’s a lot of functions that could be consolidated into single joint offices and run more efficiently rather then being duplicated by each individual service.
Other nations have a variety of strategies. There is no particular consistency between them (e.g. compare Israel, Switzerland, and Canada’s universal coverage systems), so while we could randomly pick one and go with it, I think it’s better to understand why our costs are so high compared to everyone else (roughly double the average of other modern nations).
That I’ve been able to determine the historic tendril of the US’s problem is our attempt to use employment as our way to push most of the population into gaining health coverage. Tax incentives were offered to the population to receive plans through their employer, and so employers started to offer plans.
In other nations, there’s a cost to health coverage. If the government is footing your health, then they’re going to have their financiers running cost-benefit analysis on available treatments and only approve those which make financial sense. If you’re an individual buying insurance from an insurance agency, you’re going to want the cheapest possible option, which pushes the insurance agencies to offer low-cost but still acceptable options. So, again, they’ll do some research to try and make sure that the cost-benefit of various treatments are worth it.
But when my employer offers me an insurance plan, his goal is to entice me to come work for him. Ultimately, the money that goes into the plan comes from my wage, but people tend not to look at it that way. They just look at whether company A offers more than company B, without much taking into account whether the plan actually makes sense from a Expected Years of Life Gained vs. Cost perspective. This has meant, in the US, that we have the most high-tech treatment options of the whole world and the prettiest hospitals (with TVs in every room, etc.) but no significant improvement on our life span. The simple truth is that most of our high-tech MRI scanners, laser cutters, and blue-tooth dental xray systems just aren’t as cost effective as plain old asking where it hurts, metal scalpels, or old-fashioned xray film.
In countries where people go to an insurance company, rather than where health coverage is entirely controlled by the government, health spending still tends to be higher. Obviously, it’s in those companies’ interest to try and upsell you. They don’t care as much whether the plans are worth their cost, just whether they can sell you on it. But I still prefer private insurance because it allows one to choose their own plan, and different companies are going to experiment with different treatments, which is useful for making sure that new technologies are properly trialled. Plus not-gubmint. So having plans be reviewed by an independent party, and that information made public, seems like a way to gain something like the reduced cost of government coverage, while still keeping the benefits of private coverage.
One thing that I fear, if the US took on the Canadian or UK model is that, at the moment, the US is really the only country buying and using the most modern medical technology. It might not be cost-effective, but buying today’s medical advances help to fund tomorrow’s medical advances - which will eventually become cost effective. I don’t want to shut down the only source of income for advanced medicine, outside of abstract scientific research, that currently exists in the world.
I am also worried about making a dramatic shift. If you declare “All health coverage is under government mandate!”, then you’re effectively putting large swathes of the insurance industry out of business. I’m not sure how many people would actually be effected, but I still imagine that it would result in a fairly large number of layoffs across the country. Given as we’re already on private care, it seems smoothest to continue that, for the economy.
That’s because everyone is automatically opposed to pork barrel programs. That’s pretty much the definition: a pork barrel program is one you’re opposed to. If you support the program, it’s not pork.
Investment capital is productive. Instead, tax all gains/income/lottery winnings/carried interest/etc/ identically so that you don’t drive money from one bucket to another.