I hope the title of this post is an exaggeration, but it’s certainly a logical conclusion based on what is written in the Congressional Budget Office’s updated Economic and Budget Outlook. The Capitol Hill bureaucracy basically has a deficit-über-alles view of fiscal policy. CBO’s long-run perspective, as shown by this excerpt, is that deficits reduce […]
read more...Bill Frezza of Adams Capital Management writes at RealClearMarkets to debunk claims that the current deficit is due to a lack of tax revenue, rather than excessive spending. Using IRS data, he shows how revenues from the rich – as well as the effective tax rate on the rich – rose during the Bush years. So […]
read more...I don’t agree with all the points in this column from Real Clear Markets, but I fully agree with the overall theme that the GOP would be wise to cut Bush out of the Party’s history. Like Nixon, he was a failed, big-government statist. The sour economy is presenting Republicans with a golden opportunity to […]
read more...My former Heritage Foundation colleague has returned to youtube.com with a video asking taxpayers whether examples of government waste are true or false.
read more...I’m still dealing with the statist echo chamber, having been hit with two additional attacks for the supposed sin of endorsing Reaganomics over Obamanomics (my responses to the other attacks can be found here and here). Some guy at the Atlantic Monthly named Steve Benen issued an critique focusing on the timing of the recession […]
read more...I don’t like wasteful government spending, but it really adds insult to injury when politicians use my tax dollars for political propaganda. A nauseating example of this practice are the highway signs highlighting how projects are funded by the so-called stimulus. In my young and reckless days, they would have been ideal targets for vandalism. […]
read more...The Washington Examiner explains that America’s Founders would be aghast to see how modern politicians have accumulated $trillions of debt. That may be true, but the editorial is nonetheless unsatisfactory because it’s quite likely that the founders would be even more horrified by the amount of spending. After all, the Constitution permitted debt, but Article […]
read more...In a column in today’s New York Post, I mock White House unemployment calculations and then explain why companies are not anxious to hire more workers. The White House last year released a supposedly scientific analysis that claimed to show that adopting the “stimulus” bill would cut unemployment. Indeed, the report specifically estimated that the […]
read more...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.” CBO’s analysis is a throwback to the widely discredited Keynesian theory that assumes you can enrich […]
read more...Governments that tax work and subsidize sloth are committing a form of slow-motion suicide, and the Greek fiscal crisis is the canary in the coal mine of this phenomenon. Interestingly, some European governments are trying to halt the downward slide, though I suspect that most of them will fail to take the necessary steps. But […]
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