For years now, Americans have called for a balanced budget, debt reduction, and fiscal sanity. Yet the federal government continues to spend beyond its income, driving the level of federal debt up and public confidence down. Why is that? Why have the monsters of public financepork-barrel spending, entitlements, and the deficitremained unchecked for so long? What effects have they had on our economy and our politics? What, if anything, can be done to tame them?This concise, well-written primer of American political economy offers answers to these questions and more, all the while covering a...

The generational wars are about to begin: competing for entitlements, wrestling over taxes, dancing around the deficit. Today's children and grandchildren are tomorrow's taxpayers and social fabric. The authors of Payment Due contend that we are setting those children up for economic disaster.Former Representative Tim Penny (DMinn.) knows how volatile the politics of the situation are; he retired because he couldn't locate in Congress at large the institutional will (or stomach) to deal with the issues squarely. Political scientist Steven Schier understands the way in which the...

Welfare policy illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the American political process. The central political dilemma is how welfare policy can assist the poor without creating dependency. Although policy solutions tend to focus on the short term, they are often responsive to public input. This book explores why the debate on welfare policy has shifted to the conservative's vantage point. In discussing how political rhetoric shapes the welfare debate, Anne Marie Cammisa considers questions such as: What happened to welfare? How did it become a program fraught with problems and abuses?...

Students of American government are faced with an enduring dilemma: Why two parties? Why has this system remained largely intact while around the world democracies support multiparty systems? Should our two-party system continue as we enter the new millennium? This newly revised and updated edition of Two Parties-Or More? answers these questions by placing the dilemma in the context of recent elections and the environment in which all parties must function. The text provides students with a historical overview of minor parties and their impact on politics. By focusing on Ross Perot's...

When the Supreme Court's effectively decided the presidential election of 2000, it decision illustrated a classic question in American politics: what is the appropriate role for the Supreme Court? The dilemma is between judicial activism, the Court's willingness to make significant changes in public policy, and judicial restraint, the Court's willingness to confine the use and extent of its power. While the Framers of the Constitution felt that the judiciary would be the "least dangerous branch" of government, many have come to the conclusion that courts govern America, a notion at odds with...

The Clinton scandals. The Rise of militia and patriot groups. The proliferation of trash TV. Record U.S. trade deficits. Isolated events, or is there some connecting thread? Susan Tolchin says it's angermainstream, inclusive, legitimate public angerand it's not going to vanish until we as a polity acknowledge it and harness its power. How to tap into this pervasive political anger and release its creative energy without being swept away by its force is the dilemma of the 1990s for government leaders and citizens alike. The second edition of this acclaimed volume has been completed revised and...

The role of money in the U.S. electoral process has become more and more controversial in recent years. Following the Buckley ruling and other legislation in 1996, candidates and political parties are free to raise virtually unlimited soft money, making money perhaps the most significant factor in a campaign's success. In Moey Rules, Anthony Gierzynski theorizes that, under our current system of financing elections, our political process has tilted too far in favor of political freedom, at the expense of political equality. Gierzynski examines the historical roots of the...

Given how the media portray the political system, how can we educate ourselves about politics without feeling alienated? The amount of information now available to the public about government is without precedent, and contemporary media bring the political action closer than ever before. But in an age when reports on the manipulative behavior and character flaws of public figures appear as frequently as coverage of policy issues, many people are tuning out.Remote and Controlled examines the issue of widespread cynicism in an era of abundant information, asking whether it is possible to...

Image is everything. Today, our television and movie stars, our athletes, and our politicians carefully craft images for public consumption. Even our country's Executive Chief is not immune to a bit of image manipulation. If presidents can not always actually satisfy the public's excessive, contradictory, and unrealistic expectations, they can at least present a compelling image of presidential leadership and success. When it comes to the modern presidency, tennis star Andre Agassi was correct, Image is everything. Image creation is a serious business with critically important implications...

With the demise of the Clinton health care reform plan, the debate on health care changed but did not subside. From opinion pieces in newspapers to dinner-table conversations, the debate over whether the right to quality health care is a public right, akin to educating our children, or whether it is a private one, akin to life insurance, continues. In The Accidental System Michael Reagan shows that in the American political context, health care is neither exclusively a public right nor a private privilege. This insightful policy study provides students with an excellent demonstration...