The Domestic Landscape

America remains at a historic crossroads; two-in-three believe the country is on the wrong track and a majority thinks the next generation will be worse off than the current one. Our President and Congress must restore consistent economic growth if our country is to achieve widely distributed prosperity. A rapidly growing economy improves living standards for everyone, and we need government policies that promote it. 

Fiscal, monetary, regulatory, and trade policies must be designed to support the strongest possible real growth. Recent corporate tax reform and rollbacks to the vast federal regulatory apparatus are a good start, but must be sustained.

To promote growth and improve living standards, the private sector must have incentives for innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment in physical and human capital. Specific policies must be embedded in macroeconomic monetary and fiscal policy that lays a sound foundation for economic growth. 

That means addressing runaway spending on entitlements; returning decision making for health care consumption to individuals; continuing to mitigating the consequences caused by taxes more focused on the income distribution than their economic distortions; making regulation a clearer, more cost effective endeavor; reevaluating financial regulations that try but fail to prevent bank runs; and maintaining the benefits of robust free trade.

Economic policy must be debated in every generation, because policy becomes hostage to the short-term political purposes of various interests. Good economic policy rests on timeless principles.