The Sixteen-Trillion-Dollar Mistake: How the U.S. Bungled Its National Priorities from the New Deal to the Present - Hardcover

This isn't a polemical book, it's a somber one that makes you realize how routinely we've come to mistake absurd polemics for common sense. -- Paul Rosenberg Denver Post Jansson's analysis is persuasive on several points... will surely fuel additional interest. -- A. Scott Henderson, Furman University The Historian Provides a systematic, informative, and suprisingly absorbing survey...yields important insights. -- Mark H. Leff, University of Illinois--Urbana Journal of American History Jansson is able to critically juxtapose the Bush and Clinton presidencies of the late 1980s and 1990s, sharing compelling comparisons of various budgetary considerations...The Sixteen-Trillion-Dollar Mistake is an excellent source concerning the ongoing evolution of social policy in the United States, and the multiple political forces that can drive policy resource provision and implementation. -- David Woody, University of Texas at Arlington The Social Policy Journal There is no other book quite like this... It could hardly appear at a better time... Jansson writes lucidly and at times with some panache... Breaks new ground. Virginia Quarterly Review [A] lucid, remarkably flowing, critical history of American government spending and national priorities from 1932 to the present. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Choices about budget priorities are arguably the most important made by the federal government, profoundly affecting the well-being of citizens. Bruce Jansson documents how presidents from FDR to Clinton have made ill-advised choices that wasted trillions of dollars. Going beyond charges of corruption or bureaucratic waste, the book is an eye-opening expose revealing innumerable useless projects (military as well as civilian), unnecessary tax concessions, and the use of interest payments to cover deficit spending, among other costly mistakes. Using Office of Management and Budget projections through 2004, Jansson shows how the madness continues-and how an informed electorate can put an end to it.