I have a question for my friends who support a national sales tax. First, some background. Beginning with the defeat of Woody Jenkins in his Louisiana Senate race back in the 1990s, various versions of the national sales tax have caused political headaches for GOP…
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.
Great Moments in Government-Run Healthcare
British healthcare is often criticized for long waiting lines and slovenly conditions, but that’s just part of the story. Here’s a frightening story about a women who actually got treated – and died as a result. To be fair, this presumably is a…
Another Deficit Hypocrite
Paul Volcker is a typical Washington insider who maintains his favorable connections by endorsing bigger government. In recent months, he’s been busy supporting a value-added tax. Now he is saying that it is absolutely critical to address the deficit….
Senate Unanimously Rejects Greek Bailout
In an uncharacteristic display of fiscal rectitude, Senators voted 94-0 against the Greek bailout. But don’t get too excited. They only voted to instruct the White house to oppose the bailout in the absence of a plan to pay back the money. Needless to say, the…
Replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger with Pee Wee Herman?!?
That’s my reaction to Robert Reich’s crazy idea to put the nation’s least competent people in charge of British Petroleum. I’m not a big fan of BP, especially since it oozes political correctness (just think of their stupid ads where they claim BP stands for “beyond…
Will "Hauser's Law" Protect Us from Revenue-Hungry Politicians?
David Ranson had a good column earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal explaining that federal tax revenues historically have hovered around 19 percent of gross domestic product, regardless whether tax rates are high or low. One reason for this relationship, as…
Slash Government Spending to Boost Economy
The politicians in Washington and their enablers in the academy are wildly wrong about how to boost growth. They think more government spending is a key to prosperity, but this blog already has revealed that the Great Depression was made worse because of bigger…
Get Government Out of the Education Business
There’s a controversy in Texas because the State Board of Education has mandated the inclusion of certain materials in textbooks. This has elicited howls of protests from the left, which generally has controlled how some issues are portrayed. Since I don’t want…
Obama Administration Trying to Rig Government Statistics for Ideological Purposes
The government’s so-called War on Poverty has been a dismal failure, largely because giving people money as a condition of being poor is a very good way of ensuring that some of them will choose to remain poor. But now the White House wants to make a bad situation…
You don’t need to watch old Gunsmoke episodes if you want to travel into the past. Just read the latest Congressional Budget Office “research” claiming that Obama’s so-called stimulus “increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 1.8 million to 4.1 million.”…