I have many pet peeves, but one that causes me endless frustration is the Washington “spending cut” scam. This happens when politicians increase spending, but claim that they’re cutting spending because they previously had planned to make government even bigger. The…
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.
Will the Federal Reserve’s Easy-Money Policy Turn the United States into a Global Laughingstock?
One of my first blog posts (and the first one to get any attention) highlighted the amusing/embarrassing irony of having Chinese students laugh at Treasury Secretary Geithner when he claimed the United States had a strong-dollar policy.
I suspect that even Tim “Tur…
Our Tax Dollars Are Funding Bureaucrats Who Advise Congress that Higher Taxes Increase Prosperity
I’ve already written about the terrible work of the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO did an awful job on the stimulus, for instance, repeatedly asserting that diverting money from the private sector to government somehow would create jobs. CBO also was a disaster…
Congressional Staffers Should Cry on Their Own Dime
I saw a story linked on Instapundit, but it really belonged on The Onion. Apparently, our tax dollars are being used to fund grief counseling for congressional staffers who will lose their jobs in January because of the elections. Can you think of a better example…
With Ethanol Handouts Up for Renewal, Will the GOP Side with Corrupt Lobbyists or Free Markets?
Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner has a great piece looking at the utterly indefensible panoply of ethanol subsidies and handouts that screw consumers and taxpayers in order to line the pockets of the politically powerful. Unfortunately, several senior GOP…
Debunking White House Pro-Tax Increase Propaganda
The White House recently released a video, narrated by Austan Goolsbee of the Council of Economic Advisers, asserting that higher tax rates on the so-called rich would be a good idea. Since Goolsbee’s video made so many unsubstantiated assertions and was guilty of so…
Banning Happy Meal Toys in San Francisco
Reason TV has a new video in their great Nanny-of-the-Month series. The winner is a San Francisco politician who pushed through legislation to ban restaurants like McDonald’s from including toys in happy meals. Here’s a great idea: How about banning politicians from…
Should the Fed Print More Money?
Chairman Ben Bernanke has announced that the Federal Reserve will buy about $600 billion of government bonds as part of what is being called QE2 (because this is the second big stage of “quantitative easing”). This actually isn’t printing money, but it has the same…
Global Taxation: An Idea so Terrible that Even the Obama Administration Is Opposed
The old saying that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is especially true in the field of public policy. A good example is the crazy new proposal from the United Nations to collect billions of dollars by imposing global taxes on financial transactions and energy. That’s…
Can You Name the Hate-Filled, Racist, Right-Wing, Tea-Party Fanatic Who Said This?
At a recent speech in Atlanta, a somewhat famous former elected official made some rather blunt comments about welfare. According to a news report: In discussing welfare, he said rules instituted by liberals to limit benefits to single mothers discouraged blacks from…