Although the Schumer-Lee plan deserves credit for seeking to promote international capital flows and labor mobility, it would neither make a measurable dent in the housing sector's backlog nor fix a broken immigration system that hampers our economy's long-run prospects.

Repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not be enough, for a simple reason: Although Obamacare would worsen many of the problems with our system of health-care financing, that system clearly does call out for serious reform.

The New Deal failed to reduce unemployment, and the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress since the financial crisis look to be a repeat performance.

Even with its status as a "program," we should insist on appropriate and regular accounting for TARP to ensure financial responsibility.

The author recommends structural and regulatory requirements to ensure that competition is enhanced with regulation, with improvement of the American mortgage-finance system.

If the North American fertility divergence continues, it may become an example of how countries can converge at the macroeconomic level while diverging at the micro level.