Daily Analysis

America's Fiscal Problem Is Spending, not Deficits.

Steve Forbes is 100 percent correct, as was Milton Friedman. Bloated and wasteful government spending is the problem, not inadequate revenue. Deficits are merely the symptom of excessive spending: The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once famously…

Another Dishonest Deficit Hypocrite

The serial mendacity that characterizes Washington is on full display in David Border’s column entitled “Without higher taxes, the national debt will be crushing.” Yes, this is the same David Broder who did not write columns about the threat of…

Bush Was a Statist, not a Conservative

A former White House speechwriter, Mark Thiessen, has jumped to the defense of his former boss, writing for the Washington Post that George W. Bush “established a conservative record without parallel.” Even by the loose standards of Washington, that is a…

Great Moments in Foreign Government

I saw this odd story about wasteful government spending in James Taranto’s Best of the Web email. The bureaucrats at Britain’s National Health Service are sqandering thousands of dollars to create a giant “Burger Boy” as part of a government…

The New Deal Hurt the Economy

A great column in the Wall Street Journal explains how FDR’s policies hurt the economy. That is true, but the really interesting part of the column for me is that it explains how Roosevelt (and then Truman) were convinced the economy would return to depression…

Bernanke's Hollow Deficit Warning

Even though I’ve been in Washington almost 25 years, I am endlessly amazed at the chutzpah of people who support higher spending and bigger government while piously lecturing the rest of us about the need to control deficits. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a good…

Richard Rahn on the IRS and its (lack of) Morality

Richard Rahn recently wrote an article in the Washington Times about issues of morality and the IRS.  His conclusions about the oppressive nature of the federal tax bureaucracy and accurate contrasts with state tax agencies are particularly relevant in April.  Would…