According to all indications, the President will use tonight's State of the Union to hit on economic themes.  Look for exhortations to Congress to pass the payroll tax cut extension and other Obama Administration proposals.  With the head of the IMF now talking about a "1930's moment" in Europe, there are clearly some short term economic issues to be addressed.  But on the long term issues, what I expect to hear tonight is an expanded variation of the following: We need to increase our investments...

Many years ago, I was the staffer for a Senate subcommittee that had jurisdiction over government data collection. When I would visit the Chairman's home state (which staffers do a lot), I would be called upon to explain to people, mostly farmers, why they needed to fill out all this government paperwork. Why did the government need to collect all this information? It was just a useless nuisance, they would complain. Fast forward 25 years to this story in the New York Times - "Agriculture Department...

When PPI established its New Economy Task Force 11 years ago, its first product was a pamphlet entitled “Rules of the Road: Governing Principles for the New Economy.” In Internet time, 11 years is a lifetime. But that short but powerful statement still holds up — and, I would argue, is just as relevant today as it was in 1999. This seems as good a time as any to revisit what we said and take stock of how far — or not — we’ve come. The pamphlet started off with this statement: The U.S. economy...

President-elect Obama made his campaign about change and promises to do the same with government. One area to start is with the proposed stimulus package. Already he has said this one will be different. His transition team released a statement yesterday that they were going to ban all earmarks from the proposed stimulus package. But with the stimulus package having a proposed price tag of around $775 billion, of which approximately $300 billion is in tax breaks for low- and middle-income earners...

While a variety of reasons exist for why President Clinton defeated President Bush, Sr. in 1992, a primary reason was his focus on the economy.  We saw a replay of this scenario in 2008 with President-elect Obama defeating his rival, in part, because of the high marks he received from voters on the economy in the days leading up to the election.  Indeed, he emphasized in debate after debate that not only would he make the economy a top priority in his administration, but that he would also invest...

During the Great Depression, Senator Huey Long, the populist firebrand from Louisiana, proposed his Share Our Wealth Society, a radical program of wealth redistribution from the rich to "working Americans." In announcing his plan, the Kingfish stated "let no one tell you that it is difficult to redistribute the wealth of this land. . . So let us be about our work. It is simple. Why lie ye here idle? There is enough for all." But FDR and the Democratic Party had other ideas. Since FDR, Democrats...