Senator Tom Coburn’s 2014 Wastebook is out with a new, grisly collection of boondoggles and pork-barrel spending.
Dan Mitchell
Daniel J. Mitchell is the President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. Mitchell advocates limited government and fundamental tax reform, and is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations.
In addition to fiscal policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security reform – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts.
The U.S. vs U.K. Wimpiness Contest
Which freakout is worse?
The Real-World Impact of Higher Tax Rates on Upper-Income Households
New evidence confirms what we already knew: that Laffer Curve effects reduce expected revenue gains from higher taxes.
The Irish Tax Policy Debate: Bono 1 – Irish Union Bosses 0
In the Irish tax policy debate, Bono knows better than bosses from the leading Irish labor union. Moreover, the U.S. could learn a lot from Ireland’s success with a pro-growth corporate tax policy.
Who You Going to Believe on Infrastructure Spending: The IMF in August or the IMF in October?
The International Monetary Fund isn’t my least-favorite international bureaucracy. That special honor belongs to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, largely because of its efforts to undermine tax competition and protect the interests of the…
Washington’s Action Plan for Ebola: Squalid Waste and Pork-Barrel Spending by the CDC and NIH, Seasoned with Corruption at HHS
Years ago, I shared a very funny poster that suggests that more government is hardly ever the right answer to any question. Yet in Washington, the standard response to any screwup by government is to make government even bigger. Sort of Mitchell’s Law on steroids. And…
The New York Times Accidentally Admits Superiority of Privatized Social Security
I confess that I get a bit of perverse pleasure when a left-leaning media outlet screws up and inadvertently shares information that helps the cause of limited government. A New York Times columnist, for instance, pushed for a tax-hiking fiscal agreement back in 2011…
Excessive Government Spending in Europe: Sowing the Seeds for another Fiscal Crisis
Europe is in deep trouble. That’s an oversimplification, of course, since there are a handful of nations that seem to be moving in the right direction (or at least not moving rapidly in the wrong direction). But notwithstanding those exceptions, Europe in general…
Hong Kong’s Remarkable Fiscal Policy
I’ve had ample reason to praise Hong Kong’s economic policy. Most recently, it was ranked (once again) as the world’s freest economy. And I’ve shown that this makes a difference by comparing Hong Kong’s economic performance to the comparatively lackluster (or weak)…
Faced with Ebola Crisis, World Health Organization Decides to…Have a Moscow Conference to Push Global Tax Rules for Tobacco
The United Nations is not nearly as bad as other international bureaucracies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or the International Monetary Fund. But that’s because the U.N. tends to be completely ineffective. So even when the…