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Air Date: May 21, 2012
Host: Jim Schneider
Guest: Mike Gonzalez
Mike Gonzalez is the Vice President of Communications at the Heritage Foundation. Mike spent close to 20 years as a journalist, then left journalism to join the administration of President George W. Bush where he helped explain fiscal and foreign policy to U.S. and overseas audiences. He did this for the Securities and Exchange Commission, then for the State Department.
America is on a financial trajectory that simply isn’t sustainable. Unless we do something about entitlements, our children will be left with unfunded liabilities (lack of money to pay for future outlays) and debt that will certainly collapse our nation. For example, Medicare alone has an unfunded liability of close to 37 trillion dollars over the next 74 years.
Mike listed what he feels are the biggest problems facing America. (1)Economic growth is very low. (2)Government is spending too much money. As a solution he’s proposed a fiscal plan called, “Saving the American Dream”. This plan balances the budget in 10 years and replaces today’s complicated tax code with a 27% federal “flat tax”. It’s an expenditure tax that will encourage individuals to save.
Right now America has a national debt figure of 15.7 trillion. “Saving the American Dream” would reduce our debt to 30% of GDP within 25 years.
The health care aspect of this plan would feature “portability” allowing employees to take that system to a new job unlike the current system that has many people staying at jobs they don’t like because they know they’ll lose their health care.
So while various pundits are trying to find solutions by attempting to “tweak” our current broken system, Mike is one of the few individuals providing new answers. Learn more details when you listen to this interesting edition of Crosstalk.
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