The disagreement is over the solutions — on what spending to cut; what taxes to raise (basically none ever, according to Boozman); whether or not to enact a balanced budget amendment (Boozman says yes; Pryor no); and on what policies would promote the kind of economic growth that would make this a little easier.
I am going to continue this series and mainly include the opinions of Milton Friedman concerning these matters. Today I have included some comments from Milton Friedman from his Film Series “Free to Choose: Episode 10 How to Stay Free,” which addresses several issues concerning how to control our spending. This is part 2 of this series concerning Milton Friedman’s thoughts from this video clip.
Friedman: Criminal tax evasion in Britain, laws and regulations defied in the U.S. It’s nothing to celebrate. The hopeful thing is that throughout the free world the public is coming to recognize the dangers of big government and is taking steps to control it. But it will be no easy task to cut government down to size. Today in country after country the strongest special interest has become the entrenched bureaucracy. Whether at the national or at the local level. In addition, each of us gets special benefits from one or another governmental program. The temptation is to try to cut down government at someone else’s expense while retaining our own special privileges. That was a stalemate. The right approach is to tackle head on the explosive growth in government spending. Lets give the government a budget the way each of us has a budget. A movement in this direction is already underway in the U.S. with the many proposals for Constitutional Amendments limiting government spending. Several states have already adopted such an amendment. There is strong pressure for a similar amendment at the federal level. Those amendments would force government to operate within a strict budget. Each special interest would have to compete with other special interests for a larger share of a fixed pie instead of all of them being able to join forces at the expense of the taxpayer.
This is an important step, but it is only a first step. No piece of paper by itself can solve our problems for us.
The Daily Hatch 