Mirage: Why Neither Democrats Nor Republicans Can Balance the Budget, End the De

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		Mirage: Why Neither Democrats Nor Republicans Can Balance the Budget, End the De
		Mirage: Why Neither Democrats Nor Republicans Can Balance the Budget, End the De

基本信息·出版社：Times Books
·页码：336 页
·出版日期：1997年03月
·ISBN：0812924525
·条形码：9780812924527
·版本：第1版
·装帧：精装
·开本：32开 Pages Per Sheet
·外文书名：海市蜃楼

内容简介 Shortly after be realized his long-held dream by masterminding the first Republican takeover of the House and Senate in forty years, House Speaker Newt Gingrich committed his followers to a daring and perilous goal: by scaling back or dismantling some of the nation's most cherished social welfare programs, they would balance the budget. Eliminating the deficit, once just one facet of the Republicans' plan to change America, soon became an all-consuming obsession. But barely a year later, in the grim winter of 1995, Gingrich and his troops were in desperate retreat as their poll ratings plummeted and a government shutdown they had helped engineer enraged the voters.
Gingrich was hardly the first politician to promise to balance the budget. So did George Bush, Ross Perot, Ronald Reagan, and dozens more. All of them wound up like Gingrich - humbled, embarrassed, and in some cases out of office after they tried to convert breezy campaign promises into reality.

Why is it so hard to make America's checkbook balance? Why has the nation managed only eight budget surpluses in the half century since the end of World War II? Why did the first Republican Congress since the 1950s fail so miserably to redeem its most important promise to voters?

Mirage tells why. Here, in compelling detail, are the inside stories of two decades of often noble but usually unsuccessful attempts to solve a problem that has vexed the nation throughout its history.

From Library Journal
Despite the claims of its title, this book, by two reporters who work for Congressional Quarterly and the Washington Post, respectively, is really the history of the last two years of congressional-presidential budgetary politics told as a melodrama. Beginning in February 1995 and ending with Clinton's reelection, the story is mostly told in flashback. As background the authors provide a brief review of America's deficit spending habits from 1690 to 1981; they then give extensive, behind-the-scenes treatment to the Reagan and Bush years. This book has much in common with earlier works that attempted to explicate budgetary politics?notably David Stockman's The Triumph of Politics (LJ 7/86) and Jeffrey Birnbaum and Allan Murray's Showdown at Gucci Gulch (LJ 9/1/87)?but will also provide insight for those seeking a better understanding of the government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996. Eminently readable and accessible.

Book Dimension　
Height (mm) 243 　　　　　　　　　　Width (mm) 165
作者简介 George Hager is a reporter for The Congressional Quarterly, where he covers budget and appropriations in the House and Senate.  Hager's detailed coverage of the way Congress and the White House budget and spend the nation's money has made him a regular commentator on a variety of radio and television news programs, including numerous appearances on C-Span.  He lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Eric Pianin is a congressional correspondent on the national staff of The Washington Post, specializing in budget and economic issues.  He has written for a number of magazines, including Washington Monthly and The Washington Post Magazine, and has appeared numerous times on local television news programs and on C-Span.  He and his wife, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, live with their son and daughter in Washington, D.C.
媒体推荐 Customer Reviews
1.The Social Sciences are comprised of an enemy in our midst., April 8, 1997
Reviewer: A reader

