Steve Laffey, a Real Grownup, Is Running For President

Laffey is running for the Republican nomination with fundamental policies to fix Social Security, healthcare, taxes, and more -- all designed to restore the American Dream for your children.

WARNING: This is a column about a close friend of mine, Steve Laffey, who is running for President as a Republican. I’m not endorsing Steve. I don’t endorse politicians. And I don’t share or fully share all of Steve’s views on a ranging of issues. I’m posting about Steve because he will, at a minimum, change the debate on everything from Social Security to taxes to education. Steve’s a grownup from my perspective because he’s not glossing over our nation’s biggest problem — its long-term insolvency and a range of other threats to our children’s welfare.

Many of you want me to write just about economics and personal finance — and stay far away from politics. If you’re in that boat, don’t read further as I’m not here to disturb you. But for everyone else, let me point out that economics was long called Political Economy. It had that name for a reason. Politics impacts government policy and government policy matters to our national and your personal economies.

Steve Laffey will shortly be a household name. The former Mayor of Cranston, RI just announced — on Good Morning America — that he’s running for the Republican nomination for President. Steve is unlike any Presidential candidate you’ve seen in recent history. His campaign isn’t about you. It’s about your children. And Laffey’s platform is an action plan, not a compendium of slogans.

Steve is a friend of mine. He contacted me out of the blue a decade back to ask if he could interview me for the movie he was making: Fixing America. “Sure, come over.”

Then and later I learned that Steve grew up in a terribly dysfunctional, extremely poor household in Cranston, RI, excelled in school, received a scholarship from Bowdoin College, earned top marks, got an MBA at Harvard Business School, went into banking, was highly successful, and then quit to do what? Become Mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island. Steve went back to give back.

Steve had little chance of beating the long-time incumbent. Yet, he was elected and worked his heart out for the city. Next, he and his wife, Kelly, and their children moved to Colorado where they went into ranching, property development, homeschooling their six kids, and handling two very major illnesses of their daughters, one ongoing.

Their daughter, Sarah, has been fighting terminal cancer for some seven years. Against all odds and with the critical help of fabulous doctors at the Philadelphia, Denver, and Boston children’s hospitals, Sarach has not only survived. She is now getting a master's degree at Boston University’s School of Hospitality. She’s the most extraordinary person and my personal hero. Unfortunately, Sarah’s fight with cancer continues. So, please do what I do — pray for her.

Steve’s my hero too. Horatio Alger’s archetypes are morally upstanding and accidentally meet a savior. Steve saved himself, starting as a child. His success is a combination of relentless effort, intense energy, and a brilliant mind. It’s a mind that’s trained in economics, fully experienced and versed in modern finance, and chock full not just of the actual facts, but of their connections and implications. Anyone brave enough to step onto the debate floor with Steve Laffey had best do their homework. He’ll be discussing his simple plans to fix America, not the size of anyone’s hands.

In 2011, Steve hired a film crew, bought a van, and traveled the country shooting the movie. Take a look at the 41:31 minute mark. You’ll see a tattered American flag hanging over Youngstown, Ohio’s city hall. That was the best flag the town could afford. Fixing America, The Movie is about all our Cranston, RIs, our Youngstown, OHs, our Camden, NJs, our Flint, MIs, and, you can take it from there. North, South, East, and West, America has become, in far too many parts, an economic wasteland. The country needs fixing — for ourselves, but primarily for our kids.

Here are some of the tough questions Steve is going to ask the country about the things we love the most — our children.

Why are we running a terrible Ponzi scheme, with a massive debt-to-GDP ratio and gravely insolvent Social Security and federal healthcare systems? Why is our infant-mortality rate astronomical? Why do we have the 21st worst educational system of any top nation in the world? Why is there a school shooting almost every day? Why are we emitting 4.5 GTs of carbon annually? Why are almost one in five of our kids living in poverty? Why are we failing miserably to maintain, let alone dramatically improve our infrastructure? Why have we saddled our kids with $1.7 trillion in student debt? Why are 20 percent of our youngsters obese? Why do over two in five college students drop out? Why have we transformed the American Dream into the American Myth?

The answers are simple. Our politicians, red and blue, care more about the next election than the next generation.

Steve, like the rest of us, is sick and tired of “leaders” who won’t lead, who refuse to discuss, let alone fix anything that requires shared sacrifice. And fixing everything — from Social Security, to healthcare, to our tax/transfer system, to education, to school safety, to ... — is why Steve’s running.

Steve Laffey’s reform ideas will seem radical. His view is, “Let’s start with a good idea and see if we can improve it.” Healthcare reform, the perennial boogyman, is high up on Steve’s domestic agenda. The reason? Our country can’t afford to pay so much for so little when our long-term fiscal gap represents an incredible 8 percent of GDP on an ongoing basis. We’re now spending 18 percent of GDP on healthcare and producing far worse healthcare outcomes than most advanced countries are achieving with a 12 percent of GDP or lower outlay. Coming up with a perpetual 8 percent of GDP to cover our CBO-project path of future federal outlays may seem small. It’s gargantuan. Doing so would require raising the entire path of federal tax revenues by 41.3 percent. Hence, Steve, as well as anyone with common sense, realizes that the path to fiscal solvency and far better healthcare if fundamentally reforming our healthcare system to produce far more for far less. The Bettercare Plan is one proposal Steve is seriously considering. It’s very similar to what’s working in countries like Switzerland and Germany and Israel and Japan and ... — all places where the typical American would prefer to receive healthcare.

Steve’s going to advocate radical surgery for all our failing institutions, including Social Security. The Personal Security System (PSS), which I lay out in my book, You’re Hired, doesn’t kick the can down the road on Social Security, which provides benefits for one in five Americans, but is $61 trillion in the red according to its own actuaries. How can any “leader” say fixing this is “off the table.” But that’s what we’re hearing from Washington. Whether Steve goes for the PSS or something else, he’s going to put Social Security reform — a radical fix for young generations — on the table. It will preserve all the essential elements of the current system, but not operate as a Ponzi scheme that’s scheduled to collapse.

The other reforms in You’re Hired are likely to appear in some form in Steve’s platform. But we’ll see. The main point is that he’s into radical surgery because radical surgery is our only means of saving the patient — our children. That’s not hype. That’s the reality of our nation’s long-term fiscal insolvency. So, get ready for an exciting ride. There’s a new Republican in town who’s not talking about himself. He’s focused on just one thing — keeping your children safe from the entire gamut of threats, domestic and foreign, economic and military.