Mt.Hamilton Society - Romina Boccia - Fiscal Restraint in the Age of Trump

Fiscal Restraint in the Age of Trump, DOGE, and Conservative Populism

Fiscal restraint once meant balanced budget proposals and serious debate over the size and scope of government. Today, both parties have embraced runaway spending—from the left’s embrace of modern monetary theory to fund left-wing utopias through subsidies and price controls to the right’s populist giveaways and central economic trade planning. Fiscal responsibility doesn’t just mean enacting popular tax cuts and slashing woke programs—it must also wean Americans off their addiction to unsustainable entitlement programs before debt suffocates the economy and individual liberty.

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Romina Boccia is director of federal budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute and writes The Debt Dispatch on Substack. She advises presidential administrations and the Congress on US federal fiscal policy and Social Security reform. She’s best known for being ‘an economist who speaks English’ and for promoting a fiscal commission modeled after the Base Realignment and Closure process. She’s co-author of the edited volume A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the US Federal Debt Crisis and is currently working on a new book to publish in August of 2025, titled Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes.

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Please join the Mont Hamilton Society in this 16th year since our founding, to hear and interact with Romina Boccia on this important topic that could be of dire consequence.

This meeting, including lunch, will be in-person for no more than 24 individuals only. We think you will enjoy the intellectual stimulation, the edification, the camaraderie, and meeting new people.

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About the Mont Hamilton Society - In 1947 Friedrich Hayek, an economist and social philosopher who later won the Nobel Prize, organized a meeting at Mt. Pelerin, a resort in Switzerland. Hayek convened a modest sized group of (39) economists, historians, philosophers and journalists for the purpose of supporting research and discussion on the role of markets vs. government. The Mont Pelerin Society is now a large and prestigious international organization.

In 2009, a group of friends began to meet in San Jose for the purposes of improving their understanding of economic theory, applying it to current events and sharing their understanding with others as well as promoting a joyous sense of camaraderie. In recognition of the example set by the Mont Pelerin Society, they decided to name their group the Mont Hamilton Society. Members understand the realities of the business world, share an interest in economic thinking, and value civil discourse from a variety of perspectives. Faculty and students from the Department of Economics at San Jose State University are frequent guests at Society meetings. In June 2017 the Mont Hamilton Society became the San Jose affiliate chapter of the Bastiat Society, an AIER.org project, hence our name from then till late last year was: Mont Hamilton/Bastiat Society. However AIER decided late in 2024 to discontinue the Bastiat Society program, so we are reverting to our original name: The Mont Hamilton Society and continuing on our own.

There are no membership fees or organizational meetings at this time, but all interested are encouraged to join and participate.

If you would like to be on our invitations list, or know someone else who might like to receive notice of our 7 - 10 luncheon or other events per year, or if you have any questions, please send an email to:

[email protected]

You or your suggested contact(s) will receive an announcement/invitation and a reminder or two for each event as they are scheduled, or a prompt answer to your question/s.

These events are discussions, not standard lectures. To facilitate this, the in-person gatherings before Covid Lockdowns were kept "small," typically 12 - 24 individuals only. Some presentations are video recorded, depending on demand and available resources. Constructive feedback on our events and interest in recordings is welcome, since we are continuing to evolve our meeting formats.

Thank you for your interest.

Host or Publisher Mont Hamilton/Bastiat Society