The Market Center Blog

Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation

For Immediate Release
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
202-285-0244
www.freedomandprosperity.org

CF&P Video Uses International Examples to
Show that Limiting the Growth of Government
Spending Is the Best Fiscal Policy

(Washington, D.C., Tuesday, February 22, 2011) A new video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) examines how foreign countries have successfully solved fiscal problems by restraining the growth of government spending. Entitled, "Spending Restraint, Part II: Lessons from Canada, Ireland, Slovakia, and New Zealand," the mini-documentary is a follow-up to CF&P's last video, which demonstrated how Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton successfully curtailed the burden of government.

Dan Mitchell, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, explains in the video that Canada, Ireland, Slovakia and New Zealand are examples of how to solve America's fiscal crisis. All of these nations made big improvements in fiscal policy by capping the burden of government spending. In only a few years, each country was able to dramatically reduce the share of GDP consumed by the public sector while also slashing deficits, and in some cases even turning them into surpluses.

Links to the video: YouTube | Dailymotion | Blip.TV

"The nations highlighted in this video may not be role models for small government, but they are examples of how nations can get great results with a policy of genuine spending restraint," said CF&P Foundation President Andrew Quinlan. He added, "Simply stated, the best way out of a fiscal hole created by excessive government spending is to stop digging."

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute commented, "Almost all industrialized nations face a fiscal crisis because of too much government spending, but these problems can be solved by limiting the growth of the government." Mitchell also remarked that, "The ideal policy would be dramatic spending reductions, but progress is possible so long as the productive sector of the economy grows faster than the government."

Executive Summary

Nations can make remarkable fiscal progress if policy makers simply limit the growth of government spending. This video, which is Part II of a series, uses examples from recent history in Canada, Ireland, Slovakia, and New Zealand to demonstrate how it is possible to achieve rapid improvements in fiscal policy by restraining the burden of government spending. Part I of the series examined how Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were successful in controlling government outlays – particularly the burden of domestic spending programs.

Last Week's Video: Spending Restraint, Part I: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJneSSGLnSI
 

CF&P Foundation has also released more than three-dozen mini-documentaries since 2007. These videos include Tax Competition Primer, VAT-Hidden Tax, Global Flat Tax Revolution, Cutting the U.S. Corporate Income Tax, Promoting Prosperity, Obama's So-Called Stimulus, Obama's Deferral Proposal, Case Against Class-Warfare Tax Policy, President Obama's Dishonest Demagoguery on Tax Havens, Six Reasons Why the Capital Gains Tax Should Be Abolished, The Rahn Curve and the Growth-Maximizing Level of Government, a three part series on the Benefits of Tax Havens and a another three-part series on the Laffer Curve.
Link: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/videos/videos.shtml

Web Links:

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnhb0JwS_7A

Dailymotion
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xh59mv_spending-restraint-part-ii-lessons- from-four-nations_news

Blip.TV
http://blip.tv/file/4797066

For additional comments:
Andrew Quinlan can be reached at 202-285-0244, andy@freedomandprosperity.org
Dan Mitchell can be reached at 202-218-4615, dmitchell@cato.org

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