Buy This Book

Debts and Deficits

  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction

Part One: Social Goals and Federal Outlays

Chapter 1: The Politics of Deficit Spending

  • The Federal Budget
  • Ambivalent Voters
  • Congressional Profligacy
  • Micromanagement
  • Executive Politics
  • Bureaucratic Management

Chapter 2: Income by Majority Vote

  • The Rationale
  • Entitlements for Seniors
  • Assistance to Students
  • Help for the Needy
  • Subsidies for Farmers
  • Foreign Aid
  • Aid to Others

Chapter 3: The Ethics of Entitlement

  • Equitable Distribution
  • Removal of Want
  • Equalization of Incomes
  • Unheeded Consequences
  • Envy or Error

Chapter 4: Underground Government

  • Going Off-Budget
  • Off-Budget Local Government
  • Statewide OBEs
  • Underground Federal Government
  • Flexibility and Innovation
  • Winners and Losers
  • Industrial Development Agencies

Chapter 5: Deficits Do Matter

  • Private vs. Government Debt
  • Measurements of Debt
  • We Owe It to Ourselves
  • Debts are Tax Liens
  • Deficits Breed Inflation
  • Balance-of-Payments Deficits
  • Real Income is Falling

Chapter 6: Worse than 1929

  • Then and New
  • From Ease to Super Ease
  • The Bubble
  • Bizarre Explanations

Part II: In Search of a Solution

Chapter 7: Palliatives and Penaceas

  • 1. Privatizing Federal Functions
    • Seven Different Meanings
    • Genuine Privatization
    • Sale to Favored Individuals
    • Counterfeit Sales
    • Private Contractors to the Rescue
    • Voucher System
    • Sale of Loan Portfolios
  • 2. A Line-Item Veto
    • Continuing Resolutions
    • No Balance of Power
    • Conflict on Every Level
    • A Shift of Power
  • 3. A Balanced Budget Amendment
    • A Popular Movement
    • Hope or Hoax
    • Defective Constitution
    • Raising Revenue
    • Raucous Opposition
    • Backdoor Spending

Chapter 8: Taxes and Tributes

  • Taxpayers and Tax Consumers
  • Functional Finance
  • Changing the System
  • To Equalize Incomes
  • The Gramm-Rudman Deficit Control Act
  • Another Tax Reform Act

Chapter 9: A Letter to the President

  • A Noble Example
  • A Splendiferous Stage
  • From $6 a Day to $89,500 a Year

Chapter 10: The Coming Storm

  • Deep in Debt, in Grave Danger
  • End of an Era
  • Rampant Inflation
  • Acute Deflation
  • Strict Regulation

Chapter 11: Eternal Hope

  • A Moral Standard
  • Breaching the Strongholds
  • Social Security
  • Medicare
  • A Spending Freeze
  • A New Beginning

Notes

Index

Buy This Book