There are essentially two ways the federal government spends our money  — Mandatory spending and Discretionary spending.

Think in terms of a business.  In every business there are fixed expenses (e.g. building lease) and variable expenses (e.g. cost of goods).  Consider the government’s fixed expenses “mandatory” and the variable expenses “discretionary.”

Mandatory programs are payments the government is forced by law to pay annually.  These include…

As a child, I used to play the board game of Monopoly. I still vividly remember the excitement of a “Get out of Jail Free” card and the royal blue of Boardwalk and Park Place. My brothers would be angered when I’d loft off to using the pink pastel colored dollars for other, imaginary scenarios in make-believe businesses. Who knew at a young age, I’d be an energetic entrepreneur, only my lessons of business and true capitalism would come from something other than playing monopoly with…

The topic of oil is an old one, but is becoming more popular in conversations in Congress and across the U.S. It is virtually impossible to read articles about the state of the economy and not hear about oil, jobs, energy, and North Dakota. Oil producing states are featured in the news because of their positive growth in jobs and revenue. Through oil and energy production, states like North Dakota and Texas lead the nation in job creation and fiscal…

How do you feel when you think of the word “bureaucracy?” I did an experiment and wrote down all the adjectives I could think of when I thought about bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Stop for a moment and do this yourself. What were your results? All negative?

Do we need…