Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Podcast: How the budget mess in Congress hurts all of us

Podcast: How the budget mess in Congress hurts all of us

This year the federal government is expected to collect more than $3.5 trillion in taxes— a vast amount of money by any measure. One of the key functions of Congress is to pass a budget. But often that seems close to impossible.


Lack of agreement over federal spending regularly threatens to bring about government shutdowns that have a negative impact on millions of Americans. Yet few of us can even begin to understand the byzantine budget process.
Both of our guests in this episode have worked with other policy experts to make the budget process function better, with greater efficiency and transparency.



Alison Acosta Winters is a fiscal conservative and was most recently a senior policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity. Emily Holubowich is vice president for federal advocacy at the American Heart Association, and often supports more government spending.


Brought together by Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, Alison, Emily and other stakeholders from diverse backgrounds spent months working together to come up with several major proposals for overhauling the budget process.

Listen now

Read More

US Capitol

Each branch of government needs to get serious about restoring the public's trust.

Andrey Denisyuk/Getty Images

We need a government that works

Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.

The first — and really only — order of business for the government is to solve problems beyond the grasp of a single person or a small community. In exchange for that service, we the people surrender some of our income and liberty. This grand bargain breaks down when the government decides it’s got other things to do besides take care of everything from our sewage to our space debris.

The longer the government falls short of our expectations, the more likely the people will be to opt out of their own obligations, such as voting. This dangerous tit-for-tat is hard to reverse. A less effective government sparks a less dutiful public, which makes it harder for the government to perform, and so on.

Keep ReadingShow less
People wading in a river, in front of a destroyed house

Workers walk through the Rocky Broad River in Chimney Rock, N.C., near a home destoryed by Hurricane Helene.

Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Project 2025 would have 'catastrophic' impact on hurricane warnings

Raj Ghanekar is a student at Northwestern University and a reporter for the school’s Medill News Service.

Residents in the southeastern United States are still recovering from devastating damage brought on by back-to-back hurricanes. As federal, state and local officials continue working to deliver aid, experts say the country would be less prepared for future hurricanes if proposals included the conservative plan known as Project 2025 were to be put in place.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration houses the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, which are vital to predicting these cyclones. But the 920-page proposal published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argues NOAA “should be dismantled” and includes steps to undermine its authority and position leading the country’s planning for severe weather events, such as providing official emergency warnings.

Keep ReadingShow less
People walking alongside a river

Migrants from Guatemala prepare to cross the Rio Grande, to enter the United States in February. The best way to address immigration is fix problems caused by past interventions in foreign countries.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Immigration isn't a border issue – it's caused by U.S. interventions

Yates-Doerr is an associate professor anthropology at Oregon State University and the author of “Mal-Nutrition: Maternal Health Science and the Reproduction of Harm.” She is also a fellow with The OpEd Project.

Immigration is a hot-button topic in the presidential election, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both promising to crack down hard at the border. But neither candidate is talking about a root cause of immigration: the long history of U.S. meddling, which has directly resulted in displacement. If our politicians really wanted to address immigration, they would look not at the border but at past actions of the U.S. government, which have directly produced so much of the immigration we see today.

Keep ReadingShow less
Destroyed mobile home

A mobile home destroyed by a tornado associated with Hurricane Milton is seen on Oct.12 in the Lakewood Park community of Fort Pierce, Fla.

Paul Hennesy/Anadolu via Getty Images

Disaster fatigue is a real thing. We need a cure.

Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.

Before I left for the airport to attend a conference in Washington, D.C., I double checked with my wife that she was OK with me leaving while a hurricane was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. We had been in Miami for a little more than a year at that point, and it doesn’t take long to become acutely attentive to storms when you live in Florida. Storms nowadays form faster, hit harder and stay longer.

Ignorance of the weather is not an option. It’s tiring.

Keep ReadingShow less