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Two budget experts who are part of The Concord Coalition’s Fiscal Solutions Tour emphasize the importance of Medicare reform in separate blog postings on The American Square.Joe Antos of the American Enterprise Institute criticizes elected officials who downplay Medicare’s impact…

Last week, the House continued to make progress on appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2012. The House passed the Homeland Security bill by a vote of 231-188 -- the first of the 2012 bills to clear the House. The House…

Elected officials still seem locked into their negotiating positions on the federal debt limit, leading Moody’s to warn that it could soon consider downgrading the government’s credit rating “due to the very small but rising risk of a short-lived default.”The…

The punch line of an old joke aptly describes the status of budget negotiations in Washington: you can’t get there from here. It’s not the “there” that is the problem; it’s the “here.”Broad bipartisan consensus exists on two points. The…

Elected officials often approach discussions about deficit reduction as a zero-sum game in which compromise amounts to defeat. But as various experts and bipartisan groups have demonstrated, certain policy options could bring results that should please both parties.“The best ideas…

Six diverse organizations offered proposals for broad fiscal reform last week at the second annual “Fiscal Summit” in Washington hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.Although the plans differed in a variety of ways, all called for substantial changes in…

Later today House Republicans plan to vote down an initial request from the administration to approve an increase in the federal debt limit without spending reductions. The vote will be largely symbolic, coming after several weeks of negotiations between the…

By Rebecca Williams A viable plan to reduce our country’s mounting deficits and debt will be built on painful choices that include revenue increases and cuts to all government spending, including entitlements and defense. With such thorny issues at stake, it…