A couple of weeks ago, I offered some guarded praise for Paul Ryan’s budget, pointing out that it satisfies the most important requirement of fiscal policy by restraining spending – to an average of 3.1 percent per year over the next 10 years – so that government…
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.
China, Regulation, Wealth, and Chicken Wings
While I’m not oblivious to geopolitical concerns, I don’t worry about China becoming a more prosperous nation. Yes, more wealth could enable the nation’s dictators to finance some unwelcome aggression, but I mostly think higher living standards will create pressure…
If Obamacare Is Constitutional, then Why Did the Founding Fathers Bother with a List of Enumerated Powers?
I think Obamacare is bad policy because it exacerbates the main problem with the current healthcare system, which is third-party payer. And as a public finance economist, I’m obviously not happy about the new taxes and additional spending in Obamacare. But those…
Should States Be Allowed to Tax Outside their Borders, Particularly if It Means a Database of Your Online Purchases?
Tax competition, as I have explained to the point of being a nuisance, is an important restraint on the greed of the political class. Simply stated, politicians are less like to over-tax and over-spend if they know that geese with the golden eggs can fly across the…
The Toulouse Child Killer: Another Case of Welfare Being Used to Subsidize Terrorism?
I’m not a big fan of welfare programs, in part because I sympathize with taxpayers (check out these outrageous examples of waste) but mostly because redistribution programs subsidize poverty and trap people in lives of despair. But as I wrote in 2010, the most…
Romney’s Big Gaffe Is TARP, not Etch-a-Sketch
Governor Romney’s campaign is catching some flak because a top aide implied that many of the candidate’s positions have been insincere and that Romney will erase those views (like an Etch-a-Sketch) and return to his statist roots as the general election begins. I’m…
Congressman Ryan’s Budget Restrains Spending Growth, Allows Private Sector to Expand Faster than Burden of Government
The Chairman of the House Budget Committee has produced a new budget plan which contrasts very favorably with the tax-heavy, big-spending proposal submitted by the President last month. Perhaps most important, Congressman Ryan’s plan restrains spending growth,…
The Small Business Administration Should Be Abolished
Being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. A free market means that nobody is using the coercive power of government to obtain unearned goodies, and that is true for big business as well as big labor, or any particular segment of the population. Indeed,…
A Test for the GOP: Shutting Down the Spigot of Corporate Welfare at the Export-Import Bank
Republicans are telling voters that they’ve learned the hard lessons from the 2006 and 2008 elections and that they are back on the side of taxpayers. I’m not convinced, which is why I’ve outlined some key tests that will demonstrate whether the GOP genuinely supports…
An Indictment of Barack Obama’s Economic Record
In a recent post comparing Reaganomics and Obamanomics, I explained why I think Barack Obama’s policies have been hurting the economy. In today’s New York Post, I do a full-scale indictment. Here are my bullet points. * The unemployment rate is still above 8 percent,…