Robert Samuelson on All Topics
Displaying
1-15
of 57
“In all the recent reports, speeches and news conferences concerning the federal budget outlook -- including the administration's proposed budget for 2011 -- hardly anyone has posed these crucial questions: What should the federal government do and why; and who should pay?”
“Only leadership that convinced people that the prospective benefits outweighed the risks would make the health-care system's transformation possible. Obama hasn't provided it.”
“Bernanke didn't foresee the crisis, but his aggressive response contained the damage. Casting him and the Fed as handmaidens of Wall Street gives vent to populist anger but doesn't explain what happened.”
“Two-thirds or more of China's reserves are estimated to be held in dollars. As an economic strategy, dumping the dollar would boomerang. It would amount to a declaration of economic war in which everyone -- Chinese, Americans and many others -- would lose.”
“Are Wall Street's leaders that much smarter and more industrious than everyone else? By their own admission, they're not.”
“You may think that the last place to find a portrait of a nation is a book full of numbers.”
“One insistent question at the start of a new decade involves the lingering effects of the old: What scars will the Great Recession leave?”
“For me, there remains the personal pleasure of discovery and a faith that the unfettered pursuit of truth -- no matter how contentious or futile -- has stand-alone meaning. It's called freedom.”
“The country would be the worse for [health care reform's] passage. What it's become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama's self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of "universal coverage." What it's not is leadership.”
“To attack costs first would be politically challenging. It would require admitting that all good things are not possible simultaneously and that the uninsured already receive much medical care.”
“The most obvious characteristic of health spending is that government can't control it. The reason is public opinion.”
“There are risks in overaggressive government job-creation programs that can be sustained only by borrowing or taxes.”
“The second-guessing is occurring now when there's less fear and more information.”
“We have become a society that invests in its past and disfavors the future.”
“There is an air of absurdity to what is mistakenly called 'health-care reform.'”