I won't criticize the technical skills of the writers in preparing this book, but rather its content and conclusions that bode the American people a disastrous future if taken seriously. I present the thinking of a Real Scientist who has undertaken to review the domain of the Social Scientist, a hitherto forbidden domain except to those indoctrinated from their early days of wide eyed innocence to accept by rote whatever nonsense may be forced into their minds. The entire fraternity of Economic professionals may take the content of this book seriously, as it is based totally on the "holy writ" of Economic Philosophy, taught by rote to eager young minds who attain an A+ and a PhD degree by accurately reciting what they've been taught, like recording machines. But this discipline, "Economics, the Science of Scarcity," is as much a "dead end" philosophy as were Alchemy and the Flat Earth Theory, that should have ceased a century ago and replaced with a completely new reality, "Economics 2, The Science of Abundance." There is no original thought here as there is in the chronically successful Real Sciences, which are nevertheless made subservient to the Social Science question, "where is the funding to come from?" Within the Real Sciences progress is made by ever leaping forward into the vast unknown without looking back. Would one refer to Thomas Edison to resolve a knotty problem with say, semiconductors? The Social Sciences incestuously and circuitously refer to each other, present and past, as support of any doctrine and concept they may conceive with absurdities of logic analogous to "water flows uphill." Such incest produces monstrosities of logic, such as is the total content of this book, "Mirage...." The members of this profession are the most prestigious in our society, resident in all our universities. It is they who advise Presidents and Kings, and are the direct cause of all the misery, crime, violence and war throughout the ages. It is most particularly so for the last century, when the reason for all these ancient ills of mankind could have easily been eliminated as the age old Food Scarcity was superseded by Food Abundance, a success of the Real Science technology of Food production, the very condition the analogy of Adam and Eve had presented re the Garden of Eden and leaving it. We could have had by now a modern Garden of Eden on earth for us all to return to, had we not ignorantly succumbed to the blandishments of the fraternity of Social Sciences, trying desperately to maintain their validity and function. "Balance the Budget?" Throughout ancient history, the Food Budget, (which is the only validity to any "budget") was inadequate for the needs of the entire population. Upon this ancient and then logical "budget," the entire fabric of modern Economic Philosophy was woven. Even then, proposals by such as Marx were that despite Food scarcity, perhaps those with enough, could at least share with those that had nothing. That was the basis of "socialism" and "communism" which was never practiced though their names were used to describe the "every man for himself" doctrine that is the basis of "capitalism" and the Economics of Scarcity that is destroying the world. Ironically, Marx's concept of "one for all and all for one" is the very reason for the success of any "capitalistic" group where within the four walls, cooperation is a must if the group is to succeed. However, today, there is no need for "sharing," except such minor things as library books, parking spaces, and the like, as there is now more than enough of vital things for everyone. A century ago, it was announced that "excess grain was dumped into Lake Michigan." For what reason, but that for the first time in world history, (other than the ancient analogy of the Garden of Eden) Food became enough of a drug on the market to threaten DEflation. The ancient marketplace, a means by which Food could be Denied to those lowest on the social scale, simply because there was not enough, a marketplace which was created, along with all its shibboleths, such as Barter, Money et al, suddenly threatened obsolescence to the Economic fraternity. The Food "budget" could now meet the needs of the entire population. By clever manipulation of the ignorant minds of the hoi polloi, these economic mountebanks first tried to reverse Food abundance by deliberately destroying Food, a still ongoing practice via farm subsidies NOT to produce, and failing that, managed to create a diversion of man's age old obsession with adequate Food into an unholy obsession with what was invented to be only a surrogate for Food, a "ticket of access," Money. And Money was deliberately planned to be issued in just as scarce supply as Food had once been. That is the function of the Federal Reserve. So, all the ancient, miserable, violent history of man is maintained to the modern day, our environment continuing on the path of destruction, but most insidiously, the Economic profession -- no the entire field of Social Science, notorious failures in their proposed function of resolving Social Problems, continue to be maintained with a totally undeserved respect and adulation. Today we suffer a totally illogical anomaly. The country that is the first in world history to create such an over abundance of Food and its derivative GDP that floods the market, yet we must suffer a shortage of a totally imaginary device Money. Money "budgets" are deliberately kept in too scarce a supply to satisfy everyone, a fictitious wealth that is meant to provide a "ticket of access" to our Real Wealth, our Land, Labor and GDP, of which there is more than enough. Overriding that "budget deficit" by Deficit Spending is held to be anathema, though it supples those of us not privileged to be among the class known as Haves, is held to be an evil that must be corrected by driving the underclass into more and more poverty, despite the over abundance of whatever it is that we all need. No one seems to want to think about it, except the negative means of "balancing the budget," by curtailing expenditure of imaginary Money. It seems to enter no one's mind that the "budget" ought to be balanced in the other direction, by INCREASING the "budget" until it means enough for everyone. So long as the Federal Reserve maintains its destructive attitude, we must bypass their resulting evil by Deficit Spending, as the easiest approach out of the morass we've been led into. An approach that was successful while we were in the midst of the Great Depression, (a result of Hoover's success in "balancing the budget") as the exigency of WW2 was thrust upon us, was to throw all spending restrictions to the winds and concentrate on the people in toto, and see to their every need. We prospered as a result, despite the waste and destruction of the war. We can now do the same in peacetime, see to the needs of the entire population as we did then, and again we will prosper beyond our wildest dreams. There is no "debt" to be concerned about, its absurdity especially evident if one considers just who is supposed to be the "creditor" and how such a creditor can in any way compromise our welfare as a country and individually. A senseless fiction has been created that attempts to emulate the ancient taxation of Food of the citizen food grower to support those in the public service, that made sense. Today, no one is permitted by strict edict to produce Money, as Food is produced. Yet everyone is subject to pay a tax in Money, that may pass through his hands as it circulates. This is a consummate fraud that serves no useful purpose but to maintain a "gun to the head" control of us all. Such Money is deliberately called "taxpayer's money," to further instill this nonsense into all our minds

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