In my last post, “Why I Lean Republican,” I endorse the ten year budget plan just released by the House Budget Committee which will lead to a balanced budget within ten years.  It represents an excellent starting point towards addressing one of our country’s most serious problems, our huge and rapidly growing national debt.

Jim Vanderholm responded to this post by giving his own top priorities for the next President. They are:

• Job Formation. All sorts of other problems would be addressed in the process. Record high numbers of unemployed and underemployed. Record numbers of people on 85 different welfare programs at a cost of over $1 trillion per year.
• Highly targeted education/training of the workforce to fill the newly created jobs with American citizens.
• Reducing annual deficits. Growing the economy by putting more people back to work will bring in more tax revenue. Along with slowing the growth of spending this will lead to lower annual deficits. Once the deficit is reduced by half or more of its current value (about $500 billion), then the debt as a percentage of GDP will begin to shrink.
• Reduced focus on divisive social issues. The basic structural problems referred to above will not be solved by more gun control, higher carbon tax, shuttering the coal industry, free pre-school and college education, or discontinuing tax-payer funding to Planned Parenthood.

In other words, we need a new President who will focus on basic economic and fiscal issues and not be distracted by divisive social issues. In fact, an ideal division of labor would be for the House Budget Committee to take the lead in getting spending under control while the new President attempts to implement policies to get the economy growing faster. This would lead to real progress on both fronts!

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