Friday, January 17th, 2020
Will Marshall, PPI President

It’s time for straight talk with Democratic voters: If you want to dump Trump, your job isn’t to choose your ideological soulmate, it’s to vote for the candidate who has the best chance of beating him in the Electoral College.

Such political realism has been in short supply since the debates got underway last June.
Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America's Future, for Forbes
The discussion finally started after moderator Abby Phillip asked Sen. Bernie Sanders how he would finance his proposals to double existing federal spending. Several candidates weighed in, offering insight into how their management of the federal budget would differ from one another, as well as with President Trump.
Dane Stangler, Director of Policy Innovation
Democratic candidates should be asked to speak about the economic—and social—importance of entrepreneurship in American history. How, at the very moment that the American entrepreneurial spirit appears to be in trouble, would they reinvigorate that legacy?
Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America's Future, for Forbes

It’s official: the Trump administration spent $1 trillion more in 2019 than it raised in revenue. That deficit is 50% larger than the deficit in 2017, which was President Trump’s first year in office, and represents the first calendar-year deficit to top $1 trillion since 2012.
Dane Stangler, Director of Policy Innovation

Because the United States is enduring what some researchers call a “startup deficit.” Business creation, by most measures, is at historically low levels. High-growth firms — which contribute disproportionately to job creation, productivity, and innovation — have grown rarer.
During the December debate, entrepreneurship was mentioned roughly zero times. The sole mention of business creation was by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in talking about her plan to erase most student loan debt. The only time the word “entrepreneurship” was actually uttered was when Andrew Yang talked about serving as “an ambassador of entrepreneurship” during the Obama administration.