Paul Ryan and Rand Paul Meet Cato Institute’s Chris Preble and Dan Mitchell

Americans demanding small government find no home at either the Republican or Democratic parties. Americans are told by Wisconsin rep Paul Ryan that the world is less safe when America doesn’t lead. Ryan offers a plan expanding America’s defense budget. Defense spending? Or is it offense spending? America spends a disproportionate percentage of the Pentagon budget on foreign entanglements and defending countries that would be well served defending themselves. Senator Rand Paul, unlike Representative Paul Ryan, appears to know this. The make America safer answer for all Americans, Republican and Democrat alike, is to be found in the Cato Institute’s Chris Preble’s The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free. Read more about Chris Preble here (I, II, III).

Representative Ryan correctly attacks government spending, however, focusing on entitlement programs. Americans will find the real answer on the despair of big government in Cato Institute senior fellow Dan Mitchell’s research on government spending. Dan Mitchell is perhaps America’s leading scholar on the need to cut the rate of government spending below the growth rate of the private economy.

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Originally posted April 10, 2014.