All the talk of spending cuts in Washington is fictitious. Even the House Republican Study Committee budget allows spending to increase, on average, by 1.7 percent each year for the next decade. The Ryan budget, which critics deride for its “savage” cuts, allows…
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.
Talking about the Debt Limit at a Tea Party Press Conference
I spoke yesterday at a press event put together by some of the Tea Party groups. Here’s what I said about the debt limit. I debunked the notion that a higher debt limit was needed to avoid default and explained that the problem is too much spending and that deficits…
With a Few More “Successes” Like the GM Bailout, We’ll Be Greece in Record Time
Most of us have probably heard the joke about the moronic salesman who admitted to losing money on each sale but was hoping to make it up with higher volume. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post is taking this financial approach to a new level. His column today asserts…
How Will You Celebrate Europe Day?
You probably didn’t realize that May 9th was Europe Day. Yes indeed, this is the day that you celebrate European unity, at least according to the bureaucrats of the European Union, who get to celebrate every day since they unify themselves with the tax dollars of…
Robert Murphy of San Francisco Is a Despicable Thief
I’ve never met Robert Murphy, but he is a reprehensible person. I don’t know if he’s as bad as Michael Wolfensohn, but he’s definitely a sorry excuse for a human being. For all I know, Mr. Murphy goes to church every day, volunteers at a homeless shelter, reads books…
From East Coast to West Coast, Bureaucrats Are Ripping Off Taxpayers
Let’s start in Washington, where USA Today reports that there are “at least 17,828 federal employees whose annualized salaries totaled $180,000 or more in September 2010.” That’s rather distressing news for taxpayers, but these excerpts from the story provide…
Do Budget Deficits Threaten American Competitiveness? Dan Mitchell vs. the Establishment
I recently took part in a symposium on “The Budget Deficit and U.S. Competitiveness.” Put together by the Council on Foreign Relations, five of us were asked to concisely explain our thoughts on the issue. Here’s some of what I wrote: Excessive government spending can…
New Job Numbers Are a Mixed Bag for the Economy, but Bad News for Obama
The Labor Department released its latest job numbers today and they remind me of Clint Eastwood’s 1966 classic, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” The good news is that the economy created 244,000 new jobs, the biggest gain in almost one year. And the jobs were in the…
Let’s Make Fun of Germany and France…But Then Learn from their Mistakes
We have two completely unrelated topics from Germany and France, but both fit in the broader theme of Europe’s gradual, self-inflicted suicide. Let’s start with the Germans. I’m not a big fan of the country’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel. She is supposedly a…
Back-Door Tax Increases Are a Recipe for Bigger Government
Martin Feldstein’s on a roll, but not in a good way. Earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, he advocated throwing in the towel on reforming Social Security into a system of personal retirement accounts. Today, in the New York Times, he endorses big tax…