Unapologetically Moderate: My Search for the Rational Center in American Politics

GDP, roughly speaking, is the value of all of the goods and services produced by the U.S. economy—our gross income, if you will. Looking at our debt and deficits as a percentage of GDP also allows us to make more accurate comparisons of our conditions to other countries and to previous periods in history. As of the end of the government’s most rece

But I have also found that notwithstanding the hysterical polarization so prevalent today there is a great center to the American people.

This has been the result of a

When you add a 5 percent increase in expenses to a 3 percent decrease in revenues to a historic 2

The federal deficit for last year (i.e., the amount by which all federal expenditures exceeds revenues) was about $600 billion, or about 6 percent of GDP.

combination of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a new Medicare prescription benefit, the effects of the recession and the Obama administration’s stimulus spending and tax cuts early in his administration.

A good place to begin to try and understand the federal government’s finances is a report issued by an obscure federal agency known as Financial Management Services.

The basic facts regarding how the system works, including its long-term funding challenges, are plainly disclosed by Social Security’s annual report. See http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html. If people are misinformed about the status of Social Security, it is because they have not taken the time to inform themselves, not because someone has li

Obsession over “end times” is nothing new. Most cultures have as part of their belief system some ultimate fate of the human race, with most foreseeing a calamitous end. The beliefs are so widely held that we have a word for such systems: eschatology.