President Barack Obama today will unveil his latest budget blueprint in a speech at George Washington University. Budget experts at The Heartland Institute – all of whom are experienced radio and TV commentators – are available to talk on the air about what Obama proposes.
Below is a preview of what to expect from Heartland’s experts:
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Peter Ferrara, senior fellow, The Heartland Institute, and author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, available from HarperCollins in June:
“In his budget speech today, President Obama will fatefully frame the tax and spending issue for 2012. Paul Ryan’s GOP budget returns federal taxes to their long-term, post-war historical average as a percent of GDP, and eventually reduces federal spending below that long-term average, enabling the federal debt to be paid off completely over a responsible period of decades. President Obama today will commit his presidency to raising taxes well above that long-term, historical average, to fund federal spending well above that average, much higher than Ryan proposes. That would leave the federal government permanently much bigger, and our economy permanently much weaker. And it will work to close deficits and reduce the explosion of debt only if the economy will support much higher taxes than it ever has in the past.”
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Eli Lehrer, vice president of Washington, DC operations, The Heartland Institute:
“President Barack Obama’s Social Security plan is better than what Rep. Paul Ryan originally proposed. Yet overall, the president’s budget ideas – like those of his deficit commission – rely far too much on new taxes and new spending and not nearly enough on free markets. Republicans should follow Speaker Boehner’s lead and make a genuine effort to work with the president on entitlement reform.”
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To book a Heartland budget expert on your show, contact Tammy Nash at The Heartland Institute via email at [email protected] or phone at 312/377/4000. If on a tight deadline, contact Heartland’s director of communications, Jim Lakely, at [email protected] or 312-731-9364.
The Heartland Institute is a 27-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site at http://www.heartland.org or call 312/377-4000.
Jim Lakely is the Vice President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.
