While American politicians are experts when it comes to squandering money, they may be just amateurs compared to the kleptocrats at the European Commission. The overall burden of government is heavier in Europe, so that certainly suggests that there are greater…
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 European Waste, Part I.
In the ongoing contest to see which group of politicians can squander money in the most obscene fashion, it appears that the bureaucrats at the European Commission in Brussels might be surpassing their counterparts in Washington. Here’s a story from the…
You Pay while Fannie and Freddie Play.
The Wall Street Journal has more details about the sordid redistribution of our money to the insiders at Fannie Mae and Freddie mac: …there’s still some ugly 2009 business to report: To wit, the Treasury’s Christmas Eve taxpayer massacre lifting the…
Washington vs. America.
One of the dirty little secrets of Washington is that Republicans and Democrats have more in common with each other than either party has with ordinary Americans. Tim Carney has an excellent (but depressing) column in the Washington Examiner exposing how both Democrat…
Another "Eminent Domain" Scandal.
Ever since the Supreme Court’s odious Kelo decision, which allowed a city in Connecticut to seize a woman’s home for the benefit of a politically-connected big corporation, there has been a deep concern that this would open the door to more examples of…
Nebraska Voters Don't Like Stolen Money.
Let’s give some credit to the Cornhusker state. As John Fund reports in the Wall Street Journal voters are overwhelmingly opposed to Obamacare – even though their state would get a big pile of money from taxpayers in the other 49 states. Meanwhile, the…
Should Republicans Have Compromised to Produce a Less-Bad Healthcare Bill?
Writing for Forbes, Bruce Bartlett puts forth an interesting hypothesis that healthcare legislation could have been made better (hopefully he meant to write “less destructive”) if the GOP had been willing to compromise with Democrats: Democrats desperately…
The Death Tax Is Dead!
Good news for entrepreneurs and investors, at least the ones who are very sick. As of January 1, the death tax is repealed. But this silver cloud has a couple of dark linings. First, the tax springs back to life next January 1, so healthy taxpayers are out of luck….
Do Taxes Make People Unhappy
A column in the Wall Street Journal reports on a new study showing that people tend to be unhappiest in high-tax states. This type of research is very imprecise, to be sure, and it may be that the causality (if any) is that unhappy people vote for higher taxes. The…
Bureaucrats Living on Easy Street.
A column in the Washington Examiner compares the bloated payrolls and happy times for the bureaucracy with the challenging times for workers in the productive sector of the economy. The column does not mention that bureaucrats also are vastly overpaid compared to…