October 09, 2000

Blacks See School Vouchers as Civil Rights Matter
Congressional Budget Office Warns of Future Budget Problems

Blacks See School Vouchers as Civil Rights Matter

The New York Times publishes a story on the front page of today's paper reporting that inner-city black leaders are supporting "the contentious notion of giving parents vouchers financed by taxpayers to send their children to private schools." Cory A. Booker, Rhoades scholar and "part of a growing cadre of young blacks who have embraced vouchers," explains that "I don't necessarily want to depend on the government to educate my children--they haven't done a good job in doing that. Only if we return power to the parents can we find a way to fix the system."

The Cato Institute has long advocated school choice as the most effective way to reform public schools. See "School Choice for Fortunate Sons," by Darcy Olsen and Dan Lips, and the many articles and studies posted on Cato's education and child policy site.

Congressional Budget Office Warns of Future Budget Problems

The CBO released its annual 75-year budget forecast Friday, and it "presents a glum warning of problems lurking over the horizon for the U.S. economy," reports today's Wall Street Journal. Despite current economic growth, the CBO warns that "the government will be awash in red ink again" because of increased entitlement spending as the baby boom generation retires. "The report suggests that politically difficult structural reforms are needed. If they don't occur, 'federal deficits are likely to reappear and eventually drive federal debt to unsustainable levels.'"

Cato's Doug Bandow lays out the economic consequences of a Gore presidency in this column. And in their Policy Analysis, Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinsky demonstrate that the Republicans are just as profligate as the Democracts when it comes to budget pork.

The CBO study also concurs with an important point made by Cato's Andrew Biggs in his new Social Security Policy Analysis (" Is It 'A Crisis That Doesn't Exist'?"). Biggs explains that continued economic growth will not prevent Social Security's bankruptcy, because benefit payments are pegged to wages--the more people earn, the more Social Security will have to pay them in future benefits. Biggs notes that Social Security's future solvency "would demand unprecedented levels of economic growth. More important, even if the economy does grow more quickly, Social Security's benefit liabilities and its funding shortfalls will eventually rise along with the economy. Even under assumptions vastly more optimistic than those the crisis deniers put forward, Social Security still faces trillions of dollars in tax increases or benefit cuts if the system is to stay in balance." Concurring, the CBO report warns that "federal deficits are likely to reappear and eventually drive federal debt to unsustainable levels. In turn, those fiscal developments could signifcantly slow the growth of the economy."

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