Setting National Priorities

Henry Aaron

doi:10.5771/9780815719441

Summary

Setting National Priorities continues the highly acclaimed and influential series of books that examine domestic and foreign policy choices confronting the United States. Members of the Brookings staff join outside experts to evaluate America's course through the next decade.

In clear and nontechnical terms the contributors explain and evaluate options for the United States in the 1990s, consider whether the federal government's current pollicies are consistent with long-term objectives, and explain what action could best achieve those goals.

Charles L. Schultze shows why it is important to solve the problem of the federal budget deficit and how it can be done: John D. Steinbruner addresses the revolution taking place in American foreign policy and explains how the United States can be more secure with lower defense spending; Lawrence J. Korb evaluates President Bush's defense budget and suggests possible improvements; Robert Z. Lawrence describes how the U.S. government and private industry should respond to the competitive challenge from foreign companies; William D. Nordhaus explains the risks form global warming and presents a policy to meet them; John E. Chubb and Eric A. Hanshek chart new directions of American elementary and secondary education; Henry J. Aaron identifies the major problems with the financing of healthcare and describes how they can be solved; and Thomas E. Mann considers how political institutions and public preferences constrain our ability to enact needed policy changes and what might be done to overcome those obstacles.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-0-8157-0047-0
ISBN-Online: 978-0-8157-1944-1
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 317
Product type: Edited Book

1. Contents No access
1. The Budget No access
2. Foreign and Defense Policy No access
3. The Defense Budget No access
4. Technology and Trade No access
5. Global Warming No access
6. Education No access
7. Health Care No access
8. Politics No access
1. How Large Are Budget Deficits Likely to Be? No access
2. Why Worry about the Budget Deficit? No access
3. Where Does Federal Spending Go? No access
4. How Can the Deficit Be Turned into a Surplus? No access
5. Appendix A: Do the Official Accounts Overstate the Size of the Federal Budget Deficit? No access
6. Appendix B: The Productivity Payoff from Public Infrastructure Investment No access
1. Cooperative Security No access
2. Economic Engagement No access
3. International Equity No access
4. The State of Adjustment No access
1. The Defense Debate No access
2. The 1991-95 Program No access
3. Conclusion No access
1. Postwar Trade and Innovation Policies No access
2. Innovation in One Country No access
3. The Foreign Challenge No access
4. Policy Options No access
5. Preferable Options No access
6. Conclusions No access
1. Scientific Theory and Evidence of Global Warming No access
2. Social and Economic Effects of Climatic Change No access
3. Possible Responses to the Threat No access
4. Policies to Slow Global Warming No access
1. A More Serious Problem Than People Think No access
2. Why "More" Has Not Meant "Better" No access
3. The Problem of Bureaucracy No access
4. The Need for Output Policies No access
5. Administrative Reforms No access
6. Market-Oriented Reforms No access
7. Alternative Market Mechanisms No access
8. The Role of Federal Policy No access
9. Conclusion No access
1. Health Care Expenditures No access
2. Health Insurance No access
3. The Role of Governments in Health Care No access
4. Strategies for Reform No access
5. A 1990s Agenda for Health Care Financing No access
1. Bush's First Year No access
2. Sources of Immobilism No access
3. Prospects for Change No access
4. Coping with Contemporary Political Arrangements No access