Category Archives: John Kasich

Another Way to View the Presidential Candidates

Posted on by
Reply

As regular readers of this blog well know, I constantly advocate for two major changes in government policy:

  • Speeding up economic growth, which has averaged an anemic 2.1% per year since the end of the Great Recession in June 2009. This will create the new and higher paying jobs that country so badly needs.
  • Shrinking annual deficits, ideally down to zero, so that our huge public debt (on which we pay interest) will begin to decrease as a percentage of GDP over time.

My last post compared the President’s proposed budget for 2017 with a proposal from the House Budget Committee. Basically the President’s budget increases both taxes and spending while the House budget keeps revenues at a steady 18.2% and leads to a balanced budget after ten years.
Capture2The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has just produced an interesting report, ”How Much More Would Government Spend Under the Next President?” It compares the spending plans of the remaining five presidential candidates from both parties.  It finds that:

  • Only John Kasich would actually decrease spending over the next decade from 22.1% of GDP (under current law) to 21.5%.
  • The other four candidates would all increase spending: Hillary Clinton (to 22.5%), Donald Trump (to 22.7%), Ted Cruz (to 23.4) and Bernie Sanders (to 29.5%).

Mr. Kasich’s spending restraint would amount to a 2% decrease over current law while Ms. Clinton, for example, would increase spending by 2%.
As I showed a year ago,  reining in spending by 2% per year over current law is a major achievement and will lead to a balanced budget in ten years. In other words, Mr. Kasich’s spending plans are in sync with the latest House Budget Committee proposal.  Perhaps this should not be surprising since Mr. Kasich served as Chair of this House Committee in the 1990s!
Easy question: Which presidential candidate and which chamber of Congress are acting in the most fiscally responsible manner?

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jack_heidel
Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jack.heidel.3

Is Expanding The Social Safety Net Compatible With Fiscal Restraint?

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday’s New York Times addresses this issue with an article “Ohio Governor Defies G.O.P. With Defense of Social Safety Net”.  It describes how Republican Governor John Kasich has maneuvered to expand Medicaid coverage in Ohio to 275,000 low income Ohioans under the new healthcare law, over the objections of his own Republican dominated state legislature.
Mr. Kasich is a former congressional deficit hawk and there is little doubt about his fiscal conservatism.  He recently balanced his state budget by cutting revenues to local government by $720 million.  But he has also expanded state aid for the mentally ill and supported efforts to raise local taxes for improving education.  He says “for those who live in the shadows of life, for those who are the least among us, I will not accept the fact that the most vulnerable in our state should be ignored.”
Especially after the disastrous debt ceiling debate, with Tea Party Republicans willing to default on our national debt in order to defund Obama Care, it is critical for fiscal conservatives to publicly demonstrate that they are not opposed to helping the poor in a reasonable manner, as long as it is cost effective.
To be in favor of controlling entitlement spending is not the same thing as wanting to abolish entitlement programs.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  We must control their costs so that the government will have the means to continue to support them.  It is just plain ordinary common sense.  If our national debt continues to grow unchecked, we risk not only entitlement programs but our entire way of life.
Take Medicaid as a concrete example.  Right now the federal government pays a percentage of the costs incurred by state governments in running the program.  The more a state spends for Medicaid, the greater the reimbursement from the federal government. This increases spending for both the states and the federal government.  A more cost effective approach is to give each state a block grant from the federal government and enough leeway to operate its own program as efficiently as it can.  Exactly this approach is being used in Rhode Island and is working very well at a much lower overall cost.
Being a fiscal conservative is not the same thing as being mean spirited!  The future of our country depends on getting this crucial message out far and wide!

Federal Cutbacks Suggest State and Local Expansion

Posted on by
2

 

A front page article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “An Ohio Prescription for the GOP:  Lower Taxes, More Aid for Poor”, describes how Ohio’s Republican Governor, John Kasich, a former congressional spending hawk, has expanded Medicaid coverage in Ohio and steered millions more dollars into local food banks.  Mr. Kasich says, “When you die and go to heaven, St Peter is probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small.  But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor.”
There are good reasons why we should shift programs and responsibilities from the federal government back to states and localities.  At the federal level there is little fiscal restraint and therefore little incentive for making sure that governmental programs operate efficiently and effectively.  Study after study by the Government Accounting Office, as well as by private think tanks, demonstrate enormous waste and duplication in virtually all areas of federal government.  This long lasting fiscal irresponsibility at the federal level has now led to a massive national debt which will have a perverse effect on our nation’s prosperity for many years to come.
At the same time, all state and local governments are required to balance their budgets.  This means that they have to pay attention to the costs of all programs and set spending priorities.  They have to make sure that all functions of government are effective and be prepared to cut back or eliminate any program which is performing poorly.  States such as Illinois and California, and cities such as Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia, which have huge operating deficits year after year, will eventually be forced to declare bankruptcy (such as Detroit has just done) in order to reorganize their finances and make a fresh start.
It has long been a practical axiom that government should be as close as possible to the people.  But now it is a fiscal necessity as well to shift as much as possible from federal control back to state and local control.