I’m dumbfounded and amazed. When Democrats and Republicans have a game of chicken, the GOP blinks 99 percent of the time. And I thought for sure this was going to happen in the fight about whether to extend all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (the GOP position), or whether…
Daily Analysis
The GOP “Pledge” Doesn’t Go Far Enough: There Should Be No Federal Government Role in Housing
Considering they could have sat on their hands and relied on unhappy voters to give them big gains in November, I’m not too unhappy about the House GOP’s “Pledge to America.” Yes, it’s mostly filled with inoffensive motherhood-and-apple-pie language, but at least…
Government Insurance Meddling Costs Kids Coverage
Consider this a prelude to Obamacare: Tens of thousands of Texas children will be directly affected by the 11th-hour decision of a number of major health insurance companies to stop selling child-only policies rather than comply with the new federal law that requires…
Strangling Entrepreneurship and Job Creation with $1.75 Trillion of Regulation and Red Tape
A new study from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy concludes that annual regulatory costs jumped by nearly $600 billion between 2005 and 2008. Thanks to the Obama Administration’s big-government agenda, the burden of red tape today doubtlessly is…
It’s Simple to Balance the Budget without Higher Taxes
John Podesta of the Center for American Progress had a column in Politico yesterday asserting that “closing the budget gap entirely on the spending side would require draconian programmatic cuts.” He went on to complain that there are some people who “refuse to look…
New Orwellian Tax Scheme in England Would Require all Paychecks Go Directly to the Tax Authority
Our tax system in America is an absurd nightmare, but at least we have some ability to monitor what is happening. We can’t get too aggressive (nobody wants the ogres at the IRS breathing down their necks), but at least we can adjust our withholding levels and control…
Russian Government Announces 20 Percent Reduction in Number of Bureaucrats
I’ve already commented on Cuba’s surprising announcement to slash the number of government workers. And I’ve complained about the federal workforce expanding in the United States. This is not what one would expect when comparing policy developments in a communist…
Giving Cops Bad Incentives to Harass Victimless Behavior
The Washington Post has an interesting report about the huge amount of money that Fairfax County spends to go after gambling. The story cites critics who ask “why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. The answer is obvious – and…
The Environmentalist Death Toll
National Review has a column reviewing a new book, 3 Billion and Counting, that dissects the harsh human cost of banning DDT. There are things that should be banned, of course, but such decisions should be based on sound science and cost-benefit analysis. Sadly,…
The “Tea Party’s Already Won”
That’s the title of an insightful column at Thehill.com, which points out that Tea Party activism has succeeded in shifting the debate from making government bigger to making government smaller. The columnist also is correct in explaining how the Tea Party, by…