In Point of Fact

from NewsLink, Volume 1, No. 1, Fall 1996

Who ordered the ...?

"While Ronald Reagan's adversaries attack his administration's legacy as one of debt and fiscal mismanagement, more of the blame rested with Congress. The budget deficit would have been (on average) $30 billion lower each year if Reagan's [budgets] had not been treated as dead on arrival...the biggest 'free lunch crowd' was Congress." Stephen Moore, IPI Insights, September 1996.

Church and State and welfare dollars, in between the seams of separation

"In 1993, 65 percent of Catholic Charities' revenues came from government sources, as did 75 percent of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services' revenues, and 92 percent of Lutheran Social Ministries' revenues. The Supreme Court's ringing declaration [regarding the separation of church and state]...ranks among the world's greatest anomalies." Stephen V. Monsma, When Sacred and Secular Mix, 1996.

OOPS, there go those targeted tax cuts...

"...if Medicare is proving a political boon for Democrats during the campaign, some independent observers and even some Clinton appointees warn it could become a policy bomb afterward. That's because no matter who wins, the victors are going to have to fix at least some of Medicare's substantial financial problems." The Boston Sunday Globe, October 20, 1996.

Longing for the Reagan years

"A decade long drop in defense spending means taxpayers in Massachusetts and other New England states now pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal benefits... Massachusetts taxpayers send $233 more per capita to Washington than they receive in federal grants...In 1982, during the Reagan-era military buildup, the state received $424 more per capita than it sent to Washington."
The Boston Globe, October 9, 1996.

Trading barbells for books! Now why didn't we think of that before?

"There is a strong case to be made for prisons having excellent libraries and inadequate weight-lifting equipment rather than the other way around."
Criminal Justice in Massachusetts: Putting Crime Control First, Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, October 1996.

NewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996. All rights reserved.

Revised on 9/6/02 9:41 AM