President Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2012 budget today, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s no major initiative such as the so-called stimulus scheme or the government-run healthcare proposal. The bad news, though, is that government…
Daily Analysis
Obama the Born-Again Budget Cutter?!?
Chalk up another victory – at least on the rhetorical level – for the Tea Party. President Obama will release his fiscal year 2012 budget tomorrow and he’s apparently become a born-again fiscal conservative. Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post story….
House Budget Cuts Are a Great Fiscal Victory, but Just the First Step of a Long Journey
I am pleasantly stunned that GOP leaders have increased the level of cuts in the bill that will fund the government for the final seven months of fiscal year 2011. Kudos to the freshman members, the Tea Party, and the conservatives who have led the charge and achieved…
No More Taxpayer Subsidies for Republicans (or Democrats)
This is the type of story that makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve already commented on how I don’t like redistribution from rich to poor, but I really, really hate redistribution from poor to rich. And that’s exactly what happens when taxpayers subsidize the…
The 1993 Clinton Tax Increase Did Not Lead to the Budget Surpluses of the Late 1990s
Proponents of higher taxes are fond of claiming that Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase was a big success because of budget surpluses that began in 1998. That’s certainly a plausible hypothesis, and I’m already on record arguing that Clinton’s economic record was much…
Requiring a Permit to Be a Bum?!? Great Moments in Government Stupidity
Since I’ve spent the past 25 years analyzing government, I’m used to spectacular levels of waste and incompetence. Examples of pork such as “$27 light bulbs” and the “turtle tunnel” barely cause me to raise an eyebrow. It takes something really amazing to grab my…
Four Reasons Why Big Government Is Bad Government
A new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity gives four reasons why big government is bad fiscal policy. I particularly like the explanation of how government spending undermines growth by diverting labor and capital from the productive sector of the…
Comparing Reaganomics and Obamanomics with Minneapolis Fed Data
Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old on February 6, so let’s celebrate his life by comparing the success of his pro-market policies with the failure of Barack Obama’s policies (which are basically a continuation of George W. Bush’s policies, so this is not a…
Greetings from Italy
I’m in Milan, at the office of the Institute Bruno Leoni, which overlooks the famous Castle Sforza and is almost within shouting distance of the remarkable cathedral. This evening, I’ll be talking about how Italy should balance its budget by limiting the size of…
With Apologies to Dickens, One was the Best of Senators, One was the Worst of Senators.
The title of this post doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” But what can you expect when you compare politicians to the opening line of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. That’s what came to my mind, though,…